On 28 Nov 2008, at 10:46, Russell Standish wrote:
>
> On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 10:09:01AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> MGA 3
>
> ...
>
>> But this reasoning goes through if we make the hole in the film
>> itself. Reconsider the image on the screen: with a hole in the film
>> itself, you get a "hole" in the movie, but everything which enters
>> and
>> go out of the hole remains the same, for that (unique) range of
>> activity. The "hole" has trivially the same functionality than the
>> subgraph functionality whose special behavior was described by the
>> film. And this is true for any subparts, so we can remove the entire
>> film itself.
>>
>
> I don't think this step follows at all. Consciousness may supervene on
> the stationary unprojected film,
This, I don't understand. And, btw, if that is true, then the physical
supervenience thesis is already wrong. The
physical supervenience thesis asks that consciousness is associated in
real time and space with the activity of some machine (with MEC).
> but if you start making holes in it,
> you will eventually get a film on a nonconscious entity. At some
> point, the consciousness is no longer supervening on the film (but may
> well be supervening on other films that haven't been so adulterated,
> or on running machines or whatever...
>
>> Does Alice's dream supervene (in real time and space) on the
>> projection of the empty movie?
>>
>
> No.
>
>>
>> 2)
>>
>> I give now what is perhaps a simpler argument
>>
>> A projection of a movie is a relative phenomenon. On the planet 247a,
>> nearby in the galaxy, they don't have screen. The film pellicle is as
>> big as a screen, and they make the film passing behind a stroboscope
>> at the right frequency in front of the public. But on planet 247b,
>> movies are only for travellers! They dress their film, as big as
>> those
>> on planet 247a, in their countries all along their train rails with a
>> lamp besides each frames, which is nice because from the train,
>> through its speed, you get the usual 24 frames per second. But we
>> already accepted that such movie does not need to be observed, the
>> train can be empty of people. Well the train does not play any role,
>> and what remains is the static film with a lamp behind each frame.
>> Are
>> the lamps really necessaries? Of course not, all right? So now we are
>> obliged to accept that the consciousness of Alice during the
>> projection of the movie supervenes of something completely inert in
>> time and space. This contradicts the *physical* supervenience
>> thesis.
>>
>
> But the physics that Alice experiences will be fully dynamic. She will
> experience time, and non-inert processes that she is supervening on.
>
> Why does the physical supervenience require that all instantiations of
> a consciousness be dynamic? Surely, it suffices that some are?
What do you mean by an instantiation of a dynamical process which is
not dynamic. Even a block universe describe a dynamical process, or a
variety of dynamical processes.
>
>
>>
>> c) Eliminate the hypothesis "there is a concrete deployment" in the
>> seventh step of the UDA. Use UDA(1...7) to define properly the
>> computationalist supervenience thesis. Hint: reread the remarks
>> above.
>
> I have no problems with this conclusion. However, we cannot eliminate
> supervenience on phenomenal physics, n'est-ce pas?
We cannot eliminate supervenience of consciousness on what we take as
other persons indeed. Of course phenomenal physics is a first person
subjective creation, and it helps to entangle our (abstract)
computational histories. That is the role of a "brain". It does not
create consciousness, it does only make higher the probability for
that consciousness to be able to manifest itself relatively to "other
consciousness". But consciousness can rely, with MEC, only to the
abstract computation.
Sorry for being a bit short, I have to go,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Sat Nov 29 2008 - 04:11:47 PST