On Tuesday, August 12, 2014 1:12:10 PM UTC+10, Brent wrote:
>
> On 8/11/2014 7:29 PM, LizR wrote:
>
> On 12 August 2014 12:48, meekerdb <[email protected] <javascript:>>
> wrote:
>
>> On 8/11/2014 4:03 PM, LizR wrote:
>>
>>> I have never got this idea of "counterfactual correctness". It seems to
>>> be that the argument goes ...
>>>
>>> Assume computational process A is conscious
>>> Take process B, which replays A - B passes through the same machine
>>> states as A, but it doesn't work them out, it's driven by a recording of A
>>> - B isn't conscious because it isn't counterfactually correct.
>>>
>>> I can't see how this works. (Except insofar as if we assume
>>> consciousness doesn't supervene on material processes, then neither A nor B
>>> is conscious, they are just somehow attached to conscious experiences
>>> generated elsewhere, maybe by a UD.)
>>>
>>
>> It doesn't work, because it ignores the fact that consciousness is about
>> something. It can only exist in the context of thoughts (machine states and
>> processes) referring to a "world"; being part of a representational and
>> predictive model. Without the counterfactuals, it's just a sequence of
>> states and not a model of anything. But in order that it be a model it
>> must interact or have interacted in the past in order that the model be
>> causally connected to the world. It is this connection that gives meaning
>> to the model.
>
>
> What differentiates A and B, given that they use the same machine
> states? How can A be more about something than B? Or to put it another way,
> what is the "meaning" that makes A conscious, but not B?
>
>
> A makes decisions in response to the world. Although, ex hypothesi, the
> world is repeating its inputs and A is repeating his decisions. Note that
> this assumes QM doesn't apply at the computational level of A. In the
> argument we're asked to consider a dream so that we're led to overlook the
> fact that the meaning of A's internal processes actually derive from A's
> interaction with a world. Imagine A as being born and living in a sensory
> deprivation tank - will A be conscious? I think not.
>
That is a weird assumption to me and completely contrary to my own
intuition. Certainly a person born and kept alive in sensory deprivation
will be extremely limited in the complexity of the mental states s/he can
develop, but I would certainly expect that such a person would have
consciousness, ie., that there is something it would be like to be such a
person. Indeed I expect that such a person would suffer horribly. Such a
conclusion requires no mystical view of consciousness. It is based purely
on biology - we are programmed with biological expectations/predispositions
which when not met, cause us to suffer. As much as the brain can't be
separated completely from other matter, it *does* seem to house
consciousness in a semi-autonomous fashion.
Indeed I am puzzled by your insistence on consciousness deriving from
relationships with the world, given you seem to be a reductionist
materialist. In a reductionist view, such relationships don't have any
intrinsic meaning, so how is it that the presence or absence of such
relationships can make the difference between "having an experience" and
"not having an experience"? What turns the light on as it were, turning the
zombie into the human, the robot into the "real boy" (guess you've seen the
movie?)? The fact that its internal states are meaningfully correlated to
some "world", whatever that is? Such a correlation might define the
difference between adaptive and non-adaptive functioning, but how does that
distinction instantiate consciousness (or not)?
OK so that is back to "hard problem", which for people who are
fundamentally interested in engineering is also the "uninteresting problem"
or the "pointlessly distracting problem". For me, software engineer by
trade, philosopher/psychologist/tripper by nature, it's the very other way
around. The hard problem deeply troubled me even as a kid. I still find it
difficult to comprehend those whom it doesn't bother, or who can't even see
it, as if they're colour blind or something, but I've come to understand
their practical perspective. Still, to call it "uninteresting" (I don't
know if you do) is not to make an objective statement, it's merely to
assert the sphere of one's interest - 3p rather than 1p in the local
vernacular.
> But in Bruno's and Maudlin's thought experiments A might be, A could be
> aware of Peano's axioms and could prove all provable theorems plus Godel's
> incompleteness.
>
>
>
>> Because Bruno is a logician he tends to think of consciousness as
>> performing deductive proofs, executing a proof in the sense that every
>> computer program is a proof. He models belief as proof. But this
>> overlooks where the meaning of the program comes from. People that want to
>> deny computers can be conscious point out that the meaning comes from the
>> programmer. But it doesn't have to. If the computer has goals and can
>> learn and act within the world then its internal modeling and decision
>> processes get meaning through their potential for actions.
>>
>> This is why I don't agree with the conclusion drawn from step 8. I think
>> the requirement to counterfactually correct implies that a whole world, a
>> physics, needs to be simulated too, or else the Movie Graph or Klara need
>> to be able to interact with the world to supply the meaning to their
>> program. But if the Movie Graph computer is a counterfactually correct
>> simulation of a person within a simulated world, there's no longer a
>> "reversal". Simulated consciousness exists in simulated worlds - dog bites
>> man.
>>
>> Are you assuming that the world with which the MG interacts it itself
> digitally emulable? If so, doesn't Bruno's argument go through for the
> whole emulated world, if not for a subcomponent of it ("Klara") ? ISTM
> you're saying that a conscious being has to interact with a world - which
> may be true (people go mad in sensory isolation eventually). But if the
> world is emulable then the MGA can be applied to it as a whole.
>
>
> Right.
>
> Or at least I remember Bruno saying that the substitution level and
> region to be emulated weren't important to the argument, as long as there
> is some level and region in which it holds. I'm sure he said that it might
> involve emulating the world, or a chunk of the universe, but that the
> argument still goes through.
>
> Or did I misremember that, or did he say that, but there's a flaw in his
> argument?
>
>
> It's not exactly a flaw. He always says, sure just make the simulation
> more comprehensive, include more of the environment, even the whole
> universe. Which is OK, but then when you think about the reversal of
> physics and psychology you see that it is the physics here, in the
> non-simulated world, which has been replaced by the psychology PLUS physics
> in the simulated world. If I say I can replace you with a simulation -
> I'll probably be greeted with skepticism. But if I say I can replace you
> with a simulation of you in a simulation of the world - well then it's not
> so clear what I mean or how hard it will be.
>
> Brent
>
>
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