2010/3/2 Jack Mallah <jackmal...@yahoo.com>: > I guess by 'physical supervenience' you mean supervenience on physical > activity only. That is not what computationalism assumes. Computationalism > assumes supervenience on both physical activity and physical laws (aka > counterfactuals). There is no secret about that. Consciousness does not > arise from the movie, because the movie has the wrong physical laws. There > is nothing about that that has anything to do with 'prescience'.
Just so that I can be sure I've understood what you're saying here: The physical laws you refer to above would be deemed to mediate whatever physical activity is required to realise any (and all) logically possible execution paths implicit in the relevant computations. And if so, the computationalist theory of mind would amount to the claim that consciousness supervenes only on realisations capable of instantiating this complete range of underlying physical activity (i.e. factual + counterfactual) in virtue of relevant physical laws. IOW, there would always be a fully efficacious physical mechanism - of some kind - underlying the computational one. Under this interpretation, the idea would be that the absence of such physical arrangements for realising counterfactual execution paths would disqualify a mechanism as being efficacious in producing consciousness. I'm not entirely clear, however, why you say: > Now, there is a school of thought that says that physical laws don't exist > per se, and are merely descriptions of what is already in the physical > activity. A computationalist physicalist obviously rejects that view. In the case of a mechanism with the appropriate arrangements for counterfactuals - i.e. one that in principle at least could be "re-run" in such a way as to elicit the counterfactual activity - the question of whether the relevant "physical law" is causal, or merely inferred, would appear to be incidental. Is the metaphysical status of physical law deemed in some way to be relevant to consciousness? David > I finally figured out what was happening to my emails: the spam filter got > overly agressive and it was sending some of the list posts to the spam > folder, but letting others into the inbox. The post I'm replying to now was > one that was hidden that way. > > --- On Sun, 2/14/10, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: >> >> Jack Mallah wrote: >> > 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. >> >> OK. I was talking in a context which is missing. You can also conclude in >> the prescience of the neurons for example. The point is that if you assume >> the physical supervenience thesis, you have to abandon comp and/or to >> introduce magical (non Turing emulable) property in matter. > > That is false. Bruno, you don't have to assume any 'prescience'; you just > have to assume that counterfactuals count. No one but you considers that > 'prescience' or any kind of problem. > >> > 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 am not using the 'fading qualia' argument. > > Then someone else on the list must have brought it up at some point. In any > case, it was the only interesting argument in favor of your position, which > was not trivially obviously invalid. My PB paper shows that it is invalid > though. > >> > 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. >> >> It is a reasoning by a an absurdum reduction. If you agree (with any >> computationalist) that we cannot attribute prescience to the neurons, then >> the physical activity of the movie is the same as the physical activity of >> the movie, so that physical supervenience + comp entails that the >> consciousness supervenes on the movie (and this is absurd, mainly because >> the movie does not compute anything). > > I guess by 'physical supervenience' you mean supervenience on physical > activity only. That is not what computationalism assumes. Computationalism > assumes supervenience on both physical activity and physical laws (aka > counterfactuals). There is no secret about that. Consciousness does not > arise from the movie, because the movie has the wrong physical laws. There > is nothing about that that has anything to do with 'prescience'. > > Now, there is a school of thought that says that physical laws don't exist > per se, and are merely descriptions of what is already in the physical > activity. A computationalist physicalist obviously rejects that view. > >> > Counterfactual behaviors are properties of the overall system and are >> > mathematically defined. >> >> But that is the point: the counterfactuals are in the math. >> Not in the physical activity. > > Bruno, try to read what I write instead of putting in your own meanings to my > words. > > A physical system has mathematically describable properties. Among these are > the physical activity and also the counterfactuals. There is no distinction > to make on that basis. That is what I was saying. That has nothing > whatsoever to do with Platonism. > >> machine ... its next personal state has to be recovered from the statistics >> on the possible relative continuations. > > No, nyet, non, and hell no. That is merely your view, which I obviously > reject and which has nothing to recommend it - especially NOT > computationalism, your erroneous claims to the contrary. > > > > > > > -- > 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. > > -- 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. 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