On 15 Apr 2014, at 21:11, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Tuesday, April 15, 2014 1:21:41 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 14 Apr 2014, at 21:47, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Sunday, April 13, 2014 12:44:37 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:
<snip>
That my sun in law might not be a zombie/doll. Comp assumes that the
brain is Turing emulable at some level of description.
What does the brain being Turing emulable mean in this context
other than that "consciousness is generated by computation"?
"consciousness is generated by computation" is misleading,
especially in the Aristotelian era.
How will people understand that consciousness generates the
appearance of matter, without any matter, if they visualize
consciousness as a brain product.
I don't even say that the brain is Turing emulable, comp only asks
for a level of description of the brain so that I would genuinely
survive or experience if a simulation of my brain (which by itself
might be a non Turing emulable object) at that level.
We're not talking about what people will understand though, we're
talking about the basic claim of comp. The brain is only involved
because you bring it in to allow Church-Turing to build Frankensun.
If sun in law is not a doll, and if he has a brain that is being
emulated by a Turing machine, then that means that the computation
of the machine is generating his consciousness.
Not really. You reason in the aristotelian picture, where brain are
real object, etc. The classical comp picture is a priori very
different, you have a 3p ocean of computations in arithmetic, and a
consciousness particularization process made in play by natural
coherence conditions among some infinite sets of computations.
I make no claims at all on the objectivity of brains, I only am
reading back to you what your position seems to be to me. If you
introduce the brain's presumed partial Turing emulability into the
discussion, then I presume you do so to argue that emulability
supports the sufficiency of computation to .... generate
consciousness.
It does not generate consciousness, which exists in Platonia. The
brain only make that consciousness relatively manifestable.
The ability of computation to generate consciousness is the sole
aspect of computationalism/digital functionalism that I disagree
with (and all of the consequences of it). If you are not saying that
comp generates consciousness, then I'm not sure what you have been
arguing all this time.
I don't argue that my sun-in-law is conscious. I argue only that your
argument that he is not conscious is not valid, nor even existing. It
is based on your assumption that formal things cannot yield informal
things, which is provably false for machine.
Ah! So if my sun in law get his original carbon back, he would be
conscious again? And even retrospectively so, as you agree his
behavior remains invariant.
It has nothing to do with carbon. If his original brain is dead,
there is no going back.
Repeating statements does not prove them. Of course with comp there
are infinitely many going back possible.
It seems like I just gave a perfectly legitimate, clear, and common
sense challenge, to which your response has no relation. You're
talking about remote and obscure technologies, but I'm using a
simple example from ordinary human experience.
To talk with me you are using that very technology. It is hardly
remote, and I guess you find it obscure because you don't study it.
I'm using a lot of genetic and neurochemical technology also, but I
would still find the suggestion that I should study microbiology in
order to understand how to be myself to be a dodge.
By definition of comp, you are not a dodge when you get an artificial
brain, or an artificial kidney, heart, whatever, unless you are copied
at some inadequate level.
You keep saying that, and I keep explaining that I do know exactly
what you mean, but that in fact I have no confusion at all between
the difference between saying 'comp should be ruled out' and 'comp
is not proved'. I know the difference and I still say comp should be
ruled out, and for good reason. The reason is not one that is
understandable to your sun in law though, just as the shadow of
water doesn't understand why it is not water.
I will skip the irrelevant metaphors too.
If you start from comp, there is no possibility of refuting it. That
is the nature of computation - consistency, and consistency to the
point of absurdity, error, and catastrophe.
To refute X, you have to start from X and get a contrdiction, without
adding anything to X.
If not, you are just advertizing another theory.
I think that we can pretty well figure it out by the differences
between automatic systems and human resources. Machines make
perfect slaves, humans make terrible slaves.
OK, so you agree that we can enslave my sun-in-law. Nice!
Sure. What good is a machine that is not a slave?
Well, thanks for the warning.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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