On Sunday, November 1, 2015 at 6:25:57 PM UTC+11, Brent wrote: > > > > On 10/31/2015 11:47 PM, Pierz wrote: > > > > On Sunday, November 1, 2015 at 4:18:05 PM UTC+11, Brent wrote: >> >> >> >> On 10/31/2015 8:55 PM, Pierz 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? >> >> >> I take it you mean life is doing a computation which consists of finding >> ways to live and reproduce. Life on Earth is executing THE paradigmatic >> genetic algorithm. >> >> Exactly. > >> 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". >> >> >> Yes, I think that's right in a sense. Life in a sense forms a >> representation of the world. If a alien scientist were told just about >> the living organisms on Earth he could infer a great deal about the >> inorganic aspects of the planet. I don't know if you could say it's >> self-aware, except by inclusion of ourselves. The problem is that it may >> be conscious in such a different way from humans or animals that it doesn't >> really add anything to our understanding of it to say it is conscious. >> I've sometimes had a similar idea about the atmosphere and weather. Isn't >> weather a kind of computation performed by the atmosphere and isn't it >> aware of things in its environment like solar heating, ocean currents and >> temperatures, human activities like jet liners and burning fossil fuel,... >> >> Yes. But then isn't an orbiting planet carrying out a computation? Isn't > a river? Isn't an atom doing quantum computing? It almost becomes a matter > of perspective whether any given physical process is a computation or not, > e.g., if someone wanted to compute the route that water would take down a > given slope, they could "compute" it analogically with actual water on an > actual slope. Which, combined with computationalism, seems like the (ahem) > slippery slope to panpsychism, which *I* am happy enough with, but which > I suspect to be too mystical for *your* metabolism... > > > I don't see anything mystical about saying all those physical processes > are computations, i.e. they are also information processes. Have you > slipped over from computation to assuming they are conscious? >
Computationalism is precisely that assumption (that computation equates to consciousness). However, usually the assumption is also that a certain level of computational complexity must be reached before consciousness "kicks in". If as Bruno suggests, it's "all or nothing", then it's hard to see why the light should suddenly be switched on when a computation reaches some magical complexity threshold. If it's more of a continuum then that does suggest panpsychism, though what the consciousness of simple processes is like is pretty hard to imagine. Panpsychism does still sound to me like a pretty big jump from the materialism we know and (some of us) love. A world of conscious information processes is not quite a world with soul, but perhaps also not so far from it. > > Brent > -- 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.
