On 10/28/2015 2:14 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 28 Oct 2015, at 9:28 AM, Brent Meeker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 10/27/2015 3:04 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 28 Oct 2015, at 1:30 AM, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 5:16 PM, Stathis Papaioannou
<[email protected]> wrote:
>>
From examples in the physical world. You can give as many
botanical definitions of the word "tree" as you want but
it will just be a word defined by other words that are
themselves defined by yet more words that are.... If you
tried to dig for meaning all you'd find is a endless loop,
it would just be a game where words are manipulated
according to the rules of botany until somebody forgot
about definitions and pointed to the ASCII string
"t-r-e-e" and then pointed to a large photosynthesizing
organism made largely of cellulose that exists in the
physical world. Then even a martian would notice a
correspondence between this game of manipulating symbols
called "botany" that humans had invented and the way these
large photosynthesizing organism made largely of cellulose
live.
>
What about a virtual world with trees and observers, and no I/O
devices connecting it to outside trees?
There would
still be I/O devices connected to the virtual trees made by a
computer that operated according to the laws of physics, if not the
trees wouldn't even be virtual. And the books on both virtual
botany and real botany would still be more than a just a symbol
manipulation game, they would have
semantic content
because there would be a
correspondence between
the way the
symbols
are manipulated and the way the virtual (or real)
large photosynthesizing organism live.
Regardless of if they are virtual or real if you want to know
how trees live studying those botany symbols in virtual (or real)
books will help, so they must have
semantic content
.
The requirement that a computation be able to interact with the real
world puts a restriction on what qualifies as a computation. You've
challenged Bruno many times to perform a difficult computation using
his Platonic computer. Well, that computation is occurring in front
of you now in the thermal motion of the atoms in your desk, which
under an appropriate interpretation are implementing a Turing
machine. But you and Bruno don't have that appropriate
interpretation, and if you did, you would have the result of the
calculation already. In other words, the thermal motion computation
is not understandable as such in, and cannot interact with, the
world at the level of the substrate of its implementation; so it
would usually be said that either there is no computation being
implemented, or it is being implemented only in a trivial and
useless sense. But remove the requirement for interaction in the
real world, and this objection falls down. The computation is being
implemented, your difficult calculation has been completed, and it
is being appreciated by the virtual observers who are clapping and
cheering - even though you can't hear them.
That's essentially Bruno's MGA, except it stops one step short.
Bruno takes the last step and says even if the atoms of your desk
were doing absolutely nothing there is an interpretation in which
that is a computation; hence the atoms are superfluous. But clearly
then it is the interpretation which is providing the computation.
I agree; if anything at all can be seen as a computation, it is not
the thing that matters, but the interpretation.
There are two ways to avoid this conclusion. One is to say that
consciousness is not computable. The other is to say that a
computation can only be implemented relative to the real world.
I take the latter. But it doesn't have to be relative the real (i.e.
our) world. There can be a virtual consciousness relative to a virtual
world...but I don't think "virtual" and "real" add anything to this. So
when Bruno answers my criticism that the MG relys on its relation to the
world for its consciousness by saying he can just expand the program to
simulate the world too this doesn't answer my point. The consciousness
is still only relative to a world; whether it's this world or a virtual
world.
Brent
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