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.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Oxford University Press
ISBN-13
9780199658855
eBay Product ID (ePID)
213404168
Product Key Features
Subject Area
Developmental Psychology
Author
Gualtiero Piccinini
Publication Name
Physical Computation: a Mechanistic Account
Format
Hardcover
Language
English
Subject
Computer Science, Science
Publication Year
2015
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
324 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
240mm
Item Width
163mm
Item Weight
648g
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Gualtiero Piccinini
Topic
Popular Philosophy
Country/Region of Manufacture
United Kingdom
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