On Tuesday, August 19, 2014, David Nyman <da...@davidnyman.com> wrote:
> On 18 August 2014 23:27, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I'm not entirely clear on Bruno's argument on this last point. The way >> I see it, if a brain is simulated by a computer program, what is being >> simulated is the physics; and if comp is true, that means that >> simulating the physics will also reproduce the brain's consciousness. >> I'm not sure about computations instantiating consciousness without >> instantiating physics, and I'm not sure how instantiating the >> appearance of physics is different to instantiating (virtual) physics. >> > > I've always understood him to be saying, in the first place, that the > dovetailer necessarily generates certain classes of self-referential > computations. Very generally, such computations are then regarded as > emulating self-referred (i.e. first-personal or indexical) logics that in > turn are amenable to treatment as "beliefs" in realities or appearances. So > the idea is that comp necessarily entails epistemological logics (the > "dreams of the machines") that are *prior* to physics in the sense that > only certain sub-classes will be characterised by the statistical dominance > of physically-lawlike relations over their range of reference. I've always > assumed that it's this logical priority of "machine psychology" over the > subsequent appearance of lawlike physical relations that constitutes the > postulated "reversal". > What we know is that the brain can generate consciousness. The brain is not a digital computer running a program, but if it can be simulated by one, and if the simulation is conscious, and if the program can be "run" in Platonia rather than on a physical computer, then every possible brain's consciousness will necessarily be instantiated. I'm not sure whether self-referential computations on their own are conscious - that would seem a further assumption on top of the three mentioned in the previous sentence - even though it does seem more elegant than simulating klunky brains. -- 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.
