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THE OUT OF DATE TERMS: HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE.

Physicalising the Mind - The Need for a New Nomenclature
for Neurological and Computer Terminology.
Jud Evans
Copyright © 2009 Jud Evans. Permission granted to distribute in any medium, commercial
or  non-commercial,  provided  author  attribution  and  copyright  notices  remain intact.

The crude notions of there being *a mind in there somewhere* is acting as an obstacle and financial burden to serious research, and millions of dollars are being squandered in a fruitless search for something which represents the ancient beliefs of primitive man.


Physicalising the Mind
The Need for a New Nomenclature for Neurological and Computer Terminology.
Suggested replacements

Matergy - Matter-Energy
Matergicware  -  Hardware
Datergy - Electronic  Data
Datergicware  -  Software
Sensergy - Sense signals

Experience/experiencing and action/activity simply do not exist. Experience is not a brain activity it is THE BRAIN. Whilst we can do our best with some success to describe our experiences (such as tasting salt or sugar) we cannot identify what experience IS because from a physicalist  POV - what does not exist cannot be described. There is no duality involved. What exists is a meaty stimulated and responsive calculator, which reacts to the internal and external stimuli in a manner of which the precise method is not yet totally understood. The crude notions of there being *a mind in there somewhere* is acting as an obstacle and financial burden to serious research, and millions of dollars are being squandered in a fruitless search for something which represents the ancient beliefs of primitive man

All organisms respond to stimuli. Excited by the light/warmth a leaf turns towards the sun. When a plant turns towards a light source it is known as phototropism. But that does not automatically instantiate *phototropism* as an existing dualistic accompaniment of the phototropic vegetable material. Touch certain plants and they automatically withdraw or curl up. That does not mean that some primitive spook called *a curler* or *curling* or *a withdrawer* or *withdrawing* can be found in the plant.  (like Heidegger looked at a leaf searching for the *is* of its *greenness.*)

For the same reason when neurosurgeons (or some slack-jawed transcendentalist peering over their shoulder) look inside the exposed brain looking for *a soul* or *a mind* or  *consciousness* or other primitive stupidities like *qualia,* etc. they will never find anything NEVER EVER!

Such sun-seeking traits have evolved in plants over thousands of years. Growing towards a light source that beneficially changes the photosynthesising matergic entity, improves the survival rate of the plant. The human brain has developed in a similar way. Whilst the greatly improved sensorial and calculative abilities have changed the character of the meaty material and the specialised brain cells - the actual software or to quote the current  in term - the wetware does NOT EXIST as such.

Software and wetware exists as a series of electrons arranged in a certain way, just as the metal hard disc is electronically arranged in a different way (as a connected series of metal discs.) To a computer programmer or a specialist there is nothing complicated about the fact that a computer can provide *a condition report* whenever the operator requires one.

I have such an datergicware object of systematised matter on my PC which alerts me if the computational material, ( i. e. the computer) is overheating. That does not mean that either the *information* exists nor the *condition* exists - it just means that the computer exists in that physical manner at the moment it was instructed by me to give the systems report (an arrangement of datergy on my screen) and that I modify the way I exist by becoming informed as to the temperature of the computer.

Thus when a human body provides *a systems alert* (referred to by the Platonist philosopher as *qualia* (Latin for *what sort* or *what kind,*) or report in the form of electro-chemical signals from the eardrum or he damaged toe - it is the tintinnabulating eardrum and the stubbed toe that exists not some primitive dualism called   *tintinnabulation* or *pain.*

The human brain does not provide its feed back in the form of a readable script on a monitor screen, because developmentally and ergonomically a meaty monitor screen attached to the human head would have provided a clumsy encumbrance - specially when walking about in low-ceilinged caves.  The painful toe alerts the CNS electronically via nerve fibres, and the *read out* is managed by the regrouping and re-chunking of the synaptic openings and closures within the network (the rapid colour changes of a squid provides a useful analogy) which provides patterned cellular configurations that symbolise the ringing ears or the damaged toe.

Nature is very simple. But for people who believe in spirits, ghosts, disembodied *minds* and airy-fairy *consciousness* and the rest of the compendium of foolishness,  it is in their interest to make the processing human brain appear as mysterious as they possible can.  A general realization  amongst the public that these dualisms are merely the result of ignorance would throw immediate suspicion on the claims of religion and its souls and spirits and the rest of the mumbo jumbo.

An understanding of human object-action reification will one day clear away all the present transcendentalist detritus into the dustbin of history (sorry about the cliche ) where it belongs.

The ontologically confusing and misleading terms *Hardware* and *Software* are defunct, useless, out of date terms which give completely erroneous impressions of what constitutes a computer or a human brain.

When a computer programmer introduces a datergic programme or the human brain receives some internal  or external sensergy that interacts with the physical existing matergic CD-disc or the brain meat - the *datergy/sensergy* is converted into datergic electrical pulses (the bit stream) by reflections of the matergic laser beam from a photoelectric cell via the systematised (suitably arranged) matergic material we call *the datergic operating system.* What he installs is merely another form of electronic datergicware (mistakenly called *software.*)

In other words the whole computational operation is a physical one using combinations of purely material components - there is nothing metaphysical involved at all.

The so-called *software* is usually provided in the form of a physical CD, or datergy-stick or (or now less usually) a floppy disc, and is composed of micro matergic objects we call electrons, (force fields if you prefer) which cause the matergicware  and the datergicware to interact  and cause the physical computer to exist differently.

But that does not mean that either the *action* of the original hardware or the causal action of the *datergicware* exists - it simply means that the metal pieces of the hardware and the electronic pieces of the application datergicware includes programs that do real work for users. For example, word processors, spreadsheets, and database management systems fall under the category of application datergicware.

But it is the physical personal processor and , the physical processing brain and the physical *datergy* which is processed that can be found in the world - NOT THE PROCESSING!

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