Code and language: Difference between revisions

Secondly, arbitrariness. The continuity we assign to related switches and collections of switches is our own invention. Any given switch may have many particular features (“A”ness, “B”ness, “C”ness and so on); which one (or more) we choose to associate with it when we see it as a continuous object is up to us: in our discourse a red car from Italy can be a car (that happens to be red and Italian, a red thing (that happens to be an Italian car), an Italian thing (that happens to be a red car) a red car (that happens to be from Italy) and so on. Any of these groupings is legitimate, but the act of preferring one over another is an act of creative “narratising”: it does not exist in the data - it is a function of the sentence we put it in. (Richard Rorty put it this way: truth is a property of sentences, not objects”.  <br>

This brings us back to an important point. Algorithms can be fiendishly complex but they must have one property: for any input, only one output. They cannot require the machine to see any nuance, or make any value judgment. There cannot be any ambiguity in the instructions. If an algorithm is presented with an input it does not expect (that the algorithm does not cater for) the program will stop. If the algorithm stipulates “you decide what to do next” the program will freeze.  <br>