A machine is an arrangement of facts into function, and whether 'facts' are intentional, funtion irreducibly is. The machine cannot define the function: 'or' is not 'what an or gate does', except in the sense that it's what it is designed to do. How do we know when a machine goes wrong?
This is just the 'naturalistic fallacy', slightly disguised ...
Another open question argument? But not quite as boring as that.
If I am a machine then 'or' cannot be defined in terms of anything I do either. What sensible conclusions can we draw from this?
There is the 'private language' issue - we know that 'or' can't be defined in terms of something internal - something I 'think'. But isn't a collection of machines also a machine?
This looks unavoidable, but what is the function of this 'greater' machine? We don't know. What would a 'function' of this kind look like? Function for what? To whose purpose?
We might say: a functionless collection of facts may still have some order - it may do something, but not something useful. What order would it have? Only the order of some facts. An ordered groups of facts is just another fact. We might make a mistake about the order, but this would not render the group of facts 'malfunctioning'. How would we discover this order? Just as we discover the ordering of facts which allows us to build our machines. The Universe doesn't get things 'right' or 'wrong'. The great collection of machines can't get things 'right' or 'wrong' either. It is just the way it is.
But we get things right and wrong. If we didn't, we couldn't talk to one another. Another dull chant?
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