Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart) / quote 147 of 171
Computations have no ontological status
Manzotti suggests that there is actually no such thing as information. Therefore, neither machines nor biologically based nervous systems can process it more efficiently—because information may not refer to anything. He argues that the computational level may be removed from one’s description of reality and everything will keep behaving in the same way—the computational level has no causal efficacy. He writes: “Computations are therefore epistemic tools that summarize certain causal patterns and match them with certain logical structures human beings have learned to use. Furthermore, computations have no ontological status since they do not refer to something that is intrinsic to physical systems. They tell us much more about the cognitive processes of the observers