On 18 Aug 2014, at 06:24, LizR wrote:
On 18 August 2014 15:49, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com>
wrote:
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.
It would need to instantiate a stable enough universe that something
capable of computation can evolve there, I imagine. Certainly if one
assumes that the comp reversal doesn't happen.
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.
As I think Brent has pointed out previously, any process can be
defined as a computation
But that is unclear to me. When I ask people to give me an
illustration, they get only trivial computations.
- this is another form of the Chinese room, I think, the idea that
since just about anything can be treated as performing a computation
if looked at in the rignt way, there is no way to get any meaning
into a computation - it's pure syntax without semantics.
I'm not sure how this restricts comp, however, because according to
comp there are an infinite number of abstract computations backing
up each moment of consciousness, and if you add to these a few
computations performed by rocks or Boltzmann brains (or ordinary
brains) you aren't actually adding anything to the existing infinity.
I am more OK with this. yet if some rock, present in your reality, was
able to compute in a stable way, a continuation of you, it woiuld be
counted in the measure, siginificantly, and this is because the rock,
like your brain, belongs to the sheaf of the infinitely computations
going through your state. But the probability that a rock does that
computation is just very close to zero.
Bruno
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