On Wed, May 24, 2023 at 12:20 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Wed, 24 May 2023 at 21:56, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> >> On Wed, May 24, 2023, 3:20 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> On Wed, 24 May 2023 at 15:37, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Wed, May 24, 2023, 1:15 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Wed, 24 May 2023 at 04:03, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> >>>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Tue, May 23, 2023 at 7:15 AM Stathis Papaioannou < >>>>>> stath...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> On Tue, 23 May 2023 at 21:09, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> >>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> As I see this thread, Terren and Stathis are both talking past each >>>>>>>> other. Please either of you correct me if i am wrong, but in an effort >>>>>>>> to >>>>>>>> clarify and perhaps resolve this situation: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I believe Stathis is saying the functional substitution having the >>>>>>>> same fine-grained causal organization *would* have the same >>>>>>>> phenomenology, >>>>>>>> the same experience, and the same qualia as the brain with the same >>>>>>>> fine-grained causal organization. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Therefore, there is no disagreement between your positions with >>>>>>>> regards to symbols groundings, mappings, etc. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> When you both discuss the problem of symbology, or bits, etc. I >>>>>>>> believe this is partly responsible for why you are both talking past >>>>>>>> each >>>>>>>> other, because there are many levels involved in brains (and >>>>>>>> computational >>>>>>>> systems). I believe you were discussing completely different levels in >>>>>>>> the >>>>>>>> hierarchical organization. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> There are high-level parts of minds, such as ideas, thoughts, >>>>>>>> feelings, quale, etc. and there are low-level, be they neurons, >>>>>>>> neurotransmitters, atoms, quantum fields, and laws of physics as in >>>>>>>> human >>>>>>>> brains, or circuits, logic gates, bits, and instructions as in >>>>>>>> computers. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I think when Terren mentions a "symbol for the smell of >>>>>>>> grandmother's kitchen" (GMK) the trouble is we are crossing a myriad of >>>>>>>> levels. The quale or idea or memory of the smell of GMK is a very >>>>>>>> high-level feature of a mind. When Terren asks for or discusses a >>>>>>>> symbol >>>>>>>> for it, a complete answer/description for it can only be supplied in >>>>>>>> terms >>>>>>>> of a vast amount of information concerning low level structures, be >>>>>>>> they >>>>>>>> patterns of neuron firings, or patterns of bits being processed. When >>>>>>>> we >>>>>>>> consider things down at this low level, however, we lose all context >>>>>>>> for >>>>>>>> what the meaning, idea, and quale are or where or how they come in. We >>>>>>>> cannot see or find the idea of GMK in any neuron, no more than we can >>>>>>>> see >>>>>>>> or find it in any neuron. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Of course then it should seem deeply mysterious, if not impossible, >>>>>>>> how we get "it" (GMK or otherwise) from "bit", but to me, this is no >>>>>>>> greater a leap from how we get "it" from a bunch of cells squirting >>>>>>>> ions >>>>>>>> back and forth. Trying to understand a smartphone by looking at the >>>>>>>> flows >>>>>>>> of electrons is a similar kind of problem, it would seem just as >>>>>>>> difficult >>>>>>>> or impossible to explain and understand the high-level features and >>>>>>>> complexity out of the low-level simplicity. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> This is why it's crucial to bear in mind and explicitly discuss the >>>>>>>> level one is operation on when one discusses symbols, substrates, or >>>>>>>> quale. >>>>>>>> In summary, I think a chief reason you have been talking past each >>>>>>>> other is >>>>>>>> because you are each operating on different assumed levels. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Please correct me if you believe I am mistaken and know I only >>>>>>>> offer my perspective in the hope it might help the conversation. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I think you’ve captured my position. But in addition I think >>>>>>> replicating the fine-grained causal organisation is not necessary in >>>>>>> order >>>>>>> to replicate higher level phenomena such as GMK. By extension of >>>>>>> Chalmers’ >>>>>>> substitution experiment, >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Note that Chalmers's argument is based on assuming the functional >>>>>> substitution occurs at a certain level of fine-grained-ness. If you lose >>>>>> this step, and look at only the top-most input-output of the mind as >>>>>> black >>>>>> box, then you can no longer distinguish a rock from a dreaming person, >>>>>> nor >>>>>> a calculator computing 2+3 and a human computing 2+3, and one also runs >>>>>> into the Blockhead "lookup table" argument against functionalism. