Paper Info
Title
The Machine Scenario: A Computational Perspective On Alternative Representations Of Indeterminism
Abstract
In philosophical logic and metaphysics there is a long-standing debate around the most appropriate structures to represent indeterministic scenarios concerning the future. We reconstruct here such a debate in a computational setting, focusing on the fundamental difference between moment-based and history-based structures. Our presentation is centered around two versions of an indeterministic scenario in which a programmer wants a machine to perform a given task at some point after a specified time. One of the two versions includes an assumption about the future behaviour of the machine that cannot be encoded in any programming instruction; such version has models over history-based structures but no model over a moment-based structure. Therefore, our work adds a new stance to the debate: moment-based structures can be said to rule out certain indeterministic scenarios that are computationally unfeasible.
Year
DOI
Venue
2021
10.1007/s11023-020-09530-x
MINDS AND MACHINES
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Machine scenario, Open future, Representations of indeterminism, Thought experiments
Journal
31
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
1
0924-6495
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Vincent Grandjean100.34
Matteo Pascucci200.68