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Published in:
25-08-2018
The Role of Observers in Computations
How Much Computation Does it Take to Recognize a Computation?
Published in: Minds and Machines | Issue 3/2018
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Abstract
John Searle raised the question whether all computation is observer-relative. Indeed, all of the common views of computation, be they semantical, functional or causal rely on mapping something onto the states of a physical or abstract process.
In order to effectively execute such a mapping, this process would have to be observed in some way. Thus a probably syntactical analysis by an observer seems to be essential for judging whether a given process implements some computation or not. In order to be able to explore the nature of these observers in a more formal way, we look at the Computing by Observing paradigm, a theoretical model of computation that includes an observer. We argue that the observers used there, monadic transducers, are good candidates for formalizing the way in which the syntax of a process must be analysed in order to judge whether it is computational.