On 2/4/2011 7:30 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 04 Feb 2011, at 01:59, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 2/3/2011 5:17 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 03 Feb 2011, at 01:18, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 2/2/2011 2:00 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 6:45 PM, Brent
Meeker<[email protected]> wrote:
I think it very likely that the brain can be so modeled. But the
meaning
that simulated brain, as expressed in it's output decisions
relative to
inputs is dependent on the rest of the world, or at least of it
with which
the brain will interact - including the past evoutionary history
which led
up to the brain. Its computations have no canonical
interpretation in
themselves.
You can connect the simulated brain to transducers which convert
environmental inputs into electrical signals. But then, what would
happen if the same electrical signals were input from data on disk
rather than the environment? Would the brain's experience be
different? If so, how would it know where the data was coming from?
It wouldn't know; and it's responses would have no meaning except
to someone who did know. Context is essential. Otherwise you get
the rock that calculates everything.
If the context is needed and is not Turing emulable, then comp is
just false.
If it is Turing emulable then the reasoning go through, unless you
have an objection, and it would be nice you try to say where.
Bruno
My reservation is that the context will be Turing emulable, but it
will have to be so large as to constitute a whole world. That this
is what is required that be self-interpreting.
But that is not an objection at all. It is just an affirmation that
our comp substitution level is so low that the doctor has to emulate
the entire physical universe to get an artificial brain.
No, the doctor doesn't have to do that because he's only substituting
for a little part of it and allowing it to interact with the rest that
is already existing.
But the reasoning still go through, and the laws of physics have still
to be retrieved from computer science, and so we keep the
qualia/quanta distinction, which is fine.
The only thing which *is* ruled out by having such a low substitution
level is the idea of buying *in practice* an artificial brain. But
this practice idea is not used in the reasoning. I
I think it rules out the movie graph kind of brain as being conscious of
this world.
Brent
t is used in step 1-6 for making things easier, but is eliminated by
the step seven. If the entire physical universe is Turing emulable,
the UD will emulate it infinitely often, and the measure problem
remains (a nice problem given that its current solution already
explain many things, which are not explained, or are explained away,
by physicalism).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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