ABSTRACT

Pancomputational emergence is a strong form of emergence which identifies higher-level aggregate entities as necessary for the universe to “calculate” the behaviour of complex systems. In contrast to weak emergence there are accounts of strong/ontological emergence based on computational ideas, specifically pancomputationalism. This computational emergence has two mutually exclusive forms. The first, developed primarily by M. A. Bedau and expanded upon by P. Huneman, is called weak emergence. The second approach is pancomputational emergence, first suggested by P. C. W. Davies; S. I. Walker, L. Cisneros & Davies; and M. Pexton. There are two ways of investigating the limits on computation: make an estimate of the amount of information in a pancomputational universe and make an estimate of how hard the algorithms are that a pancomputational universe executes. Consideration of the informational limits suggests that reductionism in a pancomputationalist universe may be implausible.