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Juno_Watt comments on How sure are you that brain emulations would be conscious? - Less Wrong
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http://lesswrong.com/lw/p7/zombies_zombies/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/p9/the_generalized_antizombie_principle/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/f1u/causal_reference/
More generally http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Zombies_(sequence)
The argument against p-zombies is that there is no physical difference that could explain the difference in consciousness. That does not extend to silicon WBEs or AIs.
The argument against p-zombies is that the reason for our talk of consciousness is literally our consciousness, and hence there is no reason for a being not otherwise deliberately programmed to reproduce talk about consciousness to do it if it weren't conscious. It is a corollary of this that a zombie, which is physically identical, and therefore not deliberately programmed to imitate talk of consciousness but must still reproduce it, must talk about consciousness for the same reason we do. That is, the zombies must be conscious.
A faithful synaptic-level silicone WBE, if it independently starts talking about it at all, must be talking about it for the same reason as us (ie. consciousness), since it hasn't been deliberately programmed to fake consciousness-talk. Or, something extremely unlikely has happened.
Note that supposing that how the synapses are implemented could matter for consciousness, even while the macro-scale behaviour of the brain is identical, is equivalent to supposing that consciousness doesn't actually play any role in our consciousness-talk, since David Chalmers would write just as many papers on the Hard Problem regardless of whether we flipped the "consciousness" bit in every synapse in his brain.
A functional duplicate will talk the same way as whomever it is a duplicate of.
A WBE of a specific person will respond to the same stimuli in the same way as that person. Logically, that will be for the reason that it is a duplicate, Physically, the "reason" or, ultimate cause, could be quite different, since the WBE is physically different.
It has been programmed to be a functional duplicate of a specific individual.,
Something unlikely to happen naturally has happened. A WBE is an artificial construct which is exactly the same as an person in some ways,a nd radically different in others.
Actually it isn't, for reasons that are widely misunderstood: kidney dyalisis machines don't need nephrons, but that doens't mean nephrons are causally idle in kidneys.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/p9/the_generalized_antizombie_principle/
Why? That doesn't argue any point relevant to this discussion.
Did you read all the way to the dialogue containing this hypothetical?
The following discussion seems very relevant indeed.
I don't see anything very new here.
How does Albert know that Charles;s consciousness hasn't changed? It could have changed becasue of the replacement of protoplasm by silicon. And Charles won't report the change because of the functional equivalence of the change.
If Charles's qualia have changed, that will be noticeable to Charles -- introspection is hardly necessary, sinc ethe external world wil look different! But Charles won't report the change. "Introspection" is being used ambiguously here, between what is noticed and what is reported.
Albert's comment is a non sequitur. That the same effect occurs does not prove that the same cause occurs, There can mutliple causes of reports like "I see red". Because the neural substitution preserves funcitonal equivlance, Charles will report the same qualia whether or not he still has them,
Implying that qualia can be removed from a brain while maintaining all internal processes that sum up to cause talk of qualia, without deliberately replacing them with a substitute. In other words, your "qualia" are causally impotent and I'd go so far as to say, meaningless.
Are you sure you read Eliezer's critique of Chalmers? This is exactly the error that Chalmers makes.
It may also help you to read making beliefs pay rent and consider what the notion of qualia actually does for you, if you can imagine a person talking of qualia for the same reason as you while not having any.
Doesn't follow, Qualia aren't causing Charles's qualia-talk, but that doens't mean thery aren't causing mine. Kidney dyalisis machines don't need nephrons, but that doens't mean nephrons are causally idle in kidneys.
The epiphenomenality argument works for atom-by-atom duplicates, but not in WBE and neural replacement scenarios. if indentity theory is true, qualia have the causal powers of whatever physical properties they are identical to. If identity theory is true, changing the physcial substrate could remove or change the qualia.
