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SaidAchmiz comments on A defense of Senexism (Deathism) - Less Wrong
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No direct evidence, just the totality of what we currently know about the mind (i.e. cognitive science). Subjective experience is not irrelevant, though I am still confused about its nature. I don't, however, have any reason to believe that it's tied to any particular instantiation.
I don't think my view can properly be characterized as dualism. I don't posit any sort of nonmaterial properties of mind, for instance, nor that the mind itself is some nonmaterial substance. Computationalism merely says, essentially, that "the mind is what the brain does", and that other physical substrates can perform the same computation.
Everything that I know about the idea of embodied cognition leads me to conclude that it is a brand of mysticism. I've never heard a cogent argument for why embodiment can't be simulated on some suitable level.
Hmm, I can see arguments for and against calling computationalism a form of dualism. I don't think it matters much, so I'll accept your claim that it's not.
As for embodied cognition, most of what I know about it comes from reading Lawrence Shapiro's book Embodied Cognition. I was much less impressed with the field after reading that book, but I do think the general idea is important, that it's a mistake to think of the mind and body as separate things, and that in order to study cognition we have to take the body into consideration.
I agree that embodiment could be simulated. But I don't like to make assumptions about how subjective experience works, and for all I know, it arises from some subtrates of cognition but not others. Since I think of my subjective experience as an essential part of my self, this seems important.
I agree. I don't think embodiment is irrelevant; my own field (human-computer interaction) takes embodiment quite seriously — it's an absolutely integral factor in natural user interface design, for example.
I just don't think embodiment is in any way magic, the way that the embodied cognition people seem to think and imply. If you can simulate a human and their environment on any level you like, then embodiment stops being an issue. It seems like we don't actually disagree on this.
This is certainly not impossible, but it's not clear to me why you couldn't then simulate the substrate on a sufficiently low level as to capture whatever aspect of the substrate is responsible for enabling cognition. After all, we could in principle simulate the entire universe down to quantum configuration distributions, right?
If you wanted to make a weaker claim based on computational tractability, then that would of course be another thing.
I concur with this. To the extent that I have any kind of a handle of what subjective experience even is, it does seem quite important.
P.S.
Yeah, this is probably a question of preferred terminology and I am not inclined to argue about it too much; I just wanted to clarify my actual views.
Sure you can (and have to) take the body with you into the simulation - but then the (biological) rules governing the body still apply. You may have more control over them though.