I don't know. It would seem you would want to believe that if you were going to say "yes"
to the doctor, since the doctor is relying functionalism to ensure the replacement works.
But Bruno's UD computes all functions and he theorizes that 1p consciousness consists of a
sequence of states in this computation, if I understand him correctly.
Brent
On 5/13/2013 10:39 AM, Stephen Paul King wrote:
We should add that computationalism postulates that consciousness is a process that can
be exactly specified by a recursively enumerable function. No?
On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 1:16 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 5/13/2013 5:41 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 7:05 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 5/12/2013 9:00 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
If your mom ate something different while pregnant with you, such
that you
developed with different atoms, does that mean someone else would
have been
born in your place and you wouldn't be conscious? Or if one
unexpressed
gene was different, would it be someone other than you looking
through those
eyes? What if one gene were different, but it was of little
consequence, or
what if multiple genes were different, etc. How much of the
circumstances
would have to change for you to never have been born? If you admit
that
different matter or different genes would not make it such that you
were
never born, then are you not all your siblings as well?
That doesn't follow. The most common theory of why you are you is
that the
structure of your brain and body encode computations that are
peculiar to
you. You are determined by the structure that effects these
computations.
This is independent of the particular atoms and molecules and even
a lot of
the structure. As Bruno puts it, it depends on the level of
substitution.
Just because there is a level, e.g. atoms, that makes no
difference, it
doesn't follow that there is not a difference at another level.
It's hard to have this discussion with a single word for "you". 1p-you
and 3p-you might make it easier. The 3p-you is characterised by a
number of physical processes that we more or less understand. For
example, if I fall and lose a bit of skin from my knee that won't
change much, but there is possible a relatively small set of neurons
that can be changed to alter my personality. But the idea that the
1p-you is determined at a substitution level seems silly to me
I said it was the most common theory. Not that it was right.
Computationalism is
the theory that there is no substitution level which doesn't instantiate
you1 so
long as the computation is the same.
(unless
we can find some fundamental process by which the 1p arises).
Otherwise, I find it easier to believe that there is only one 1p
conscious entity that gets instantiated on everyone (and possible
everything), at all times, in all possible universes.
Even assuming computationalism there can be different computations and hence
different 1p. As I understand Bruno's theory, consciousness is not an
entity, it's
described by a relation between threads of computation.
Brent
Telmo.
Brent
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