On 3/23/2015 4:04 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 11:48:52AM +1300, LizR wrote:
On 23 March 2015 at 16:09, meekerdb <[email protected]> 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.
There doesn't even have to be movement, just some ordering (movement is just ordering in
time - but time isn't fundamental).
Brent
This is a relative of the "rocks are conscious" argument.
Cheers
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