On 3/28/2015 11:02 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
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).
Yes, I agree that the computation should not have to halt (compute a function) in order to
instantiate consciousness; it can just be a sequence of states. Written out on paper it
can be a sequence of states ordered by position on the paper. But that seems absurd,
unless you think of it as consciousness in the context of a world that is also written out
on the paper, such that the writing that is conscious is /*conscious of*/ this written out
world.
But in the MGA (or Olympia) we are asked to consider a device which is a conscious AI and
then we are led to suppose a radically broken version of it works even though it is
reduced to playing back a record of its processes. I think the playback of the record
fails to produce consciousness because it is not counterfactually correct and hence is not
actually realizing the states of the AI - those states essentially include that some
branches were not taken. Maudlin's invention of Klara is intended to overcome this
objection and provide a counterfactually correct but physically inert sequence of states.
But I think it Maudlin underestimates the problem of context and the additions necessary
for counterfactual correctness will extend far beyond "the brain" and entail a "world".
These additions come for free when we say "Yes" to the doctor replacing part of our brain
because the rest of the world that gave us context is still there. The doctor doesn't
remove it.
Brent
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