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Computers

Piccinini, Gualtiero (2004) Computers. UNSPECIFIED. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

According to some philosophers, there is no fact of the matter whether something is either a computer, or some other computing mechanism, or something that performs no computations at all. On the contrary, I argue that there is a fact of the matter whether something is a calculator or a computer: a computer is a calculator of large capacity, and a calculator is a mechanism whose function is to perform one out of several possible computations on inputs of nontrivial size at once. This paper is devoted to a detailed defense of these theses, including a specification of the relevant notion of “large capacity” and an explication of the notion of computer.


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Item Type: Other
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Piccinini, Gualtiero
Keywords: computer
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Computer Science
Depositing User: Gualtiero Piccinini
Date Deposited: 25 Oct 2004
Last Modified: 07 Oct 2010 15:12
Item ID: 2016
Public Domain: No
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Computer Science
Date: 2004
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/2016

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