Dace:
> There's nothing abstract about a computer. The functions it performs are
> merely *interpreted* by human beings as involving the implementation of
> abstract operations. There are no ideas or languages inscribed in a
> computer. What we find instead is silicon, copper, electricity, feedback
> loops, etc. To believe we've found anything other than this is to invoke a
> kind of mysticism.
>
> Since computation itself is strictly a function of the mind, there's really
> no such thing as a computer. What actually exists in the world is a box
> full of stuff. We imagine it's a computer only because what happens in that
> box has the same outcome we produce when we compute.
> ...
In that case one should be able to decide that any object, collection of stuff, or indeed imaginary entity is a computer. However in fact we usually observe computers as having different attributes from other objects and collections of phenomena. Some of these attributes appear to correspond to some ideas people have, but not to others -- a common phenomenon among material objects, especially those which people have done work on (changed the state of). That being the case, one can say that these ideas are "inscribed" on the form of the computer, and on its behavior as well, since we can elicit or reconstruct the ideas from the difference between the computer and other kinds of objects, and from the differences (or lack of them) between on kind of computer and the other.
In fact it would be rather odd of mental acts and states did not enter into _all_ objects which are worked on by conscious, purposive beings, especially tools. What would keep them out?