Transputing Terminators

Rating: 7/10 (24 December 2007)

Since the 1930ies, Science fiction, the "genuine American fairytale" (Gotthard Günther), has anticipated a world determined by computers. The about six generations of computers built since Zuse share that they are unable to deal with circularity, i.e. self-reference, re-entry, autopoiesis, etc., because they are constructed according to classical logic which does not allow, e.g., a statement like "I am lying", since this statement is true when I am lying and false when I am not lying, i.e. it is true when it is false and false when it is true. On similar reasons, comments about sentences are excluded, e.g. "This sentence is true/false". When we hear now, in "Terminator 3" (2003), a sentence like "My command is to protect you" or even stronger: "Get away from me ... I have no choice ... I cannot control my functions ... I am a machine", then it is clear that in the case of terminators, we have to deal with a trans-classic logic and hence not with simple computers but with "trans-puters", i.e. with computers that allow self-reference because the logical law of the Excluded Middle is abolished.
From the above quotation it is also clear that when a machine says "I have no choice ... I am a machine", it is self-aware on what it is, i.e. it has its own will. Its third logical value besides position and negation after the abolishment of the Law of the Excluded Middle allows this kind of machine to realize the difference between its program and its intent to react appropriately in a certain situation. Not even the newest computers can realize that, since they follow a logic in which the Law of the Excluded Middle is still valid. Here we also find the profoundest reason why terminators are that human-like (and, conversely, why they like to appear in human-like shape and sometimes lead to "hermaphroditic" creatures like "cyborgs", "androids" and others): Control of will is hitherto still a feature by which humans are differentiated from machines. If we now watch terminators, we see that trans-puters presuppose formalization not only of cognition (like classical computers do), but also of volition. But formalization of volition would imply that from a certain point on the computer would transgress its constructor. There would not be anymore, as in classical computers, a symbiosis between constructor and construction.
Such "poly-contextural" computers (a term introduced by G. Günther during his work at the "Biological Computer Laboratory" of the University of Illinois) with both formalized cognition and volition would fulfill Norbert Wiener's claim for Golem-like "human-machines" uttered in his book "The Human Use of Human Beings" (1950). However, from a general point of view it is strange that cybernetics, which was established as a science since the Macy conferences in New York (starting in 1946) and is nowadays practically extinct in the academic world, seems to survive in Science Fiction which, in its turn, is anticipating future computer generations. But since "control" is a core-term of cybernetics, this science may perhaps become revitalized in times where whole continents are menaced by terrorism. If this is true, one should, however, not forget that total control must not only concern the reign of cognition but most utterly the empire of the will, too. Since this must not be done as in the case of Dr. Mabuse whose aim was simply to replace the will of humans by his own, but in allowing a machine to have its OWN will, the concept of formalization of volition only will imply both control and freedom.