Le 04-sept.-06, à 16:57, David Nyman a écrit :
>
>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>> Either those *specific* physical activities are turing emulable, and
>> we
>> are back to "1)" and "2)", or they are not, and then comp is false.
>> Recall we assume comp.
>
> I don't follow. I thought Maudlin is proposing a physical machine
> running the consciousness program, not a turing-emulated one. Are you
> saying that if we assume comp, the 'physical activity level' of a
> correctly substituted emulation is posited as equivalent to that of a
> 'real' machine (i.e. there is in fact no meaningful distinction)?
Once Maudlin proposes a physical machine running a (consciousness)
program, obviously he assumes its turing emulability. Then the
reasoning shows that comp makes it very hard to attribute the
consciousness to the physical activity corresponding to that physical
emulation".
Anything a "physical" computer can compute is turing emulable, 'course.
> In
> this case AFAICS the substitution level would need to be below that of
> 'registers' etc, which are insufficiently constrained aspects of
> machine architecture.
>
>> We would have zombie. Why not. Once comp is false ...
>
> Why talk of zombies? A zombie is a being that is supposedly conceivable
> (though not to me) as being 'unconscious' despite apparently possessing
> the structural/ behavioural prerequisites of consciousness. I was
> referring to the issue that, if the characteristics of consciousness
> are indeed correlated with specific physical activities, then aspects
> of consciousness would necessarily *co-vary* with physical
> instantiation. To avoid this, comp would need to adopt a substitution
> level that preserved the invariance of whatever 'physical activities'
> were deemed relevant to consciousness (as I suggest above).
OK. That follows from the comp hyp.
>
>> OK in this situation. But comp makes impossible to distinguish the
>> experience of driving a car, and the experience of driving a virtual
>> car in a virtual environment, done at the right level of substitution
>> (or below). Then the movie-graph or Maudlin's Olympia shows that
>> machines cannot even distinguish a physical virtual environment and a
>> purely arithmetical virtual environment.
>
> So this is all about the level of substitution.
Exactly.
> Well, as I've
> suggested, I think the level would have to be at or below that at which
> machine architecture differences become indistinguishable.
Well. I am not sure where are you in the reasoning. Both me and Maudlin
presuppose some material background before arriving at a
epistemological contradiction.
Comp predict that if we look at ourself or at our neighborhood at a
level below our substitution level then we should find the trace of the
"parallel" computation existing in "platonia".
That is why physics is redefined through comp as the study of a
relative measure on an infinite set of computation quotientized by an
non-distinguishability relation, which is then so hard to define than I
isolate it indirectly through the lobian interview.
> So I don't
> believe that arguments involving registers etc. can be correct, because
> it becomes hard to argue coherently that the necessary invariances are
> preserved at this level. We might debate atom-by-atom, or
> circuit-by-circuit, or does the doctor have some more general principle
> to resolve this?
No. Comp explicitly forbid any rule there. That's why a comp-honest
doctor should always tell his patient that a digital brain/body
substitution is proposed at the patient risk and peril.
If you read the literature by the neurosurgeon you will see most of
them bet the level is high (neuronal). Imo it is at least biochemical,
if not quantum (just above Heizenberg indetermincay).
>
> BTW I think I see now that most of our original disagreements were
> language based. If comp is in essence an objective idealist model, in
> effect it begins from the assumption that 'objective idealist reality'
> exists 'in the sense that I exist' (although of course not constrained
> solipsistically to my 1st-person pov). That is all I have ever sought
> in terms of '1st-person primacy'.
Perhaps. let us proceed. I think you will see the nuance which should
be added here at the right moment. If I try to explain now, there is
99% of chance that it will look purely terminological. And perhaps it
is. let us come back on this latter.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Wed Sep 06 2006 - 05:50:01 PDT