Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

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235350

The instructional information processing account of digital computation

Nir FrescoMarty J. Wolf

pp. 1469-1492

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.

Publication details

Published in:

(2014) Synthese 191 (7).

Pages: 1469-1492

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-013-0338-5

Full citation:

Fresco Nir, Wolf Marty J. (2014) „The instructional information processing account of digital computation“. Synthese 191 (7), 1469–1492.