Abstract
Multiple realizability (MR) is traditionally conceived of as the feature of computational systems, and has been used to argue for irreducibility of higher-level theories. I will show that there are several ways a computational system may be seen to display MR. These ways correspond to (at least) five ways one can conceive of the function of the physical computational system. However, they do not match common intuitions about MR. I show that MR is deeply interest-related, and for this reason, difficult to pin down exactly. I claim that MR is of little importance for defending computationalism, and argue that it should rather appeal to organizational invariance or substrate neutrality of computation, which are much more intuitive but cannot support strong antireductionist arguments.
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Notes
- 1.
I owe this observation Aaron Sloman.
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Acknowledgements
The work on this paper was financed by National Science Centre under the program OPUS, grant no. 2011/03/B/HS1/04563. The author wishes to thank Aaron Sloman for an extended discussion of his idea, to the audience at PT-AT 13, and to the anonymous referee of the previous version of the paper.
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Miłkowski, M. (2016). Computation and Multiple Realizability. In: Müller, V.C. (eds) Fundamental Issues of Artificial Intelligence. Synthese Library, vol 376. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26485-1_3
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