Coming apart at the seams: the role of computation in a successor metaphysics

What I read

In this text, the author argues that a common framing of digital computers as base, objective and formal is incorrect; instead, the fundamental quality of a digital computer is situated. The author calls for a complete overhaul of metaphysics, one that assumes no axiomatic relationship to formality.

The author begins by describing a common misconception: that digitalness (or discreteness) is at the root of computation. Computation, it is commonly considered, is entirely determinate (and defined at a metaphysical level), and the boundaries around digital structures are “absolutely sharp.” Over time, our environment will creep in, and great efforts are made to ensure that the determinate qualities remain; these efforts include physical activities (such as the clean retention of media), but also ontological activities (such as separating language of the base and the things happening to the base.)

The author argues the opposite: that computers are “crucially not discrete.” The idea that there is a semantic cleanness that is separate from a syntactical messiness is impossible, as computers “participate in their subject matter.” The reality of building a “clean” manifestation of digital computation—how it shows up in life—is “not a possible way to design software intended to be used in the real world.”

The logical consideration of software is based on a fundamental metaphysical understanding of understanding, and this is the base of scientific discourse: “the goal of scientific discourse is to delineate the objects, categories, and properties in the world so that their boundaries are discrete.” The author argues that this is not possible; for example, claiming that there are clouds cannot be quantified, meaningfully: it is not possible to answer the question of “how many clouds are there?” Language is situated, and computers are of language; formality, the author proposes, is “discreteness run amok.” This leads to the conclusion that metaphysics itself needs to be reconsidered, and reconsidered without commitments to formality. The author concludes by stating that, in reconsidering metaphysics, “I want no prior commitment to any distinctions at all.”