For example, according to this theory, a brain being simulated in great detail on a computer is just as conscious as a biological brain. After all, it has no way to tell that it’s not biological; why wouldn’t it be conscious?
It can have a false belief that it is biological , so it can have called false belief that it is conscious. [*]
If you make a computational, and therefore functional , duplicate of a person who believes they are conscious, as people generally do, the duplicate will report that it is biological and conscious. And it’s report that it is biological will be false. So why shouldn’t its report that it is conscious be false?
[*] For many definitions of “conscious”. You might be able to evade the problem by defining consciousness as the ability to have beliefs.
After all, it has no way to tell that it’s not biological; why wouldn’t it be conscious?
Why would it be, if you don’t assume computationalism?
To make computationalism well-defined, we need to define what it means for a computation to be instantiated or not. Most of the philosophical arguments against computationalism attempt to render it trivial by showing that according to any reasonable definition, all computations are occurring everywhere at all times, or at least there are far more computations in any complex object than a computationalist wants to admit. I won’t be reviewing those arguments here; I personally think they fail if we define computation carefully, but I’m not trying to be super-careful in the present essay
Computationalism isn’t the null hypothesis. Even if the arguments against it fail, that doesn’t make it true.
It can have a false belief that it is biological , so it can have called false belief that it is conscious. [*]
If you make a computational, and therefore functional , duplicate of a person who believes they are conscious, as people generally do, the duplicate will report that it is biological and conscious. And it’s report that it is biological will be false. So why shouldn’t its report that it is conscious be false?
[*] For many definitions of “conscious”. You might be able to evade the problem by defining consciousness as the ability to have beliefs.
Why would it be, if you don’t assume computationalism?
Computationalism isn’t the null hypothesis. Even if the arguments against it fail, that doesn’t make it true.