Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I The Computability of Physical Systems and Physical Systems as Computers
- 1 Ontic Pancomputationalism
- 2 Zuse’s Thesis, Gandy’s Thesis, and Penrose’s Thesis
- 3 Church’s Thesis, Turing’s Limits, and Deutsch’s Principle
- Part II The Implementation of Computation in Physical Systems
- 4 How to Make Orthogonal Positions Parallel: Revisiting the Quantum Parallelism Thesis
- 5 How is There a Physics of Information? On Characterizing Physical Evolution as Information Processing
- 6 Abstraction/Representation Theory and the Natural Science of Computation
- Part III Physical Perspectives on Computer Science
- 7 Physics-like Models of Computation
- 8 Feasible Computation: Methodological Contributions from Computational Science
- 9 Relativistic Computation
- Part IV Computational Perspectives on Physical Theory
- 10 Intension in the Physics of Computation: Lessons from the Debate about Landauer’s Principle
- 11 Maxwell’s Demon Does not Compute
- 12 Quantum Theory as a Principle Theory: Insights from an Information-Theoretic Reconstruction
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - Intension in the Physics of Computation: Lessons from the Debate about Landauer’s Principle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 May 2018
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I The Computability of Physical Systems and Physical Systems as Computers
- 1 Ontic Pancomputationalism
- 2 Zuse’s Thesis, Gandy’s Thesis, and Penrose’s Thesis
- 3 Church’s Thesis, Turing’s Limits, and Deutsch’s Principle
- Part II The Implementation of Computation in Physical Systems
- 4 How to Make Orthogonal Positions Parallel: Revisiting the Quantum Parallelism Thesis
- 5 How is There a Physics of Information? On Characterizing Physical Evolution as Information Processing
- 6 Abstraction/Representation Theory and the Natural Science of Computation
- Part III Physical Perspectives on Computer Science
- 7 Physics-like Models of Computation
- 8 Feasible Computation: Methodological Contributions from Computational Science
- 9 Relativistic Computation
- Part IV Computational Perspectives on Physical Theory
- 10 Intension in the Physics of Computation: Lessons from the Debate about Landauer’s Principle
- 11 Maxwell’s Demon Does not Compute
- 12 Quantum Theory as a Principle Theory: Insights from an Information-Theoretic Reconstruction
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In this paper the key issues in the debate about Landauer's Principle are identified, and important lessons are drawn about how our view of computation and physics relates to and is informed by the interpretation of thermal physics. It is argued that there are several respects in which modality, and how processes and systems are represented, are crucial to both Landauer's Principle and the application of thermodynamics. After reviewing the L-machine model of Ladyman, Presnell, Short, and Groisman (2007) as an exemplification of a general account of computation and its physical realization, John Norton's supposed no-go theorem for the thermodynamics of computation, and work by David Wallace (2014) on the nature of the Second Law of thermodynamics and the relationship between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, it is argued that both computational and thermodynamic states are intensional, but that the modal structure of physical states that represent them can nonetheless be taken to be an objective component of implementation.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018