Related papers: Consciousness qua Mortal Computation
Dynamical Systems theory generally deals with fixed point iterations of continuous functions. Computation by Turing machine although is a fixed point iteration but is not continuous. This specific category of fixed point iterations can only…
This text presents the research field of natural/unconventional computing as it appears in the book COMPUTING NATURE. The articles discussed consist a selection of works from the Symposium on Natural Computing at AISB-IACAP (British Society…
Computational modeling is a critical tool for understanding consciousness, but is it enough on its own? This paper discusses the necessity for an ontological basis of consciousness, and introduces a formal framework for grounding…
Although the conscious state is considered an emergent property of the underlying brain activity and thus somehow resides on brain hardware, there is a non-univocal mapping between both. Given a neural hardware, multiple conscious patterns…
Computational complexity has often been ignored in philosophy of mind, in philosophical artificial intelligence studies. The purpose of this paper is threefold. First and foremost, to show the importance of complexity rather than…
One might think that, once we know something is computable, how efficiently it can be computed is a practical question with little further philosophical importance. In this essay, I offer a detailed case that one would be wrong. In…
``The purpose of life is to obtain knowledge, use it to live with as much satisfaction as possible, and pass it on with improvements and modifications to the next generation.'' This may sound philosophical, and the interpretation of words…
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…
We introduce a new type of shift dynamics as an extended model of symbolic dynamics, and investigate the characteristics of shift spaces from the viewpoints of both dynamics and computation. This shift dynamics is called a functional shift…
Are minds subject to laws of physics? Are the laws of physics computable? Are conscious thought processes computable? Currently there is little agreement as to what are the right answers to these questions. Penrose goes one step further and…
This paper looks at recent debates in the enactivist literature on computation and consciousness in order to assess major obstacles to building artificial conscious agents. We consider a proposal from Villalobos and Dewhurst (2018) for…
Challenging the standard notion of totality in computable functions, one has that, given any sufficiently expressive formal axiomatic system, there are total functions that, although computable and "intuitively" understood as being total,…
A fundamental question is whether Turing machines can model all reasoning processes. We introduce an existence principle stating that the perception of the physical existence of any Turing program can serve as a physical causation for the…
The field of computability and complexity was, where computer science sprung from. Turing, Church, and Kleene all developed formalisms that demonstrated what they held "intuitively computable". The times change however and today's…
Cognitive Architectures are the forefront of the research into developing an artificial cognition. However, they approach the problem from a separated memory and program model of computation. This model of computation poses a fundamental…
According to mathematical constructivism, a mathematical object can exist only if there is a way to compute (or "construct") it; so, what is non-computable is non-constructive. In the example of the quantum model, whose Fock states are…
Functionals are an important research subject in Mathematics and Computer Science as well as a challenge in Information Technologies where the current programming paradigm states that only symbolic computations are possible on higher order…
Hypercomputation or super-Turing computation is a ``computation'' that transcends the limit imposed by Turing's model of computability. The field still faces some basic questions, technical (can we mathematically and/or physically build a…
In the field theories in physics, any particular region of the presumed space-time continuum and all interactions between elementary objects therein can be objectively measured and/or accounted for mathematically. Since this does not apply…
At a first glance the Theory of computation relies on potential infinity and an organization aimed at solving a problem. Under such aspect it is like Mendeleev theory of chemistry. Also its theoretical development reiterates that of this…