On 14 May 2014, at 12:25, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Wednesday, May 14, 2014, LizR <[email protected]> wrote:
Comp isn't really a theory, so testing it is a bit problematic. It's
"just" a logical argument which purports to show the consequences of
taking seriously the idea that brains are Turing emulable.
Why do you think it can't be shown that brains are Turing emulable?
So far, there has been no natural phenomenon discovered that isn't
Turing emulable, as far as I'm aware. It also hasn't been shown as
far as I'm aware that brains function using supernatural phenomena.
So it seems a straightforward assumption, as straightforward as any
other in science, that the brain is Turing emulable. It could be
wrong, but no more likely wrong than anything else given the
overwhelming evidence.
Note that the brain being Turing emulable does not obviously imply
you should say yes to the doctor, for it may yet be that the
computerised brain is a zombie - consciousness is not a behaviour.
However, it can be shown by a further argument that if the brain is
in fact Turing emulable, then a computer reproducing the behaviour
of the brain would also reproduce the brain's consciousness. So I
guess if you want to say that consciousness is Turing emulable
(which I think is an incoherent statement, but it's in the end just
semantics), then you can, given all we know about physics and
chemistry.
I agree. "consciousness is Turing emulable" is a bit of misleading
expression. Even the knowledge of a machine, if we define it by "true
belief" is not Turing emulable. The beliefs are Turing emulable, but
not the correspondence with truth, which strictly speaking is not
definable by the machine.
The "yes doctor" association is less fuzzy. It does not say that the
brain or the machine produces the consciousness, it just bet it get
the right level description"[]p" (the right beliefs), and the right
connections between those beliefs, so that the connection with truth
will be preserved with the copy at that "right []p".
Comp does not assume we know the level, or have any understanding of
what we copy or imitate. Just bet that there is a level where the
laws used are Turing emulable. By the "Penrose correction" (already
seen by Post in 1922), we just cannot knowably copy ourself, but we
can bet on a level.
Bruno
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Stathis Papaioannou
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