On 12 February 2014 02:55, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > On 2/11/2014 12:42 AM, LizR wrote: > > On 11 February 2014 17:21, Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au>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 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.
