num_pages: 320
description: Computing systems are ubiquitous in contemporary life. Even the brain is thought to be a computing system of sorts. But what does it mean to say that a given organ or system computes? What is it about laptops smartphones and nervous systems that they are deemed to compute-and why does it seldom occur to us to describe stomachs hurricanes rocks or chairs that way? These questions are key to laying the conceptual foundations of computational sciences including computer science and engineering and the cognitive and neural sciences.Oron Shagrir here provides an extended argument for the semantic view of computation which states that semantic properties are involved in the nature of computing systems. The first part of the book provides general background. Although different in scope these chapters have a common theme-namely that the linkage between the mathematical theory of computability and the notion of physical computation is weak. The second part of the book reviews existing non-semantic accounts of physical computation. Shagrir analyze three influential accounts in greater depth and argues that none of these accounts is satisfactory but each of them highlights certain key features of physical computation that he eventually adopts in his own semantic account of physical computation - a view that rests on a phenomenon known as simultaneous implementation (or indeterminacy of computation). Shagrir completes the characterization of his account of computation and highlights the distinctive feature of computational explanations.
language: English
title: The Nature of Physical Computation
publisher: Oxford University Press