On 18 August 2014 15:20, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 8/17/2014 8:49 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>> 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. > > > That's answering the converse question. So if the early universe was > instantiated by a computation (a computation that instantiated physics) then > you think that part of the early universe was a sustained stream of > consciousness. How do you conceive of this consciousness' relation to the > physics? For example might it be some structure in the inflaton field? Or > do you think of it as separate from physical structures? I think of consciousness as a side-effect of, at least, the computations that give rise to the type of behaviour we observe in intelligently-behaving entities. It could also be that much simpler computations have a much simpler consciousness, i.e. panpsychism, but I don't know how to prove this; it's hard enough to prove that even other people are conscious. > 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. > > > Why is it arbitrary to say that a computation that is very simple, has not > possible branchings for example, cannot be conscious while some more complex > computation, one controlling an autonomous Mars Rover for example, may be? What is arbitrary is to say that a computer that has unused components inactivated, as per Maudlin or Bruno's MGA, is unconscious or differently conscious. > Do you agree with Bruno that consciousness is all-or-nothing? No, I think there are different degrees of consciousness. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
