On 8/19/2014 2:53 AM, Pierz wrote:
If you're going to stick with this argument you need to be more rigorous about it and not just lazily rely on your intuition. How specifically does the computer distinguish computation about something from computation about ... what? nothing? Why does processing data that is correlated with the physical world make a computer conscious? How could the machine distinguish between simulator data and real data? And if simulator data is OK, what exactly is data that is not OK? Please convince me, but right now I see no reason to take the idea seriously at all.You're trying to isolate the consciousness from it's context so that it's "just" data and patterns and 1s and 0s and neuron pulses. I'm saying consciousness requires a context, in fact I think it requires a physics.I know what you're saying. But why don't you specifically answer my questions instead of just reiterating what you already said?
I thought I answered this one: "How specifically does the computer distinguish computation about something from computation about ... what? nothing?" The answer being that the computer, by itself doesn't; the distinction is in causal relations to a world outside the computer.
I don't think this one has an answer, "Why does processing data that is correlated with the physical world make a computer conscious?" beyond "It just does" or "That's what we mean by 'conscious'".
"How could the machine distinguish between simulator data and real data? And if simulator data is OK, what exactly is data that is not OK?" A machine, by itself with no context can't. That's why a computer programmer has to provide the interpretation of a simulation. But if the machine was an autonomous Mars Rover, real data would be used for reaching it's goals while simulated data fed to it's sensors would give it illusions - just as you can be tricked by illusions and think you're seeing something you're not.
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