Le 28 mars 2015 08:33, "Bruce Kellett" <[email protected]> a écrit : > > meekerdb wrote: >> >> On 3/27/2015 4:54 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote: >>> >>> >>> I understand counterfactual correctness, but I think the concept is misapplied -- even to the extent of making a category error. Counterfactual correctness can be ascribed to a computer/calculator but not to a calculation. A calculator would not be counterfactually correct if it gave the same output for every input, but a calculation is a calculation! It is a single thing -- one output from one input. If you change the input, in general you would get different output. But then that would be different calculation. It is a category error to ask for counterfactual correctness from an individual calculation. >>> >>> If I do a calculation with pencil and paper, writing out the steps of my calculation, that is still a calculation even after I have finished. It is still the same calculation 10 years later (if the paper is intact). IIt is not counterfactually correct because I do different calculations on different pieces of paper, leaving the original recoded calculation intact. But it is still a calculation -- what else would you call it? >> >> >> A fair point. But the MGA tries to link consciousness to computation. > > > I would argue that this is where the first, and probably the most important, error creeps in. Why should you call a sequence of brain states a computation or calculation? If you want to simulate that sequence of brain states, the computer has to do a lot of calculations to mimic synapse potentials, ion flows and all the rest of it. The end result of these calculations is a simulation of the original brain states. At no point does it have to be assumed that this sequence of brain states is actually a calculation of anything.
A simulation is a computation... It's simple to prove it, you can write a program for that simulation, compile it and finally run it on a turing universal computer... If you can't do that, that means you need something not digitally representable. Also I see you're using the narrower term calculation instead of computation which in this case seems to be to try to hide the point being made. Quentin > > >> Most people intuit that a certain sequence of brain states instantiates some conscious thought. And further that the particular brain material is not necessary to this instantiation, rather it is something about the computation. >> >> So what is your intuition about the relation between computation and consciousness. Is it just the calculation instantiated in the brain that creates the consciousness and could that same calculation then create the same conscious experience when written out on paper or realized by a one-entry lookup table. That seems wrong too. > > > No, as I said, I do not think it is helpful to describe the sequence of brain states as a calculation. If you simulate the actual brain states by doing a lot of calculations on a computer, then you will reproduce the original conscious moment. But the conscious moment itself does not calculate anything. The simulation of brain states could be written out on paper, or use any number of look-up tables (as efficient programs tend to do). It is still a simulation of the original brain states, and if accurate, the conscious experience will be recreated. > > >> Another possibility is that all those neurons that /*didn't*/ fire in the calculation were just as necessary to the experience as the one's that did. That seems quite plausible to me. > > > I find the notion quite bizarre. It is the actual sequence of actual brain states that is important. If some neuron didn't fire, then they did not contribute to /that/ conscious moment, no matter that they might be crucial to other, /different/, moments of consciousness. > > >> Translating that into what it would mean in terms of an AI is that the transistors that didn't switch were necessary, not to the calculation, but to the computation/conscious experience instantiation. Counterfactual correctness is the Platonia version of this - I think. > > > As I said, conterfactual correctness has very little to do with the actual conscious moment. That is given simply by the sequence of actual brain states -- this sequence does not really calculate anything. Computationalism ultimately rests on a confusion between a simulation and the calculations necessary to produce that simulation. > > >> Brent >>> >>> >>> I think this basic confusion between the calculator and the calculation renders the MGA toothless. It does not establish that the recording cannot be conscious. The recording is as much a calculation as the original. If you degrade the film/recording, then you finally lose consciousness, but that is beside the point. It is just like rubbing out or burning your original paper calculation. It is only if you insist that your computing mechanism is counterfactually correct that you can say that a recording cannot reconstitute consciousness, but the computing mechanism is not the calculation that corresponds to consciousness. >>> >>> Bruce > > > -- > 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 [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
