On Tue, 16 May 2017 at 12:44 pm, Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au>
wrote:

> On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 11:41:04AM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote:
> >
> > We had extended arguments starting from "Why isn't
> > the-rock-that-computes everything conscious?"  I think your analysis
> > above needs to be extended to cover that.   You seem to take
> > "perception" as a given attribute of the machine, but perception is
> > part of consciousness which we're trying to explain.  At the very
> > least I think perception already requires a first-person distinct
> > from, but interacting with an environment.
> >
>
> The rocks that computes everything can be dealt with by noting that
> any such supported computationalist consciousness cannot supervene on
> the rock, as a different consciousness is also so supported without
> change in the state of the rock.


Yes, it is not an argument for rocks thinking, it is an argument against
physical supervenience. Some are offended by this and prefer to throw out
computationalism altogether.

I make exactly this argument in my as yet unpublished paper "MGA
> revisited", and note that consciousness does not supervene on the
> universal dovetailer either.
>
> For some reason, people seem to believe that if a consciousness
> supervenes on A, then it must also supervene on the combined system
> A+B, for an arbitrary system B. These sorts of examples, the rock that
> computes all, the universal dovetailer and IMHO the classroom (see the
> paper) are counterexamples to that belief.
>
>
> --
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr Russell Standish                    Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Principal, High Performance Coders
> Visiting Senior Research Fellow        hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
> Economics, Kingston University         http://www.hpcoders.com.au
>
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-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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