On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 11:48:52AM +1300, LizR wrote: > On 23 March 2015 at 16:09, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > > > That's where the MGA comes in. It purports to show that one of the > > possible substrates is inert matter, which seems so absurd that we should > > conclude the matter plays no part whatsoever. > > > > That sounds like Maudlin's Olimpia argument....? > > So far I get that different substrates can create the same computational > states (by which I assume we mean the contents of registers and memory?) > But how does the MGA get from showing that to showing that inert matter can > be a possible substrate? (ISTM that a projected graph is not inert, if > that's the argument.) >
Broadly, the idea is to use notion that movement is relative. If a machine is moving through a fixed sequence of states, we can equivalently set things up so the machine is inert, but the observer moves in such a way that appearance is unchanged. The absurdity is that this implies consciousness depends on the motion of the observer. This is a relative of the "rocks are conscious" argument. Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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.
