On 2 October 2013 00:46, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >> 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
