Brent Meeker writes: > David Nyman wrote: > > Russell Standish wrote: > > > > > >>Maudlin say aha - lets take the recording, and add to it an inert > >>machine that handles the counterfactuals. This combined machine is > >>computationally equivalent to the original. But since the new machine > >>is physically equivalent to a recording, how could consciousness > >>supervene on it. If we want to keep supervenience, there must be > >>something noncomputational that means the first machine is conscious, > >>and the second not. > >> > >>Marchal says consciousness supervenes on neither of the physical > >>machines, but on the abstract computation, and there is only one > >>consciousness involved (not two). > > > > > > Is there not a more general appeal to plausibility open to the > > non-supervenience argument? We are after all attempting to show the > > *consequences* of a thoroughgoing assumption of comp, not prove its > > truth. Under comp, a specific conscious state is taken as mapping to, > > and consistently co-varying with, some equally specific, but purely > > computationally defined, entity. The general problem is that any > > attempt to preserve such consistency of mapping through supervention on > > a logically and ontically prior 'physical' reality must fail, because > > under physicalism comp *must* reduce to an arbitrary gloss on the > > behaviour at an arbitrary level of arbitrarily many *physical* > > architectures or substrates. > > There is another possibility: that consciousness is relative to what it is > conscious > *of* and any computation that implements consciousness must also implement > the whole > world which the consciousness is conscious of. In that case there may be > only one, > unique physical universe that implements our consciousness.
Do you believe it is possible to copy a particular consciousness by emulating it, along with sham inputs (i.e. in virtual reality), on a general purpose computer? Or do you believe a coal-shovelling robot could only have the coal-shovelling experience by actually shovelling coal? Stathis Papaioannou _________________________________________________________________ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
