Bruno, My answer would have to be, no, she lacks the necessary counterfactual behaviors during that time. And, moreover, if only part of the brain were being run by a recording then she would lack only some counterfactuals, and so she would count as partially conscious.
--Abram On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 3:12 PM, Bruno Marchal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On 29 Nov 2008, at 15:56, Abram Demski wrote: > >> >> Bruno, >> >>> The argument was more of the type : "removal of unnecessay and >>> unconscious or unintelligent parts. Those parts have just no >>> perspective. If they have some perpective playing arole in Alice's >>> consciousness, it would mean we have not well chosen the substitution >>> level. You are reintroducing some consciousness on the elementary >>> parts, here, I think. >>> >> >> The problem would not be with removing individual elementary parts and >> replacing them with functionally equivalent pieces; this obviously >> preserves the whole. Rather with removing whole subgraphs and >> replacing them with equivalent pieces. As Alice-in-the-cave is >> supposed to show, this can remove consciousness, at least in the limit >> when the entire movie is replaced... > > > The limit is not relevant. I agrre that if you remove Alice, you > remove any possibility for Alice to manifest herself in your most > probable histories. The problem is that in the range activity of the > projected movie, removing a part of the graph change nothing. It > changes only the probability of recoevering Alice from her history in, > again, your most probable history. IThere are no physical causal link > between the experience attributed to the physical computation and the > "causal history of projecting a movie". The incremental removing of > the graph hilighted the lack of causality in the movie. Perhaps not in > the best clearer way, apparently. Perhaps I should have done the case > of a non dream. I will come back on this. > > >> >> >> >>> >>> Then you think that if someone is conscious with some brain, which >>> for >>> some reason, does never use some neurons, could loose consciousness >>> when that never used neuron is removed? >>> If that were true, how could still be confident with an artificial >>> digital brain. You may be right, but the MEC hypothesis would be put >>> in doubt. >>> >> >> I am thinking of it as being the same as someone having knowledge >> which they never actually use. Suppose that the situation is so >> extreme that if we removed the neurons involved in that knowledge, we >> will not alter the person's behavior; yet, we will have removed the >> knowledge. Similarly, if the behavior of Alice in practice comes from >> a recording, yet a dormant conscious portion is continually ready to >> intervene if needed, then removing that dormant portion removes her >> consciousness. > > > You should definitely do the removing of the graph in the non-dream > situation. Let us do it. > Let us take a situation without complex inputs. Let us imagine Alice > is giving a conference in a big room, so, as input she is just blinded > by some projector, + some noise, and she makes a talk on Astronomy (to > fix the things). Now from 8h30 to 8H45 pm, she has just no brain, she > get the "motor" info from a projected recording of a previous *perfect > dream* of that conference, dream done the night before, or send from > Platonia (possible in principle). Then, by magic, to simplify, at 8h45 > she get back the original brain, which by optical means inherits the > stage at the end of the conference in that perfect dream. I ask you, > would you say Alice was a zombie, during the conference? > > Bruno > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
