A surprising number of conscious computer scientists believe that computers reproduce the mind-body problem in the form of software-hardware. I don't think so -- mainly because there is no "problem" with hardware-software.
In the case of computer systems we are able to express and explain the continuum from hardware to software into the minutest detail. Theoretically, no feature of software escapes a causal explanation. Even though the causal processes may be chaotic, we can still understand all the links between levels. But we are mostly unable to explain how consciousness, intentionality, and agency emerge from the lower-level (biological, physical, and chemical) functions.
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1 comments:
For me the mind-body problem was solved by Gilbert Ryle who argued that "the mind is a function of the brain."
So, in terms of Ryle's solution, if one must make a computing analogy, isn't the second analogy better than the first?
1) Mind:brain::software:hardware
2)Mind:brain::computation:software and hardware
(Don't computer scientists consider software to be made of matter [i.e., stored on matter]? Also, isn't the substance, the placeholder, of a datum matter too?)
So -- the mind-body problem ceases to be a problem, (in the Cartesian and computing sense) and loses its spookiness if one reframes the two elements as a) the the function of matter, and b) matter.
At least it does for me.
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