Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account
Jul 2015 · OUP Oxford
eBook
336
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn more
About this eBook
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. The Nature of 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.
About the author
Gualtiero Piccinini is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Shortly after his appointment to the position in 2005, he founded Brains, which later became a group blog in the philosophy of mind and related sciences. He received early tenure and promotion in 2010 and early promotion to full professor in 2014. Between 2001 and 2014 he was department chair. In 2014, he received the Herbert A. Simon Award from the International Association for Computing and Philosophy for his research in the philosophy of computation.
Rate this eBook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Centre instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
