From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Jun 19 2002 - 10:45:17 MDT
Hal writes
> Lee writes:
> > We all know the basic difference, apparent every day of our lives,
> > between static representations and dynamically changing ones over
> > time. We never suppose a frozen state, or even a sequence of frozen
> > states, to be conscious or to be experiencing anything. So where does
> > this bizarre notion that appears to afflict you and Greg Egan that
> > a large enough number of separate patterns---say separate integers---
> > take on any sort of dynamism? For me, since no information flows
> > between dead and passive structures, they're not alive.
>
> Actually I was not claiming this, and I don't think my argument depends
> on it. My claim was only that computer programs and even executions of
> programs exist in the same abstract sense that numbers and geometric
> shape exists.
First, your argument as to what? (your first sentence)?
Second, programs and their executions are elementarily equivalent
to integers, and so for mathematical realists exist as much as
integers do.
> I am undecided on the issue of whether "passive" data
> could have the same properties.
> However I can make two arguments in favor of that idea, even though I am
> not fully persuaded by them. The first is to think of the universe as a
> four-dimensional space-time continuum. One of the ideas from relativity
> theory is that time is a fourth dimension...
Yes, I've been struggling for about two decades to try to
get a handle on exactly how a static four-dimensional world
is different (if it is) from our 3+1 world insofar as these
questions concerning consciousness arise.
> So, here is a structure which is (in a sense) static and yet it does
> contain conscious entities. So this might give us some reason to think
> that static entities can contain consciousness if they have the right
> kind of internal structure.
Leaving alone higher dimensionality, we could wonder the same
thing about a three dimensional object. Consider a rock in
my hand. By *forcing* interpretations, it is possible to find
any pattern in there at all, and to find sequences of any
patterns we choose, e.g., conscious entities. One possible
escape (showing *my* prejudice!) is to point out that forced
interpretations require too much input from the forcer, and
that the real information starts to reside in the person
holding the rock (i.e. the person forcing such interpretation)
and very little in the rock itself.
(Putnam in "Representation and Reality" has an appendix, quite
absurd to me, in which he proves in detail that you can read
any interpretation you like into a rock, and he draws various
philosophic conclusions from it that I don't recall in detail.)
But this line of thought leads into your next point:
> Another example comes from Wolfram... with the proper arrangement
> of initial bits on the line, this CA can perform any computation....
> This view may raise the question of whether the 2-D picture is conscious
> "all the time", whether there is in some sense a conscious entity buried
> in there who is thinking all thoughts at once, and other difficult
> questions.
I don't see anything philosophically new here. First, we know that
Conway's Life can contain conscious entities provided that some
computer actually computes succeeding generations from preceding
generations. We believe so because this is exactly equivalent to
computer operation which is commonly accepted (here!) to be able
to support uploading.
So as in last year's discussions, imagine a plastic gel that
*explicitly* depicts a Life generation, and then lay a succession
of gels on top of that which depict subsequent generations. (Here
since the representation is so explicit, we avoid my earlier
criticism of "forcing" interpretations.)
We now have a large cube that is isomorphic to, say, someone's
last five minutes of conscious experience. Don't exactly the
same questions arise for it?
What I want to know is "How explicit is the cause and effect
that connects the gels?". Notions of causality aren't so
easy to deal with themselves, so far as I know. I wonder if
philosophers have made any headway in the past couple of
decades. Anyway, the "causality" linking the gels together
isn't apparent to me! No more than a single 1-dimensional
slice of Wolfram's CA is causally connected to the next
1-dimensional slice. Again, to be meaningful to me, they
have to actually execute.
Perhaps we have the following philosophic continuum:
1 - everyday life in which only people are conscious
2 - consciousness presumed in some possible computer programs
(e.g. a particular run of a Life implementation)
3 - consciousness and experience imputed to passive objects
of the right kind, like stacks of gels, or detailed
pictures of Wolfram CAs.
4 - experience and consciousness extended to sequences of
physical objects having precise and detailed structure
isomorphic to possible conscious entities. These need
not even be in each others proximity, such as patterns
of dust throughout the cosmos
5 - extension of consciousness, feeling, and experience to
completely abstract entities, such as enormous integers
or real numbers.
To me, the whole purpose of philosophy is prescription. I want
to know what to do in various circumstances. For example, how
should I value my life if I have to choose between living here
and uploading? If some program, say a friend of mine, has
undergone a lot of pain, does re-running good runs he had help
him at all, or compensate for his unpleasantness? Should I
vigorously oppose the execution of programs which experience
pain, on the grounds that it doesn't matter whether they've
been run before?
Well, somewhere in the above continuum, I *must* draw the line,
and I *am going* to draw the line. For me, sorry, but it's very
pointless to muse that 99.9999 percent of all experience is
really happening to me or is happening to everyone in some
abstract space. I know what it means for my life to go better
or worse, and (especially with the Singularity looming), I
need advice for action.
For now, I stand and draw the line squarely between 2 and 3 above.
You go stack gels however you please. You go and take detailed
pictures of runs of Wolfram CAs, and I don't care how much pain
they encode any more than I care how many copies of Reservoir Dogs
or some other brutal movie are made (or shown, or enjoyed by people).
> But of course believing that Platonic computer programs could create
> our own consciousness requires at least as much as a leap, and after
> a while it all starts to seem curiously reasonable.
The Revolutionary People's Committee for Public Safety
will deal with you later! :-D
Lee
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