On 06 Dec 2011, at 21:04, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/6/2011 11:27 AM, benjayk wrote:
Yes it says... Computationalism is the theory that you can be
> run/simulated
> on a digital computer.
Even if it does (it is not exactly COMP as defined by Bruno,
because it
doesn't state that we ourselves can be run on a computer, just that
our body
can be substituted): A digital computer consists not only of the
turing
emulable states it works with. It does way more than that, since it
is a
physical object and has to have some parts that transfrom the
states (which
work with analog means like voltage), and receive (analog) input
and output.
It is essentially consciousness that is being reproduced. If
consciousness arises from the brain performing certain computations,
then those computations could be performed to any desired degree of
precision by a digital computer; and saying "Yes" to the doctor is
betting that the instantiating those computations will necessarily
instantiate consciousness (the naturalist hypothesis - there is no
magic).
OK. And saying yes to a doctor asks only for Turing emulability at
some level. It does not presuppose that such an emulation can be only
arithmetical or immaterial. That necessity is handled by the Movie
Graph Argument (MGA, step 8(*) of UDA).
Yes doctor is basically the "naturalist hypothesis", at least for an a
priori materialist, but then step 8 shows that nature and Matter are
themselves necessarily machine's mental construct, so, to be neutral,
I would probably prefer to call that the "rationalist hypothesis".
(*) http://old.nabble.com/MGA-1-td20566948.html
And because of that, we can't assume that it only matters that the
computations are being done, but it may matter how the computations
are done
and how they are being interfaced with the environment.
One could define computer more narrowly to exclude input and
output, but in
this case a substitution is impossible, because without input and
output a
brain or body can't work.
Yes, that's why I think the "level of substitution" might be a whole
universe. Tegmark's argument that the brain is essentially
classical only shows that you could replace a brain with a digital
computer IF you still have the rest of the universe to interact with.
Hmm... In that case, the brain (the generalized brain) *is* the
universe. If you can replace the brain (the biological one in the
skull) and if I survive by the fact that such an artificial brain run
(physically, say) the right computation, then the "rest of the
physical universe" (whatever that is) is an average of some sort on
all computations (physical or not by step 8) going through my actual
brain state.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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