> On 6 Dec 2019, at 00:53, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List > <everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote: > > > > On 12/5/2019 9:05 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >>> On 5 Dec 2019, at 02:12, Bruce Kellett <bhkellet...@gmail.com >>> <mailto:bhkellet...@gmail.com>> wrote: >>> >>> On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 10:44 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List >>> <everything-list@googlegroups.com >>> <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> wrote: >>> On 12/3/2019 1:08 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>>>>> This absurd conclusion depends only on the single world assumption, it's >>>>>> a consequence of the non-existence of counterfactuals. Clearly actions >>>>>> as a response to counterfactual inputs must be relevant for >>>>>> consciousness, >>>>> It's not clear to me. How can there be a response to an input ("input" >>>>> to what) that doesn't occur? And why would such a response be anything >>>>> but crazy? >>>> Why necessarily crazy? If you can prove this, you refute Mechanism. >>> >>> Wow, I didn't expect it to be so easy. I have a dog. If my dog died I'd >>> get another dog. My dog didn't die today. The counterfact then is that my >>> dog did die today. So responding the counterfact I get another dog. The >>> same thing eventuates tomorrow. Soon my neighbors report me to the >>> authorites and when I explain this to the judge he mandates psychiatric >>> care. >>> >>> Hence Mechanism is false. >>> >>> I think the point Bruno is making is that consciousness requires >>> "counterfactual correctness”, >> >> >> Not just “consciousness”, also the simpler notion of computation requires or >> even define a notion of counterfactual correctness. It is not much more than >> a semantic for the “if A then B else C”. >> >> >> >>> by which he appears to mean that consciousness must be such that if the >>> inputs are changed (counterfactually), then the output must also change. >> >> … must also change (counterfactually). OK. >> >> >>> This hypothesis -- that consciousness requires this "counterfactuall >>> correctness" -- was introduced ad hoc in order to protect the movie graph >>> argument. If we take the sequence of states through which a computation >>> proceeds to give a particular conscious experience and reproduce exactly >>> those states on a film or something similar, then running through those >>> states will reproduce the same conscious experience. They want to avoid >>> this conclusion, so they impose the restriction that the sequence of state >>> must be "counterfactually correct", i.e., it must respond differently to >>> different input -- which the movie graph, being fixed, clearly cannot. >> >> Who they? Not me, and Maudlin makes that move to get a reductio ad absurdum >> of having both mechanism and materialism. Then at the end he choses >> materialism, where I keep Mechanism, but both Maudlin and me showed that >> indeed it is absurd to believe in both mechanism and the idea that >> consciousness is related exclusively to some material events. >> >> >>> >>> That this ad hoc manoeuvre does not prove anything about consciousness was >>> shown by Maudlin in his "Olympia" argument. >> >> That is weird. Maudlin, and men did prove something about consciousness, >> mechanism and materialism. >> >> We show that materialism -> non mechanism, or equivalently that mechanism -> >> non materialism. You can’t have them both. > > But it assumes that computation exists in the abstract…
Abstract, may be for an Aristotelian who believe in a “concrete” physical reality. Personally, only the natural numbers are concrete object to me, and computations are rather very concrete too, as they are as singular as the natural number, well defined, etc. 2 is concrete. 2 apples is far more abstract. We are not aware of this because we use quasi unconsciously highly sophisticated measuring apparatus (eyes, the nose, …) and a very sophisticated computer (the nervous system, billions of neurons, etc.) to analyse quickly the observation, and to eat the apple, making us feeling that it is concrete, when it is actually very abstract, and even more so if we accept the current description of what could be an apple (a partial trace of a quantum wave in an Hilbert space?). > simply because there's a thing we invented called the existential quantifier. Prime numbers and computations existed in the arithmetical reality in a way which does not depend of time, space, or humans for that matter. And we don’t need to make existence into a notion of metaphysical existence. Computations exists like a solution to the equation x + 1 = 3 exists. > It's as weak as St Anslem's ontological proof; which tellingly Goedel thought > he could make sound. This has nothing to do with the existence of computation, which you can prove from Peano arithmetic once you accept the Church-Turing definition. That is not the case, neither for Gödel’s God, nor for any notion of ontological physical universe, which requires some faith. The only faith required for mechanism is the faith into surviving a special medical operation. Bruno > > Brent > >> >> >>> One can restore counterfactual correctness by additional ad hoc additions >>> to the graph, without altering the fact that the movie record still >>> reproduces the conscious experience. >> >> But the added piece have no role in the actual computation, and so that >> would endow the movie with consciousnes, but also the movies with the holes, >> and all consciousness will supervene on anything, making the theory >> inconsistent. >> >> It is much simpler to study what is a computation, and understand that >> consciousness is in the computation, not in this or that implementation of >> the computation, except statistically below our substitution level. >> >> >> >> >>> The "competition" is irrelevant to consciousness in this case. >> >> >> ? >> >> Bruno >> >> >> >> >>> >>> Bruce >>> >>> -- >>> 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 >>> <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. >>> To view this discussion on the web visit >>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLS6ci61hmJfK%2Ba%3D3413%2BxeY2VU4%3Dm0tHDNpX2Q_8vwSWw%40mail.gmail.com >>> >>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLS6ci61hmJfK%2Ba%3D3413%2BxeY2VU4%3Dm0tHDNpX2Q_8vwSWw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. >> >> -- >> 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 >> <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/D65B4EFA-FF06-4C00-ADBC-072F36BC9967%40ulb.ac.be >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/D65B4EFA-FF06-4C00-ADBC-072F36BC9967%40ulb.ac.be?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. > > > -- > 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 > <mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/7cae5efb-b8f2-ca99-b9b8-7981b912b63e%40verizon.net > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/7cae5efb-b8f2-ca99-b9b8-7981b912b63e%40verizon.net?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2D94ED7A-0630-4D6B-AFB6-42D4514335B0%40ulb.ac.be.
