On 8/12/2014 6:36 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 6:17 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:On 8/11/2014 9:27 PM, LizR wrote:On 12 August 2014 15:50, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote: On 8/11/2014 8:26 PM, LizR wrote:Well, I guess a physical UD would be made robust against quantum uncertainty, like all computers, but why do we need to assume QM apply?The argument assumes it doesn't apply, so that the computation can be deterministic. I don't know that it affects the argument, but worries me a little that we make this unrealistic assumption; especially if we have include a whole 'world context' for the MG simulation. Ah, I see. One of the assumptions of comp is that consciousness is a classical computation. At least I think that's what it means to say that the Church-Turing thesis applies. I suppose a question here is whether QM can introduce some "magic" that allows it to create consciousness from a purely materialistic basis. If so then there's no need for comp because consciousness isn't classically emulable....yes?Although a quantum computer can compute some things much faster than a classical computer, it still can't compute things that are Turing uncomputable, so I don't think it provides that kind of magic. I was thinking more of the fact that the recorded inputs to B and the response to the projection of the movie onto the graphwill not be perfectly deterministic, but only with high statistical probability. Also, in QM it generally makes a difference to the evolution of the system whetherother states are available even if they are never occupied.This is what I don't see. Why do A's internal processes have meaning, while B's don't - given that they're physically identical?B's have meaning too, but it is derivative meaning because the meanings are copies of A's and A's refer to a world. So it's an unwarranted conclusion to say, see B is conscious and there's no physics going on. There's plenty of physics going on in the past that causally connects B to A's experience. Just because it's not going on at the moment B is supposed to be experiencing it isn't determinative. Real QM physics can require counterfactual correctness in the past (e.g. Wheeler's quantum erasure, Elitzur and Dolev's quantum liar's paradox). Well, as I've mentioned previously I think time symmetry may sort out those awkward retroactive quantum measurements. But anyway, I guess this is putting the schrodinger's cat before the horse, in that comp only assumes classical computation and attempts to derive a quantum world from it. So I guess we can't necessarily assume real QM physics, or at least not unless we've shown comp to be based on false premises or internally inconsistent, or have a rival theory of consciousness arising naturally from qm and materialism, or some other good reason to do so. I think what I'm trying to say here is that to assume comp must work with real physics is to assume from the start that there is no reversal.Well there's also the question of whether comp and the UD solve the hard problem any better than psychophysical parallelism.I'm not sure that comp and UD propose to solve the hard problem, as much as proposing why it's not solvable.
I agree. I don't think it's solvable in the way people ask for. I think it's solvable in the engineering sense. The advantage of Bruno's theory is that, if the theory is right, then he can prove within it what the hard problem is not solvable and can say why.
Pierz did a good job of examining this and I made some comments on his post. I would like to look at comp+UD as just another scientific hypothesis which we willadopt when it makes some surprising prediction which is proved out by tests. Obviously getting some surprising, trestable prediction out of it is likely to bevery difficulty. But unlike Bruno I'm not much persuaded by logical inference from logic, Church-Turing, or Peano arithmetic because I think they aren't "The Truth" but just models we use in our thinking. Just reflect on how all logicians and philosophers would have said, "No object can be in two different places at the same time. It's just logic." - before quantum mechanics.It is my impression that progress in logic is done by removing all that is non-abstract. It's a simplification effort. My difficulties with logic usually arise from not being able to grasp the counter-intuitive simple level at which it operates. Confusing common sense with logic is a common mistake. You see this a lot on you tube these days, where well-meaning atheists like to say "it's just logic" when they are in fact referring to scientific common sense. I am an atheist, an agnostic and a lover of science, so I never like this -- it's resorting to the tricks of the "enemy".I'm not sure I follow you here. Why does making the simulation bigger invalidate the argument? Is there a cut-off point?I don't know about a cut-off. The argument is a reductio. The conclusion Bruno makes is that no physical process is necessary to support consciousness, OK consciousness can be instantiated in a Turing machine simulation. Sorry to split the sentence, but I must admit I thought that latter part was his initial assumption, rather than his conclusion?The initial assumption is consciousness can be instantiated by a physical computation (one that replicates the I/O of your neurons), but step 8 is to show it must be independent of the physical computation and can be instantiated by an abstraction.But my argument is that the simulation must also simulate a world that the consciousness interacts with, is conscious *of*, that a physical world is necessary for consciousness. If it's a simulated consciousness, then it can be a simulated physics but it has to be some physics. Right, yes, I see. Or I think I see. That's implying that the comp argument is assuming what it sets out to show, that is, it sets out to show that physics can be derived from consciousness as computation, but if it has to introduce physics to show this, then the argument has become circular. So if interactions with an environment are necessary for consciousness to exist (as part of the definition of consciousness) then the argument is necessarily circular. The question is whether the interaction is necessary, or incidental - "incidental" would mean that consciousness has arisen in a physical world through evolution, and hence is highly specialised as an agent interacting with that world, but it could at least in theory arise some other way (e.g. inside a computer). Although it's hard to imagine how any conscious being could learn anything useful without interacting with some sort of world - it would sure be a blank slate otherwise. So I guess the question boils down to: is a blank slate consciousness - one that isn't aware of anything (except its own existence, I guess) possible?It is in Bruno's conception. It is MOST conscious because it can go anywhere from there, be anybody or any being. That's why he thinks intelligence, which he deprecates as mere "competence", detracts from consciousness. It has narrowed or directed consciousness. As you can see that is quite different from my idea of consciousness as something that arose as a way for evolution to take advantage of perception mechanisms in doing learning, prediction, and planning. I think consciousness is a certain kind of thought and it's about something. Bruno thinks it's a mystic property of relations between computations, e.g. being provable.In a more naive way, I arrived at the same conclusion before reading Bruno: that intelligence and consciousness are different things. I did it through introspection. I know highly intelligent people that think like you. I know I am being honest and I fully believe you are being honest too, so I see this divergence as part of the mystery, that merits investigation.
I agree that intelligence and consciousness are different, and I can see Bruno's point that competence tends to take away awareness. Knowing a lot about a subject keeps you from seeing it with fresh eyes. But human-like consciousness entails seeing and distinguishing, it's model making as a way to seeing the world. And mathematics, logic, and arithmetic are models too. Platonists just have a prejudice against "material" models - even though the "material" is Hilbert space or Calabai-Yau manifolds.
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