David Deutsch has some things to say which are relevant to discussions
of computationalism.
http://edge.org/conversation/constructor-theory
"One of the first rather unexpected yields of this theory has been a new
foundation for information theory. There's a notorious problem with
defining information within physics, namely that on the one hand
information is purely abstract, and the original theory of computation
as developed by Alan Turing and others regarded computers and the
information they manipulate purely abstractly as mathematical objects.
Many mathematicians to this day don't realize that information is
physical and that there is no such thing as an abstract computer. Only a
physical object can compute things."
And later:
"Several strands led towards this. I was lucky enough to be placed in
more than one of them. The main thing was that starting with Turing and
then Rolf Landauer (who was a lone voice in the 1960s saying that
computation is physics—because the theory of computation to this day is
regarded by mathematicians as being about abstractions rather than as
being about physics), Landauer realized that the concept of a purely
abstract computer doesn't make sense, and the theory of computation has
to be a theory of what physical objects can do to information. Landauer
focused on what restrictions the laws of physics imposed on what kinds
of computation can be done."
"The notion of a purely abstract computer doesn't make sense!" I find
myself to be sympathetic with this view.
Bruce
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