In Computation, Parallel is Nothing, Physical Everything

Authors:
Selmer Bringsjord
Affiliations:
Department of Philosophy, Psychology and Cognitive Science, Department of Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, NY 12180-3590, USA/ E-mail: selmer@rpi.edu
Venue:
Minds and Machines
Year:
2001

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Abstract

Andrew Boucher (1997) argues that ``parallel computation is fundamentally different from sequential computation'' (p. 543), and that this fact provides reason to be skeptical about whether AI can produce a genuinely intelligent machine. But parallelism, as I prove herein, is irrelevant. What Boucher has inadvertently glimpsed is one small part of a mathematical tapestry portraying the simple but undeniable fact that physical computation can be fundamentally different from ordinary, ``textbook'' computation (whether parallel or sequential). This tapestry does indeed immediately imply that human cognition may be uncomputable.