Related papers: Consciousness qua Mortal Computation
Many real-world dynamic systems, both natural and artificial, are understood to be performing computations. For artificial dynamic systems, explicitly designed to perform computation - such as digital computers - by construction, we can…
The classical simulation of physical processes using standard models of computation is fraught with problems. On the other hand, attempts at modelling real-world computation with the aim of isolating its hypercomputational content have…
We define a novel calculus that combines a call-by-name functional core with session-based communication primitives. We develop a typing discipline that guarantees both normalisation of expressions and progress of processes and that…
The brain is often called a computer and likened to a Turing machine, in part because the mind can manipulate discrete symbols such as numbers. But the brain is a dynamical system, more like a Watt governor than a Turing machine. Can a…
We develop a novel formal theory of finite structures, based on a view of finite structures as a fundamental artifact of computing and programming, forming a common platform for computing both within particular finite structures, and in the…
Quantum computation is a novel way of information processing which allows, for certain classes of problems, exponential speedups over classical computation. Various models of quantum computation exist, such as the adiabatic, circuit and…
In this chapter, we argue for an epistemological shift from viewing coding and computational thinking as mastery over computational logic and symbolic forms, to viewing them as a more complex form of experience. Rather than viewing…
We construct a complexity-based morphospace to study systems-level properties of conscious & intelligent systems. The axes of this space label 3 complexity types: autonomous, cognitive & social. Given recent proposals to synthesize…
There have lately been a variety of attempts to connect, or even explain, if not in fact, reduce human consciousness to quantum mechanical processes. Such attempts tend to draw a sharp and fundamental distinction between the role of…
MemComputing is a new model of computation that exploits the non-equilibrium property-we call 'memory'-of any physical system to respond to external perturbations by keeping track of how it has reacted at previous times. Its digital,…
In contrast to other constructivist schools, for Brouwer, the notion of "constructive object" is not restricted to be presented as `words' in some finite alphabet of symbols, and choice sequences which are non-predetermined and unfinished…
The World Wide Web continues to evolve and serve as the infrastructure for carrying massive amounts of multimodal and multisensory observations. These observations capture various situations pertinent to people's needs and interests along…
This text introduces the twin deadlocks of strong artificial life. Conceptualization of life is a deadlock both because of the existence of a continuum between the inert and the living, and because we only know one instance of life.…
A remarkable new definition of a self-delimiting universal Turing machine is presented that is easy to program and runs very quickly. This provides a new foundation for algorithmic information theory. This new universal Turing machine is…
Recently T. Kieu (arXiv:quant-ph/0110136) claimed a quantum algorithm computing some functions beyond the Church-Turing class. He notes that "it is in fact widely believed that quantum computation cannot offer anything new about…
The model of interactive Turing machines (ITMs) has been proposed to characterise which stream translations are interactively computable; the model of reactive Turing machines (RTMs) has been proposed to characterise which behaviours are…
We present a logical proof that computing machines, and by extension physical systems, can never be certain if they possess conscious awareness. This implies that human consciousness is associated with a violation of energy conservation. We…
The "easy" problem of cognitive science is explaining how and why we can do what we can do. The "hard" problem is explaining how and why we feel. Turing's methodology for cognitive science (the Turing Test) is based on doing: Design a model…
Although there is a somewhat standard formalization of computability on countable sets given by Turing machines, the same cannot be said about uncountable sets. Among the approaches to define computability in these sets, order-theoretic…
At the intersection of what I call uncomputable art and computational epistemology, a form of experimental philosophy, we find an exciting and promising area of science related to causation with an alternative, possibly best possible,…