On 3/28/2015 12:33 AM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
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.
It's a calculation of a sequence of brain states; which what hypothetically instantiates
consciousness.
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.
Ok, I was using the term "calculation" to distinguish the static thing, as written out on
paper, from the dynamic process, "computation", because I thought it was a distinction you
were making so that the latter was conscious but not the former. Did I misinterpret you?
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.
That seems bizarre to me. Are you saying that when I look at a black and white picture
only the photoreceptors that fire contribute to my experience and the ones that didn't
fire are irrelevant? Only the "1"s matter and not the "0"s? The state of the brain
(assuming thought is neural action) depends on all the neurons; not just the ones firing
at a given time.
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 --
But what is "a brain state". Can a part of the brain be ignored in some state but not in
another?
this sequence does not really calculate anything. Computationalism ultimately rests on a
confusion between a simulation and the calculations necessary to produce that simulation.
Computationalism is just the idea that conscious thought can be instantiated by digital
device that simulates the brain at some sufficiently detailed level. If such a simulation
is possible then it can be realized by a program running on a universal Turing machine.
But that's an abstract process in Platonia and is independent of any physics or material
existence. That's what the MGA purports to show.
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.
So you are using "calculation" here to mean a static representation of a
calculation. Right?
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.
You're saying the static written out calculation instantiates a bit of consciousness?
Does it matter in what language it is written or whether anyone can read it? In some
language it might just be a single line, as Feynman joked, X=0. How does it get it's meaning?
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.
That agrees with Bruno's view that the mechanism is irrelevant, it is the abstract
computation, that exists in Platonia, that corresponds to consciousness. Since all
physics is simply inferred from conscious experiences and thoughts then the material world
should be explained in terms of those abstract computations that instantiate thoughts. He
then goes onto to suppose that all possible computations are done, in the abstract, by the
Universal Dovetailer running of the UTM in Platonia. Then the state his problem is to
show that the apparent order we observe and agreement in perception can be recovered from
within this potential infinitude of computation.
Brent
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