On 18 August 2014 15:20, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
