On 3/24/2015 2:23 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2015-03-24 1:57 GMT+01:00 meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>:
On 3/23/2015 5:44 PM, LizR wrote:
On 24 March 2015 at 13:07, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Yes, as I understand it that's the argument. It's consistent with Platonism.
A computer program's execution written out on paper is just as much a
calculation as a lot of transistors switching.
So is the idea to show that a recording is just as conscious as the original
calculation?
My caveat is that neither of them is conscious in THIS world because
being
conscious requires being conscious OF something. An isolated, pure
consciousness is an oxymoron. Consciousness only exists as part of
thoughts and
thoughts only have meaning by reference to an external world and
potential
action in that world.
I am under the impression Bruno gets around that by potentially allowing the
environment to be simulated as well. Or contrariwise, can't all the inputs
to the
conscisouness be provided as though it was in the world? (as for a brain in
a vat
for example. I mean hypothetically, and to simplify the argument, not as a
general
model of consciousness.)
Yes, he casually dismisses the objection by saying we'll just include the
environment too. But that's my point that it's then no longer a new radical
result. It's just saying that if you simulate a world it can include
conscious
beings who are conscious of that world. But IN THAT WORLD their substrate
is not
inert - even if it's inert in our world, e.g. consider the novel "Mody
Dick" being
simulated in a computer. To Ishmael and Ahab in the computer they'd be
conscious
and experiencing the hunt for the white whale. And, according to
Platonists, they
are as printed on the page too.
If the world is a computation, conscious part of it are subprogram that can be isolated
by definition...
That's the point I disagree with. When Bruno starts the comp argument by asking if you
would say "Yes" to the doctor, it is implicit that the doctor is going to replace some
part or all of your brain, BUT it's going to remain within the same environmental
context. I think the "consciousness subprogram" can run without the context, but I think
it gets it's meaning, what it's about, from the context - and I think that context has to
be very broad, including evolutionary history for example.
now that when they run, for their consciousness to have meaning they must be fed input
that have meaning to the conscious subprogram is a tautology...
Also, the MGA *never* assert that the consciousness simulated is conscious of
*our* world
It's implied by his Alice discussion. If the computation were just some arbitrary program
we would have no reason to think it instantiated consciousness. We only think that
because it is record to a conscious computation in our world.
(as it is obvious it can't be as it isn't fed inputs from our world)... it only assumes
that you're running a program who is thought to be conscious (simulating a conscious
being) and shows that if you accept that, and you accept the supervenience thesis and so
accept that it is conscious in virtue of running in bare matter, you have to accept that
the same stream of consciousness supervene on the projection + broken gate.
But I'm not accepting the supervenience thesis as applied to an isolated sequence of
states. Without the context (which is implicit in the counterfactuals) the same sequence
of computations could correspond to two different meanings, two different conscious
thoughts - just as the same set of differential equations can model two different physical
systems.
I'm not sure how this plays into the UD because there they are infinitely many threads of
computation through the same state. The state cannot, by itself, instantiate a thought.
A thought must require a long sequence of identical or similar states. But in the UD
there are no counterfactuals, because every possibility occurs at some point and branches
from the thread. At least that's how I understand it.
Brent
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