A philosophical question

by Coded Logic 12 Replies latest social entertainment

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  Coded Logic

  What's to stop someone from simulating that same sensory input to the roach brain without the robot body? How would the roach know the difference?
  - OEJ

  
  

  The roach brain would be a physical brain. Not a simulated brain. There is a huge difference. I'm NOT talking about the Matrix where we're all brains floating around in a vat hooked up to a bunch of electrodes. Rather, the simulation hypothesis proposes that our brains would be part of the simulation. Not a physical computer architecture that's setup mimic a brain - but instead a full on simulation.

  We can simulate lots of things. But none of those simulations have the properties the actual things have. In the near future we're going to simulate a human brain (The Human Brain Project). But that doesn't mean the simulated brain will have the properties of actual brains (e.g. subjective first person experience). It doesn't mean it will be able to experience pain, or feel pleasure, or love. It will be a simulation of how a brains work. Not an actual working brain.

  Simulating an earthquake inside a supercomputer doesn't cause actual tremors inside the server room. Simulating a blizzard doesn't produce actual snow. And I have yet to hear a good reason why simulating a brain would produce actual consciousness.

  Perhaps we could build a physical brain that would be conscious. But that's not the same thing as a simulation of a brain that is conscious.
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  OneEyedJoe

  It doesn't mean it will be able to experience pain, or feel pleasure, or love.

  Why not?

  
  

  Simulating an earthquake inside a supercomputer doesn't cause actual tremors inside the server room. Simulating a blizzard doesn't produce actual snow. And I have yet to hear a good reason why simulating a brain would produce actual consciousness.

  But if you simulated that roach brain (or a human brain, or an entire human body) in that earthquake simulation, how would the simulated entity tell what is real (the still of the server room) from what is simulated (the tremors) ? You're still missing the point - the simulation doesn't impact reality outside the simulation, it's just that anything inside the simulation will have no way to tell that the simulation isn't reality.

  If a brain is just a computer, I have yet to hear from you a good reason why simulating a brain wouldn't produce consciousness. The only reason (so far as I can see, correct me if I've missed something) a sufficiently detailed simulation of my brain wouldn't be conscious is if you asset the existence of some immaterial component like a soul that is responsible for consciousness. No evidence points to that being the case, though.
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  Coded Logic

  Why not?

  Because positive claims require positive evidence. The person claiming that we could be in a simulation needs to demonstrate that it's possible for consciousness to emerge from a simulations.

  how would the simulated entity tell what is real

  I'm not sure that a "simulated entity" could tell anything because I'm not convinced that a "simulated entity" would be capable of a subjective first person experience. Being a" simulated entity" may well be like being like a rock - that is to say, like nothing at all. Asking "what it's like" is question begging. It assumes the premise it's attempting to demonstrate.

  
  

  I have yet to hear from you a good reason why simulating a brain wouldn't produce consciousness.

  Because simulations are mathematical descriptions of complex systems over time. They don't actually have the properties of the things they're describing. We can build a simulation of the inside of our sun - but that doesn't mean that nuclear fusion is actually going on inside of the computer - or that if you could somehow get inside the simulation you would have an identical experience of - or anything remotely equivalent to - nuclear fusion.

  Conscious minds require physical brains. If we're going to say that simulated brains could produce consciousness than we're going to need some kind of evidence to support that conclusion.