On 9 July 2014 07:23, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > But would it still be consciousness if there were no world that provided > referents for the program? >
It's hard to imagine how you could do this *without* a world to supply referents. Even if the world being simulated in the MGA was some abstract virtual reality based on, say, music a la Olaf Stapledon, the referents used to create it still have to come from a world. In practice, I don't think anyone can imagine a world which doesn't relate in some way to the one they (apparently) exist in. Even Alan E Nourse's "Universe between" or Andre Norton's geometric parallel world, I forget in which story, were of course based on the one they lived in. However even if the MGA's apparent reality *could *be entirely without referents to a world, the programme in the MGA would still be conscious, by hypothesis (assuming comp, of course, but the MGA assumes comp). It would be conscious of an entirely imaginary world. I suppose that is kind of similar to dreaming / tripping, although dreams / trips still refer to the outside world, at least in a surreal / oblique manner. The fact that the only way to do the experiment in practice is to use a world to supply referents doesn't mean the world involved has to be primary, of course. It could still emerge from infinite computations or whatever. The argument about consciousness needing a world to relate to *at the time it's relating* is interesting, but has always struck me as requiring some weird metaphysical extras. I can't see how a conscious digital computer programme being started in the same state as the first time around, and having the same inputs replayed to it as before, would not be just as conscious as it was the first time around. Either it's conscious as it was before, OR it wasn't conscious the first time, OR there is some weird supernatural stuff going on that somehow makes a difference. (This isn't the point at which I have problems with the MGA.) -- 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.
