Hardware And Software

Examples of hardware as contrasted with software include an iPhone as opposed to iOS (an operating system that spans Apple products like phones, tablets, and laptops) or a Chromebook as opposed to Google Chrome (an Internet browser).  A smartphone or laptop is a physical and tangible object; pressing a touchscreen or a keyboard is still not the same as physically touching software itself, only a screen that displays software or a button that controls it.  The hardware is the means of accessing the software, and if the hardware runs out of battery or is removed from a power source respectively, the software stops running.  Thing A is still metaphysically distinct from thing B.

The very concept of software is not that of a physical item, and there are additional differences that perhaps would help the less abstract thinkers of the masses, and thus the more prone to neglect or misunderstand logical necessity, start to grasp this.  Software can be updated wirelessly through an Internet/cellular service connection, but the hardware does not change.  This objective conceptual distinction, which is still true because of and knowable because of reason as opposed to sensory experience, can be brushed up against in the modern world's daily life quite easily.  No matter how many times I update my Nintendo Switch or phone, the device is the same; the software running on it has been altered, and that change has occurred even without a physical connection linking my hardware to other hardware.

We have very strong evidence, though evidence can be very misleading and thus no assumptions are ever logically justified, that software is created and sustained by hardware.  This could be analogous to the ontological relationship between mind and body for composite creatures like myself.  Perhaps the body, and especially the nervous system, generates consciousness, as would seem to be the case from sensory evidence: bodies that are biologically dead no longer show any evidential signs of a conscious presence, and the lack of evidence for pre-womb conscious existence makes it seem like humans become conscious during bodily development.  The mind is either way immaterial, distinct from the body in "substance".

A thought is by logical necessity not conceptually the same as a neuron.  Mental states cannot be tangibly grasped; staring at a living brain is not the same as gazing into a being's actual thoughts.  It is logically possible for consciousness to exist entirely independent of a physical form, which could not be true if the two were identical or if the mind was just one part of the body.  There would be no difference between a living person and a fresh corpse if consciousness was not immaterial--the body is the same other body!  Also, hallucinating the perception of stimuli that are not physically present is only logically possible, again, if mind is immaterial, as is demonstrably the case whether someone likes it or not.

The parallels between software/hardware and mind/body are very distinct even apart from the seeming casual relationship.  One thing which is immaterial has a presence inside another thing which is comprised of physical substance.  With software and hardware, emergent naturalism appears to be the case as might also very well be true of the human mind and body: this entails an immaterial existent ironically being brought into being by something material.  As paradoxical as this is, it is not logically impossible because it does not contradict anything that cannot be false (logical axioms).  Some immaterial things must exist without dependence on matter one way or another, like the necessary truths of logic, the metaphysical space that holds matter, and the uncaused cause.

Matter could not exist if this was not consistent with the inherent truths of logical axioms, if there was no space to hold it, and if the uncaused cause never acted or if there was no uncaused cause to start the causal chain.  As unprovable as it is, with software and human minds, a very different metaphysical relationship would exist, with physical substance being the seeming cause of select immaterial existents like human and general animal consciousness and software.  In these cases, the nonphysical existent would depend on matter rather than matter depending on it as is true by necessity with the aforementioned examples of logic, space, and the uncaused cause.  The analogous nature of software and embodied consciousness is still correct irrespective of whether emergent naturalism is true in these particular cases.