On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote: > > What does "locally" mean in this context? I doubt that consciousness is > strictly local in the physical sense; it requires and world to interact > with.
I would have thought that dreams would be a pretty clear counter-example to the claim that consciousness requires a world to interact with...? On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 7:58 PM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote: > I think the whole world probably is Turing emulable, but then that does not > get rid of materialism. Material just becomes one of the things emulated > along with consciousness. But then the material world we observe doesn't cause our consciousness. Rather, the underlying emulation substrate (which we have no access to) causes both the material world and consciousness. For instance, it would not be the case that neurons cause consciousness...neurons wouldn't be an extra layer that existed between us and the emulation substrate. What exists would be the emulation substrate, going about it's business of existing. As a (presumably) accidental side-effect of that existence, there would be us with our experience of the world. But, given the example of dreams - which aren't "of" anything external to us (again, presumably) - why assume that there actually is a world beyond our experience . Perhaps the emulation substrate produces nothing but dreams? Would there be any reason to predict that such an emulation substrate would be governed by principles that we could comprehend? How would it be different from the Kantian noumenal realm? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@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.
