The instructional information processing account of digital computation

Nir Fresco; Marty J. Wolf

doi:10.1007/s11229-013-0338-5

The instructional information processing account of digital computation

Nir Fresco, Marty J. Wolf

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

What is nontrivial digital computation? It is the processing of discrete data through discrete state transitions in accordance with finite instructional information. The motivation for our account is that many previous attempts to answer this question are inadequate, and also that this account accords with the common intuition that digital computation is a type of information processing. We use the notion of reachability in a graph to defend this characterization in memory-based systems and underscore the importance of instructional information for digital computation. We argue that our account evaluates positively against adequacy criteria for accounts of computation.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1469-1492
Number of pages	24
Journal	Synthese
Volume	191
Issue number	7
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0338-5
State	Published - 1 Jan 2014
Externally published	Yes

Keywords

Computational taxonomy
Digital computation
Finite state automata
Information processing
Instructional information
Physical computation
Turing machines

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Philosophy
Social Sciences (all)

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10.1007/s11229-013-0338-5

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AB - What is nontrivial digital computation? It is the processing of discrete data through discrete state transitions in accordance with finite instructional information. The motivation for our account is that many previous attempts to answer this question are inadequate, and also that this account accords with the common intuition that digital computation is a type of information processing. We use the notion of reachability in a graph to defend this characterization in memory-based systems and underscore the importance of instructional information for digital computation. We argue that our account evaluates positively against adequacy criteria for accounts of computation.

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KW - Digital computation

KW - Finite state automata

KW - Information processing

KW - Instructional information

KW - Physical computation

KW - Turing machines

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The instructional information processing account of digital computation

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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