Setting the Demons Loose: Computational Irreducibility Does Not Guarantee Unpredictability or Emergence.

Tabatabaei Ghomi, Hamed

A phenomenon resulting from a computationally irreducible (or computationally incompressible) process is supposedly unpredictable except via simulation. This notion of unpredictability has been deployed to formulate recent accounts of computational emergence. Via a technical analysis, I show that computational irreducibility can establish the impossibility of prediction only with respect to maximum standards of precision. By articulating the graded nature of prediction, I show that unpredictability to maximum standards is not equivalent to being unpredictable in general. I conclude that computational irreducibility fails to fulfill its assigned philosophical roles in theories of computational emergence.

DEMONOLOGY

Philosophy of Science, 2022, Vol 89, Issue 4, p761

0031-8248

Academic Journal

10.1017/psa.2022.5