On 11 May 2015 at 12:56, Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
> ISTM that the environment _is_ important, but that it can be simulated > or replayed so long as the conscious entity's inputs remain unchanged. > Sorry, that's what I meant. I don't seem to be expressing myself very well. I was trying to say that the environment doesn't invalidate the MGA at an "in-principle level", as Brent often suggests it does. > > The reason why it is important is that consciousness must be awareness > about something. That something is the other of the self-other > distinction, and we would probably just call that the environment. > Yes. But if the inputs can be recorded and played back, then is that sufficient to take any sting out of the "what about the environment?" objection. > > That leads to why counterfactual correctness is important. If a > conscious program were not counterfactually correct about it's > environment, particularly if it is completely unchanged with respect > to changes in the environment, there is no way it can be said to be > aware of the environment. What can consciousness even mean in that > case? > Generally that is true, but I can't see how it applies to the MGA, which replays the computation and the inputs exactly. In which case there are never any counterfactuals to take account of, in practice. At least I can't see how there could be, given that the process is completely determined. > > If _that_ line of reasoning is accepted, then one can eliminate the > requirement for the MGA to depend on an intuition that can be hard to > justify. > Do you mean the intuition that a recording can't be conscious? Unfortunately I can't follow the reasoning here. > > And it perhaps also nicely ties in Brent's worry about environment > needing to be taken into account, and also the recent comments I made > on Putnam's rock example. > -- 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.
