Beyond the super-turing snare: analog computation and digital virtuality

  • Authors:
  • Giuseppe Trautteur

  • Affiliations:
  • Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Università di Napoli Federico II, Napoli, Italy

  • Venue:
  • CiE'05 Proceedings of the First international conference on Computability in Europe: new Computational Paradigms
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Conceptual difficulties involved in attempts to build analog super-Turing sources are examined in the light of epistemic problems of physical measurement. Basic concepts of computability theory are appealed to in order to set up a procedural comparison between analog and digital computations which is not affected by similar conceptual difficulties: Is the interpretation of program code within the capacities of some analog computer? The epistemological significance of this “virtuality” problem is emphasized by reference to explanation requests arising in the cognitive neurosciences.