(August 30, 2013 at 9:44 am)bennyboy Wrote: I agree with all of this, except the last sentence. In the case of software, it does have an independence of the hardware running it. You could scrap all the code for Windows, recode it based purely on your idea of it, and still have Windows. Without that 3rd party observer/creator, that "software" has no existential reality (as opposed, maybe, to a tree).
If I scrap all the code for windows, the software no loner exists. The code may exist - the software doesn't. Once I recode it, the software comes into existence once again. At no point does it have an existence independent of the hardware. And once created, it no longer requires the 3rd party observer/creator to sustain its existence.
