On 28 Mar 2015, at 08:33, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
On 3/27/2015 4:54 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
I understand counterfactual correctness, but I think the concept
is misapplied -- even to the extent of making a category error.
Counterfactual correctness can be ascribed to a computer/
calculator but not to a calculation. A calculator would not be
counterfactually correct if it gave the same output for every
input, but a calculation is a calculation! It is a single thing --
one output from one input. If you change the input, in general you
would get different output. But then that would be different
calculation. It is a category error to ask for counterfactual
correctness from an individual calculation.
If I do a calculation with pencil and paper, writing out the steps
of my calculation, that is still a calculation even after I have
finished. It is still the same calculation 10 years later (if the
paper is intact). IIt is not counterfactually correct because I do
different calculations on different pieces of paper, leaving the
original recoded calculation intact. But it is still a calculation
-- what else would you call it?
A fair point. But the MGA tries to link consciousness to
computation.
I would argue that this is where the first, and probably the most
important, error creeps in. Why should you call a sequence of brain
states a computation or calculation? If you want to simulate that
sequence of brain states, the computer has to do a lot of
calculations to mimic synapse potentials, ion flows and all the rest
of it. The end result of these calculations is a simulation of the
original brain states. At no point does it have to be assumed that
this sequence of brain states is actually a calculation of anything.
Exactly. A computation is not a sequence of states (and still less a
movie of a sequence of states).
A computation is a relation between a universal number and some
(universal or not) number(s).
I guess that now you agree that the "movie of a computation" is not a
computation, and that consciousness cannot be directly attached to it.
Most people intuit that a certain sequence of brain states
instantiates some conscious thought. And further that the
particular brain material is not necessary to this instantiation,
rather it is something about the computation.
So what is your intuition about the relation between computation
and consciousness. Is it just the calculation instantiated in the
brain that creates the consciousness and could that same
calculation then create the same conscious experience when written
out on paper or realized by a one-entry lookup table. That seems
wrong too.
No, as I said, I do not think it is helpful to describe the sequence
of brain states as a calculation. If you simulate the actual brain
states by doing a lot of calculations on a computer, then you will
reproduce the original conscious moment. But the conscious moment
itself does not calculate anything. The simulation of brain states
could be written out on paper, or use any number of look-up tables
(as efficient programs tend to do). It is still a simulation of the
original brain states, and if accurate, the conscious experience
will be recreated.
Hmm... With computationalism, consciousness needs only the relative
running to manifest itself relatively to some other programs/machines/
numbers. You can do the computation with paper end pencil, that's OK.
But a copy on some papers of a computation is not a computation. It is
a description of a computation, even when made dynamical in a movie,
it abstract too much from the causal relationships between the
elementary part of the u that it "imitates" locally.
Another possibility is that all those neurons that /*didn't*/ fire
in the calculation were just as necessary to the experience as the
one's that did. That seems quite plausible to me.
I find the notion quite bizarre.
Then you don't need the stroboscope. Maudlin's analysis (Olympia +
Klara) will be enough. I am OK with this. To ascribe a computational
role, in one computation, to an object which has no physical nor
computational role is akin to magic thought.
It is the actual sequence of actual brain states that is important.
If some neuron didn't fire, then they did not contribute to /that/
conscious moment, no matter that they might be crucial to other, /
different/, moments of consciousness.
Translating that into what it would mean in terms of an AI is that
the transistors that didn't switch were necessary, not to the
calculation, but to the computation/conscious experience
instantiation. Counterfactual correctness is the Platonia version
of this - I think.
As I said, conterfactual correctness has very little to do with the
actual conscious moment. That is given simply by the sequence of
actual brain states -- this sequence does not really calculate
anything.
Again we agree. We can even change the universal number/machine used
in the background in such a way that we get any computations we want.
Computation will be relational, like the notion of person, and even
consciousness.
Computationalism ultimately rests on a confusion between a
simulation and the calculations necessary to produce that simulation.
I would have said: physical supervenience rests upon a confusion
between a description of a simulation and an actual simulation. Even
in arithmetic both exists and are quite different. The description of
the simulation or computation is a number, the actual computation/
simulation, even in arithmetic, is a more complex "true" relation
between numbers (eventually: even an infinity, with relevant relative
proportion, which put light on the measure problem).
Bruno
Brent
I think this basic confusion between the calculator and the
calculation renders the MGA toothless. It does not establish that
the recording cannot be conscious. The recording is as much a
calculation as the original. If you degrade the film/recording,
then you finally lose consciousness, but that is beside the point.
It is just like rubbing out or burning your original paper
calculation. It is only if you insist that your computing
mechanism is counterfactually correct that you can say that a
recording cannot reconstitute consciousness, but the computing
mechanism is not the calculation that corresponds to consciousness.
Bruce
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