Bruno Marchal wrote in explaining Maudlin's argument:
"For any given precise running computation associated to some inner
experience, you
can modify the device in such a way that the amount of physical
activity involved is
arbitrarily low, and even null for dreaming experience which has no
inputs and no outputs.
Now, having suppressed that physical activity present in the running
computation, the
machine will only be accidentally correct. It will be correct only
for that precise computation,
with unchanged environment. If it is changed a little bit, it will
make the machine running
computation no more relatively correct. But then, Maudlin
ingenuously showed that
counterfactual correctness can be recovered, by adding non active
devices which will be
triggered only if some (counterfactual) change would appear in the
environment.
I believe the argument is erroneous. Maudlin's argument reminds me of
the fallacy in Maxwell's demon.
To reduce the machine's complexity Maudlin must perform a modicum of
analysis, simulation etc.. to predict how the machine performs in
different situations. Using his newly acquired knowledge, he then
maximally reduces the machine's complexity for one particular task,
keeping the machine fully operational for all other tasks. In effect
Maudlin has surreptitiously inserted himself in the mechanism. so now,
we don't have just the machine but we have the machine plus Maudlin. The
machine is not simpler or not existent. The machine is now Maudlin!
In conclusion, the following conclusion reached by Maudlin and Bruno is
fallacious.
"Now this shows that any inner experience can be associated with an
arbitrary low (even null) physical
activity, and this in keeping counterfactual correctness. And that
is absurd with the
conjunction of both comp and materialism."
Maudlin's argument cannot be used to state that "any inner experience
can be associated with an arbitrary low (even null) physical activity."
Thus it is not necessarily true that comp and materialism are incompatible.
I think the paradox can be resolved by tracing how information flows and
Maudlin is certainly in the circuit, using information, just like
Maxwell's demon is affecting entropy.
George
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Received on Tue Oct 03 2006 - 00:57:08 PDT