meekerdb wrote:
On 3/28/2015 12:33 AM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
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?
I wasn't really making a distinction between 'calculation' and
'computation'. According to the OED, 'computation' is a result got by
calculation, though I see it can also mean the act of calculation.
Wikipedia says: "Calculation is a term for the computation of numbers,
while computation is a wider reaching term for information processing in
general." I don't think this latter distinction has much traction
outside the computer science community.
The point I was making was I see a calculation as the evaluation of a
function over numbers. In this context, taking some input and producing
an output. The conscious state does not really produce an output. The
calculations (computations) involve take input action potentials (or
whatever) and responds to these via a sequence of neuron firings and
signal transmissions. Is the output the result of computing a function?
I suppose in the most general sense of 'computing' you might say so, but
consciousness supervenes on these neural processes: it is not actually
the calculation itself, so simulating the results of the original
computations can still produce consciousness.
The calculation written out on paper is a static thing, but the result
of that calculation might still be part of a simulation that produces
consciousness. Though, unless Barbour is right and the actuality of time
can be statically encoded in his 'time capsules (current memories of
past instances)', I was thinking in terms of a sequence of these states
(however calculated).
Bruce
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