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I scanned Maudlin's paper. Thank you Russell. As I suspected I found a
few questionable passages:
Page417: line 14:
"So the spatial sequence of the troughs need not reflect their
'computational sequence'. We may so contrive that any sequence of
address lie next to each other spatially."
Page 418 line 5:
"The first step in our construction is to rearrange Klara's tape so
that address T[0] to T[N] lie spatially in sequence, T[0] next to
T[1] next to T[2], etc...
How does Maudlin know how to arrange the order of the tape locations? He
must run his task Pi in his head or on a calculator.
Maudlin's reaches a quasi religious conclusion when he states:
"Olympia has shown us a least that some other level beside the
computational must be sought. But until we have found that level and
until we have explicated the relationship between it and the
computational structure, the belief that ...of pure computationalism
will ever lead to the creation of artificial minds or the the
understanding of natural ones, remains only a pious hope."
Let me try to summarize:
Maudlin is wrong in concluding that there must be something
non-computational necessary for consciouness.
Maudlin himself was the unwitting missing consciousness piece inserted
in his machine at programming time i.e., the machine's consciouness
spanned execution time and programming time. He himself was the
unwitting missing piece when he design his tape.
The correct conclusion IMHO is that consciousness is independent of
time, space, substrate and level and in fact can span all of these just
as Maudlin partially demonstrated - but you still need an implementation
-- so what is left? Like the Cheshire cat, nothing except the software
itself: Consistent logical links operating in a bootstrapping reflexive
emergent manner.
Bruno is right in applying math/logic to solve the
consciousness/physical world (Mind/Body) riddle. Physics can be derived
from machine psychology.
George
Russell Standish wrote:
>If I can sumarise George's summary as this:
>
>In order to generate a recording, one must physically instantiate the
>conscious computation. Consciousness supervenes on this, presumably.
>
>Maudlin say aha - lets take the recording, and add to it an inert
>machine that handles the counterfactuals. This combined machine is
>computationally equivalent to the original. But since the new machine
>is physically equivalent to a recording, how could consciousness
>supervene on it. If we want to keep supervenience, there must be
>something noncomputational that means the first machine is conscious,
>and the second not.
>
>Marchal says consciousness supervenes on neither of the physical
>machines, but on the abstract computation, and there is only one
>consciousness involved (not two).
>
>Of course, this all applies to dreaming machines, or machines hooked
>up to recordings of the real world. This is where I concentrate my
>attack on the Maudlin argument (the Multiverse argument).
>
>Cheers
>
>
>
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Received on Wed Oct 04 2006 - 23:35:11 PDT