Re: Implementation

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri Jul 23 07:23:42 1999

Chris wrote:

>[...] Computation
>supervenes on physical structures, but you must take the entire
>physical structure into account, including parts that happen to
>be inactive during a particular run. Those parts change the
>counterfactuals, and thus change the program.


At least I am relieved, you don't take Olympia (which, as Maudlin makes
clear, is the whole setting including the inactive Klaras) for a zombie.

And you believe that the absence or presence of an inactive block makes
the
consciousness absent or present (during that particular execution).

How could an inactive block be need for a conscious experience to be
present during a singular execution ?

This seems rather magical to me. If only because, for a computationalist,
the only role of the inert block (during the particular execution) is to
explain why the machine WOULD have give a correct answer in case the
inputs WOULD have been different.
This mean that you don't associate consciousness with a particular
physical computation but with the entire set of possible computations.
But that is exactly what I do ..., and what I mean by the abandon
of physical supervenience.
A singular brain's activity becomes an invention of the mind.

Bruno
Received on Fri Jul 23 1999 - 07:23:42 PDT