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 (Unpublished)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
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID 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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