On 5/17/2017 2:07 AM, David Nyman wrote:
To the extent that it ought to be possible for any program to
represent any other program by a suitable time-based transformation
applied by an external observer, then yes.
I think there's a subtlety here. If we're speaking about *physical*
supervenience (which is after all the only kind that could be
"observed" externally) then of course I agree with you and Brent that
the relation with computation and hence, by assumption, with
consciousness, becomes ambiguous in the sense that it's open to
variation by extrinsic interpretation. I tend to agree that in this
case the implication is so much the worse for this definition of
supervenience.
However, if we're speaking strictly of computational supervenience,
I'm not sure what that mean? ...supervenience of consciousness on
computation? on arithmetic? of computation on arithmetic?
then ISTM that no notion of "external observation" can now coherently
apply. You can't speak of "observing" a computation unless you're
already implicitly assuming physical supervenience.
Bruno's theory is based on interviews of a perfect machine which
"observes" what it proves, knows, believes, bets,...
So on the strict assumption of computational supervenience without
extraneous additions a computation simply is what it is, as it were,
and as such is invulnerable to variation of extrinsic interpretation.
So in this case there need be no ambiguity and the notion of
supervenience seems to be robust in this respect.
If it "is what it is" then there's nothing to supervene on.
Supervenience takes two arguments. But as just an abstract computation
it is not clear how it can be "consciousness" OF something. I realize
that the idea is that it is conscious of (believes) things in the
computation. It is like the consciousness of a simulated person is a
simulated world. The simulated person is conscious of things in the
simulated world. But my view is that the simulated consciousness
supervenes on the simulated physics, simply in order to have something
consistent enough to be "a world".
Brent
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