The role of the representational entity in physical computing

Stepney, Susan and Kendon, Viv; McQuillan, Ian and Seki, Shinnosuke, eds. (2019) The role of the representational entity in physical computing. In: Unconventional Computation and Natural Computation. Lecture Notes in Computer Science . Springer-Verlag, JPN, pp. 219-231. ISBN 9783030193119 (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19311-9_18)

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Abstract

We have developed abstraction/representation (AR) theory to answer the question "When does a physical system compute?" AR theory requires the existence of a representational entity (RE), but the vanilla theory does not explicitly include the RE in its definition of physical computing. Here we extend the theory by showing how the RE forms a linked complementary model to the physical computing model, and demonstrate its use in the case of intrinsic computing in a non-human RE: a bacterium.