Key works |
While for some authors the world and its natural processes are deterministic and digital, based on classical mechanics (e.g. Zuse 1969, Fredkin 1990), for others it may be obvious that the world cannot be the result of classical computation (Feynman 1982, Deutsch 1997, Lloyd 2010) because that would leave quantum phenomena unaccounted for. The main question, however, is which processes are most fundamental. Some authors believe that quantum phenomena are an emergent property of information and computation (Wheeler 1989, Wolfram 2002). The main opposing pancomputational views claim that no current scientific theory can fully account for natural phenomena such as brain consciousness (e.g. Penrose 1999), and for a world where indeterministic randomness actually occurs and free will is possible (e.g. Scheidl et al 2010). They do so, for example, by strictly assuming the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. A weaker form of pancomputationalism entails an algorithmic view of the world and of nature (Chaitin 2012, Zenil 2011) independent of computational model. |