Related papers: Physics and metaphysics looks at computation
In the context of theories of the connection between mind and brain, physicalism is the demand that all is basically purely physical. But the concept of "physical" embodied in this demand is characterized essentially by the properties of…
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,…
Human consciousness has been a long-lasting mystery for centuries, while machine intelligence and consciousness is an arduous pursuit. Researchers have developed diverse theories for interpreting the consciousness phenomenon in human brains…
Physics is so successful today in understanding the nature of matter. What can it say about mind ? Is it possible to have a unified theory of matter and mind within the framework of modern science ? Is Consciousness an accident or is it a…
The theory that all processes in the universe are computational is attractive in its promise to provide an understandable theory of everything. I want to suggest here that this pancomputationalism is not sufficiently clear on which problem…
The recent debate on hypercomputation has arisen new questions both on the computational abilities of quantum systems and the Church-Turing Thesis role in Physics. We propose here the idea of "effective physical process" as the essentially…
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…
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.…
It is generally accepted that machines can replicate cognitive tasks performed by conscious agents as long as they are not based on the capacity of awareness. We consider several views on the nature of subjective awareness, which is…
Experiments in cognitive science and decision theory show that the ways in which people combine concepts and make decisions cannot be described by classical logic and probability theory. This has serious implications for applied disciplines…
We revisit the question (most famously) initiated by Turing: can human intelligence be completely modeled by a Turing machine? We show that the answer is \emph{no}, assuming a certain weak soundness hypothesis. More specifically we show…
The question of what ontological message (if any) is encoded in the formalism of contemporary physics is, to say the least, controversial. The reasons for this state of affairs are psychological and neurobiological. The processes by which…
The hard problem in consciousness is the problem of understanding how physical processes in the brain could give rise to subjective conscious experience. In this paper, I suggest that in order to understand the relationship between…
The Turing Machine is the paradigmatic case of computing machines, but there are others such as analogical, connectionist, quantum and diverse forms of unconventional computing, each based on a particular intuition of the phenomenon of…
The Mind-Body Problem, which constitutes the starting point for a large part of the speculations about consciousness and conscious experience, can be re-stated in an equivalent way, using the `brain duplication' argument described in this…
The way we view the reality of nature, including ourselves, depend on consciousness.It also defines the identity of the person, since we know people in terms of their experiences. In general, consciousness defines human existence in this…
Though the truths of logic and pure mathematics are objective and independent of any contingent facts or laws of nature, our knowledge of these truths depends entirely on our knowledge of the laws of physics. Recent progress in the quantum…
It has been proposed that human physical reasoning consists largely of running "physics engines in the head" in which the future trajectory of the physical system under consideration is computed precisely using accurate scientific theories.…
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…
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…