The key think to keep in mind is that EY is a physicalist. He doesn’t think that there is some special consciousness stuff.
Instead, consciousness is just what it feels like to implement an algorithm capable of sophisticated social reasoning.
The theory that consciousness is just what it feels like to be a sophisticated information processor has a number of attractive features ,but it is not a physicalist theory, in every sense of “physicalist”. In particular, physics does not predict that anything feels like anything from the inside, so that would need to be an additional posit.
Relatedly, his theory is in no way a reduction of of consciousness to physics (or computation). A reductive explanation of consciousness would allow you to predict specific subjective states from specific brain states (as in Mary’s Room); would allow you to reliably construct artificial consciousness; and so on. The “just what it feels.like from the inside” theory doesn’t do any of that.
Your 1 states EYs theory is physicalist in the sense of not being substance dualist …and that is true,as far as it goes...but it is far from the only issue, because there are many dualisms and many non-physiclaisms.
I think you can predict specific subjective states by observing that same computations result in same subjective states? I mean, in theory—do you mean that for a theory to be a reduction it must be practical to predict specific human’s qualia? By that standard we don’t have a physical reduction of billiard balls.
We do have a reductive explanation of billiard balls, in theory. If we don’t have a reductive explanation of billiard balls , we don’t have a reductive explanation of anything. Of course , the computations can be impractical, but that’s why Mary in Mary’s Room is a super scientist.
The theory that consciousness is just what it feels like to be a sophisticated information processor has a number of attractive features ,but it is not a physicalist theory, in every sense of “physicalist”. In particular, physics does not predict that anything feels like anything from the inside, so that would need to be an additional posit.
Relatedly, his theory is in no way a reduction of of consciousness to physics (or computation). A reductive explanation of consciousness would allow you to predict specific subjective states from specific brain states (as in Mary’s Room); would allow you to reliably construct artificial consciousness; and so on. The “just what it feels.like from the inside” theory doesn’t do any of that.
Your 1 states EYs theory is physicalist in the sense of not being substance dualist …and that is true,as far as it goes...but it is far from the only issue, because there are many dualisms and many non-physiclaisms.
I think you can predict specific subjective states by observing that same computations result in same subjective states? I mean, in theory—do you mean that for a theory to be a reduction it must be practical to predict specific human’s qualia? By that standard we don’t have a physical reduction of billiard balls.
We do have a reductive explanation of billiard balls, in theory. If we don’t have a reductive explanation of billiard balls , we don’t have a reductive explanation of anything. Of course , the computations can be impractical, but that’s why Mary in Mary’s Room is a super scientist.