On 17/02/2008, John Ku <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Can you clarify this? What do you mean by "any computation can be > mapped onto any physical system"? I take it to be uncontroversial that > computations are multiply realizable or can be implemented by > different physical substrates but I don't see how that's anywhere near > enough to establish the conclusions you want.
If computation is multiply realizable, it could be seen as being implemented by an endless variety of physical systems, with the right mapping or interpretation, since anything at all could be arbitrarily chosen to represent a tape, a one, a zero, or whatever. This is rather like saying that a random computer screen contains any given English sentence if you have a lookup table telling you whether a pixel should be mapped to black or white: trivially true, but useless. You can't make sense of the computation without the mapping function, and in order to obtain that you need to implement the computation in a conventional manner. But what if the computation in question is that for a self-aware entity interacting with a virtual environment? It doesn't seem reasonable to suppose that the entity only acquires consciousness when someone prints out, or reads and understands the mapping function. Rather, if consciousness supervenes on physical activity, it should be enough that the physical activity simply occurs. -- Stathis Papaioannou ------------------------------------------- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&id_secret=96140713-a54b2b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
