相关论文: From Philosophy to Program Size
Two philosophical applications of the concept of program-size complexity are discussed. First, we consider the light program-size complexity sheds on whether mathematics is invented or discovered, i.e., is empirical or is a priori. Second,…
One might think that, once we know something is computable, how efficiently it can be computed is a practical question with little further philosophical importance. In this essay, I offer a detailed case that one would be wrong. In…
In 1686 in his Discours de Metaphysique, Leibniz points out that if an arbitrarily complex theory is permitted then the notion of "theory" becomes vacuous because there is always a theory. This idea is developed in the modern theory of…
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…
Computational complexity has often been ignored in philosophy of mind, in philosophical artificial intelligence studies. The purpose of this paper is threefold. First and foremost, to show the importance of complexity rather than…
While concepts and tools from Theoretical Computer Science are regularly applied to, and significantly support, software development for discrete problems, Numerical Engineering largely employs recipes and methods whose correctness and…
Incompleteness theorems of Godel, Turing, Chaitin, and Algorithmic Information Theory have profound epistemological implications. Incompleteness limits our ability to ever understand every observable phenomenon in the universe.…
We introduce a set of eight universal Rules of Inference by which computer programs with known properties (axioms) are transformed into new programs with known properties (theorems). Axioms are presented to formalize a segment of Number…
Some Goedel centenary reflections on whether incompleteness is really serious, and whether mathematics should be done somewhat differently, based on using algorithmic complexity measured in bits of information. [Enriques lecture given…
Recent work by Faizal et al. (2025) claims that G\"odelian undecidability of non-algorithmic truths in our universe imply the impossibility of a formal, algorithmic simulation of the universe. This paper clarifies the distinction between…
We offer a view of mathematics as an experimental science where axioms play the role of foundational theories like general relativity and quantum mechanics in physics. Under this view, axioms are provisional and inferred from experience…
Complexity theory offers a variety of concise computational models for computing boolean functions - branching programs, circuits, decision trees and ordered binary decision diagrams to name a few. A natural question that arises in this…
Computational complexity theory contains a corpus of theorems and conjectures regarding the time a Turing machine will need to solve certain types of problems as a function of the input size. Nature {\em need not} be a Turing machine and,…
This paper is an experimental exploration of the relationship between the runtimes of Turing machines and the length of proofs in formal axiomatic systems. We compare the number of halting Turing machines of a given size to the number of…
`What more than its truth do we know if we have a proof of a theorem in a given formal system?' We examine Kreisel's question in the particular context of program termination proofs, with an eye to deriving complexity bounds on program…
Challenging the standard notion of totality in computable functions, one has that, given any sufficiently expressive formal axiomatic system, there are total functions that, although computable and "intuitively" understood as being total,…
Axiomatic approach has demonstrated its power in mathematics. The main goal of this preprint is to show that axiomatic methods are also very efficient for computer science. It is possible to apply these methods to many problems in computer…
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…
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…
Depth is a complexity measure for natural systems of the kind studied in statistical physics and is defined in terms of computational complexity. Depth quantifies the length of the shortest parallel computation required to construct a…