Software and Philosophical Beliefs
“We all hold philosophical beliefs” (*). Where did software come from? Is it real? Can it evolve into some sort of intelligence? If yes, do we have a moral right to abort some projects which may lead in the future to intelligent software forms? Would it be software like we define it today or it finally evolves into something new? Where and when there is a line dividing intelligent and non-intelligent software? What about killing a running instance of software or shutting down its hardware? Are we some sort of software too? If software is real does it more real than we are? Did software exist before us? Is there any software God or gods? Can we consider ourselves as software gods? Freedom of software and its output, perhaps in some distant future? These are fundamental questions that come to a mind of any philosophically inclined software engineer or a computer scientist. And most answers to them require to take a certain philosophical stance and hold beliefs not possible to verify or test at the moment.
(*) Philosophy, by S. Law, p. 14-15
- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareGeneralist.com -
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