Re: computationalism and supervenience

From: 1Z <peterdjones.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 17:27:57 -0700

Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
> >
> >
> > Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
> >> >
> >
> >> Q. What is it like to be a human? It is like being a mind. There is
> >> information delivered into the mind by the action of brain material
> >> which
> >> bestows on the human intrinsic knowledge about the natural world outside
> >> the human....in the form of phenomenal consciousness. This knowledge is
> >> not a model/abstraction, but a literal mapping of what's there (no
> >> matter
> >> how mysterious its generation may seem).
> >
> > What is the difference between a "model" and a "literal mapping" ?
>
> Real physics C(.) does something (goes through certain states).
> Real physics f(C(.)) does something (directly tracks the states of C(.).
>
> A state machine S that abstracts the states of C(.) is a model.

That's no help at all. What is the difference between tracking the
states
and abstracting the states ?

> f(.) is a literal mapping.
>
> Humans to f(.), computers do S.
>
> >
> >> The zombie does not have this.
> >
> > Why not ?
>
> Because the physics of f(.) above is not there.

Zombies have the same physics as people, by definition.

> >
> >> Nor does the Turing machine.
> >
> >
> >> No matter how good the a-priori abstraction given by the human the UM
> >> will
> >> do science on its sensory feeds until it can no longer distinguish any
> >> effect because the senses cannot discriminate it
> >
> > Don't humans have sensory limits?
>
> Yes, but the sensory fields are NOT what is used in intelligence.

What -- not at all ?

> The
> sensory fields are used to generate the phenomenal fields.

So they are involved indirectly.

> The phenomenal
> fields are used to be intelligent. Human phenomenal fields to not include
> a representation of neutrino flux.

Because human sensory fields don't.

> A zombie could never know of neutrinos!

It is pretty hard for anyone to.

> ...because they are incapable of observation of their causal descendants
> (no phenomenal fields). Our sensory data did not deliver evidence of
> neurtrinos...our phenomenal fields did!

Hmmm.

Well, at least I wa able to come to a conlusion on the basis of what
you said...

> In terms of the symbols above....
>
> The zombie can construct an S from sensory fields predictive of the impact
> of C(.) on its own sensory data. But the relationship of this S to the
> outside world C(.)? It can never know. C(.) could put 5 billion other
> states in between all the states detected by the zombie sensory data and
> the zombie would have no clue. Zombie science is the science of zombie
> senory data, not science of the natural world outside the zombie.
>
> Of course you can mentally increase the amount of dta and the
> computational intellect of teh zombie to arbitrary levels.... all you are
> doing is moving the abstractions around. The zombie still has no internal
> life, no awareness there is a natural world at all.
>
> cheers
> colin hales


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Received on Sat Sep 16 2006 - 20:28:56 PDT

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