You keep bringing up that argument, but kidney dialysis machines are built specifically to replace the functionality of kidneys ("deliberately replacing them with a substitute"). If you built a kidney-dialysis machine by a 1:1 mapping and forgot some cell type that is causally active in kidneys, the machine would not actually work. If it did, you should question if that cell type actually does anything in kidneys.
Changing the physical substrate could remove the qualia, but to claim it could remove the qualia while keeping talk of qualia alive, by sheer coincidence - implying that there's a separate, unrelated reason why the replacement neurons talk of qualia, that has nothing to do with qualia, that was not deliberately engineered - that stretches belief past the breaking point. You're saying, essentially: "qualia cause talk of qualia in my meatbrain, but talk of qualia is not any indication of qualia in any differently built brain implementing the same spec". Then why are you so certain that your talk of qualia is caused by your supposed qualia, and not the neural analogue of what causes talk of qualia in WBE brains? It really does sound like your qualia are either superfluous or bizarre.
[edit] Actually, I'm still not sure I understand you. Are you proposing that it's impossible to build a straight neuron substitute that talks of qualia, without engineering purposeful qualia-talk-emulation machinery? Is that what you mean by "functional equivalent"? I'm having serious trouble comprehending your position.
[edit] I went back to your original comment, and I think we're using "functional equivalence" in a very different sense. To you, it seems to indicate "a system that behaves in the same way despite having potentially hugely different internal architecture". To me, it indicates a 1:1 neuron computational replacement; keeping the computational processes while running them on a different substrate.
I agree that there may conceivably exist functionally equivalent systems that don't have qualia, even though I have difficulty seeing how they could compute "talk of qualia" without running a sufficient-fidelity qualia simulation internally, which would again correspond to our qualia. However, I find it unlikely that anybody who is not a very very bored deity would ever actually create such a system - the qualia-talk machinery seems completely pointless to its function, as well as probably much more computationally expensive. (This system has to be self-deluding in a way consistent with a simpler system that it is not allowed to emulate) Why not just build a regular qualia engine, by copying the meat-brain processes 1:1? That's what I'd consider the "natural" functional-equivalence system.
I arguing about cases ofWEB and neurla replacement, which are stiuplated as not being 1:1 atom-for-atom replacements.
Not coincidence: a further stipulation that funcitonal equivalene is preserved in WBE;s.
I am noting thar equivlant talk must be included in functional equivalence.
You mean atom-by-atom? But is has been put to me that you only need synapse-by-synapse copies. That is what I am responding to.
I don't think I understand what you're saying here, what kind of change could you notice but not report?
If a change to the way your funcitonality is implemented alters how your consciousness seems to you, your consciosuness will seem different to you. If your funcitonality is preserved, you won't be able to report it. You will report tomatos are red even if they look grue or bleen to you. (You may also not be able to cognitively access--remember or think about--the change, if that is part of the preserved functionality, But if your experience changes, you can't fail to experience it).
Hmm, it seems to me that any change that affects your experience but not your reports must have also affected your memory. Otherwise you should be able to say that the color of tomatoes now seems darker or cooler or just different than it did before. Would you agree?
Two things. 1) that the same electronic functioning produces consciousness if implemented on biological goo but does not if implemented on silicon seems unlikely, what probability would you assign that this is the meaningful difference? 2) if it is biological goo we need to have consciousness, why not build an AI out of biological goo? Why not synthesize neurons and stack and connect them in the appropriate ways, and have understood the whole process well enough that either you assemble it working or you know how to start it? It would still be artificial, but made from materials that can produce consciousness when functioning.
1) What seems (un)likely to an individual depends on their assumptions. If you regard consc. as a form of information processing, thern there is very little inferrential gap to a conclusion of functionalism or computationalism. But there is a Hard Problem of consc, precisely because some aspects --subjective experince, qualia -- don't have any theoretical or practical basis in functionalism of computer technology: we can build memory chips and write storage routines, but we can't even get a start on building emotion chips or writing seeRed().
2) It's not practical at the monent, and wouldn't answer the theoretical questions.