On Sunday, 1 November 2015, Pierz <[email protected]> wrote: > OK, a subject title designed to provoke, but here's a thought that has > intrigued me. Computationalism (and let's not worry for the time being > about whether one buys Bruno's UDA) states that consciousness supervenes on > computation. This necesssarily implies (by Church thesis) that the > hardware doesn't matter. This commits us to some unintuitive scenarios in > which thought is instantiated by means of carrier pigeons delivering > letters with symbols written on them, or dominoes falling or whatever. It's > assumed that such a computation must reach a certain level of complexity in > order to become conscious, though what level of complexity is not > specified. According to some views (Brent has expressed this position), it > is necessary that the computations reference a "world", though I'll admit I > don"t understand the rationale for that exactly. Important though is that > it is neither necessary that the computations are carried out in some > localised "device"/brain nor that they are carried out by "wetware". > > So my thinking is this: isn't *evolution* precisely such a computation? > It is undoubtedly an extremely complex calculation (more so than any human > thought has ever been), and it undoubtedly "references a world". Bruno > mentions "Loebianity" in this context as well, or the capacity for > self-reference. I'm not so sure about this in relation to an evolutionary > computation. Certainly it is a highly recursive procedure with a continual > self-environment feedback loop. I don't understand Loebianity sufficiently > to say whether genes , or the gene-environment system, might possess it. > However I'm also not sure if it's required for consciousness, or merely > *self*- consciousness. I don't see that the possession of qualia demands > the possession of self-awareness, though I can also see that it is at least > conceivable that an evolutionary feedback system might possess a kind of > self-reference. > > Anyway it seems that if we're committed to computationalism plus Church > thesis, then we have to consider the possibility that evolution may be a > conscious process - indeed the onus should be on us to say why it > *wouldn't* be conscious. Which does not mean I am suggesting some > mystical additional ingredient. Evolution would still be described > objectively in terms of random mutation plus environmental selection, but > this process may have an interior component, its own "1P". > > Thoughts? >
This is panpsychism for computation: if one thing can be conscious, why can't everything be conscious to a greater or lesser extent? -- 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.
