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. We show that the RE does not need to be a human brain, by demonstrating its use in the case of intrinsic computing in a non-human RE: a bacterium.

中文翻译：

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物理计算中的代表性实体

我们已经开发了抽象/表示（AR）理论来回答“物理系统何时计算？”这一问题。AR理论要求存在一个表示实体（RE），但香草理论并未将RE明确包含在其物理计算定义中。在这里，我们通过显示RE如何形成与物理计算模型的链接互补模型来扩展理论。通过证明其在非人类RE：细菌的内在计算的情况下的使用，我们证明RE不必是人类的大脑。