Truth and the Automaton
(21st century version of Kantianism)
1-you find a machine that it is claimed to distinguish between apples, and oranges. you give a photo of an orange,the machine says: "this is an orange" , the same for the apple.
2-you find that the machine persistently making mistakes. you threaten the machine to smash it . nothing happens.(if you smash a machine, you only have a smashed machine, nothing more.)
you go to the programmer, and say your machine is not working. make me a refund. in this way, you threaten to punish him . and then, he will give you a better program .
3- the programmer may tell you that the code is alright, the problem comes from your hardware. you check the hardware to see whether it can calculate 2 x 2? ...the hardware gives you 25 ... you get mad , and go to the producer. threaten to punish him ( to get a refund) but surprisingly, he answers you : " oh my friend, this is not a calculating machine, it is showing the temperature of the room! which is correctly 25 degrees. "so you have misinterpreted the "purpose" of the producer .
4- so the problem of truth is closely related to two other problems: a) the responsibility b) interpretation . for the idea of the truth to become possible, somebody should be responsible for the machine, and you should interpret the machine correctly. when a machine speaks with you a human language, there is virtually no possibility of mis-interpretation, at least no more than the way you may misinterpret a human being.
5- you may say there is no need for responsibility, searching among many machines, suddenly I have come across a machine which correctly distinguished apples and oranges. but one may say in this way, the machine for you is not a machine. it's an element of nature. and just like other elements of nature, it is obeying only the natural laws. so, you have come to a grip of the natural laws (in a not realistically simple way) that makes you able to have an apparatus which can distinguish between apples and oranges. if this state of nature seems unrealistic, then the only way to recover a more meaningful world, is to return to the "purpose" of the machine builders, which reintroduces the human element, and establishes again machines as machines.
6- imagine that the machine gives you 0's for apples and 1's for oranges. you implement another machine to translate these bits of information to sentences like "this is an apple" . so in this way, for making a non-ambiguous interpretation possible ( in terms of a human language) you have relied on the responsibility of another machine-maker .thus, the problem of interpretation shares something with the problem of responsibility which we will try to clarify.
7- interpretation , is behaving according to the laws of linguistic signification. that is, a human being which interprets something, is relating words and signs in the order which is outlined by the laws of linguistics .little matters whether you are interpreting traffic signs or translating languages .a translator who is supposed to pursue the linguistic laws , might be subjected to punishment if he does not do the job correctly . (for example think about a governmental translation office) the liability of the translator to punishment,and thus his/her responsibility , is a guarantee for the correct interpretation (translation).
8- a human interpreter, behave according to laws of linguistics, a machine behaves according to the laws of nature. if there is a claim that this certain machine is interpreting "correctly" ,that is as a human may do,there should be somebody to guarantee this. some human being who can be hold responsible for it.
9- if you have a machine, which you do not know who is the producer , and discover that it is interpreting correctly, then you are responsible for the truth of interpretation. if at some point, the machine stops to interpret correctly (which you can only understand ,only if you are interpreting yourself alongside with that machine ) then you are the only person responsible for the mistake.
10- when the builders of a machine are not any more responsible for it (for example they die,
or escape, or become millionaires or ...) that is, it has become impossible to punish them, the
machine turns into an element of nature. a simple ensemble of mechanical pieces .which only
behaves according to the laws of nature. if you want to use it as a machine, you should
guarantee it's proper functioning yourself.
11a- suppose that you imagine there is a human translator, who will do some job for you qua an
Internet connection. then you are being told that no, it is an illusion. this is Google who is translating the material for you . since Google is not responsible to you, for you the translator is an element of nature. then , you discover that you could not really distinguish between an element of nature, and a responsible human being (subject) . here you come to the point that subjectivity of some other creature, is only something that I posit for myself. I do this on some circumstantial evidence, but there is less and less guarantee for these evidence at the age of the networks. it remains only something that you posit .if at some point you decide to deny what you have posited before, you are the only person responsible for your "untruth".
11b-Turing's Idea about a human user, discriminating between a human agent, and a machine, are not only based on our understanding of humanity. it is mostly based on our understanding of a machine. that is , if we don't have some idea about the difference between grammatical errors that a machine may make, in comparison to what a human may make, this idea is going to fail . if we do not know that a machine may exist, and nothing about the abilities of present time machines, there can be no Turing test. Using Turing test like ideas, you can not claim that you have a scientific manner, to discover “subject” s. rather you may say you have a more elaborate way to organize circumstantial evidence. In any case, the claim that a subject is a subject, is essentially and fundamentally a non-scientific claim, never can be supported by pure science.
12-suppose you have produced a machine which should do this or that task . you find out that
the machine is not functioning. after spending a huge amount of time, you understand that nothing wrong is in your plan . if the machine has behaved according to the laws of nature, it should have worked. therefore, you discover that the machine is following some different laws (or may be no law at all) . but how can it be that an element of nature is not obeying the laws of nature? this obvious contradiction means that you have unwantedly designed an experience which refutes what has been so far known as the laws of nature, in other words, you understand that "laws of nature" are products of human civilization at some specific age.
13-the validity of the laws of nature, simply depends on the responsibility of the people who have
postulated that these are the "correct" laws. in other words, they depend on the responsibility
of "linguistic" agents who express them . It is not possible to claim that linguistic agents also
follow the laws of nature. because in this way, you do not have any guarantee for these laws.
existence of the laws of nature, directly depends on "linguistic" creatures which do not follow
the laws of nature, but a different set of laws, namely laws of linguistics, which gives you permission to use phrases like "true" and "false" . in an exclusively natural world, there is no true and false .therefore,no meaningful expression can be made.
