On 12 February 2014 02:55, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2/11/2014 12:42 AM, LizR wrote: > > On 11 February 2014 17:21, Russell Standish <[email protected]>wrote: > >> On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 04:57:50PM +1300, LizR wrote: >> > >> > You wouldn't need to say that if you could show what's wrong with it! >> :-) >> > >> > (Sorry!) >> > >> > I think the chances are a TOE will have to go a looong way before it's >> > likely to make predictions rather than retrodictions. Didn't string >> theory >> > retrodict the graviton or something, and everyone said that was a >> positive >> > result? Well, Bruno's got qualia, apparently... >> > >> >> I don't see how he does. He does have the existence of incommunicable >> facts (the G*\G thing), but that's not the same as qualia ISTM. >> > > I said "apparently" because I have no idea how he does it. > > > I think a simpler form of the argument is that it must be possible to > simulate consciousness because (we think) any physical process can be > simulated and consciousness necessarily accompanies the physical processes > of one's brain. This is the bet of "saying yes to the doctor". But > there's a catch. When we simulate an aircraft flying or a weather system > those have a reference in the 'real' world and that's why they are > simulations. But if we simulate a conscious brain the consciousness will > be 'real' consciousness. So simulating conscious is in a sense impossible; > we may be able to produce it but we can't simulate it. Consciousness must > be consciousness of something, but it need not be anything physical; it > could just be consciousness of arithmetical truths. This explains why > aspects of consciousness are ineffable. It's because conscious processes > can prove Goedel's theorem and so know that some truths are unprovable. > Bruno takes "qualia are ineffable" and "some arithmetical truths are > unprovable" and postulates "ineffable=unprovable". This allows him to > identify specifically what makes some computer program conscious: it's the > ability to do induction and diagnoalization and prove Goedel's theorems. > > My problem with this is that I don't believe in arithmetical realism in > the sense required for this argument. I think consciousness depends of > consciousness *of* an external world and thoughts just about Peano's > arithmetic is not enough to realize consciousness and the > "ineffable=unprovable" identification is gratuitous. There are obvious > physical and evolutionary reasons that qualia would be ineffable. That's > why I think step 8 is invalid because it assumes dreams (of arithmetic?) > are possible independent of any external world - or looked at another way, > I think to make it work would require that the 'inert' computation simulate > a whole world in which the consciousness would then exist *relative* to > that world. >
Well, you have already rejected step 0 - (at least one of) the initial assumptions - so I wouldn't worry about step 8! -- 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.
