On 7/10/2014 12:19 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2014-07-10 20:39 GMT+02:00 meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>:
On 7/10/2014 4:08 AM, David Nyman wrote:
In short, under physicalism, a 'computation' *just is* a particular
sequence of
physical states. Indeed what else could it be? The states, so to speak,
come first
and hence the notion that those states 'implement a computation' is always
an a
posteriori attribution that neither need, nor can, bring anything further
to the party.
I agree with all you wrote. But as Bruno says it's a reductio. Given that
it's
absurd, the question is what makes it absurd. I think it's the assumption
that the
sequence of physical states constitutes a computation *independent* of any
reference
to a world. When you talk about your PC and accidental compensation for a
physical
fault, the concept of 'compensation' already assumes a correct operation -
but what
makes an operation correct?...it's relation to you and the rest of the
world. A
computation, a sequence of states simpliciter, could be a computation of
anything or
of nothing. So the intuition that the computation still exists without the
physical
instantiation
But that's how we know a given physical instantiation is said to compute this or that,
it's because it has a one/one mapping to the abstract computation... the computation is
what relates the input to the output... if we cannot relate a physical instantiation to
the abstract algorithm, in what way could we say it computes anything ?
That's my point, we need the physical (a world) to impute meaning to the computational
process so that it is a computation.
Brent
It's strange that all the program that run on any physical machine are made of
abstraction, you never program using electron... you program at the basic level with
boolean logic, that you can relate to physical phenomenon, but never the other way around.
Quentin
is contradicted by the intuition that a computation must be about
something. With
conflicting absurdities I'm left unconvinced.
Brent
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