--- On Mon, 2/15/10, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net> wrote: > On reading the first page of your paper a thought occurred to me. What > actually happens in the case of progressive Alzheimer’s disease is a bit > different from the idea that I get from the discussion.
Hi Stephen. Certainly, Alzheimer's disease is not the same as the kind of partial brains that I talk about in my paper, which maintain the same inputs as they would have within a full normal brain. > Are you really considering “something” that I can realistically map to my own > 1st person experience or could it be merely some abstract idea. That brings in the 'hard problem' discussion, which has been brought up on this list recently and which I have also been thinking about recently. I won't attempt to answer it right now. I will say that ALL approaches (eliminativism, reductionism, epiphenomenal dualism, interactionist dualism, and idealism) seem to have severe problems. 'None of the above' is no better as the list seems exhaustive. In any case, if my work sheds light on only some of the approaches that is still progress. BTW, I replied to Bruno and the reply appeared on Google groups but I don't think I got a copy in my email so I am putting a copy of what I posted here: --- On Fri, 2/12/10, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: > Jack Mallah wrote: > --- On Thu, 2/11/10, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> > > > MGA is more general (and older). > > > The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness > > > to a movie of a computation > > > > That's not true. For partial replacement scenarios, where part of a brain > > has counterfactuals and the rest doesn't, see my partial brain paper: > > http://cogprints.org/6321/ > > It is not a question of true or false, but of presenting a valid or non valid > deduction. What is false is your statement that "The only way to escape the conclusion would be to attribute consciousness to a movie of a computation". So your argument is not valid. > I don't see anything in your comment or links which prevents the conclusions > of being reached from the assumptions. If you think so, tell me at which > step, and provide a justification. Bruno, I don't intend to be drawn into a detailed discussion of your arguments at this time. The key idea though is that a movie could replace a computer brain. The strongest argument for that is that you could gradually replace the components of the computer (which have the standard counterfactual (if-then) functioning) with components that only play out a pre-recorded script or which behave correctly by luck. You could then invoke the 'fading qualia' argument (qualia could plausibly not vanish either suddenly or by gradually fading as the replacement proceeds) to argue that this makes no difference to the consciousness. My partial brain paper shows that the 'fading qualia' argument is invalid. I think there was also a claim that counterfactual sensitivity amounts to 'prescience' but that makes no sense and I'm pretty sure that no one (even those who accept the rest of your arguments) agrees with you on that. Counterfactual behaviors are properties of the overall system and are mathematically defined. > Jack Mallah wrote: > > It could be physicalist or platonist - mathematical systems can implement > > computations if the exist in a strong enough (Platonic) sense. I am > > agnostic on Platonism. > > This contradicts your definition of computationalism given in your papers. > I quote your glossary: <<Computationalism: The philosophical belief that > consciousness arises as a result of implementation of computations by > physical systems. >> It's true that I didn't mention Platonism in that glossary entry (in the MCI paper), which was an oversight, but not a big deal given that the paper was aimed at physicists. The paper has plenty of jobs to do already, and championing the possibility of the Everything Hypothesis was not the focus. On p. 14 of the the MCI paper I wrote "A computation can be implemented by a physical system which shares appropriate features with it, or (in an analogous way) by another computation." If a computation exists in a Platonic sense, then it could implement other computations. On p. 46 of the paper I briefly discussed the All-Universes Hypothesis. That should leave no doubt as to my position. -- 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.
