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, 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.--Publisher description.

1.Towards an Account of Physical Computation -- 2.Mapping Accounts -- 3.Semantic Accounts -- 4.Pancomputationalism -- 5.From Functional Analysis to Mechanistic Explanation -- 6.The Ontology of Functional Mechanisms -- 7.The Mechanistic Account -- 8.Primitive Components of Computing Mechanisms -- 9.Complex Components of Computing Mechanisms -- 10.Digital Calculators -- 11.Digital Computers -- 12.Analog Computers -- 13.Parallel Computers and Neural Networks -- 14.Information Processing -- 15.The Bold Physical Church-Turing Thesis -- 16.The Modest Physical Church-Turing Thesis.