On 5/12/2014 7:12 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 9:46 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 10 May 2014, at 12:12, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 8:30 AM, LizR <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 10 May 2014 17:30, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Saturday, May 10, 2014, LizR <[email protected]
<mailto:[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?
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)
2. brain generates consciousness but
3. it requires actual brain matter to do so then
4. brain behaviour is not computable (~comp)
so comp = ~comp
I also wonder if I'm missing something, since I hear this one a lot.
I guess other might have answer this, but as it is important I am not
afraid of
repetition. O lost again the connection yesterday so apology for
participating to
the discussion with a shift.
What you miss is, I think, Peter Jones (1Z) argument. He is OK with comp (say
"yes"
to the doctor), but only because he attributes consciousness to a computer
implemented in a primitive physical reality. Physics might be computable,
in the
sense that we can predict the physical behavior, but IF primitive matter is
necessary for consciousness, then, although a virtual emulation would do
(with
different matter), an abstract or arithmetical computation would not do, by
the lack
of the primitive matter.
I agree that such an argument is weak, as it does not explain what is the
role of
primitive matter, except as a criteria of existence, which seems here to
have a
magical role. (Then the movie-graph argument, or Maudlin's argument, give
an idea
that how much a primitive matter use here becomes magical: almost like
saying that a
computation is conscious if there is primitive matter and if God is willing
to make
it so. We can always reify some "mystery" to block an application of a
theory to
reality.
Ok, I tried to think about this for a while. It appears that it also connects with the
issue "can there be computation without a substrate?".
Please see what you think of my thoughts, sorry if they are a bit rough and
confusing:
In a purely mathematical sense, it seems to me that computation is simply a mapping from
one value to another. Any computer program p can be represented as a value under some
syntax. So, taking Lisp as an example, there is a function L such that:
L( (+ 1 1) ) = 2
By doing the computation, we in the 1p can know the value of L(p) for a certain
p. If p is:
(fact 472834723947)
Then we cannot do it in our heads. We have to have some powerful computer, spend a lot
of energy and so on.
Of course, due to the halting problem, the mapping is not guaranteed to exist,
and so on.
These mappings already exist in Platonia. Why do we have to spend so much energy and
effort to obtain some of them? This only seems to make sense if we are embedded in the
computation ourselves and, somehow, we have to attain a position in the multiverse where
the mapping is known. Once the mapping is known, I can communicate it to you without any
further computational effort or energy spending.
So according to Peter Jones, consciousness is generated by the effort of moving from one
observer position to another. (even rejecting the MWI, even in the classical world, the
thing can be seen as a tree of possible future states). The result of the computation
does not change depending on when I started it, who started it and so on.
This seems to assume an observer in explaining consciousness. Circular? If conscious
thought is realized by computation it must be that there are some computations that
produce conscious thoughts and some that don't. We have all experienced the Poincare
effect, and even when you ask yourself "What are the factors of 74?" it's not clear where
the computation takes place. And we have gaps in our memory corresponding to being
unconscious.
This seems, as you say, as an appeal to magic. The main questions that occur to me are:
how can such an hypothesis be falsified,
But the hypothesis that some computations instantiate conscious thoughts is also
untestable. Which is why we infer it from intelligent behavior.
Brent
and if it is true, where is the ontological difference? If you accept comp but then make
such a move, you are proposing something that is fundamentally untestable and that leads
to the exact same consequences of its opposite. It feels to me a bit like the "free
will" discussion which, in my view, is solved by the simple realisation that the
question does not make sense in the first place (here I agree with John Clark).
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