{"id":1533,"date":"2023-02-28T10:15:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-28T10:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/lancog\/?p=1533"},"modified":"2023-02-28T10:15:00","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T10:15:00","slug":"seminar-series-in-analytic-philosophy-2022-23-session-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cful.demiurgos.eu\/lancog\/seminar-series-in-analytic-philosophy-2022-23-session-14\/","title":{"rendered":"Seminar Series in Analytic Philosophy 2022-23: Session 14"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Mechanistic Computation and its Problems: An Abstract Solution<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Luke Kersten<\/p>\n<p>LanCog, University of Lisbon<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>3 March 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time \u2013 WET)<\/p>\n<p>Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa<\/p>\n<p>Sala Mattos Rom\u00e3o (Departamento de Filosofia)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Abstract:<\/strong> The mechanistic account of computation (or MAC) maintains that computational implementation is best explicated within a mechanistic framework.\u00a0A physical system is said to implement a computation only if it processes medium-independent vehicles in virtue of being a functional mechanism. Recently,\u00a0a number of objections have been raised to MAC, including the \u201cdecomposition\u201d, \u201cabstraction\u201d, \u201cgenerality\u201d, and \u201chierarchy\u201d problems. These\u00a0challenges threaten to undermine MAC\u2019s status as a workable theory of implementation. The aim of this paper is to shore up MAC\u2019s conceptual foundations by responding to each.\u00a0After unpacking the four problems, I outline a recent proposal from\u00a0Kuokkanen (2022a) which argues that MAC can be rescued by employing a distinction between \u201cvertical\u201d and \u201chorizontal\u201d abstraction. I argue that, while promising, Kuokkanen\u2019s proposal comes at too high a price,\u00a0requiring MAC to sacrifice its claims on \u201cextensional adequacy\u201d. In response, I outline what I call the \u201ccomputation-as-abstracta\u201d view. I suggest that thinking\u00a0of\u00a0computation as a form of abstracta not only helps to dissolve the four problems\u00a0but also\u00a0provides a way of retaining extensional adequacy in the process. I conclude by taking up two further problems recently articulated by Shagrir (2022) and Kuokkanen (2022b).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mechanistic Computation and its Problems: An Abstract Solution Luke Kersten LanCog, University of Lisbon &nbsp; 3 March 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time \u2013 WET) Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa Sala Mattos Rom\u00e3o (Departamento de Filosofia) &nbsp; Abstract: The mechanistic account of computation (or MAC) maintains that computational implementation is best explicated within a mechanistic framework.\u00a0A physical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cful.demiurgos.eu\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cful.demiurgos.eu\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cful.demiurgos.eu\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cful.demiurgos.eu\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cful.demiurgos.eu\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cful.demiurgos.eu\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1534,"href":"https:\/\/cful.demiurgos.eu\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions\/1534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cful.demiurgos.eu\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cful.demiurgos.eu\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cful.demiurgos.eu\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}