From: *Stathis Papaioannou* <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
On Wed, 21 Mar 2018 at 10:56 am, Bruce Kellett
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
From: *Stathis Papaioannou* <[email protected]>
On Tue, 20 Mar 2018 at 10:09 am, Bruce Kellett
<[email protected]> wrote:
If the theory is that if the observable behaviour of the
brain is replicated, then consciousness will also be
replicated, then the clear corollary is that consciousness
can be inferred from observable behaviour. Which implies that
I can be as certain of the consciousness of other people as I
am of my own. This seems to do some violence to the 1p/1pp/3p
distinctions that computationalism rely on so much: only 1p
is "certainly certain". But if I can reliably infer
consciousness in others, then other things can be as certain
as 1p experiences....
You can’t reliable infer consciousness in others. What you can
infer is that whatever consciousness an entity has, it will be
preserved if functionally identical substitutions in its brain
are made.
You have that backwards. You can infer consciousness in others, by
observing their behaviour. The alternative would be solipsism.
Now, while you can't prove or disprove solipsism in a mathematical
sense, you can reject solipsism as a useless theory, since it
tells you nothing about anything. Whereas science acts on the
available evidence -- observations of behaviour in this case.
But we have no evidence that consciousness would be preserved
under functionally identical substitutions in the brain.
Consciousness may be a global affair, so functionally equivalence
may not be achievable, or even definable, within the context of a
conscious brain. Can you map the functionality of even a single
neuron? You are assuming that you can, but if that function is
global, then you probably can't. There is a fair amount of
glibness in your assumption that consciousness will be preserved
under such substitutions.
You can’t know if a mouse is conscious, but you can know that if
mouse neurones are replaced with functionally identical
electronic neurones its behaviour will be the same and any
consciousness it may have will also be the same.
You cannot know this without actually doing the substitution and
observing the results.
So do you think that it is possible to replace the neurones with
functionally identical neurones (same output for same input) and the
mouse’s behaviour would *not* be the same?
Individual neurons may not be the appropriate functional unit.
It seems that you might be close to circularity -- neural functionality
includes consciousness. So if I maintain neural functionality, I will
maintain consciousness.
Bruce
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