On 8/17/2014 8:49 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Sunday, August 17, 2014, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 8/16/2014 10:16 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 16 August 2014 10:16, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> 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.
I think that a sustained stream of consciousness will probably be part of a computation
that instantiates physics - instantiates a whole universe complete with physics.
That's answering the converse question. So if the early universe was instantiated by a
computation (a computation that instantiated physics) then you think that part of the
early universe was a sustained stream of consciousness. How do you conceive of this
consciousness' relation to the physics? For example might it be some structure in the
inflaton field? Or do you think of it as separate from physical structures?
However, the point that I wanted to make was that if computation can instantiate
consciousness then there is nothing to stop a recording, a Boltzmann Brain, a rock and
so on from doing so; for these possibilities have been used as arguments against
computationalism or to arbitrarily restrict computationalism.
Why is it arbitrary to say that a computation that is very simple, has not possible
branchings for example, cannot be conscious while some more complex computation, one
controlling an autonomous Mars Rover for example, may be? Do you agree with Bruno that
consciousness is all-or-nothing?
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.