Setting the Demons Loose: Computational Irreducibility Does Not Guarantee Unpredictability or Emergence.
A phenomenon resulting from a computationally irreducible (or computationally incompressible) process is supposedly unpredictable except via simulation. This notion of unpredictability has been deployed to formulate recent accounts of computational emergence. Via a technical analysis, I show that co...
| Publicado en: | Philosophy of Science Vol. 89; no. 4; pp. 761 - 784 |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Cambridge University Press
Oct2022
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| Sumario: | A phenomenon resulting from a computationally irreducible (or computationally incompressible) process is supposedly unpredictable except via simulation. This notion of unpredictability has been deployed to formulate recent accounts of computational emergence. Via a technical analysis, I show that computational irreducibility can establish the impossibility of prediction only with respect to maximum standards of precision. By articulating the graded nature of prediction, I show that unpredictability to maximum standards is not equivalent to being unpredictable in general. I conclude that computational irreducibility fails to fulfill its assigned philosophical roles in theories of computational emergence. |
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