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Laoch comments on Eight questions for computationalists - Less Wrong Discussion
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I reject the "Consciousness is really just computation" if you define computation as the operation of contemporary computers not brains, but I wholeheartedly agree that we are physical and an effect of evolution as is our subjective experience. I just don't think that the mind/consciousness is solely the neural connections of ones brain. Cell metabolism and whole organism metabolism and the environment of that organism define the concious experience also. If it's reduced to a neural net important factors will most certainly be lost.
Does this mean that amputees should be less conscious?
Maybe not with humans, but definitely for octopuses!
(More seriously, depending on how seriously you take embodied cognition, there may be some small loss. I mean, we know that your gut bacteria influence your mood via the nerves to the gut; so there are connections. And once there are connections, it becomes much more plausible that cut connections may decrease consciousness. After a few weeks in a float tank, how conscious would you be? Not very...)
I'm pretty sure that you agree that none of this means that a human brain in a vat with proper connections to the environment, real or simulated, is inherently less conscious than one attached to a body.
I don't take embodiment that far, no, but a simulated amputation in a simulation would seem as problematic as a real amputation in the real-world barring extraordinary intervention on the part of the simulation.
No but subjective conscious experience would change definitely.
Well, that ought to be testable. If he upload a human, and the source of consciousness is lost, they should stop feeling it. Provided they're honest, we can just ask them.
That could very well be the case.
Well, you're a p-zombie, you would say that.