Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2015-06-10 14:11 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au
Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2015-06-10 13:40 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett
<bhkell...@optusnet.com.au <mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>
Quentin Anciaux wrote:
Then the computation will be in the mapping which is the
interpreter... the rock itself is missing the machine
interpreting the state and relating all the sequence of
states
of the rock... The rock and the interpreter is a
computation,
the rock alone is not.
What is the interpreter in Platonia?
The transition function relating the states.
A computation is not a sequence of states, it is a sequence of
states and the relation between them.
The relation between them is given by the sequence order. You are
the one who 'interprets' that sequence, gives it meaning.
So a computer computing without us, is not computing....
The mapping is what makes the interpretation. A computation is a
sequence of state + a transition table relating the states.
As you can map the rock states with an adhoc mapping to any
computations, it doesn't mean the rock computes everything, it just
means the rock states are not enough, you forget the mapping ie: the
interpreter. The rock on itself could compute anything, but relatively
to you, it can compute meaningfully only if you have the correct
mapping... and if to produce such a mapping that would make sense
relatively to you, it asks you to do the computation you want to map to
the rock states... in what sense can you say the rock is computing
relatively to you in any meaningful sense ?
A computation can be regarded as a mapping between inputs and outputs. A
Turing machine has a transition table relating the states -- that has to
be provided to define the machine, as you say. You can do this with the
rock, you map each rock state to the necessary computational state, and
that mapping makes the interpretation in the same way as for any other
computer.
Bruce
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