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Understanding of the phenomena of vision and thought require clarification of the general mechanism of perception. So far, philosophical inquiries and scientific investigations have not been able to address clearly the mysteries surrounding…

Approaching limitations of digital computing technologies have spurred research in neuromorphic and other unconventional approaches to computing. Here we argue that if we want to systematically engineer computing systems that are based on…

A physical system is determined by a finite set of initial conditions and "laws" represented by equations. The system is computable if we can solve the equations in all instances using a "finite body of mathematical knowledge". In this…

We are used to the fact that most if not all physical theories are based on the set of real numbers (or another associative division algebra). These all have a cardinality larger than that of the natural numbers, i.e. form a continuum. It…

Various research initiatives try to utilize the operational principles of organisms and brains to develop alternative, biologically inspired computing paradigms and artificial cognitive systems. This paper reviews key features of the…

When we want to predict the future, we compute it from what we know about the present. Specifically, we take a mathematical representation of observed reality, plug it into some dynamical equations, and then map the time-evolved result back…

The paper presents a paradoxical feature of computational systems that suggests that computationalism cannot explain symbol grounding. If the mind is a digital computer, as computationalism claims, then it can be computing either over…

We frame the question of what kind of subjective experience a brain simulation would have in contrast to a biological brain. We discuss the brain prosthesis thought experiment. We evaluate how the experience of the brain simulation might…

The aim of this paper is to give an overview of brain organoid computing, its characteristics, challenges, as well as possible advantages for future applications in the field of artificial intelligence. An important part is the extensive…

To explain consciousness as a physical process we must acknowledge the role of energy in the brain. Energetic activity is fundamental to all physical processes and causally drives biological behaviour. Recent neuroscientific evidence can be…

Trying to be effective (no matter who exactly and in what field) a person face the problem which inevitably destroys all our attempts to easily get to a desired goal. The problem is the existence of some insuperable barriers for our mind,…

Relative to digital computation, analog computation has been neglected in the philosophical literature. To the extent that attention has been paid to analog computation, it has been misunderstood. The received view -- that analog…

The concept of intelligent software is flawed. The behaviour of software is determined by the hardware that "interprets" it. This undermines claims regarding the behaviour of theorised, software superintelligence. Here we characterise this…

This article reviews the history of digital computation, and investigates just how far the concept of computation can be taken. In particular, I address the question of whether the universe itself is in fact a giant computer, and if so,…

As far as algorithmic thinking is bound by symbolic paper-and-pencil operations, the Church-Turing thesis appears to hold. But is physics, and even more so, is the human mind, bound by symbolic paper-and-pencil operations? What about the…

Rational decision making in its linguistic description means making logical decisions. In essence, a rational agent optimally processes all relevant information to achieve its goal. Rationality has two elements and these are the use of…

The aim of this paper is to address the question: Can an artificial neural network (ANN) model be used as a possible characterization of the power of the human mind? We will discuss what might be the relationship between such a model and…

Despite differing from the human language processing mechanism in implementation and algorithms, current language models demonstrate remarkable human-like or surpassing language capabilities. Should computational language models be employed…

This paper reviews connections between physics and computation, and explores their implications. The main topics are computational "hardness" of physical systems, computational status of fundamental theories, quantum computation, and the…

Quantum mechanics---the theory describing the fundamental workings of nature---is famously counterintuitive: it predicts that a particle can be in two places at the same time, and that two remote particles can be inextricably and…