On 09 Jun 2015, at 09:11, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 08 Jun 2015, at 15:13, Bruce Kellett wrote:
But comp is false, as has been demonstrated by many observations.
What?
Reference?
You mean the brain is not Turing emulable?
Strong AI, or the possibility that part or all of your brain can
be emulated by a computer does not entail that consciousness is
only a computation.
Consciousness is not a computation, when we assume computationalism.
So what is it then?
A mental, subjective, state. A first person view. Indeed the one at
the base of all the others that we can be aware of.
Consciousness supervenes of the physical brain, and if that brain is
replaced by a computer, then it supervenes on that physical
computer. If consciousness is not a computation, does it merely
supervene on a computation? Or is the whole theory hopelessly
confused?
The theory is that a (generalized) brain is Turing emulable, at a
level such that I remain conscious (and feel no difference by
introspection).
You can say in that case that it "merely" supervene on the activity of
the brain, but not necessarily on the physical activity of the brain,
which can be shown arbitrarily variate. It is only contingently
related to consciousness.
Nor does it entail that only computations can be conscious.
A computation cannot be conscious. Only a (first) person can be
conscious.
It is a category error to believe that something 1p can be
identified with some 3p thing.
So a physical person with a physical brain is not conscious?
Consciousness is something that has intersubjective aspects -- we
can all agree that x, y, and z are conscious. We do not have direct
first-person experience of anyone's consciousness other than our
own, but that does not mean that we cannot know that another person
is conscious. To say otherwise is simple solipsism.
We cannot know as such, or for sure,, but this does not entail that e
cannot know in the larger Theaetetus' sense indeed. We can believe
that others are conscious, and they might be conscious. But then it is
the person in Platonia which is conscious, not the one we see (in our
indexical time) as this one is a construction of our brain: it does
not exist "literally". That is counter-intuitive, but not more than SR.
In fact, it is quite difficult to come up with a definition of
computation such that only computers and brains perform
computations. The structure of a Turing machine can be emulated by
a rock, for instance.
With toilet papers, and pebbles, yes. You still need to play the
role of the processor. Now, a rock does not emulate an arbitrary
turing machine.
Why not? If it can emulate a specific purpose Turning machine, it
can emulate a universal Turing machine. I think Putnam's argument
for unlimited pancomputationalism implies this.
I am not convince by that argument. Show me a rock program computing
the prime numbers.
With comp, rock are not even object, but map of accessible
continuations.
I expose only the mind body problem, and show that the machine's
solution fits QM and neoplatonism. I don't defend any truth or
religion, just the right to do those things with some rigor.
But computationalism does not even give any new insights into the
nature of consciousness,
I think AUDA shows on the contrary a lot of new insight. We get a
complete theory of qualia, and explanation of souls which fits with
both QM and all neoplatonist researchers. In the seventies it
predicted the rise of Artificial Intelligence and ... the possibility
of quantum computing. It explains easily why physics is based on math,
and it gives some light on the possible "after-life" etc.
much less give any useful results for physics.
No new one should be expected soon, but that was not the purpose at all.
You can't blame a coffee machine for not doing tea.
You can do things with all the rigour you want, but if you can't
extract any useful results, you are wasting your time. Perhaps this
is the irreconcilable difference between the physicist and the
mathematician.
Yes, I am interested in a theory of "everything", which means to me
mainly a theory which does not eliminate consciousness. I saw that
physicists avoid the question, but a bridge is born between math and
cognitive science, thanks to theoretical computer science (a branch of
math).
I am not sure I see your point. Comp is not useless, comp is the
actual theory of the materialists, and I show that contrary to a
widespread belief: materialism and computationalism are incompatible
(without adding non-comp magic).
Comp is not presented as a solution, but as a problem. In the second
part, I show the propositional solution, but you need to understand
the problem before. Actually, I think that you have seen the problem,
but want to conclude to much quickly that comp is false. The math part
shows that this is premature, especially that QM confirms both the
comp many-worlds/dreams, but also the quantum tautologies (until now).
My feeling is that you are not interested in the mind-body problem,
but for some reason want to keep physics as *the* fundamental science.
If that is the case, you have to produce a non-comp theory of mind.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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