Russell Standish wrote:
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.
No, it doesn't imply any such thing. The motion of the observer, or rate
of change of the sequence of states, is irrelevant to consciousness. The
only relevant thing is the states themselves -- the rate at which they
are observed (or even if they are static) does not matter.
(if you are concerned that /some/ notion of time is essential, then it
needs only that time be encoded in the states in some way. No external
time parameter is needed. See Julian Barbour's book /The End of Time/)
Bruce
This is a relative of the "rocks are conscious" argument.
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