On the Relation of Computing to the World William J. Rapaport Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Department of Philosophy, Department of Linguistics, and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14260-2500 rapaport@buffalo.edu http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/∼rapaport/
April 21, 2015
Abstract I survey a common theme that pervades the philosophy of computer science (and philosophy more generally): the relation of computing to the world. Are algorithms merely certain procedures entirely characterizable in an “indigenous”, “internal’, “intrinsic”, “local”, “narrow”, “syntactic” (more generally: “intra-system”) purely Turing-machine language? Or must they interact with the real world, with a purpose that is expressible only in a language with an “external”, “extrinsic”, “global”, “wide”, “inherited” (more generally: “extra-” or “inter-”sytem) semantics?
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