Sweis asked:

I am beginning my studies in philosophy of mind. However, I have a question I feel might be
considered stupid by my fellow students and professors: How does the software of a computer make
the hardware move? The question is of course connected to the ever bothersome mind-body problem
started by Descartes. I read your answers to Dualism and others, but my question is on the computer
connection.

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These types of question, Sweis, have been around for ages and yet we don't ever seem to get any
closer to a resolution. But there is an absolutely fundamental fallacy here, namely in just putting it the
way you have, as a presupposition that "a computer moves things". I suppose thousands, maybe
millions of people share in this fallacy; they are confused because science tells them this-and-that
about the supposed powers of computers and we are all supposed to believe it because of the
prestige associated with science. Let me therefore point out the fallacy for you, and maybe you'll then
feel motivated to spread the word a little. Just try and answer these few questions, but try and see
through the pattern of them:

1. When a ball rolls down a slope, who/what moves the ball?

2. When a tile falls off a roof and kills a passer-bye, who/what killed that person?

3. When you go to sleep at night, who/what puts you to sleep?

4. When you move your writing hand, who/ what pushes the pen?

5. When you drive a car, who/what drives the car?

6. When a computer issues printing code to a printer, who/what instructs the printer?

Now questions 1-2 are answerable, though not to everyone's complete satisfaction, for it depends on
whichever scientific theory is current at the moment to account for concepts like 'impetus', 'force',
'attraction' etc. But in any case, if you said "gravity" for the first and "chance" for the second, the
likelihood of it standing up in a judicial court is pretty good. With No. 3 you have to command some
fairly precise knowledge of physiology, but again an answer is readily attainable. But with No. 4 we
move into a different realm, one where the concept of 'volition' enters the picture. Let's leave aside
any question of whether it is the soul or the psyche or the mind that is ultimately responsible; for by
whatever name you label the faculty responsible for the movement, the answer to No. 4 is not, of
course, "my hand", but "I". The cartesian dilemma can be said to have been resolved to the extent
that there is no longer cause for us to abide by his mind/ matter distinction; for although we have not
come to a solution of where or how the pulse originates which moves the hand, yet its source is the
"I", which generates a stream of electrochemical energy through the appropriate neuronal pathways,
which are in turn converted by the motor cortex into a signalling bundle that triggers the desired
muscular functions.

Now here you have an answer to No. 4, which gives you both the 'mechanical' features and the
'mental' features of the arrangement involved in the movement, namely that there is an "I" (however
constituted) which initiates, a series of functions which obey, and the medium by which the intentions
are communicated and in the same pass translated into action. Basically, you have the answer to No.
5 as well now; and I only threw in this question as a stepping stone to the unveiling of the above
mentioned fallacy. Evidently it is not the motor which drives the car, although in everyday parlance we
often speak as though this were the case. Nor is it your foot on the accelerator with your hands on the
steering wheel, but once again, indubitably, the "I".

And indubitably, it is again the same "I" which issues code to the printer and instructs it. For both a
printer and a computer are 100% dead matter, which is built and programmed by human. Accordingly
the only thing a computer or a printer can "do" is to roll down an incline (if it's on wheels) or fall off a
balcony and kill a passer-by, as the objects of questions No. 1 and 2. The seemingly 'intelligent'
actions they perform, however, are not 'actions' at all — they are in the strictest sense of the word
actions performed by humans, for whom the computer acts as a proxy. For it is always and exactly
the same agency, a human mind, which instructs your hand to move the pen, your foot to push the
gas pedal and the computer to generate the code to activate a printer. Now I should add something
important here. There can be no pretence that we know exactlyhow the mind generates the stream
of electrochemical energy which runs down your nerve strands to make certain muscles twitch. But
we know exactly,down to the finest detail, how analogous action occurs in a computer and printer.
And we know this for a very obvious reason: because a human mind designed this piece of
machinery to work just as it does. Therefore, as I said, the ultimate causeof printer action is a human
mind. — The ultimate cause of a human mind? Well, for thatwe're still looking!

Jürgen Lawrenz

Sydney

Try thinking of it this way: there is a kind of illusion that "software" is the program you see on paper or
what you type in on the screen. But those are the means of symbolizing and inputting software.
Software actually is magnetically stored in the computer, and the magnetized areas in RAM affect
electrical currents flowing through the silicon. You could (and the earliest computers did) use
magnetic tape just like cassette tapes. So you don't have anything different, on that level, from an
electric motor or a thermostat. What the RAM does is enable you to direct the electrical flows very
precisely, in very complex patterns, which alter other magnetic areas, which direct other electrical
flows, over and over until you finally get impulses directed to your screen or hard drive or whatever.
You could just as well feel puzzled over how the tape in your tape player (if you still have one) causes
the speakers to make sounds.

So how is this connected to the mind-body problem? A good question. You think computers have
minds? Why on earth should you think that, except that we've been told over and over that this is the
case? I'll let you in on a secret... they don't. Which is not to say that you can't get mind from matter.
That is a totally, completely different question. And the conflation of those two questions has led to
some enormous problems in several fields today.

You might look up the "hard problem" on the web... but carefully... this is a very nasty area in
philosophy.

Steven Ravett Brown

As a former engineer I worked a lot on the software-side of computers. The most 'hard' thing I ever
did (in the first year of my study) was translating normal software in 'Assembler'. Now Assembler is a
kind of software very close to the hardware. The hardware is designed in such a way that it
understands commands in a 2 cipher-system (compositions of 0's and 1's). Its logic is a dual logic.
Consider a zero as NO and a one as YES. Assembler now translates smarter software in series
consisting of only 0's and 1's.

Back to your question. On the highest level there is smart software (close to language). This is
translated in a few steps to basic software. The last basic software is Assembler. So the final result is
a command like 0001011100110000011111. That shape of command originally used to be punched
in cards. The cards where used to steer a machine. In the machine there was a unit that felt the holes
in the cards, and translated them to machine instructions.

Henk Tuten