Computation in Physical Systems: A Normative Mapping Account

The relationship between abstract formal procedures and the activities of actual physical systems has proved to be surprisingly subtle and controversial, and there are a number of competing accounts of when a physical system can be properly said to implement a mathematical formalism and hence perform a computation. I defend an account wherein computational descriptions of physical systems are high-level normative interpretations motivated by our pragmatic concerns. Furthermore, the criteria of utility and success vary according to our diverse purposes and pragmatic goals. Hence there is no independent or uniform fact to the matter, and I advance the ‘anti-realist’ conclusion that computational descriptions of physical systems are not founded upon deep ontological distinctions, but rather upon interest-relative human conventions. Hence physical computation is a ‘conventional’ rather than a ‘natural’ kind

The Structure of Sensorimotor Explanation

The sensorimotor theory of vision and visual consciousness is often described as a radical alternative to the computational and connectionist orthodoxy in the study of visual perception. However, it is far from clear whether the theory represents a significant departure from orthodox approaches or whether it is an enrichment of it. In this study, I tackle this issue by focusing on the explanatory structure of the sensorimotor theory. I argue that the standard formulation of the theory subscribes to the same theses of the dynamical hypothesis and that it affords covering-law explanations. This however exposes the theory to the mere description worry and generates a puzzle about the role of representations. I then argue that the sensorimotor theory is compatible with a mechanistic framework, and show how this can overcome the mere description worry and solve the problem of the explanatory role of representations. By doing so, it will be shown that the theory should be understood as an enrichment of the orthodoxy, rather than an alternative

Driven by Compression Progress: A Simple Principle Explains Essential Aspects of Subjective Beauty, Novelty, Surprise, Interestingness, Attention, Curiosity, Creativity, Art, Science, Music, Jokes

I argue that data becomes temporarily interesting by itself to some self-improving, but computationally limited, subjective observer once he learns to predict or compress the data in a better way, thus making it subjectively simpler and more beautiful. Curiosity is the desire to create or discover more non-random, non-arbitrary, regular data that is novel and surprising not in the traditional sense of Boltzmann and Shannon but in the sense that it allows for compression progress because its regularity was not yet known. This drive maximizes interestingness, the first derivative of subjective beauty or compressibility, that is, the steepness of the learning curve. It motivates exploring infants, pure mathematicians, composers, artists, dancers, comedians, yourself, and (since 1990) artificial systems.Comment: 35 pages, 3 figures, based on KES 2008 keynote and ALT 2007 / DS 2007 joint invited lectur

statically checking structural constraints on Java programs

It is generally desirable to detect program errors as early as possible during software development. Statically typed languages allow many errors to be detected at compile-time. However, many errors that could be detected statically cannot be expressed using today’s type systems. In this paper, we describe a meta-programming framework for Java which allows for static checking of structural constraints. In particular, we address how design principles and coding rules can be captured

The Mole & The Snake

This article starts from the Foucaultanian notions of biopower and discipline, deal- ing with the strategies of the modern and contemporary capitalism. Introducing the term biopower into his research, Foucault is alluding to a series of transformations re- lated to the capitalist system: life enters into the scope of power in terms of \u201ccontrolled insertion of bodies\u201d in the social apparatus of production, as well as in terms of an \u201cadaptation of population phenomena to economic processes\u201d. It involves the exchange of services on which the Fordist social pact was founded in the twentieth century. The life that is claimed in and against the relationship of capital concerns \u201cneeds\u201d that refer to a \u201cconcrete essence of man\u201d. In the undeniable awareness of a \u201ctriangulation\u201d between sovereignty, discipline and biopower, the author, as a criterion for reading the dynamics of contemporary power, analyzes the theme of control referring to Deleuze. This is de- lineated in the double form of \u201cbiopolitical algorithms\u201d and of the normalization that by means of the selection and targeted processing of big data and information packages, incessantly produced by social activity in and on the network, capture forms of life at the service of capitalism