Switch to: References

Citations of:

On computational explanations

Synthese 193 (12):3931-3949 (2016)

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. The role of the environment in computational explanations.Jens Harbecke & Oron Shagrir - 2019 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (3):1-19.
    The mechanistic view of computation contends that computational explanations are mechanistic explanations. Mechanists, however, disagree about the precise role that the environment – or the so-called “contextual level” – plays for computational explanations. We advance here two claims: Contextual factors essentially determine the computational identity of a computing system ; this means that specifying the “intrinsic” mechanism is not sufficient to fix the computational identity of the system. It is not necessary to specify the causal-mechanistic interaction between the system and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Integrating computation into the mechanistic hierarchy in the cognitive and neural sciences.Lotem Elber-Dorozko & Oron Shagrir - 2019 - Synthese 199 (Suppl 1):43-66.
    It is generally accepted that, in the cognitive and neural sciences, there are both computational and mechanistic explanations. We ask how computational explanations can integrate into the mechanistic hierarchy. The problem stems from the fact that implementation and mechanistic relations have different forms. The implementation relation, from the states of an abstract computational system to the physical, implementing states is a homomorphism mapping relation. The mechanistic relation, however, is that of part/whole; the explaining features in a mechanistic explanation are the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Manipulation is key: on why non-mechanistic explanations in the cognitive sciences also describe relations of manipulation and control.Lotem Elber-Dorozko - 2018 - Synthese 195 (12):5319-5337.
    A popular view presents explanations in the cognitive sciences as causal or mechanistic and argues that an important feature of such explanations is that they allow us to manipulate and control the explanandum phenomena. Nonetheless, whether there can be explanations in the cognitive sciences that are neither causal nor mechanistic is still under debate. Another prominent view suggests that both causal and non-causal relations of counterfactual dependence can be explanatory, but this view is open to the criticism that it is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Making too many enemies: Hutto and Myin’s attack on computationalism.Jesse Kuokkanen & Anna-Mari Rusanen - 2018 - Philosophical Explorations 21 (2):282-294.
    We analyse Hutto & Myin's three arguments against computationalism [Hutto, D., E. Myin, A. Peeters, and F. Zahnoun. Forthcoming. “The Cognitive Basis of Computation: Putting Computation In Its Place.” In The Routledge Handbook of the Computational Mind, edited by M. Sprevak, and M. Colombo. London: Routledge.; Hutto, D., and E. Myin. 2012. Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds Without Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Hutto, D., and E. Myin. 2017. Evolving Enactivism: Basic Minds Meet Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press]. The Hard Problem (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Review of Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account by Gualtiero Piccinini - Gualtiero Piccinini, Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2015), 313 pp., $65.00 (cloth). [REVIEW]Oron Shagrir - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (3):604-612.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • No computation without implementation? A potential problem for the single hierarchy view of physical computation.Jesse Kuokkanen - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-15.
    The so-called integration problem concerning mechanistic and computational explanation asks how they are related to each other. One approach is that a computational explanation is a species of mechanistic explanation. According to this view, computational or mathematical descriptions are mechanism sketches or macroscopic descriptions that include computationally relevant and exclude computationally irrelevant physical properties. Some suggest that this results in a so-called single hierarchy view of physical computation, where computational or mathematical properties sit together in the same mechanistic hierarchy with (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Vertical-horizontal distinction in resolving the abstraction, hierarchy, and generality problems of the mechanistic account of physical computation.Jesse Kuokkanen - 2022 - Synthese 200 (3):1-18.
    Descriptive abstraction means omission of information from descriptions of phenomena. In this paper, I introduce a distinction between vertical and horizontal descriptive abstraction. Vertical abstracts away levels of mechanism or organization, while horizontal abstracts away details within one level of organization. The distinction is implicit in parts of the literature, but it has received insufficient attention and gone mainly unnoticed. I suggest that the distinction can be used to clarify how computational descriptions are formed in some variants of the mechanistic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Brain as an Input–Output Model of the World.Oron Shagrir - 2018 - Minds and Machines 28 (1):53-75.
    An underlying assumption in computational approaches in cognitive and brain sciences is that the nervous system is an input–output model of the world: Its input–output functions mirror certain relations in the target domains. I argue that the input–output modelling assumption plays distinct methodological and explanatory roles. Methodologically, input–output modelling serves to discover the computed function from environmental cues. Explanatorily, input–output modelling serves to account for the appropriateness of the computed function to the explanandum information-processing task. I compare very briefly the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations