On 3 April 2015 at 01:06, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: >> However, what you call "my" fuctionalism is a superset >> of comp, and it may still be possible to replace part of the brain >> with a device incorporating a hypercomputer, or even a magical device >> animated by God, and preserve consciousness. > > > ... making your functionalism trivial, if you excuse the straightness.
It is not trivial because it makes this (if I may say so) rather profound claim: that it is impossible even for God to make a device that reproduces the observable function of the brain without also reproducing any associated consciousness. Roger Penrose proposes that the brain utilises non-computable physics and that therefore it is not possible to reproduce either the observable function of the brain or its consciousness using a digital computer. This is logically consistent, even if there is no actual evidence for it. John Searle, on the other hand, believes that it is possible to reproduce the observable function of the brain but that this would not necessarily reproduce consciousness. Given that consciousness actually exists, which entails that there is a difference between being conscious and not being conscious, this is not logically consistent because it would lead to partial zombies. >> It is my contention that >> the only requirement is that this device replicates the I/O behaviour >> of the part of the brain that it replaces, and any associated >> consciousness will follow necessarily. > > > OK. > > I think you get close to "prove" the half of comp "yes doctor", as everybody > agrees that we cannot prove Church thesis. (which does not mean we cannot > give very powerful evidences for it). > > Then the proof of "yes doctor" use the fact that partial zombiness makes no > sense, but I think that anosognosia can be used, notably if we believe in > things like a "consciousness volume" (on which the anosognosia would bear > on). I don't see how that could make sense. It is sufficient to consider not special cases where the change is small or memory and cognition are deficient, but a general case where the change in consciousness is extreme and the person's cognition is intact. If you claim that it is possible to radically change the "consciousness volume" without someone noticing then I think that is tantamount to claiming that consciousness does not exist. > The point is logical. Like in MGA, once we argue on reality, we can only > present evidences, no proofs. The LHC has not prove the existence of the > Higgs boson, nor does Mars Rover and its image prove the existence of Mars, > or Apollo 9 the existence of the moon. They just give strong evidence. > > It would be on that strong sense of "proof" that my critics would bear on. A > bit like Russell's critics on the MGA. I think the argument I present does not depend on any fact about the world (although going from the general case of what I call functionalism to what Putnam called machine-state functionalism and you call comp does depend on the physical CT being true). It depends on a very basic operational definition of consciouness: that you know it if you are conscious and you realise if there is a large enough change in your consciousness. If you don't accept this operational definition then I can find no meaning in the word "consciousness". -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
