On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 1:27 AM, Russell Standish <[email protected]>
wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 09:41:00PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
> > On 8/14/2014 8:32 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> > >On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 08:12:30PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
> > >>That does seem strange, but I don't know that it strikes me as
> > >>*absurd*. Isn't it clearer that a recording is not a computation?
> > >>And so if consciousness supervened on a recording it would prove
> > >>that consciousness did not require computation?
> > >>
> > >To be precise "supervening on the playback of a recording". Playback
> > >of a recording _is_ a computation too, just a rather simple one.
> > >
> > >In other words:
> > >
> > >#include <stdio.h>
> > >int main()
> > >{
> > > printf("hello world!\n");
> > > return 1;
> > >}
> > >
> > >is very much a computer program (and a playback of recording of the
> > >words "hello world" when run). I could change "hello world" to the
> contents of
> > >Wikipedia, to illustrate the point more forcibly.
> > OK. So do you think consciousness supervenes on such a simple
> > computation - one that's functionally identical with a recording? Or
> > does instantiating consciousness require some degree of complexity
> > such that CC comes into play?
> >
>
> My opinion on whether the recording is conscious or not aint worth a
> penny.
>
> Nevertheless, the definition of computational supervenience requires
> countefactual correctness in the class of programs being supervened
> on.
>
> AFAICT, the main motivation for that is to prevent recordings being
> conscious.
I think it is possible to have a different definition of when a computation
is "instantiated" in the physical world that prevents recordings from being
conscious, a solution which doesn't actually depend on counterfactuals at
all. I described it in the post at
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg16244.html
(or
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/GC6bwqCqsfQ/rFvg1dnKoWMJ on
google groups). Basically the idea is that in any system following
mathematical rules, including both abstract Turing machines and the
physical universe, everything about its mathematical structure can be
encoded as a (possibly infinite) set of logical propositions. So if you
have a Turing machine running whose computations over some finite period
are supposed to correspond to a particular "observer moment", you can take
all the propositions dealing with the Turing machine's behavior during that
period (propositions like "on time-increment 107234320 the read/write head
moved to square 2398311 and changed the digit there from 0 to 1, and
changed its internal state from M to Q"), and look at the structure of
logical relations between them (like "proposition A and B together imply
proposition C, proposition B and C together do not imply A", etc.). Then
for any other computation or even any physical process, you can see if it's
possible to find a set of propositions with a completely *isomorphic*
logical structure. In the case of the physical world, it seems to me you
could do this using only propositions about physical events that actually
occur, along with the general laws governing them--no propositions about
counterfactuals would be needed.
I suggested something like this to Bruno, and he seemed to agree that at
least in the case of computational *simulations* of the physical world, if
you use a rule like this to define when a simpler computation is
"instantiated" within some more detailed physical simulation, it would be
the case that a detailed simulation of a physical computer running some
simpler program P would qualify as instantiating P, whereas a detailed
simulation of a physical device that was really just playing back a
recording of a computer program (like Bruno's movie graph where all the
optical gates have been replaced by projected images) would *not*
instantiate P. See my comment at
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/Ljp3s2885Co/kght-F5LZeUJ
and Bruno's response at
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/Ljp3s2885Co/__PZn6hmCb4J
Assuming this idea for defining "instantiations" of sub-computations within
larger computations makes sense, why wouldn't it make just as much sense if
instead of propositions about computer programs running detailed physical
simulations, you instead considered propositions about actual events and
physical laws (but not counterfactuals) that are true in the physical
universe, and looked for collections of propositions whose internal logical
relations were isomorphic to those of some program?
Jesse
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