“计算是世界的客观特征吗？”——牛津大学物理哲学讨论会
2009-03-04
2009年3月5日，牛津物理哲学小组召开讨论会，本次讨论的题目是“计算是世界的客观特征吗？”，（Are computations objective features of the world?）主讲人是来自剑桥大学科学史与科学哲学系、国王学院的Mark Sprevak。
Mark Sprevak演讲的内容摘要如下：
Computational explanations have become common in the natural sciences. Such explanations can offer clear pragmatic benefits and suggest helpful manipulations to scientists. However, the status of computational explanations as claims of literal truth often remains obscure. What does it mean for a physical system to perform a computation? Under what conditions do two physical systems perform the same computation? Is computation a real (objective) property of a physical system, or is it only a property that we project onto the system? In this paper, I discuss a way of answering these questions that is widely assumed to be correct, the ‘standard position’. I argue that the standard position faces a number of serious challenges. I propose an alternative account, the ‘process-and-representation model’. One interesting feature of this model is that it allows computations to be objective features of the world.