Le 03-nov.-08, à 08:32, Brent Meeker a écrit :
> I have reservations about #6: Consciousness is a process, but it
> depends on a context.
That is why I use the notion of generalized brain. I take into account
the possible need of a context. The argument would break only if you
stipulate that the context cannot be captured digitally, but this would
make the generalized brain non turing emulable, and this would mean
comp is false. Recall that my point is that comp implies something, not
that comp is true.
> In the argument as to whether a stone is a
> computer, even a universal computer, the error is in ignoring that the
> computation in a computer has an interpretation which the programmer
> provides.
I don't see the relevance of this concerning the step #6.
I have never written nor indeed believed that a stone can be a computer.
> If he can provide this interpretation to the processes within
> a stone, then indeed it would be a computer; but in general he can't.
I agree with this, but I don't see the relevance.
> I think consciousness is similar; it is a process but it only has an
> interpretation as a *conscious* process within a context of perception
> and action within a world.
In step six, the context is taken into account. Your argument will go
through only if you think that the context is both needed integrally
and is not turing emulable, But then comp is false.
Also consciousness makes sense only, strictly speaking, for the
subject. If some direct access to a world was needed throughout, then
even the experience of dream becomes impossible.
> Which is why I think philosophical zombies
> are impossible.
If this were true, then the movie graph (step 8 without occam) would
not been needed. Arithmetical truth is provably full of philosophical
zombies if comp is true and step 8 false.
> But then, when you imagine reproducing someone's
> consciousness, in a computer and simulating all the input/output, i.e.
> all the context, then you have created a separate world in which there
> is a consciousness in the context of *that* world. But it doesn't
> follow that it is a consciousness in this world.
To accept this I have to assume "I = the world", and that world is not
turing-emulable. But then comp is false.
> The identification of
> things that happen in the computer as "He experiences this." depend on
> our interpretation of the computer program. There is no inherent,
> ding-an-sich consciousness.
Here I disagree. This would entail that if you beat a child in a way
such that nobody knows, then the child does not suffer.
>
> Your step #6 can be saved by supposing that a robot is constructed so
> that the duplicated consciousness lives in the context of our world,
> but
> this does not support the extension to the UD in step #7. To identify
> some program the UD is generating as reproducing someone's
> consciousness
> requires an interpretation.
With comp the universal machine is the interpreter. Again you are
telling me that comp is false.
> But an interpretation is a mapping between
> the program states and the real world states - so it presumes a real
> world.
Then dreaming cannot be a conscious experience. But since the work of
Laberge and Hearne, all brain physiologist accept this.
I am afraid you put something magical (non Turing emulable) in the
world and in consciousness. This makes us non digital machine or
entity.
>
> I have several problems with step #8. What are consistent 1-histories?
This is needed for the AUDA (arithmetical translation of the UDA). The
movie graph just explain that comp makes it impossible to attach
consciousness to the physical activity of the running UD. It explains
why we don't have to run the UD. Digital machines cannot distinguish
physical computations from arithmetical computations.
> Can they be characterized without reference to nomological consistency?
> The reduction to Platonia seems almost like a reduction argument
> against
> comp.
This is certainly possible, but up to now, nobody has been able to get
a contradiction. In the seventies, some people pretend that I have
refute comp by showing it entails many-worlds. At least since
Everett-Feynman-Deutsch, people have abandon this idea (that many
worlds = contradiction).
> Except that comp was the assumption that one physical process can
> be replaced by another that instantiates the same physical relations.
No, comp implicates the notion of "me" or of "my consciousness". Comp
is just the assumption that my consciousness is unchanged when my
(generalized) brain is substituted by digital devices at some level of
description.
> I
> don't see how it follows from that there need not be an instantiation
> at
> all and we can just assume that the timeless existence in Platonia is
> equivalent.
Well, it comes from the impossibility to attach consciopusness to the
exclusively physical: that is the point of the movie graph argument
(also entailed by Maudlin's Olympia argument).
>
> You write: "...the appearance of physics must be recovered from some
> point of views emerging from those propositions." But how does is this
> "emergence" work? Isn't it like saying if I postulate an absolute
> whole
> that includes all logically possible relations then this must include
> the appearance of physics and all I need is the probability measure
> that
> picks it out. It's like Michaelangelo saying, "This block of marble
> contains a statue of David. All I need is the measure that assigns 0
> to
> the part that's not David and 1 to the part that is David."
To select effectively the statue of David, so that it becomes manifest
relatively to his public, Michael Angelo has still to remove the zero
part. This can be done by ... sculpting.
>
>> To be sure, do you understand the nuance between the following theses:
>>
>> WEAK AI: some machines can behave as if their were conscious (but
>> could as well be zombies)
>> STRONG AI: some machines can be conscious
>> COMP: I am a machine
>>
>> We have
>>
>> COMP => STRONG AI => WEAK AI
>>
>> WEAK does not imply STRONG AI which does not imply COMP. (it is not
>> because machine can be conscious that we are necessarily machine
>> ourself, of course with occam razor, STRONG AI go in the direction of
>> COMP).
>>
>> Does those nuances make sense? If not (1...8) does not, indeed, make
>> sense. You just don't believe in consciousness and/or person like in
>> the eliminative materialism of neuro-philosophers ( the Churchland,
>> amost Dennett in "consciousness explained").
>>
> I think they make some good arguments. I don't think that
> consciousness
> is a thing or can exist apart from a much larger context.
Again, if consciousness needs that context, then either the context is
not turing emulable, and this means comp is false (because in that case
consciousness needs something non turing emulable), or the context is
turing emulable, and then the reasoning go through.
You are not refuting the derivation. It seems you are hesitating
between eliminating consciousness, or making it relying on something
non Turing emulable. In both case comp is false then. You could as well
say "Marchals shows that comp entails there is no fundamental physical
universe, thus marchal has refuted comp. But nobody has ever prove
there is a primary physical universe so I take it as premature to
pretend that we have shown comp contradictory. All what comp implies is
that the appearance of a physical universe has to emerge from the many
computational histories existing already in elementary arithmetic.
The contradiction even disappear completely once we look at the
translation of UDA in arithmetic. Thanks to incompleteness, we have all
the ingredient to explain how the laws of physics emerge from the
computations as seen from internal points of view.
Is it so astonishing that, like the biological principles have emerged
by natural selection, the laws of physics emerge from numbers by a
logical and arithmetical selection principle?
Tell me if you understand why step 6 and 7 are correct, before we
tackle the more subtle step 8. Just remember that comp explicitly
invoke the notion of consciousness, remind the use of generalized
brain. It is very rare now that people have still problem with 1..7.
To be sure in the seventies people did understood 1...7, and I have
never met since (never, even at Brussels) someone who does not
understand 1..7 in a oral presentation, despite the huge utilization of
the first person experience delay-invariance. I hope you understand
that your critics of #6 does not go through. OK?
Bruno Marchal
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Mon Nov 03 2008 - 06:23:49 PST