2009/1/13 Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com>: > In human consciousness, as instantiated by brains, there is a process in which > signal/information is not local, it is distributed in spacetime and is > connected > causally which means, per relativity, that you cannot make any unique > spacelike > snapshot and label it "the state". I don't go so far as to claim that > consciousness *must be* instantiated in this way, but I think there must be > something that makes the "states" part of a process - not just snapshots. > Bruno > gets around the problem of defining states by assuming a digital Turing like > process, but then he has to provide something besides spacetime to make the > set > of states a sequence; which is he does by invoking the requirement that they > be > a computation. I have some doubts as to whether this is enough, but at least > it > is something.
It comes down to whether the brain is Turing emulable. If it is, then I see no problem describing it in terms of a sequence of discrete states. The question then arises whether the causal links between the states in an intact digital computer are necessary to give rise to consciousness, which is what I thought you were claiming, or whether the same states in disconnected fashion would achieve the same thing. Opponents of computationalism such as John Searle have argued that if a Turing machine can give rise to consciousness then the disconnected states would also have to give rise to consciousness, which is then taken as a reductio against computationalism. The alternative way, saving computationalism, is, I think, Bruno's: it isn't the physical states giving rise to consciousness, but the computation as Platonic object. -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
