Wide computationalism revisited: distributed mechanisms, parsimony and testability

ABSTRACT

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in applying mechanistic thinking to computational accounts of implementation and individuation. One recent extension of this work involves so-called ‘wide’ approaches to computation, the view that computational processes spread out beyond the boundaries of the individual. These ‘mechanistic accounts of wide computation’ maintain that computational processes are wide in virtue of being part of mechanisms that extend beyond the boundary of the individual. This paper aims to further develop the mechanistic account of wide computationalism by responding to two outstanding worries, what are called the parsimony and testability challenges. The first is based on considerations about wide computation’s ontological cost; the second the view’s experimental testability. The argument is that wide mechanistic computationalism can gain the necessary conceptual resources to address the challenges by embracing two further aspects of the mechanistic approach: (i) the structural aspect of mechanistic explanation and (ii) the notion of constitutive relevance.

KEYWORDS:

• Wide computationalism
• implementation
• mechanism
• constitutive relevance
• parsimony
• testability

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Mark Sprevak, Marcin Milkowski, and Dave Ward for constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. I also want to thank two anonymous referees from the journal for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For examples of wide mechanistic computation, see Kersten (2017), Nowakowski (2017), and Smart (2018).

2 In contrast, Harbecke (2014) argues that mechanistic constitution involves local supervenience. If what is said here is on track, though, this view should be rejected, as computational processes can indeed ‘supervene’ on distributed mechanisms. For a detailed argument against the view, see Wilson (1995, ch.6).

Additional information

Funding

This work was generously supported by the Killam Trust under Grant RES0064987.

Notes on contributors

Luke Kersten

Luke Kersten is currently a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta. His research focuses mostly on issues in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, with additional interests in the philosophy of science.