From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@rawbw.com)
Date: Tue Apr 01 2008 - 22:29:53 MDT
Stathis homes in for the kill:
> Lee wrote:
>
>> One possibility [of the scenario you were proposing]
>> is that only my speech centers are being authentically
>> computed while the rest of my cortex is being merely
>> looked up. I would be having very, very little in the
>> way of experience [according to my view], of course.
>
> I guess it is possible if only the lower motor neurons
> controlling speech are normal and the rest of the brain
> is looked up that you could be a complete zombie,
> since presumably lower motor neurons are not
> involved in consciousness, or at any rate not very
> much consciousness.
Yes, an almost complete zombie.
> But in the thought experiment we could identify every
> neuron from the retina up that is involved in visual
> processing, and replace these with looked up analogues.
> You would then have no visual experience at all, but
> you would look at a picture of a dog, accurately
> describe the picture, write an evocative poem about it,
> and truly and honestly believe that you are looking at
> a picture of a dog; while in fact you are completely
> bereft [on your view] of any visual experience.
Yes. But here, of course, you have sliced and diced
what is meant by "I" or "me" or "you" or "one". There
are other ways to dissolve identity, such as split-
brain experiments, or the wonderful exposition
"The Story of a Brain" by Arnold Zuboff, in Hofstadter's
and Dennett's "The Mind's I".
> If you believe that this is possible, then you have to
> admit that you have no evidence right now to support
> the theory that you are actually seeing this email.
I wouldn't go so far as to quite endorse that. As yet
we have no computronium of sufficient density that
could provide the necessary GLUT, and when I am
electrically shielded from the outside it's clear that
my ordinary brain is processing my thoughts according
to normal causal computation, which I claim, as do you,
must be conscious so far as we can even speculate
according to evolutionary theory.
But, under the extreme situations in which these
practical considerations are moot, e.g., I've been
uploaded and the year is 3000 A.D., then it is
possibly just as you say.
> You think you are, but if some medical investigation
> shows that you have been blind for the last twenty years
> without knowing it, you won't be able to dismiss it as
> absurd.
Yes, given vastly improved technology that might
exist hundreds of years from now.
> And, given that you have always enjoyed (or thought you
> enjoyed!) your visual experiences, you might seriously
> consider an expensive and slightly risky operation to
> restore your sight.
I think that that is exactly true, though clearly some part
of me is *enjoying* something closely related. But yes,
it cannot be said that I am enjoying the visual experience
since according to me it is being looked up.
It might be very much like someone who has gotten
used to blindsight, but for whom medical examination
proves that certain normal pathways have been blocked.
Your point is well taken, and this is indeed an awkwardness
in my view.
> At least you see what you think of as an absurdity and
> adjust the theory (functionalism) to remove the absurdity.
> Most philosophers and cognitive scientists dismiss the
> apparent absurdity and simply carry on as before.
Thanks. I do believe that we are concluding that so far
as either of us can see, one is forced into my acceptance
of zombies, or into your acceptance of OMs in platonia,
(about which I intend to start a separate thread).
>> >> Now, let me phrase my answer using an
>> >> experiment so that there is no mistaking
>> >> my meaning. Question: would you prefer
>> >>
>> >> (A) to be tortured for an hour in the
>> >> old-fashioned way
>> >>
>> >> (B) for records of such an hour merely to be
>> >> retrieved from a galaxy far, far away a
>> >> long time ago in which you were tortured
>> >> just the same, and merely the states for
>> >> that hour interval brought to Earth and at
>> >> the proper moment merely looked up?
>>
>> To be precise, an entire state is swapped into the location where you
>> reside once every trillionth of a second. None of the states is causally
>> connected to any of the others: they could even have been retrieved
>> from extremely disparate and separated areas of intergalactic space,
>> by some random process that just happened to find patches of dust.
>> (Those, by an amazing coincidence, do happen to be the same states
>> that are now being computed, a trillion to the second, in the city where
>> you live, by the ordinary metabolic processes (computations).)
>>
>> So can you recapitulate and answer (A) or (B) for sure? Thanks.
>> For of course, if your answer differs from mine, I have further
>> questions.
>
> In that case, (A) and (B) would be equivalent.
