Related papers: Pancomputationalism: Theory or metaphor?
Computation has changed the world more than any previous expressions of knowledge. In its particular algorithmic embodiment, it offers a perspective, within which the digital computer (one of many possible) exercises a role reminiscent of…
Computation is commonly defined as the execution of abstract algorithms over symbolic representations, with physical systems treated as substrates that realise predefined operations. While effective for engineered machines, this separation…
The success of the abstract model of computation, in terms of bits, logical operations, programming language constructs, and the like, makes it easy to forget that computation is a physical process. Our cherished notions of computation and…
In this first of two papers, strong limits on the accuracy of physical computation are established. First it is proven that there cannot be a physical computer C to which one can pose any and all computational tasks concerning the physical…
Quantum Mechanics, almost 80 years after its arrival, is a well established and experimentally not falsified theory. It has predicted and explained a whole series of natural phenomena of a very delicate nature. But its interpretation has…
It is proposed that the physical universe is an instance of a mathematical structure which possesses a dual structure, and that this dual structure is the collection of all possible knowledge of the physical universe. In turn, the physical…
What does it mean to claim that a physical or natural system computes? One answer, endorsed here, is that computing is about programming a system to behave in different ways. This paper offers an account of what it means for a physical…
Human societies continuously transform scattered information into collective judgments and coordinated action, whether through markets discovering prices, governments allocating resources, communities enforcing norms, or science converging…
While its applications have made quantum theory arguably the most successful theory in physics, its interpretation continues to be the subject of lively debate within the community of physicists and philosophers concerned with conceptual…
This paper examines whether unitary evolution alone is sufficient to explain emergence of the classical world from the perspective of computability theory. Specifically, it looks at the problem of how the choice related to the measurement…
In the first of this pair of papers, it was proven that that no physical computer can correctly carry out all computational tasks that can be posed to it. The generality of this result follows from its use of a novel definition of…
The familiar theories of physics have the feature that the application of the theory to make predictions in specific circumstances can be done by means of an algorithm. We propose a more precise formulation of this feature --- one based on…
The human mind is endowed with innate primordial perceptions such as space, distance, motion, change, flow of time, matter. The field of cognitive science argues that the abstract concepts of mathematics are not Platonic, but are built in…
The interpretation of quantum mechanics is an area of increasing interest to many working physicists. In particular, interest has come from those involved in quantum computing and information theory, as there has always been a strong…
Quantum mechanics has maintained over the years the reputation of being "the most obscure theory." It works perfectly well, but nobody seems to know why. It has been argued that the difficulty in understanding quantum theory is our failed…
The physical Church thesis is a thesis about nature that expresses that all that can be computed by a physical system-a machine-is computable in the sense of computability theory. At a first look, this thesis seems contradictory with the…
The rather unintuitive nature of quantum theory has led numerous people to develop sets of (physically motivated) principles that can be used to derive quantum mechanics from the ground up, in order to better understand where the structure…
The quantum world is fascinating. It presents a description of nature that defies our most rooted concepts about what reality is. For example, quantum objects possess \lq\lq spooky\rq\rq\ properties that allow them to be in multiple places…
Constructor theory seeks to express all fundamental scientific theories in terms of a dichotomy between possible and impossible physical transformations - those that can be caused to happen and those that cannot. This is a departure from…
Self-replication is central to all life, and yet how it dynamically emerges in physical, non-equilibrium systems remains poorly understood. Von Neumann's pioneering work in the 1940s and subsequent developments suggest a natural hypothesis:…