Re: Implementation

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat Jul 24 07:58:52 1999

Thanks for your nice precise specification of an 'Olympia'.

I will probably used it in a more detail reply.

Nevertheless, perhaps by my fault, you seem to misunderstand a
probably subtil point in Maudlin's argument.

Here are hints.

First I don't take an expression like 'physical structure' for granted.
But this is beside the point since we make a reduction ad absurdum. But
it is
good to keep that in mind.

Now (in some framework) I agree that a 'physical structure' can
implement a computation. I even suggest to Jacques MM that relative
counterfactualness provides a "criteria" for correct-implementation of
a computation. And this is equivalent to the non-zombie principle.

If we keep comp, the only think Maudlin (and me) shows is that
consciousness cannot be linked to the physical activity accompagning
the physical instantiation of the computation.

What a physical system can locally do is to make possible for a machine
to manifest itself relatively to others computations.

As you say:

>Note that in the above argument, consciousness
>never entered into the discussion.

Well that is the problem in your argument.
Also, when you say:

>Unless you can prove to
>me that physical structures cannot reliably implement
>computations,

I don't pretend that (although in some context, you can wrongly deduce
that I say that: this is because I will stop believe that "physical
structure" are objective predicate).

What I say is that consciousness is not linked to any particular
physical instantiation of computation, but only to all computational
histories in which the particular instantiation is relatively infer.

Physical activity can implement a computation, and a relative computation
can "implement" consciousness. But this doesn't entail that,
ontologically,
consciousness is "produced" by the physical activity of the computer.
I am convinced that it will more "economical" to take the 'physical
activity
of the computer' as produced by consciousness, in some very precise sense,
where 'consciousness' is modelized by an inference of
quasi-self-consistency.

I must really leave you now. More on this after tuesday ...

Bruno
Received on Sat Jul 24 1999 - 07:58:52 PDT