On 10 May 2014, at 13:30, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 10 May 2014 20:12, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 8:30 AM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote:
On 10 May 2014 17:30, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote:
On Saturday, May 10, 2014, LizR <[email protected]> wrote:
I guess one could start from "is physics computable?" (As Max
Tegmark discusses in his book, but I haven't yet read what his
conclusions are, if any). If physics is computable and consciousness
arises somehow in a "materialist-type way" from the operation of the
brain, then consciousness will be computable by definition.
Is that trivially obvious to you? The anti-comp crowd claim that
even if brain behaviour is computable that does not mean that a
computer could be conscious, since it may require the actual brain
matter, and not just a simulation, to generate the consciousness.
If physics is computable, and consciousness arises from physics with
nothing extra (supernatural or whatever) then yes. Am I missing
something obvious?
You're missing the step where you explain how doing the computations
generates consciousness. That is what I understand "consciousness is
computable" to mean.
Yeah, I always feel the same about this sort of argument. It seems
so trivial to disprove:
"even if brain behaviour is computable that does not mean that a
computer could be conscious, since it may require the actual brain
matter, and not just a simulation, to generate the consciousness."
1. If brain behaviour is computable and (let's say comp)
Not "and let's say comp", since that is what you are setting out to
prove
2. brain generates consciousness but
3. it requires actual brain matter to do so then
4. brain behaviour is not computable (~comp)
No, that doesn't follow. That brain behaviour is computable means
that we are able to compute such things as the sequence in which
neurons will fire and the effect neuronal activity will have on
muscle.
so comp = ~comp
I also wonder if I'm missing something, since I hear this one a lot.
A computer model of a thunderstorm will predict the behaviour of a
real thunderstorm but it won't be wet. In contrast, I believe that a
computer model of a brain will not only predict the behaviour of a
real brain but will also be conscious. However, I don't think this
is trivially obvious.
Someone like Peter Jones would say that a simulation of a thunderstorm
cannot make you wet, but he would still agree that a simulation *in
the physical reality* of a couple "thunderstorm+observers", at some
right level, will make the observer feeling (conscious) of wetness.
He would still be under the FPI if the physical universe is big and
run a UD, but he would not mean for him that is is under the purely
arithmetical FPI, so that he can save physicalism by supposing that
the physical universe is too small to run any significant part of the
UD. But then the MGA, or Maudlin's like argument, shows that
consciousness use some magic put in that primitive matter, having no
other role to make it existing physically to be lived from inside.
They don't use the behavioral role of that primitive matter, only the
fact that it is primitive, and such move is weak, and shown weaker
through MGA.
Bruno
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Stathis Papaioannou
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