Activity: Talks or Presentations › Other Invited Talks or Presentations
Description
Unlimited pancomputationalism is the view that every physical system simultaneously implements every computational model. Some philosophers argue that unlimited pancomputationalism renders implementation ‘trivial’ or ‘vacuous’, unsuitable for serious scientific work. One popular reaction to this argument is to reject unlimited pancomputationalism. This article explores a different approach. Given certain assumptions about the nature of computational ascription, unlimited pancomputationalism does not undermine computation’s role in science. These assumptions concern the relativity and context-sensitivity of computational ascription. Very roughly: relative to a specific, contextually salient way of regarding a physical system computationally, there is typically no good reason to think that computation, in that context, is trivial. Or so I argue.