On 8/16/2014 10:16 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 16 August 2014 10:16, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <javascript:;>> wrote:
> On 8/15/2014 4:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> > I think these sorts of considerations show that the physical states cannot
> > be responsible for generating or affecting consciousness.
>
>
> How do they show that? I thought they only showed that CC and environmental
> reference were necessary to consciousness. Are you assuming that the
> playback of a recording IS conscious?
If it is true that a recording is conscious or the random states of a rock are conscious
then I think that does imply that physical states are irrelevant to consciousness. But
the argument goes that this irrelevance of physical states is absurd, so some
restriction is imposed on what can be conscious in order to avoid the absurdity. One
possible restriction is that consciousness only occurs if the computations are
implemented relative to an environment, another is that the counterfactuals be present.
But these are ad hoc restrictions, no better than saying that consciousness can only
occur in a biological substrate.
> > The immediate objection to this is that physical changes in the brain *do*
> > affect consciousness. But if physical states cannot be responsible for
> > generating or affecting consciousness, there can be no evidence for a
> > separate, fundamental physical world. What we are left with is the platonic
> > reality in which all computations are realised and physical reality is a
> > simulation. It is meaningless to ask if consciousness supervenes on the
> > computations implemented on the simulated rock or the simulated recording.
>
>
> It's not meaningless to ask if there must be simulated physics for the
> simulated consciousness to supervene on. Do you think you could be
> conscious of a world with no physics?
Both consciousness and physics supervene on the computations, which exist necessarily.
Consciousness does not supervene on the physics.
Yes, I agreed to that. The question was can consciousness supervene on computations that
do not instantiate any physics? I think not. And then the other question is can physics
supervene on computations that do not instantiate any consciousness? I'm not sure about that.
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
