I think this would benefit from a crisp definition of “consciousness” and of “simulation”. THEN you can clarify your question to one of:
MUST consciousness be simulated, because it can’t exist in a base-level reality.
DOES my consciousness happen to be simulated, even though it’s feasible to exist in a base-level reality.
CAN consciousness exist in a simulation, or is it only conscious in the base-level reality, with the simulation being some sort of interference layer.
I haven’t seen good enough definitions of either thing for these questions to make sense. Most conceptions of ‘simulation’ are complete enough that it’s impossible to determine from inside whether or not it’s a simulation, so that would lead to “with that conception of simulation, with the consciousness that I’m experiencing, it is untestable and unimportant whether it’s in a simulation”.
Yeah I probably should have, thanks for the comment.
What I meant by simulation was whatever model the brain has of itself, and if that was necessary for consciousness (with consciousness I don’t have a really precise definition, but I meant what my experience feels like, being me feels like something, while I’d assume a basic computer program or an object does not feel anything) to arise, and the distinction from that and base reality was where the computing happens (in an abstract way) the brain is computing me and what I’m feeling (the computed is what I mean by simulation). The way it might be testable is that it predicts that if an agent is not modeling himself internally we can rule out that it’s conscious.
I think this would benefit from a crisp definition of “consciousness” and of “simulation”. THEN you can clarify your question to one of:
MUST consciousness be simulated, because it can’t exist in a base-level reality.
DOES my consciousness happen to be simulated, even though it’s feasible to exist in a base-level reality.
CAN consciousness exist in a simulation, or is it only conscious in the base-level reality, with the simulation being some sort of interference layer.
I haven’t seen good enough definitions of either thing for these questions to make sense. Most conceptions of ‘simulation’ are complete enough that it’s impossible to determine from inside whether or not it’s a simulation, so that would lead to “with that conception of simulation, with the consciousness that I’m experiencing, it is untestable and unimportant whether it’s in a simulation”.
Yeah I probably should have, thanks for the comment.
What I meant by simulation was whatever model the brain has of itself, and if that was necessary for consciousness (with consciousness I don’t have a really precise definition, but I meant what my experience feels like, being me feels like something, while I’d assume a basic computer program or an object does not feel anything) to arise, and the distinction from that and base reality was where the computing happens (in an abstract way) the brain is computing me and what I’m feeling (the computed is what I mean by simulation). The way it might be testable is that it predicts that if an agent is not modeling himself internally we can rule out that it’s conscious.