Re: [Patents] Re: Re: You have rights.. Software Patents are Illegal

[Flemming Bjerke <flem@bjerke.dk>]

Tirsdag 18 maj 2004 11:03 wrote Erik Josefsson about Re: [Patents] Re: Re:  
You have rights.. Software Patents are Illegal:
> Let me put it this way: Since you believe "information is material", 

Well, it was not exactly what I said. I said that information in a computer 
is 
purely material/physical. Do you disagree? Has a computer a mind? Or?

> you
> are left with a model where ontological arguments can hardly be used
> against software patents.

Not a logical conclusion. I have not asserted that ontology never has any 
relevance to whether patents should be patentable or not, though I have a 
preference for empirical founded scientific arguments. My point was just that 
you can't conclude from an ontology of mind and matter that software should 
not be patentable. 

>
> When I say "information on a carrier", you say only "carrier" since
> "information" does not exist as a separate object, right?

I said neither. I said that in a computer (or a digital storage), information 
only exist on a carrier. Furthermore, I said that a similar point of view 
also has been proposed concerning information in humans - but that is a 
complicated discussion beyond the scope of the debate here.

>
> To me, information objects are just as real as physical objects while I
> believe my mind contimously creates images of them. 

That is hardly a belief. Rather, it is an experience. (Although I would 
phrase 
it a bit differently.)

> I also believe they
> exist independently of my mind and of course that there is no such thing
> as a "reality check", only communication methodology.
>
> As you say, the philosophical questions are not settled, but which
> questions are? 

Numerous scientific questions are settled. Not least in the natural sciences 
and computer science. 

> Any explanatory model is always flawed. Which one you
> choose is finally a non-logical or non-scientific decision.

1. This seems to be close to a radical social constructivm (relativism) point 
of view which is easily contested.: Assume that it is true that all 
explanations were equally good and reality check never worked. In that case 
the opposite is true as well, thus the first is not true. (For a concise 
discussion of why radical social constructivism is untenable, see Finn 
Collin, Social Constructivism. But, also Larry Laudan's critique of 
relativism.)

2. If all questions are unsettled, it is true that software patent promote 
innovation, as well as they hamper innovation. It is just a "non-logical or 
non-scientific decision". I must admit that I strongly disagree. That 
software patents hamper innovation is relatively well founded on empirical 
grounds. The opposite is not.

>
> Meaning of "meaning" discussions are IMHO dead ends, and the reason the
> post-modernist tradition of deconstruction never appealed to me. To
> quote the TBA: "it is necessary to determine the exact meaning of the
> expression "as such"" is like a division by zero - it has no meaning.

Of course "as such" has meaning, and EPO has twarted this meaning radically.

Flemming