Allow me to elaborate slightly. A rogue branch of the ANP
(Australian National Police) is considering whether to
A. seize citizen Stathis Papaioannou and torture him
for an hour the old fashioned way
B. by fantastical means collect patches of dust in our
(Tegmark) infinite level one universe separated by
millions or trillions of lightyears, and load them
into memory sequentially in such a manner that
the torture spoken of in (A) is apparently reproduced,
the sole difference being that there is no actual
causal connection between the states (which is so
important in my view)
C. just save the time and expense of the loading part
of (B) and just leave them laying around in the
solar system here and there
D. don't bother even doing (C), but leave them be,
and cause the normal Stathis metabolism to not
operate for the hour, with only the memories
(i.e. the last state that has been collected in (B)
being implanted and normally running resuming
from there.
My intent was to leave (A) and (B) without significant
modification from the earlier discussion, but if you
suspect I've erred, you can examine the P.S. to this
post and correct me.
At any rate, are you indifferent to A, B, C, and D?
>> Uploading is entirely orthogonal to the argument
>> we're having. The only feasible way to upload
>> someone is to entirely simulate with near perfect
>> fidelity the actual computations his or her brain
>> is already achieving. Whether I or some part of
>> me could in theory be "looked up" now is exactly
>> the same issue as to whether some part of me
>> could be "looked up" after I'm uploaded.
>
> Someone could claim that a perfect simulation might
> behave like the original, but it might be unconscious,
> or at least differently conscious. This the layperson's
> usual response to the idea of mind uploading.
Yes, a commonly heard claim that you and I dismiss,
which appears patently faulty.
> I claim that the argument whereby if part of your
> brain is replaced by the simulation you could not
> possibly notice anything had changed *proves*
> that the simulation must be conscious in exactly the
> same way as biological tissue.
Yes, and under the extremely hypothetical GLUT
hypothesis, I disagree.
> But, according to you, this argument proves nothing
> since it is possible to feel exactly the same while
> undergoing a process of gradual zombification.
I can't quite agree entirely because of the aforementioned
small likelihoods of computronium existence or that I'm
being run in the far future.
> If that's so then there is no *proof* that an upload will
> be conscious in the same way as the original. You might
> think that it sounds reasonable, but ultimately you have
> to take it on faith.
It would be a very strong sort of faith, though, again for
the same reason. But yes, if it's really far in the future
right now, or someone somehow has devised a
computronium type substance, then functionalism
is to me---and has not been for many years now---
entirely 100% correct.
> You also have to admit that you might be at least partially
> a zombie right now, since feeling that you're all conscious
> does not count as evidence that this is in fact the case.
Well, I don't think that that's something that I (or anything
that was pretending to be me) could or would ever concede.
For in the case at hand, where I am an evolutionarily
derived organism, we agree along with right thinking
people everywhere :-) that I'm conscious. On the
other hand, if I were just a GLUT with a tiny, simple
loader program, then since it would simulate (but not
emulate) me, then it too would erroneously announce
that it was conscious.
Lee
P.S. I reproduce here the precise discussion we had
arrived at in the previous posts for your reference in
case it's necessary.
>> >> Now, let me phrase my answer using an
>> >> experiment so that there is no mistaking
>> >> my meaning. Question: would you prefer
>> >>
>> >> (A) to be tortured for an hour in the
>> >> old-fashioned way
>> >>
>> >> (B) for records of such an hour merely to be
>> >> retrieved from a galaxy far, far away a
>> >> long time ago in which you were tortured
>> >> just the same, and merely the states for
>> >> that hour interval brought to Earth and at
>> >> the proper moment merely looked up?
>>
>> To be precise, an entire state is swapped into the location where you
>> reside once every trillionth of a second. None of the states is causally
>> connected to any of the others: they could even have been retrieved
>> from extremely disparate and separated areas of intergalactic space,
>> by some random process that just happened to find patches of dust.
>> (Those, by an amazing coincidence, do happen to be the same states
>> that are now being computed, a trillion to the second, in the city where
>> you live, by the ordinary metabolic processes (computations).)
>>
>> So can you recapitulate and answer (A) or (B) for sure? Thanks.
>> For of course, if your answer differs from mine, I have further
>> questions.
>
> In that case, (A) and (B) would be equivalent.
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