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(2014) Synthese 191 (7).
The instructional information processing account of digital computation
Nir Fresco, Marty J. Wolf
pp. 1469-1492
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
DOI: 10.1007/s11229-013-0338-5
Full citation:
Fresco, N. , Wolf, M. J. (2014). The instructional information processing account of digital computation. Synthese 191 (7), pp. 1469-1492.
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