Related papers: Pancomputationalism: Theory or metaphor?
The world of mathematics is often considered abstract, with its symbols, concepts, and topics appearing unrelated to physical objects. However, it is important to recognize that the development of mathematics is fundamentally influenced by…
Artificial computing machinery transforms representations through an objective process, to be interpreted subjectively by humans, so the machine and the interpreter are different entities, but in the putative natural computing both…
Hypercomputation is a relatively new branch of computer science that emerged from the idea that the Church--Turing Thesis, which is supposed to describe what is computable and what is noncomputable, cannot possible be true. Because of its…
In the same sense as classical logic is a formal theory of truth, the recently initiated approach called computability logic is a formal theory of computability. It understands (interactive) computational problems as games played by a…
Some contemporary views of the universe assume information and computation to be key in understanding and explaining the basic structure underpinning physical reality. We introduce the Computable Universe exploring some of the basic…
With the great success in simulating many intelligent behaviors using computing devices, there has been an ongoing debate whether all conscious activities are computational processes. In this paper, the answer to this question is shown to…
When can a model of a physical system be regarded as computable? We provide the definition of a computable physical model to answer this question. The connection between our definition and Kreisel's notion of a mechanistic theory is…
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…
Quantum computers take advantage of interfering quantum alternatives in order to handle problems that might be too time consuming with algorithms based on classical logic. Developing quantum computers requires new ways of thinking beyond…
We discuss views about whether the universe can be rationally comprehended, starting with Plato, then Leibniz, and then the views of some distinguished scientists of the previous century. Based on this, we defend the thesis that…
We clarify the confusion, misunderstanding and misconception that the physical finiteness of the universe, if the universe is indeed finite, would rule out all hypercomputation, the kind of computation that exceeds the Turing computability,…
According to the Church-Turing Thesis (CTT), effective formal behaviours can be simulated by Turing machines; this has naturally led to speculation that physical systems can also be simulated computationally. But is this wider claim true,…
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…
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…
To better understand the deep significance of our best physical theories it could be interesting to compare our Universe with its models. It may happen that the differences between the model and reality can be made indistinguishable, to the…
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…
The idea that the Universe is a program in a giant quantum computer is both fascinating and suffers from various problems. Nonetheless, it can provide a unified picture of physics and this can be very useful for the problem of Quantum…
This paper proposes a specific conceptualization of intelligence as computation. This conceptualization is intended to provide a unified view for all disciplines of intelligence research. Already, it unifies several conceptualizations…
It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But how exactly can we characterize such discrepancies in interpretation? For example, are there any specific features of an image that makes person A regard an image as beautiful while…
We give a condensed and accessible summary of a recent derivation of quantum theory from information-theoretic principles, and use it to study the consequences of this and other reconstructions for our conceptual understanding of the…