Re: computationalism and supervenience

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 12:22:04 +0200

Le 04-sept.-06, à 06:30, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :

> It is the association of any conscious experience with any physical
> process
> which links the Putnam/Searle/Chalmers/Egan/Mallah/Moravec (and me, and
> probably many others independently) argument with the Maudlin/Marchal
> argument. There are at least three, not just two, ways to explain the
> problem:


I agree and see your point (I think) but it remains pedagogically
troubling to associate the two types of problems. Hal Finney did make
also such a mix, but the question addressed are not related in
principle. The Maudlin's stuff (and this is yet clearer in my
translation of Maudlin's counterfactual moves in term of movie-graph,
made in "conscience et mécanisme") is that comp + sup-phys entails that
arbitrary physical processes---including no physical activity at all,
not even the quantum void---, must produce all form of consciousness.
It shows than you don't even need to postulate any physical system at
all. Physics is just irrelevant for consciousness, with comp.

In particular, when you say:

> (3) As a matter of fact, every physical process does give rise to every
> possible conscious experience, which means that every possible
> conscious
> experience is implemented if at least one physical process exists.

You don't even need that one.

And when you say (see below for the quote of "1),2),3)":

> (2) and (3) lead to very similar results. If (3) is the case, we may
> not know
> if we are being implemented on a "real" physical substrate or on an
> endlessly
> nested series of emulations with an extreme minimalist physical
> reality at the
> bottom. The physical reality seems irrelevant, as in (2).


I think comp makes (2) and (3) still much closer, if not identical.


=======================
I quote your "1),2),3)" here:

> It is the association of any conscious experience with any physical
> process
> which links the Putnam/Searle/Chalmers/Egan/Mallah/Moravec (and me, and
> probably many others independently) argument with the Maudlin/Marchal
> argument. There are at least three, not just two, ways to explain the
> problem:
>
> (1) It is absurd that every physical process gives rise to every
> possible
> conscious experience, therefore computationalism must be wrong.
>
> (2) It is absurd that every physical process gives rise to every
> possible
> conscious experience, therefore consciousness does not supervene on
> physical process at all, but exists in the domain of pure mathematics;
> this means that every possible conscious experience is necessarily
> implemented in Platonia.
>
> (3) As a matter of fact, every physical process does give rise to every
> possible conscious experience, which means that every possible
> conscious
> experience is implemented if at least one physical process exists.
>
> (2) and (3) lead to very similar results. If (3) is the case, we may
> not know
> if we are being implemented on a "real" physical substrate or on an
> endlessly
> nested series of emulations with an extreme minimalist physical
> reality at the
> bottom. The physical reality seems irrelevant, as in (2).


This is important because I do not believe, any piece of matter
implements necessarily all computations. If Loop Gravity is a correct
marriage of QM and General Relativity (GR), I can assure you that none
of the Fi(i) are computed when i is bigger than let us say OMEGA +
[OMEGA] + OMEGA (or any very big but finite number). If string theory
is correct it is less easy for me to drive a conclusion, but string
theory put also bound on computability power (as shown by Seth Loyd).
Contrariwise: the UD does compute all the Fi(i).
I don't insist too much on this because the Mallah implementation
problem is really non relevant: comp shows that all physical activities
emerge from number relations.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Received on Tue Sep 05 2006 - 06:24:06 PDT

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