The Fallacy of Mechanical Interpretation

THE FALLACY OF MECHANICAL INTERPRETATION A computer is an electronic machine whose work is to obtain data from input devices and, in line with the instructions given, analyze and process this data and express the result as output. It is used for a wide variety of purposes. Observing the fantastic computer functioning, many people believed that science had now arrived at the position where it could manufacture a ‘mechanical mind.’ It might have reflected the hope or expectation that something—like an intelligent mind possessed by man— which so far was being made only in the ‘factory’ of Nature might now begin to be manufactured in factories made by man. It also had a philosophical aspect: If it were possible for man to manufacture a ‘mechanical mind,’ atheists could use this to back their case, arguing that if human beings could produce a creature with a mind like man in a factory, there was no need whatsoever to accept the existence of a Creator—God, to account for the existence of an intelligent creature like man. They could have argued that just as an artificial ‘mechanical mind’ could perform various tasks accurately, the giant ‘factory’ of the universe could also function independently, with no God behind and beyond it. But scientific research and experience proved this wishful thinking to be utterly baseless. This experience about machine intelligence led to great despair among people, who were hoping that man could be proven to be a sort of