I'm not necessarily talking about every possible computation being implemented by
every physical system, just (at least) the subset of finite computations implemented by
a physical computer or brain. I think this is another way of saying that a recording, or
a single trace of a computation branching in the multiverse, can be conscious. To prevent
a recording being consious yoiu can insist on counterfactual behaviour, but that seems an
ad hoc requirement introduced simply to prevent the "trivial" case of a recording or any
physical system implementing a computation.
Stathis Papaioannou
----------------------------------------
> From: marchal.domain.name.hidden
> Subject: Re: computationalism and supervenience
> Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 15:38:23 +0200
> To: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
>
>
>
> Le 28-août-06, à 07:42, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :
>
> >
> > Bruno marchal writes:
> >
> >> Le 26-août-06, à 16:35, 1Z a écrit :
> >>
> >>>
> >>>> And since the computer may be built and programmed in an arbitrarily
> >>>> complex way, because any physical
> >>>> system can be mapped onto any computation with the appropriate
> >>>> mapping rules,
> >>>
> >>> That is not a fact.
> >>
> >>
> >> It would make sense, indeed, only if the map is computable, and in
> >> this
> >> case I agree it has not been proved. Again UDA makes such question non
> >> relevant, given that the physical is secondary with respect to the
> >> intelligible.
> >
> > Any computation that can be implemented on a physical system A can be
> > mapped
> > onto another physical system B, even if B has fewer distinct states
> > than A, since
> > states can be "reused" for parallel processing. If B is some boring
> > sysstem such as
> > the ticking of a clock then the "work" (not sure what the best word to
> > use here is)
> > of implementing the computation lies in the mapping rules, not in the
> > physical
> > activity. The mapping rules are not actually "implemented": they can
> > exist written
> > on a piece of paper
>
> Honestly I am not sure about that.
>
>
> > so that an external observer can refer to them and see what
> > the computer is up to, or potentially interact with it. And if the
> > computer is conscious
> > because someone can potentially talk to it using the piece of paper,
> > ther is no reason
> > why it should not also be conscious when the piece of paper is
> > destroyed, or everyone
> > who understands the code on the piece of paper dies. In the limiting
> > case, the platonic
> > existence of the mapping rule contains all of the computation and the
> > physical activity
> > is irrelevant - arriving at the same position you do.
>
>
> OK, in the case the mapping rule can be coded in a finite way.
> For example I can code the computation of any partial recursive
> function by using a n-body problem. But a slight change in the initial
> position of one of the body would destroy the information, and it is
> not clear why some other *finite* working mapping rule would appear,
> even in Platonia. Computation is a much constrained notion than people
> usually realize. You may be right, but I have never seen any proof. The
> probable reason for this is that such a proof would need a much more
> formal approach to physics, including what happens in the bottom, but
> nobody knows what happens there, and current theories makes big
> simplification there (renormalization, etc.).
> I think that what you say is not totally excluded by string theory, but
> would be false with loop gravity, for example (in loop gravity
> everything is quantized, and I can build, if only by diagonalization,
> computation non mappable to any finite piece of loop-gravity-matter (if
> I can say).
>
> Bruno
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
> >
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Received on Tue Aug 29 2006 - 07:16:27 PDT