Computation in Context

Abstract

AbstractUnlimited pancomputationalism is the claim that every physical system implements every computational model simultaneously. Some philosophers argue that unlimited pancomputationalism renders implementation ‘trivial’ or ‘vacuous’, unsuitable for serious scientific work. A popular and natural reaction to this argument is to reject unlimited pancomputationalism. However, I argue that given certain assumptions about the nature of computational ascription, unlimited pancomputationalism does not entail that implementation is trivial. 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, the claim that that system implements a specific computational model is as non-trivial as one could reasonably want.