On Tuesday, August 19, 2014, David Nyman <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 18 August 2014 23:27, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> 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 [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.
