Physical computation: a mechanistic account
Gualtiero Piccinini articulates and defends a mechanistic account of concrete, or physical, computation. A physical system is a computing system just in case it is a mechanism one of whose functions is to manipulate vehicles based solely on differences between different portions of the vehicles according to a rule defined over the vehicles. Physical Computation discusses previous accounts of computation and argues that the mechanistic account is better. Many kinds of computation are explicated,…
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- Full title :Physical computation : a mechanistic account / Gualtiero Piccinini
Summary
Gualtiero Piccinini articulates and defends a mechanistic account of concrete, or physical, computation. A physical system is a computing system just in case it is a mechanism one of whose functions is to manipulate vehicles based solely on differences between different portions of the vehicles according to a rule defined over the vehicles. Physical Computation discusses previous accounts of computation and argues that the mechanistic account is better. Many kinds of computation are explicated, such as digital vs. analog, serial vs. parallel, neural network computation, program-controlled computation, and more. Piccinini argues that computation does not entail representation or information processing although information processing entails computation. Pancomputationalism, according to which every physical system is computational, is rejected. A modest version of the physical Church-Turing thesis, according to which any function that is physically computable is computable by Turing machines, is defended
Read More ↓Edition Statements
- Publication Date:2018
- Edition:Paperback
Publication Statements
- Publisher(s):Oxford University Press
- Place of Publication:Oxford
- Language:eng
- Publication Date:2018
Notes
Originalår: 2015
The Physical Object
- Description:ix, 313 siser
Edition Identifiers
- ISBN:9780198801160, 0198801165, 9780199658855, 0199658854
- oclc:on1091025178
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