2009/1/12 Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>:
>> A machine running a program goes through a sequence of states.
>> Consider 20 consecutive states, s1 to s20, which give rise to several
>> moments of consciousness. Would you say that running the sequence s1
>> to s20 on a single machine m1 will give a different conscious
>> experience to running s1 to s10 on m1 and separately s11 to s20 on m2?
>>
>>
> I'm suggesting that there has to be something that makes the states a
> sequence instead of just a set or an aggregate.
In that case, there would be a difference between the two cases I
described above, perhaps a gap in consciousness when the sequence is
separated into two parts on two machines. But this presents conceptual
problems. For a start, the observer notices no gap, and his external
behaviour is also unchanged. If there is nevertheless a gap, would it
be of infinitesimal duration or would its duration perhaps be that of
the period of consciousness s10 and s11 would have given rise to had
they occurred in the usual causally connected way in the one machine?
What would happen to the gap if there were communication between the
two machines, say by sneakernet? And what if the information transfer
between the two machines was unreliable, so that the right state was
transferred only half the time?
--
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Mon Jan 12 2009 - 05:21:39 PST