Intelligence cannot be present without understanding. No computer has any awareness of what it does.

If you didn’t have any conscious beings in the world, there really wouldn’t be morality but with consciousness that you have it.

Well I didn't actually see the Matrix but I've seen other movies where with similar sorts of themes.

But I think it is a serious issue to wonder about the other platonic absolutes of say beauty and morality.

I imagine that whenever the mind perceives a mathematical idea, it makes contact with Plato's world of mathematical concepts... When mathematicians communicate, this is made possible by each one having a direct route to truth, the consciousness of each being in a position to perceive mathematical truths directly, through the process of 'seeing'.

There is a certain sense in which I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance. Some people take the view that the universe is simply there and it runs along-it's a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe, I think that there is something much deeper about it, about its existence, which we have very little inkling of at the moment.

Understanding is, after all, what science is all about — and science is a great deal more than mindless computation.