Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > 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?
That would be my present guess. >Or do you believe > a coal-shovelling robot could only have the coal-shovelling experience by > actually shovelling > coal? Probably not. But from a QM viewpoint the robot and the coal are inevitably entangled with the environment (i.e. the rest of the universe); so I don't consider it a knock-down argument. Brent Meeker --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
