On 15.09.2012 21:56 meekerdb said the following:
On 9/15/2012 9:35 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 9/15/2012 4:11 AM, Russell Standish wrote:
...
Hi Russell,
That is far too inclusive a definition of computation.
Not really, it only requires some way of representing the
information such that it can be transformed. The integers are not
the only kind of number that we can represent numbers (or any other
mathematical object) with. IMHO, we are naive to think that Nature
is hobbled to only use integers to perform her Computations. We
must never project our deficiencies on Nature.
I would go even farther than Russell implies. A lot of the muddle
about computation and consciousness comes about because they are
abstracted out of the world. That's why I like to think in terms of
robots or Mars rovers. Consciousness and computation are given their
meaning by their effecting actions in the world. To find out what a
string of 1s and 0s means a Mars rovers memory you need to see what
effect they have on its actions. You know that "1+1=10" means 1+1=2
when 10 in a register causes it to pick up two rocks.
So to further abstract computation to mean "transformation of
information" will lead to even more of a muddle.
Brent
So this is some kind of enactive model of consciousness, similar to what
Alva Noë writes in Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and
Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness.
One question in this respect. Let me start with a quote from Max
Velmans, Understanding Consciousness
Section Can qualia be reduced to the exercise of sensory-motor skills?
p. 102 “Piloting a 747 no doubt feels like something to a human pilot,
and the way that it feels is likely to have something to do with human
biology. But why should it feel the same way to an electronic autopilot
that replaces the skills exercised by a human being? Or why should it
feel like anything to be the control system of a guided missile system?
Anyone versed in the construction of electronic control systems knows
that if one builds a system in the right way, it will function just as
it is intended to do, whether it feels like anything to be that system
or not. If so, functioning in an electronic (or any other) system is
logically tangential to whether it is like anything to be that system,
leaving the hard problem of why it happens to feel a certain way in
humans untouched.”
Do you mean that the meaning in a guided missile system happens as
by-product of its development by engineers?
To me, it seems that meaning that you have defined in Mars Rovers is yet
another theory of epiphenomenalism.
Evgenii
--
http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/06/visual-world-a-grand-illusion.html
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