On Oct 11, 5:11 am, Brent Meeker <meeke....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> > But it isn't possible to determine by inspection that they are
> > conscious.Are you claiming it's impossible in principle, or just that we don't know how?
It may be impossible in principle (i.e. 1-person experience is
ex-hypothesi incommunicable) and we certainly don't know how to.
David
> David Nyman wrote:
>
> > On Oct 10, 9:12 pm, Brent Meeker <meeke....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> >>Then
> >>a calculation of pi is picked out among all instantiations of all computations - but
> >>it is still possible to calculate pi many different ways on many different physical
> >>systems. And it is possible by inspection of these systems to determine whether they
> >>calculate pi.
>
> > But it isn't possible to determine by inspection that they are
> > conscious.Are you claiming it's impossible in principle, or just that we don't know how?
>
> >'Calculating pi' in the final analysis can be satisfied by
> > the system in question externalising its results (e.g. printing out the
> > value of pi). But it isn't so simple to test a system that is claimed
> > to be conscious. Be that as it may, would you be content with the
> > conclusion that the 'properties' of materialism claimed to be jointly
> > relevant to both computationalism and consciousness are purely
> > relational? In this case, we needn't argue further. But this conclusion
> > is, I think, why Bruno thinks that 'matter' has no real explanatory
> > role in the account of conscious experience. This isn't quite
> > equivalent to claiming that it can't be the primary reality, but rather
> > to claim that it adds nothing to the accounts of computationalism or
> > consciousness to do so, beyond the role of 'relational placeholder'.I would think that identifying the relata would be relevant to explaining a relation.
> But I agree that computation is mostly a matter of relations. What matter adds is
> that it allows the computation to be instantied. To dismiss it from the explanation
> seems like dismissing hydrogen and oxygen from an explanation of water.
>
> Brent Meeker
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Received on Wed Oct 11 2006 - 14:29:40 PDT