On Thu, Mar 06, 2014 at 03:41:51PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: > On 3/6/2014 3:35 PM, Russell Standish wrote: > >On Thu, Mar 06, 2014 at 04:48:37PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> > >>For example, a brain cannot think. Brain activity cannot think, a > >>computer cannot think, a computation cannot think, I would say. > >> > >This issue causes people a lot of problems. It does not matter for the > >purposes of UDA 1-7, but for step 8 is important. The issue is > >probably best handled using the concept of (COMP) supervenience - > >consciousness supervenes on the running of a program on a given > >reference machine. That machine and the running of the program can be > >quite abstract, of course, which is something people find hard to get, > >but is perfectly fine for the concept of supervenience. > > How is that different than saying a given machine performing a > certain computation is thinking? Bruno seems to be saying that no > matter whether it's abstract or concrete it's a 3p notion and so > cannot be thinking. When I've asked Bruno what it takes, on his > theory, for a machine to be conscious, he has answered that it be > Lobian, which is an attribute of the functions it can compute and > which seems 3p to me. >
I did, at one stage, get Bruno to agree with me that "a program is conscious" is shorthand for "consciousness supervenes on a running program of some reference machine". In such a way, one should also say that a "brain is conscious" (or thinking) is shorthand for the "consciousness supervenes on a brain". What Bruno purports to show is that consciousness cannot supervene on a "primitive physical reality", whereas what I think is really shown is that observed physical reality (ie phenomena) cannot be primitive. Phenomena must be derivable from properties of computation. What is not shown by the MGA (and if it did, it would be empirically invalidated) is that consciousness does not supervene on physical reality. Brains are part of phenomena, and indeed, it would appear (empirically) that consciousness does supervene on brains. More on this no doubt when I get to write my fabled paper on the MGA. Sorry for so many vaccuous promises - but I really have several projects ahead of it in the queue, so I cannot promise when I'll get to it. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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/d/optout.
