Si nisi non esset perfectum quodlibet esset (if "IF" not existed everything
would be perfect.
Maybe I am a partial zombie for these things.
(Mildly said).
John M
On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 4:36 PM, Kory Heath <kory.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>
> On Nov 26, 2008, at 5:29 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> > Yes. Suppose one of the components in my computer is defective but,
> > with incredible luck, is outputting the appropriate signals due to
> > thermal noise. Would it then make sense to say that the computer isn't
> > "really" running Firefox, but only pretending to do so, reproducing
> > the Firefox behaviour but lacking the special Firefox
> > qualia-equivalent?
>
> It seems to me that this reasoning creates just as serious a problem
> for your perspective as it does for mine. Suppose we physically remove
> the defective component from the computer, but, with incredible luck,
> the surrounding components continue to act as though they were
> receiving the signals they would have received. Your experience of
> using Firefox remains the same, so (by your argument above) it
> shouldn't make sense to say that the computer isn't "really" running
> Firefox. But we can keep removing components until all that's left is
> a monitor that, with incredible luck due to thermal noise, is
> displaying the pixels that would have been displayed if your computer
> was actually functioning, doing things like displaying a mouse-pointer
> that (very improbably!) happens to move when you move your mouse, etc.
>
> This is, of course, just a recapitulation of the argument we've
> already been considering - the slide from Fully-Functional Alice to
> Lucky Alice to Empty-Headed Alice. I have an intuition that causality
> (or its logical equivalent in Platonia) is somehow important for
> consciousness. You argue that the the slide from Fully-Functional
> Alice to Lucky Alice (or Fully-Functional Firefox to Lucky Firefox)
> indicates that there's something wrong with this idea. However, you
> have an intuition that order is somehow important for consciousness.
> (Without trying to beg the question, I might use the term "mere
> order", to indicate the fact that, for you, it doesn't matter whether
> the blinking bits in some hypothetical 2D array were generated by
> (say) a random process, it just matters that they display the
> requisite order.) But the slide from Lucky Alice to Empty-Headed Alice
> is just as problematic for that view as the slide from Fully-
> Functional Alice to Lucky Alice is for mine.
>
> My point isn't that your intuition must be incorrect. My point is that
> the above argument fails to show me why your "mere order" intuition is
> more correct than my "real order" intuition, since the argument is
> equally destructive to both intuitions. Instead of giving up your
> intuition, you make a move to Platonia. But in that new context, I
> think it still makes sense to ask if "mere order" (for instance, in
> the binary digits of PI) is enough for consciousness, and the Alice /
> Firefox thought experiments don't help me answer that question.
>
> > If by "Unification" you mean the idea that two identical brains with
> > identical input will result in only one consciousness, I don't see how
> > this solves the conceptual problem of partial zombies. What would
> > happen if an identical part of both brains were replaced with a
> > non-concious but otherwise identically functioning equivalent?
>
> I was referring to the idea that my Conway's Life version of Bruno's
> MGA 2 may only present a problem for Duplicationists. If one believes
> that physically re-performing all of the Conway's Life computations
> would create a second experience of pain (assuming that there's a
> creature in there with that description), and if you *don't* believe
> that the act of playing the move back creates a second experience of
> pain, then you have a partial zombie problem. But it you accept
> Unification, the problem might go away (although I'm unsure of this).
>
> I still feel like I don't have a handle on how you feel the move to
> Platonia solves these problems. If we imagine the mathematical
> description of filling a 3D grid with the binary digits of PI,
> somewhere within it we will find some patterns of bits that look as
> though they're following the rules to Conway's Life. If we see
> creatures in there, would they be conscious? What about the areas in
> that grid where we find the equivalent of Empty-Headed Alice, where
> most of the cells seem to be "following the rules" of Conway's Life,
> but the section where a creature's "visual cortex" ought to be is just
> filled with zeros? In other words, why doesn't the "partial zombie"
> problem still exist for us in Platonia?
>
> -- Kory
>
>
>
> >
>
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Received on Thu Nov 27 2008 - 16:45:45 PST