Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> Peter Jones writes:
>
> > > 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.
> >
> > The requirement that computations require counterfactuals isn't
> > ad hoc, it comes from the observation that computer programmes
> > include if-then statements.
> >
> > The idea that everyting is conscious unless there is a good
> > reason it isn't -- *that* is ad hoc!
>
> No, it follows from the idea that anything can be a computation. I think this is trivially obvious,
> like saying any string of apparently random characters is a translation of any English sentence
> of similar or shorter length, and if you have the correct dictionary, you can find out what that
> English sentence is.
But that is actually quite a dubious idea. For one thing there
is an objective basis for claiming that one meaning is the
"real" meaning, and that is the meaning intended by the writer.
For another, your translations would have to be complex
and arbitrary, which goes against the ususal modus operandi
of seeking simple and consistent explanations.
> This is analogous to finding an alien computer which, when power is applied,
> is set into motion like an inscrutable Rube Goldberg machine. If you get your hands on the
> computer manual, you might be able to decipher the machine's activity as calculating pi.
You might not need the manual. Numbers don't
have arbitrary semantics in the same way words do.
That's why SETI uses mathematical transmissions.
It is also something Everythingist arguments rely on.
You can't exist as a computation in a numbers-only universe
if computations require external interpretation.
> Moreover,
> you might be able to reach inside and shift a few gears or discharge a few capacitors and make it
> calculate e instead, utilising the fact that the laws of physics determine that if the inputs change,
> the outputs will change (which, I trust you will agree, is the actual physical basis of the if-then
> statements).
> Now, in human languages as in machine design, there are certain regularities to make things
> easier for user. It might be possible, albeit difficult, to decipher a foreign language or figure out
> what an alien computer is computing by looking for these regularities. However, it is not necessary
> that there be any pattern at all: the characters in the unknown language may change in meaning
> every time they appear in the string in accordance with a random number generator, a cryptographic
> method called a "one-time pad". Similarly, the meaning of the physical states of the alien computer
> could change with each clock cycle according to some random number sequence, so that if you had
> the key you could figure out that the computer was calculating pi, but if you did not its activity would
> seem random.
Assumimng that computational states have an external semantics like
words.
> I don't think it would be reasonable to say that the computer is only calculating pi when
> you have the manual at hand ready to refer to, even though without the manual the computer is
> completely useless to you if you want to calculate the area of a circle, for example.
>
> Remember, even the apparently random computer handles counterfactuals, in that if a gear or a
> semiconductor junction were changed, the whole subsequent activity of the machine would change,
> and the manual would tell you how the computation had changed.
>
> You could dismiss the computations of random physical systems as trivial or useless, but what if you
> believe that some computations can be conscious? It would be no easier for us to observe or interact
> with these computations than it would be for us to observe or use the pi calculation, but by
> definition the conscious computations *themselves* would be self-aware.
The difficulty is artifical. It comes from your willingness to
put baroque interpretations on things.
There is an established method of finding the simplest and most
consistent
mathematical structure that maps a physical system, and that is
physics.
> We might say in the above cases that the burden of the computation shifts from the physical activity
> of the computer to the information in the manual. The significance of this is that the manual is static,
> and need not even be instantiated if we don't care about interacting with the computer: it is a
> mathematical object residing in Platonia.
>
> Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Wed Aug 30 2006 - 09:22:08 PDT