On 2 October 2013 00:46, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 01 Oct 2013, at 15:31, Pierz wrote: > >> Maybe. It would be a lot more profound if we definitely *could* reproduce >> the brain's behaviour. The devil is in the detail as they say. But a >> challenge to Chalmer's position has occurred to me. It seems to me that >> Bruno has convincingly argued that *if* comp holds, then consciousness >> supervenes on the computation, not on the physical matter. But functionalism >> suggests that what counts is the output, not the manner in which it as >> arrived at. That is to say, the brain or whatever neural subunit or computer >> is doing the processing is a black box. You input something and then read >> the output, but the intervening steps don't matter. Consider what this might >> mean in terms of a brain. > > > > That's not clear to me. The question is "output of what". If it is the entie > subject, this is more behaviorism than functionalism. > Putnam's functionalism makes clear that we have to take the output of the > neurons into account. > Comp is functionalism, but with the idea that we don't know the level of > substitution, so it might be that we have to take into account the oputput > of the gluons in our atoms (so comp makes clear that it only ask for the > existence of a level of substitution, and then show that no machine can know > for sure its subst. level, making Putnam's sort of functionalism a bit > fuzzy). > > > > > >> Let's say a vastly advanced alien species comes to earth. It looks at our >> puny little brains and decides to make one to fool us. This constructed >> person/brain receives normal conversational input and outputs conversation >> that it knows will perfectly mimic a human being. But in fact the computer >> doing this processing is vastly superior to the human brain. It's like a >> modern PC emulating a TRS-80, except much more so. When it computes/thinks >> up a response, it draws on a vast amount of knowledge, intelligence and >> creativity and accesses qualia undreamed of by a human. Yet its response >> will completely fool any normal human and will pass Turing tests till the >> cows come home. What this thought experiment shows is that, while >> half-qualia may be absurd, it most certainly is possible to reproduce the >> outputs of a brain without replicating its qualia. It might have completely >> different qualia, just as a very good actor's emotions can't be >> distinguished from the real thing, even though his or her internal >> experience is quite different. And if qualia can be quite different even >> though the functional outputs are the same, this does seem to leave >> functionalism in something of a quandary. All we can say is that there must >> be some kind of qualia occurring, rather a different result from what >> Chalmers is claiming. When we extend this type of scenario to artificial >> neurons or partial brain prostheses as in Chamer's paper, we quickly run up >> against perplexing problems. Imagine the advanced alien provides these >> prostheses. It takes the same inputs and generates the same correct outputs, >> but it processes those inputs within a much vaster, more complex system. >> Does the brain utilizing this advanced prosthesis experience a kind of >> expanded consciousness because of this, without that difference being >> detectable? Or do the qualia remain somehow confined to the prosthesis >> (whatever that means)? These crazy quandaries suggest to me that basically, >> we don't know shit. > > > Hmm, I am not convinced. "Chalmers argument" is that to get a philosophical > zombie, the fading argument shows that you have to go through half-qualia, > which is absurd. His goal (here) is to show that "no qualia" is absurd. > > That the qualia can be different is known in the qualia literature, and is a > big open problem per se. But Chalmers argues only that "no qualia" is > absurd, indeed because it would needs some absurd notion of intermediate > half qualia. > > My be I miss a point. Stathis can clarify this furher.
The argument is simply summarised thus: it is impossible even for God to make a brain prosthesis that reproduces the I/O behaviour but has different qualia. This is a proof of comp, provided that brain physics is computable, or functionalism if brain physics is not computable. Non-comp functionalism may entail, for example, that the replacement brain contain a hypercomputer. > Eventually the qualia is determined by infinitely many number relations, and > a brain filters them. It does not create them, like no machine can create > PI, only "re-compute" it, somehow. The anlogy here break sown as qualia are > purely first person notion, which explains why they are distributed on the > whole universal dovetailing (sigma_1 arithmetic). > > > Bruno > > > >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
