Would the model be conscious?
Yes.
Is it still conscious if I simulate step t1, and then wander away for a while?
Would a human be conscious, if you could magically stop time? No, while the time is stopped, there is no consciousness.
Consciousness is an activity; it happens in time. It's like running. Is the simulated robot running? Yes. If you pause the simulation, is the robot still running? No, it's frozen in the middle of running, it is not running while paused.
Consciousness is an activity; it happens in time. It's like running. Is the simulated robot running? Yes. If you pause the simulation, is the robot still running? No, it's frozen in the middle of running, it is not running while paused.
This makes me think that consciousness cannot be a property of minds or programs. "Active" and "inactive" aren't really properties that a program can have. A program execution is just a sequence of states; there's no well-defined interval of time in which the program is "running".
So this ma...
In Zombies! Zombies? Eliezer mentions that one aspect of consciousness is that it can causally affect the real world, e.g. cause you to say "I feel conscious right now", or result in me typing out these words.
Even if a generally accepted mechanism of consciousness has not been found yet are there any tentative explanations for this "can change world" property? Googling around I was unable to find anything (although Zombies are certainly popular).
I had an idea of how this might work, but just wanted to see if it was worth the effort of writing.