Binary logic is the language of supercomputers. Programming applications do work more rapidly, efficiently, and accurately than humans, with supercomputers doing thermodynamic modeling, simulation of societies, and other large number-crunching projects. More recently, the supercomputer is taking on human brain functions, with increasing attention to actually replicating the human brain. Elsewhere in this book, the author has written about the philosophy underpinning these developments, but he now focuses on how computers communicate with us. The binary language computers use has an underpinning philosophy that may help explain at least one aspect of consciousness. When we probe deeply into the philosophy of bivalent systems, radical issues emerge that embrace the nature of our very being, such as completeness, certainty, process, the very nature of our universe, and possibly a consciousness pervading it.
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This chapter explores the idea that binary logic as both a structure and the processes within it is innate in the universe. That is, what we set forth on paper as binary logic describes the essence of the universe. At its most fundamental level, it is a two-valued system, and binary logic displays all that happens with these values. The substance of the system may at first not appear to be elegant, but there appears to be an irreducible empirical truth in what constitutes order and how it translates into mind, as well be discussed below.
The most immediate technical aspect of interfacing with a supercomputer is the language by which a supercomputer communicates: binary logic. The supercomputer has a potential of being a sentient entity, and I discuss why in “The Philosophy of Supercomputers”, appearing elsewhere in this Encyclopedia. The question is raised whether the structure of a language inherently carries with it a philosophy. Whorf (1956) argued:
My own studies suggest, to me, that language, for all its kingly role, is in some senses a superficial embroidery upon deeper processes of consciousness, which are necessary before any communication, signaling, or symbolism, whatsoever can occur, and which also can, at a pinch, effect communication (though not rue AGREEMENT) without language's and without symbolism's aid. ... The statement that 'thinking is a matter of LANGUAGE' is an incorrect generalization of the more nearly correct idea that 'thinking is a matter of different tongues.'”. ... The different tongues are the real phenomena and may generalize down not to any such universal as 'language' but to something better – called 'sublinguistic' or 'superlinguistic' – and not altogether unlike, even if much unlike, what we now call 'mental'. (p 239)
A deep philosophy underpins bivalent logic. It is a logic which frames the very meaning of order, with every computer output possibly being infused not simply with a superficial ordering but with fundamental meaning. It is found that a recursion of logical operators exists, the essence of which is transferred to matrices of very large binary spaces. A three-dimensional hypercube (Horne, 2012) offers a way discovering the origin of patterns generated by cellular automatons, as described by Wuensche (2013) and Wolfram (2013), as well as patterns found in binary arrays, in general, and may contribute to the discussion about the massive parallelism found in supercomputer gating architectures.