Abstract
This note discusses the account of physical computation offered in Part II of Primiero’s On the Foundations of Computing. Although there is much to find attractive about the account, I argue that the account is obscure at certain crucial junctures and that it does not supply a wholly satisfactory account of miscomputation. I close by considering whether the engineering foundation of computing requires a theory of physical computation in the first place, suggesting tentatively that it does not.
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Notes
A little more carefully, if we wish to discuss various kinds of anti-realism about, we should say that such theories attempt to characterize the truth or assertability conditions for ‘A implements B’ and cognate expressions. I will not worry about this subtlety here.
Type-b cases can go either way, depending on how we think of programs. If programs are abstract objects, type-b cases are like type-a. If programs are not abstract, type-b cases are more like type-c and type-d.
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Curtis-Trudel, A. Primiero on Physical Computation. glob. Philosophy 33, 2 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-023-09661-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-023-09661-7