On 3/28/2015 11:36 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
On 3/28/2015 12:33 AM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
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 --
But what is "a brain state". Can a part of the brain be ignored in some state but not
in another?
Yes. See my previous comments about brain injuries, stroke, and suchlike.
this sequence does not really calculate anything. Computationalism ultimately rests on
a confusion between a simulation and the calculations necessary to produce that
simulation.
Computationalism is just the idea that conscious thought can be instantiated by digital
device that simulates the brain at some sufficiently detailed level. If such a
simulation is possible then it can be realized by a program running on a universal
Turing machine. But that's an abstract process in Platonia and is independent of any
physics or material existence. That's what the MGA purports to show.
Bruno has acknowledged that this is not what the MGA shows. MGA simply shows that his
version of computationalism is incompatible with physical supervenience. This cannot be
seen as surprising since it is explicitly built into computationalism that physicalism
is false.
That's not my understanding. Bruno's argument starts with assuming that a part, or all,
of your brain could be replaced by a digital AI with the same I/O and if done at a
suitably low level of detail (probably neuronal) you conscious inner life would be
essentially the same. That seems to me to be assuming physicalism as the basis of
consciousness.
The MGA is, therefore, largely irrelevant, because it does not prove anything that we
didn't already know. It certainly does not show that consciousness is an abstract
process in Plationia, independent of any physical process.
Bruno assumes that only some special processes instantiate consciousness and these are
characterized by being computations of some kind, i.e. a sequence of states that could be
realized by a program running on a Universal Turing Machine (not necessarily halting).
Since the consciousness computation defined this way is an abstract mathematical process
in Platonia; it is equivalent to assuming consciousness is instantiated by an abstract
mathematical process.
Brent
That was the initial asssumption, and MGA simply shows that you can't have both
computationalism *and* physicalism -- not that physical supervenience is false.
Bruce
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