A Mechanistic Account of Biological computation

Although the analogy between genome-based developmental program and computer software has been extensively criticised, many research programmes in developmental biology and related areas still champion computational explanations of biological systems. To clarify what kinds of ontological assumptions might be shared by these explanations and assess whether they are warranted, we adopt Piccinini’s mechanistic account of concrete computation. According to this account, a computing system is a functional mechanism performing operations on physical entities, called vehicles, following rules that are solely sensitive to differences between their spatiotemporal parts, called portions. We articulate the mechanistic requirements for being a computing system and critically evaluate whether biological systems satisfy them.