Bruno,
I looked on the web but could not find Maudlin's paper. So I just go by
what you are saying.
I still stand by the spirit of what I said but I admit to be misleading
in stating that Maudlin himself is part of the machine. It is not
Maudlin, but Maudlin's proxy or demon, the Klaras which is now parts of
the machine. Maudlin used the same trick that Maxwell used. He used a
the demon or proxy to perform his (dirty) work.
It seems to me that if you trace the information flow you probably can
detect that Maudlin is cheating: How are the protoolympia and the
Klaras
defined? To design his protoolympia and the Klaras he must start with
the information about the machine and the task PI. If he changes task
from PI to PIprime than he has to apply a different protoolympia and
different Klaras, and he has to intervene in the process!
Maudlin's argument is far from convincing.
George
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Le 03-oct.-06, à 06:56, George Levy a écrit :
Bruno Marchal wrote in explaining Maudlin's argument:
"For any given precise running computation associated
to some
inner experience, you
can modify the device in such a way that the amount of physical
activity involved is
arbitrarily low, and even null for dreaming experience which has no
inputs and no outputs.
Now, having suppressed that physical activity present in the running
computation, the
machine will only be accidentally correct. It will be correct only
for that precise computation,
with unchanged environment. If it is changed a little bit, it will
make the machine running
computation no more relatively correct. But then, Maudlin ingenuously
showed that
counterfactual correctness can be recovered, by adding non active
devices which will be
triggered only if some (counterfactual) change would appear in the
environment.
To reduce the machine's complexity Maudlin must perform a modicum of
analysis, simulation etc.. to predict how the machine performs in
different situations. Using his newly acquired knowledge, he then
maximally reduces the machine's complexity for one particular task,
keeping the machine fully operational for all other tasks. In effect
Maudlin has surreptitiously inserted himself in the mechanism. so now,
we don't have just the machine but we have the machine plus Maudlin.
The machine is not simpler or not existent. The machine is now Maudlin!
(We can come back on this real critics, but here is a short answer for
those who have Mauldlin's paper, we can find a version on the net now).
Olympia is "proto-olympia" + "the Klaras". Maudlin assumes comp and he
needs only the description of the original machine to build the Klaras
(for regaining counterfactual correctness) and add them to the
proto-olympia (the machine with no physical activity which is only
accidentally correct). Once added, the composed, Olympia =
"proto-olympia + Klara", is independent of Maudlin, and is
computationnaly equivalent with the original machine).
So Olympia, once build, does not need Maudlin's at all. Of course
with comp the building itself cannot influence the future possible
supervenience, for the same reason that if a doctor give you an
artificial brain, the story of each individual components has no
relation with the later use of it (if not it means the comp level has
not been chosen correctly).
In conclusion, the following conclusion reached by Maudlin and Bruno
is fallacious.
"Now this shows that any inner experience can be
associated
with an arbitrary low (even null) physical
activity, and this in keeping counterfactual correctness. And that is
absurd with the
conjunction of both comp and materialism."
I think the paradox can be resolved by tracing how information flows
and Maudlin is certainly in the circuit, using information, just like
Maxwell's demon is affecting entropy.
Once Olympia is build, Maudlin's is completely out of the circuit. I
think you forget the purpose of the Klaras.
At least, George, this is a real attempt to find an error, and in the
8th step ! I appreciate your try, but it seems to me you have just
forgot that Maudlin's did *program* his intervention: through the
Klaras, so that keeping comp at this stage makes Maudlin's special
role irrelevant. OK?
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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