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Yes, those are perhaps problems with functionalism. But a major point >>>>> in Chalmers' argument is that if qualia were substrate-specific (hence, >>>>> functionalism false) it would be possible to make a partial zombie or an >>>>> entity whose consciousness and behaviour diverged from the point the >>>>> substitution was made. And this argument works not just by replacing the >>>>> neurons with silicon chips, but by replacing any part of the human with >>>>> anything that reproduces the interactions with the remaining parts. >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> How deeply do you have to go when you consider or define those "other >>>> parts" though? That seems to be a critical but unstated assumption, and >>>> something that depends on how finely grained you consider the >>>> relevant/important parts of a brain to be. >>>> >>>> For reference, this is what Chalmers says: >>>> >>>> >>>> "In this paper I defend this view. Specifically, I defend a principle >>>> of organizational invariance, holding that experience is invariant across >>>> systems with the same fine-grained functional organization. More precisely, >>>> the principle states that given any system that has conscious experiences, >>>> then any system that has the same functional organization at a fine enough >>>> grain will have qualitatively identical conscious experiences. A full >>>> specification of a system's fine-grained functional organization will fully >>>> determine any conscious experiences that arise." >>>> https://consc.net/papers/qualia.html >>>> >>>> By substituting a fine-grained functional organization for a >>>> coarse-grained one, you change the functional definition and can no longer >>>> guarantee identical experiences, nor identical behaviors in all possible >>>> situations. They're no longer"functional isomorphs" as Chalmers's argument >>>> requires. >>>> >>>> By substituting a recording of a computation for a computation, you >>>> replace a conscious mind with a tape recording of the prior behavior of a >>>> conscious mind. This is what happens in the Blockhead thought experiment. >>>> The result is something that passes a Turing test, but which is itself not >>>> conscious (though creating such a recording requires prior invocation of a >>>> conscious mind or extraordinary luck). >>>> >>> >>> The replaced part must of course be functionally identical, otherwise >>> both the behaviour and the qualia could change. But this does not mean that >>> it must replicate the functional organisation at a particular scale. If a >>> volume of brain tissue is removed, in order to guarantee identical >>> behaviour the replacement part must interact at the cut surfaces of the >>> surrounding tissue in the same way as the original. It is at these surfaces >>> that the interactions must be sufficiently fine-grained, but what goes >>> inside the volume doesn't matter: it could be conventional simulation of >>> neurons, it could be a giant lookup table. Also, the volume could be any >>> size, and could comprise an arbitrarily large proportion of the subject. >>> >>> >> >> Can I ask you what you would believe would happen to the conscious of the >> individual if you replaced the right hemisphere of the brain with a black >> box that interfaced identically with the left hemisphere, but internal to >> this black box is nothing but a random number generator, and it is only by >> fantastic luck that the output of the RNG happens to have caused it's >> interfacing with the left hemisphere to remain unchanged? >> > > I was going to propose just that next: nothing, the consciousness would > continue. > A RNG has a different functional description though, from any conventional mind. It seems to me you may be operating within a more physicalist notion of consciousness than a functionalist one, in that you seem to be putting more weight on the existence of a particular physical state being reached, regardless of how it got there. In my view (as a functionalist), being in a particular physical state is not sufficient. It also matters how one reached that particular state. A RNG and a human can both output the string "I am conscious", but in my view only one of them is. > > After answering that, let me ask what you think would happen to the >> conscious of the individual if we replaced all but one neuron in the brain >> with this RNG-driven black box that continues to stimulate this sole >> remaining neuron in exactly the same way as the rest of the brain would >> have? >> > > The consciousness would continue. And then we could get rid of the neuron > and the consciousness would continue. So we end up with the same result as > the rock implementing all computations and hence all consciousnesses, > Rocks don't implement all computations. I am aware some philosophers have said as much, but they achieve this trick by labeling successive states of a computation to each time-ordered state of the rock. I don't think any computer scientist accepts this as valid. The transitions of the rock states lack the counterfactual relations which are necessary for computation. If you were to try to map states S_1 to state S_5000 of a rock to a program computing Pi, looking at state S_6000 of the rock won't provide you any meaningful information about what the next digit of Pi happens to be. > which amounts to saying that consciousness exists independently of any > hardware. This is consistent with Bruno Marchal’s theory. > It depends how you define hardware. Marchal's theory still requires computations supported by platonic truths/number relations. This is not physical hardware, but it's still a platform for supporting threads of computation. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUgOYSj29zYZSnfUXpmRRu3k2f4BCKmB7ckqsSi--oPVkQ%40mail.gmail.com.
