On 8/15/2014 5:30 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote:
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 1:27 AM, Russell Standish <[email protected]
<mailto:[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.
But physical processes don't have *logical* structure. Theories of physical processes do,
but I don't think that serves your purpose. And even restricting the domain to Turing
machines, I don't see what proposition A and proposition B are? Aren't they just they
transition diagram of the Turing machine? So if the Turing machine goes thru the same set
of states that set defines an equivalence class of computations. But what about a
different Turing machine that computes the same function? It may not go thru the same
states even for the same input and output. In fact there is one such Turing machine that
just executes the recording. Right?
Brent
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?
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