> On 20 Mar 2018, at 20:34, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On 3/20/2018 3:58 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >>> The interesting thing is that you can draw conclusions about consciousness >>> without being able to define it or detect it. >> I agree. >> >>> The claim is that IF an entity >>> is conscious THEN its consciousness will be preserved if brain function is >>> preserved despite changing the brain substrate. >> Ok, this is computationalism. I also bet on computationalism, but I >> think we must proceed with caution and not forget that we are just >> assuming this to be true. Your thought experiment is convincing but is >> not a proof. You do expose something that I agree with: that >> non-computationalism sounds silly. > But does it sound so silly if we propose substituting a completely different > kind of computer, e.g. von Neumann architecture or one that just records > everything instead of an episodic associative memory, for the brain. The > Church-Turing conjecture says it can compute the same functions.
That is the usual extensional Church-Turing thesis, but it implies the intensional thesis. Not only a universal machine can compute what any other can compute, but it can compute it in the same way as the one that it imitates. The reason is simple, as the universal machine can emulate the other universal machine. A list interpreter can emulate a fortran interpreter and compute, after that, like a fortran compiler/interpreter. Even Babbage Universal Engine can emulate a quantum computer, albeit with a super-slow-down, but the entities emeumlate by that quantum virtual machine will not see the difference, and when done in arithmetic, no first person can detect the delays, so that slow down does play no role. > But does it instantiate the same consciousness. My intuition is that it > would be "conscious" but in some different way; for example by having the > kind of memory you would have if you could review of a movie of any interval > in your past. Then you have got a new type of brain, doing new type of computations, which makes sense. That is why eventually we will all buy artificial brain, because they will just be really more powerful than our actual brain, and allows much more. Probably digital transplant will come in that way: people will put the smartphone *in* the head …in some not so far futures. Bruno > > 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] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list > <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
