Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 27 Mar 2015, at 00:42, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 25 Mar 2015, at 16:35, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
If my mind is being run on two separate computers, I can't know
which one of the two, and I can't say that my last remembered moment
was run on one or other or my next anticipated moment will be run on
one or other. If one computer stops it makes no difference to me and
if a third computer running my mind comes online it makes no
difference to me. So effectively there is only one conscious moment.
Under physical supervenience, stopping all the computers stops the
conscious moment.
I am OK. I think Quentin is arguing in the reducto ad absurdum part.
In a sense both Russell is righ (there is only one 1p-experience),
and Quentin is right: we can attribute consciousness in each running
(but then if we attribute it to the physical activity token: we get
the absurd conclusion: playing records and real-time consciousness
supervene on a static film, etc.
One problem is that this is an invalid "argument from incredulity".
The fact that you find this conclusion absurd is not an argument
against the conclusion: it is merely a statement about how you fell
about the conclusion -- which could be right or wrong, and in either
case does not depend on how you feel about it.
I don't think so. It is more like when a student get an equation with a
number or a function on a number at the right hand side, and a
differential at the other side.
The stroboscope illustrates the non sensicalness to attribute a
consciousness in real time when a movie is performed. It is really
non-sense, unless adding ad-hoc metaphysics and rules, which you can do
to any theory applied to reality.
If you start from a set of assumptions and derive a contradiction, then
you know that one or more of your assumptions is incorrect. The
contradiction in MGA shows that the assumptions are mutually
incompatible, but it does not show which assumption is invalid. That is
where you appeal to the so-called absurdity of 'consciousness in real
time when a movie is performed'. That is the argument from incredulity,
and it is invalid. You cannot conclude that from the MGA since it could
equally well be concluded that computationalism, or the UD, or anything
else in the argument, is incorrect.
Bruce
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