On 08 May 2015, at 01:08, Russell Standish wrote:
On Thu, May 07, 2015 at 10:45:12PM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
...
I am sorry, but this just does not follow. The original physical
functionality is admitted to be still intact -- provide, admittedly,
by the projected movie, but that is still a physical device,
operating with a physical film in a physical projector, and
projecting on to the original (albeit damaged) physical machinery.
How has the physical element in all of this been rendered redundant?
The original functionality of the 'brain' has been preserved by the
movie; the conscious experience is still intact even though much of
the original functionality has been provided by another external
physical device. How does this differ from the original "Yes Doctor"
scenario in which the subject agrees to have his brain replaced by a
physical device that simulates (emulates) his original brain
functionality? I submit that it does not.
The only difference between the movie replacing the functionality of
the original experience and having that functionality replaced by a
computer would seem to be that the computer can emulate a wider
range of conscious experiences -- it is 'counterfactually correct'
in that it can respond appropriately to different external inputs.
The film, being a static record of one conscious experience, cannot
do this. But it has been admitted that the film can reproduce the
original conscious experience with perfect fidelity. And the film is
every bit as physical as the original 'brain'. So the physical has
not been shown to be redundant. It cannot be cut away with Occam's
razor after all. If it were, there would be no conscious experience
remaining.
I conclude that the MGA fails to establish the conclusions that it
purports to establish.
Thanks for this excellent summary, Bruce. The answer given as to why
the film is
supposedly not conscious is that it absurd. I agree with you that it
is not, prima facie, absurd at this point. Usually, Bruno then goes on
to recount his "stroboscope argument", which is in his thesis, but not
in any English language publication to my knowledge. Essentially the
idea is that we stop the projector, take the film out and lay it down
on a very large table. Now as an observer, we can run along the table,
seeing the frames of the film in their original order, and it will be
as though the film is projected. But that would mean the conscious
moment would depend on whether the external observer is running or
not.
Personally, I think the problem started much earlier, in supposing
that that recreating the exact same sequence of physical states
instantiates more conscious moments. It does not. The conscious moment
is exactly the same, and exists in that physical reality. Creating a
recording does not change that fact.
The only problem I see is if the recording were to arise by chance, by
some lucky coincidence of the random motion of molecules, without the
original computation having taken place. Then is that conscious moment
instantiated? Obviously, in a robust ontology, it is, because all
conscious moments are instantiated, but suppose the ontology is not
robust.
Personally, I think the intuituion pump has simply run dry at that
point. I
don't think the MGA helps.
No, MGA really does show that either you need that neuron have
prescience, or that a recording is conscious in realtime, which is
absurd (as showed by a second unclothing of the movie, or better with
the stroboscope, or with maudlin which can be used to get any physical
activity for any computations. It does show that that you cannot keep
comp and the physical supervenience, without making primary matter
into a god-of-the-gap. What Bruce does not seem to see is only that
arithmetic already run the computations (unlike the babel library or
the normal real numbers which produce only the description of
computation: it is more like in "the garden of forking path" than "the
library of babel".
MGA proves this. Then you can indeed logically keep comp and physical
supervenience, like a creationist can keep evolution and God made it
all. MGA shows that you have to abandon rationalism to keep comp and
physical supervenience. It is just that rationalism is implicitly
assume (in science).
Bruno
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected]
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
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.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
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.
