On 5/6/2019 8:25 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 4:38 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 5/6/2019 2:02 PM, Jason Resch wrote:On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 3:41 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On 5/5/2019 11:26 PM, Jason Resch wrote:On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 12:59 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On 5/5/2019 10:30 PM, Jason Resch wrote:On Sun, May 5, 2019 at 10:51 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On 5/5/2019 7:30 PM, Jason Resch wrote:On Sunday, May 5, 2019, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On 5/5/2019 5:57 PM, Jason Resch wrote:On Sunday, May 5, 2019, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On 5/5/2019 3:49 PM, Jason Resch wrote:How do we know other humans are conscious (we don't, we can only suspect it). Why do we suspect other humans are conscious (due to their outwardly visible behaviors). Due to the Church-Turing thesis, we know an appropriately programmed computer can replicate any finitely describable behavior. Therefore a person with an appropriately programmed computer, placed in someone's skill, and wired into the nervous system of a human could perfectly mimic the behaviors, speech patterns, thoughts, skills, of any person you have ever met. Do you dispute any of the above?It assumes you could violate Holevo's theorem to obtain the necessary program. You could find the program by chance or by iteration (for the purposes of the thought experiment).In those cases you could never know that you had been successful. The question wasn't whether or not we would succeed, but given that we know it is possible to succeed, given there ezists a program that could convince you it was your friend, why doubt it is consciousness?I don't think I would doubt it was conscious even if it just acted as intelligent as some stranger. But note that it would have to be interactive. So I think Wegner's point is that makes its computations not finitely describable. Who is Wegner in this context, and what was his point? I don't see how any computation could be not finitely describable, given that any programs can be expressed as a finite integer.This guy, Peter Wegner, that pt referred to indirectly. http://www.cse.uconn.edu/~dgoldin/papers/strong-cct.pdf His point is that human consciousness is an interactive program that receives arbitrary and unknown inputs from the environment and is modified by those inputs. He calls this model a PTM, Persistent Turing Machine, because it keeps a memory and doesn't overwrite it. Of course you can say that whatever the environmental input is, it can be included in the TM code, but then it is potentially inifinite. Even if true, this doesn't preclude the thought experiment I defined, where the program takes in inputs from the environment via the senses and feeds those inputs to the program.But those inputs modify the program (what you do depends on your memory). I am not following where this point is going. Do you dispute the idea that you could put a finite program in your friend's head and you wouldn't not be able to tell the difference?No, but then I'm easily fooled. The information channel between me and my friend is very narrow. What's your point?I was explaining to Philip that his basis for assuming the consciousness of fellow humans (based on their observable behavior) is known (assuming CT) to be something that a silicon-based mind is equally capable of meeting.I was just reacting to you statement that a person can be defined as a finitely describable TM. If by person you mean body, then perhaps not. But if by person you mean mind, this is the assumption of the computational theory of mind.That's what I object to: the idea that the mind is the person and independent of a physical world.You object to the computational theory of mind or the definition of a person?
The definition of mind as something independent of a physical world and the definition of a person as only a mind.
And there is also the point that whatever TM you use to model a person, physics says it will be entangled with the environment and effectively random at a low level. Even Bruno agrees that the physics of the world is not TM emulable. Quantum physics is emulable.Not really. It's emulable IF you know what computation it performs...but you cannot know that.You don't need to. Unless you think you can detect one resulting quantum randomness through your friend's behavior vs. some other quantum randomness or for that matter, some non quantum random source. (Are these nitpicks or do you consider these to be fatal flaws to my argument that you couldn't distinguish the behavior of your friend from your friend whose brain was replaced with appropriately programmed and wired computer?)It's the first person viewpoints of the apparent randomness are not. (but this randomness is subjective, not objective).Now you're asserting a multiple worlds interpretation of QM as though it is a fact, which I find dubious. Explain to me how something physical can happen for no reason.
A "reason" is something a person has, an explanation connecting their action to some value they hold. Physical events don't have reasons.
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