Abstract
We have developed abstraction/representation (AR) theory to answer the question “When does a physical system compute?” AR theory requires the existence of a representational entity (RE), but the vanilla theory does not explicitly include the RE in its definition of physical computing. Here we extend the theory by showing how the RE forms a linked complementary model to the physical computing model, and demonstrate its use in the case of intrinsic computing in a non-human RE: a bacterium.
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Acknowledgements
We thank our colleagues Dom Horsman, Tim Clarke, and Peter Young, for illuminating discussions. VK is funded by UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grant EP/L022303/1.
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Stepney, S., Kendon, V. (2019). The Role of the Representational Entity in Physical Computing. In: McQuillan, I., Seki, S. (eds) Unconventional Computation and Natural Computation. UCNC 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11493. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19311-9_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19311-9_18
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