On Sunday, August 17, 2014, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 8/16/2014 10:16 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > > On 16 August 2014 10:16, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 8/15/2014 4:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > > I think these sorts of considerations show that the physical states > cannot > > > be responsible for generating or affecting consciousness. > > > > > > How do they show that? I thought they only showed that CC and > environmental > > reference were necessary to consciousness. Are you assuming that the > > playback of a recording IS conscious? > > If it is true that a recording is conscious or the random states of a rock > are conscious then I think that does imply that physical states are > irrelevant to consciousness. But the argument goes that this irrelevance of > physical states is absurd, so some restriction is imposed on what can be > conscious in order to avoid the absurdity. One possible restriction is that > consciousness only occurs if the computations are implemented relative to > an environment, another is that the counterfactuals be present. But these > are ad hoc restrictions, no better than saying that consciousness can only > occur in a biological substrate. > > > > The immediate objection to this is that physical changes in the brain > *do* > > > affect consciousness. But if physical states cannot be responsible for > > > generating or affecting consciousness, there can be no evidence for a > > > separate, fundamental physical world. What we are left with is the > platonic > > > reality in which all computations are realised and physical reality is > a > > > simulation. It is meaningless to ask if consciousness supervenes on the > > > computations implemented on the simulated rock or the simulated > recording. > > > > > > It's not meaningless to ask if there must be simulated physics for the > > simulated consciousness to supervene on. Do you think you could be > > conscious of a world with no physics? > > Both consciousness and physics supervene on the computations, which > exist necessarily. Consciousness does not supervene on the physics. > > > Yes, I agreed to that. The question was can consciousness supervene on > computations that do not instantiate any physics? I think not. >
I think that a sustained stream of consciousness will probably be part of a computation that instantiates physics - instantiates a whole universe complete with physics. However, the point that I wanted to make was that if computation can instantiate consciousness then there is nothing to stop a recording, a Boltzmann Brain, a rock and so on from doing so; for these possibilities have been used as arguments against computationalism or to arbitrarily restrict computationalism. -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
