> Irmak believes we should start with our everyday notions. When we talk about software, these are the kinds of things we generally believe about it. The way we

> Irmak believes we should start with our everyday notions. When we talk about software, these are the kinds of things we generally believe about it. The way we talk about software, we being the everyday folk, should inform our theory as to what kind of thing software is While this view is often intuitively persuasive and reasonable, I think we should be careful with it. While you could argue that social constructs are by definition constructed by the beliefs of everyday folk, sometimes our everyday beliefs really do turn out to be fundamentally incoherent. In other words I believe that ontological error theories can be correct and/or persuasive. In any case, people interested in this might enjoy reading the SEP page on computer science, which includes a section on the software/hardware distinction and the ontology of software more generally: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computer-science/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computer-science/