Two Paradigms for Individuating Implementations
Colin Klein · Journal of Cognitive Science · 2012
There has always been a lot to like about Chalmers’ article. You might have thought, for example, that a theory of implementation should be most concerned with telling us which things compute at all. Chalmers argues— convincingly, in my opinion—that this is less interesting than the question of which computations things perform. On his account, everything computes something or other. But only complicated things instantiate complicated programs. Computationalists about mind and brain arguably don’t need much more than that. Whatever computation our brain performs, it’s surely a doozy. Relatively few things manage it.