Related papers: Pancomputationalism: Theory or metaphor?
The dialogue develops arguments for and against adopting a new world system, info-computationalist naturalism, that is poised to replace the traditional mechanistic world system. We try to figure out what the info-computational paradigm…
Roughly, the Church-Turing thesis is a hypothesis that describes exactly what can be computed by any real or feasible conceptual computing device. Generally speaking, the computational metaphor is the idea that everything, including the…
The brain-as-computer metaphor has anchored the professed computational nature of the mind, wresting it down from the intangible logic of Platonic philosophy to a material basis for empirical science. However, as with many long-lasting…
Suspicions that the world might be some sort of a machine or algorithm existing ``in the mind'' of some symbolic number cruncher have lingered from antiquity. Although popular at times, the most radical forms of this idea never reached…
Quantum theory (QT) has been confirmed by numerous experiments, yet we still cannot fully grasp the meaning of the theory. As a consequence, the quantum world appears to us paradoxical. Here we shed new light on QT by having it follow from…
We argue that computation is an abstract algebraic concept, and a computer is a result of a morphism (a structure preserving map) from a finite universal semigroup.
Quantum theory (QT) has been confirmed by numerous experiments, yet we still cannot fully grasp the meaning of the theory. As a consequence, the quantum world appears to us paradoxical. Here we shed new light on QT by being based on two…
Is the universe computable? If so, it may be much cheaper in terms of information requirements to compute all computable universes instead of just ours. I apply basic concepts of Kolmogorov complexity theory to the set of possible…
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,…
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…
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…
Computational philosophy is the use of mechanized computational techniques to unearth philosophical insights that are either difficult or impossible to find using traditional philosophical methods. Computational metaphysics is computational…
Philosophy of science attempts to describe all parts of the scientific process in a general way in order to facilitate the description, execution and improvements of this process. So far, all proposed philosophies have only covered existing…
Hypercomputational formal theories will, clearly, be both structurally and foundationally different from the formal theories underpinning computational theories. However, many of the maps that might guide us into this strange realm have…
The Computational Metaphor, comparing the brain to the computer and vice versa, is the most prominent metaphor in neuroscience and artificial intelligence (AI). Its appropriateness is highly debated in both fields, particularly with regards…
Physical processes are computations only when we use them to externalize thought. Computation is the performance of one or more fixed processes within a contingent environment. We reformulate the Church-Turing thesis so that it applies to…
The computational abilities of theories within the generalised probabilistic theory framework has been the subject of much recent study. Such investigations aim to gain an understanding of the possible connections between physical…
More than a speculative technology, quantum computing seems to challenge our most basic intuitions about how the physical world should behave. In this thesis I show that, while some intuitions from classical computer science must be…
Quantum Mechanics, the physical theory describing the microworld, represents one of science's greatest triumphs. It lies at the root of all modern digital technologies and offers unparalleled correspondence between prediction and…
The relationship between brains and computers is often taken to be merely metaphorical. However, genuine computational systems can be implemented in virtually any media; thus, one can take seriously the view that brains literally compute.…