Except for the (disturbing) fact that a program is the projection of a programmer. A program is to some extent (to what extent?) the potentiality of the programmer (Dasein). Ja, ja.

P.S. Eek, a mouse (Seiende) in the computer room!
 

And a mechanical contraption the projection of its inventor. We don't enter machines in the Olympics and say they "run" faster a sprinter. Although the first machine to move faster than a human was an exciting engineering feat. Nor should we anthropomorphize computers and claim they "play" chess. I think it's exciting a program can compute all the possibilities so fast that it can beat a chess grand master, and kudos to the programmers. But humans will go on playing chess against each other.
 

I wrote up a longish post against Carman's (quite bad) argument, you can reach it here:

http://www.eripsa.org/blog/2006/02/the-standard-argument/

We don't enter a machine into the Olympics because the Olympics is a match between humans, of perfection of the human body in various ways. (Surely a Heideggerian would understand that :) Entering a machine would defeat the purpose. I don't see how that's the case with chess, which is an activity of the intellect, and ripe for machine participation.

Also, the computer's programmers are quite bad at math. I don't see how Deep Blue is a reflection about any programmer or engineer's abilities. it is an expression of the possibilities of chess itself.
 

I don't see the distinction you are making between a physical and a mental match. Olympic races and chess matches are between humans. When a machine can roll faster than a human run, or calculate the probabilities about chess positions faster than a chess player, it's a noteworthy event, but humans will continue to race and play each other.

I also don't understand your point about programmers. A computer processor can essentially only move and add numbers. All other operations are built from those by humans, wheteher by adding more complex instructions, designing compilers, or writing the actual chess programs. When we say a computer can beat someone at chess, we mean that a machine can run a chess playing program written by humans. Its the same case again as a vehicle beating a sprinter. The vehicle doesn't enter into a race with the sprinter, but instead a human directs the vehicle and tells it when to start, what direction to go in, etc.

That chess programs are the products of humans is demonstrable by the availability of chess programs in stores. They run on the same hardware, but some are more successful than others becauser they are a reflection of the engineers that wrote them. A silicon chip or a collection of rules doesn't create a chess game

The possibility of chess itself is a human invention. This is key in Heidegger. No thing exists except for humans giving it meaning. Otherwise nature is just changes in energy against a background field. It's humans that say this a board, this is a rook, and these are the rules of the game.
 

"A silicon chip or a collection of rules doesn't create a chess game"

I completely agree that a collection of rules does not create a chess game. Rules are static and inert- benign unless embodied in an agent.

But why can't a silicon chip be such an agent? Or rather, a collection of chips and wires and electromagnetic disks and so on. Surely it was just a collection of meat and bones and neural networks that created the game of chess in the first place.

Further, I surely didn't create chess. Neither did you, or anyone around today. We can play chess because we piggy back on a rich cultural tradition of chess playing, and the rules for the game have been inherited (and, in fact, have evolved over time). I don't say 'this is a board, this is a rook'. I say 'It is called a board, and it is called a rook.' The computer likewise piggybacks on this tradition. I don't see how the computer's dependence on the social conventions makes any difference in its 'playing' of the game.

But the most important mistake here is saying that the intelligence is rightly attributed to the designer. That is entirely false. When the computer is up against a particular chess position, IT is the one who evaluates possible moves, and IT is the one who decides on a move, and IT is the one who acts on that decision. No human is involved or interferes with this process. No human knew the machine would face that particular situation, and did not construct the machine to act in any particular way to that situation.

I am always confused when Heideggerians argue this line in talking about machine chess (Dreyfus is especially guilty on this account). Surely this is a mistake of the cause. The cause of the behavior of a computer in a particular chess game is the computer. The designer gives birth to the program, but it is the program itself that is the agent. Surely you don't blame the parents for the actions of their adult children?
 

I'll just have to disagree completely. Programmers don't give birth to programs that then go off and behave autonomously. A programmer instructs the program how to behave exactly for every input. If the program runs into some input the programmer didn't anticipate, the computer panics, typically shutdowns the program and may even stop working--although they tend to be more robust these days, and the underlying layers of software are better at handling malfunctions. When the program is confronted by a chess position, it calculates all the probabilities exactly as the programmer instructed it to, and then makes a decisions based on the heuristics written in its program. If the programmer got the math wrong, the computer will make the same mistake. The computer is merely carrying out the designers instructions at a later time. I spend a fraction of my professional life writing programs and the rest of it adjusting the the programs to cope with inputs that were unanticipated in the initial design.