On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 8:52 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp.domain.name.hidden>wrote:
>
> 2008/11/23 Kory Heath <kory.domain.name.hidden>:
>
> > If we apply the Conway's Life rule to all the cells, it seems like the
> > creatures in the grid ought to be conscious. If we don't apply the
> > Life rule to any of the cells, but just pull the data from our
> > previously-created lookup table, it seems like the creatures in the
> > grid are not conscious. But if we apply the Life rule to half of the
> > cells and pull the other half from the lookup table, there will
> > (probably) be some creature in the grid who has half of the cells in
> > its brain being computed by the Life rule, and half being pulled from
> > the lookup table. What's the status of this creature's consciousness?
>
> Which leads again to the problem of partial zombies. What is your
> objection to saying that the looked up computation is also conscious?
> How would that be inconsistent with observation, or lead to logical
> contradiction?
>
>
I would side with Kory that a looked up recording of conscious activity is
not conscious. My argument being that static information has no implicit
meaning because there are an infinite number of ways a bit string can be
interpreted. However in a running program the values of the bits do have
implicit meaning according to the rules of the state machine.
What makes this weird is that in one respect our universe might be
considered a 4-d recording, containing a record of computations performed by
neurons and brains across one of its dimensions. Perhaps this is further
evidence in support of Bruno's theory: mind cannot exist in a physical
universe because it is just a recording of a computation, and only the
actual computation itself can create consciousness.
Jason
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Received on Sat Nov 22 2008 - 22:47:09 PST