In order to claim that qualia can’t be duplicated in a qualia simulator, you are claiming that a purely mental property exists, outside physical reality.
I treated qualia the same way I treated gravity—does that mean I must also believe gravity to be a purely mental property outside physical reality?
And when you point this assembly of biases at something that is otherwise very simple, it’s trivial to see that the question isn’t, “can machines duplicate qualia?”, because clearly, we are machines, so the question is silly.
The question wasn’t if machines can duplicate qualia, but if Turing Machines can duplicate qualia.
Turing machines can’t duplicate gravity.
Turing machines can’t duplicate sound.
Turing machines can’t duplicate lots and lots of physical phenomena. Machines can duplicate these things, Turing machines can’t.
You have exactly the same evidence for other people having qualia, as you do for a simulation of a person having qualia: namely, that the person or simulation says they do.
The question wasn’t if machines can duplicate qualia, but if Turing Machines can duplicate qualia.
Then the question is whether reality is Turing computable, and we currently have no reason to believe it isn’t.
(Or, more precisely, we have no evidence that we would experience anything differently if our universe were itself a simulation running on a Turing machine.)
You have exactly the same evidence for other people having qualia, as you do for a simulation of a person having qualia: namely, that the person or simulation says they do.
Not exactly the same. My own internal experience is applicable with more certainty to other flesh brains that use the same physical processes as mine than it is to electronic simulations thereof.
Then the question is whether reality is Turing computable
And my whole point is that reality being Turing computable doesn’t mean that reality is Turing-producable. Same way that a black hole can be Turing computable but not Turing-producable.
Or, more precisely, we have no evidence that we would experience anything differently if our universe were itself a simulation running on a Turing machine.
We have no evidence to believe that anyone would experience anything on a Turing machine algorithm. Turing machines produces an output whose meaning is deciphered by external observers according to their own definitions. There’s no magic in the Turing Machine that creates an independent universe with its own internal meaning and internal experience—the Turing Machine returns some computations to us, to our universe, not to some different internal one.
It’s the belief the Turing Machine creates an internal universe with its own life that is a confusion.
Unless Tegmark IV—in which case we don’t even need the Turing machine, the math alone would sustain said internal universe.
My own internal experience is applicable with more certainty to other flesh brains that use the same physical processes as mine than it is to electronic simulations thereof.
Why, if it’s a complete simulation of those “same physical processes”?
You’re missing the privileged hypothesis here. The hypothesis you’re privileging is, “consciousness or qualia are physical side-effects of the brain’s operation”… a proposition for which no evidence exists, first of all.
You’re then using this hypothesis as a basis for an extended argument for the possibility that, if this hypothesis were true, then simulation of consciousness wouldn’t really be the same as regular consciousness.
But, you’re not only privileging that hypothesis (i.e., putting it forward without any evidence), you’re not even thinking through the ramifications of it being true!
Because if it’s true, then either those physical effects feed back into the operation of your brain, or they don’t.
And if they don’t, then, what do they matter? Why should we care about them, any more than we care about how much heat your brain radiates as a side-effect of its operation? (And how could this side-effect be perceived by you as “qualia” in that case?)
And conversely, if they do feed back into your brain’s operation (as they would have to in order for you to perceive them!), well, then a simulation which lacks this element will diverge in behavior from a real human, and thereby make apparent what is missing from the simulation.
In other words, you’re simply making another zombie-world argument. (That is, you’re making another “epiphenomena” argument—that some mysterious thing exists which has no effects and yet somehow matters, thereby providing a rationale for the bottom-line intuitions you started out with.)
Why, if it’s a complete simulation of those “same physical processes”?
For the same reason that a complete simulation of a plane, down to the quark level,
still won’t fly.
You’re missing the privileged hypothesis here. The hypothesis you’re privileging is, “>consciousness or qualia are physical side-effects of the brain’s operation”… a >proposition for which no evidence exists, first of all.
That’s vaguely phrased. There may be no direct evidence that qualia are
epiphenomenal side effects, but there is plenty of evidence that they covary
with brain operation.
And conversely, if they do feed back into your brain’s operation (as they would
have to in order for you to perceive them!), well, then a simulation which lacks this > element will diverge in behavior from a real human, and thereby make apparent
what is missing from the simulation.
It is perfectly possible for qualia to be causally effective in brains, and to be missing
from simulations, and for the simulation to be behaviourally identical. It For instance,
transistors are causally effective in electronic computers. But any electronic computer
can be rebuilt as a behaviourally identical optical, mechanical, hydrualic (etc) computer.
Why, if it’s a complete simulation of those “same physical processes”?
Because I understand the word “simulation” to mean an algorithm which can answer questions about the states of the thing it simulates; not something which actually performs those same processes. The simulation of an Boeing can’t actually fly actual people to actual America. Why should the simulation of a brain actually experience actual qualia?
The confusion doesn’t lie with me about this—nobody, not even you, has ANY problem understanding why the simulation of a physical phenomenon (e.g. gravity, flight, fire, weather patterns) is different to the physical phenomenon itself. And yet many people have trouble understanding why the simulation of a mental phenomenon may be different to the mental phenomenon itself.
In other words, you’re simply making another zombie-world argument.
Not so. The zombie-world argument is about an atom-for-atom identical to our world reality whose people nonetheless don’t experience qualia, even though they talk about them.
A simulation of a thing isn’t atom-for-atom identical to the thing it simulates. It might compute every single atom, so that it produces answers which an outside observer can somehow use their own cognitive processes to map its responses onto the relevant thing. But the map isn’t the territory.
Unless, again, Tegmark IV—keep in mind that my own position is NOT actually “No qualia in simulation” but rather “Tegmark IV or no qualia in a simulation”.
That some mysterious thing exists which has no effects
I certainly believe qualia have an effect, including the fact I’m talking about them right now. Same as mass, gravity, sound waves, radiation, etc… I treat them as a physical phenomenon, which can be reproduced by machines, but only simulated and not reproduced in a Turing machine.
Because I understand the word “simulation” to mean an algorithm which can answer questions about the states of the thing it simulates; not something which actually performs those same processes.
Yes, generally speaking. But certain kinds of simulation necessarily perform that which they simulate. For example, a perfect simulation of a scientific calculator necessarily is a scientific calculator, because in reporting what a scientific calculator would show as the answer, it necessarily itself shows that same answer.
The confusion doesn’t lie with me about this—nobody, not even you, has ANY problem understanding why the simulation of a physical phenomenon (e.g. gravity, flight, fire, weather patterns) is different to the physical phenomenon itself. And yet many people have trouble understanding why the simulation of a mental phenomenon may be different to the mental phenomenon itself.
Let’s re-word that last bit:
And yet many people have trouble understanding why the simulation of a scientific calculator may be different to the scientific calculator itself.
Certainly a Turing machine can be anything which is strictly defined by the return of an abstract output after the manipulation/transformation of a symbolic map it receives as input/initial state—so, a Turing machine can be a simulator, a calculator, a chess playing program, etc, etc.
The confusion doesn’t lie with me about this—nobody, not even you, has ANY problem understanding why the simulation of a physical phenomenon (e.g. gravity, flight, fire, weather patterns) is different to the physical phenomenon itself.
But first, you have to demonstrate that this “qualia” thing is physical, which you haven’t done. When you can show qualia are physical in this same way, you might have a case.
But at this point, you’re still arguing the purely-theoretical possibility of a very-privileged hypothesis.
my own position is NOT actually “No qualia in simulation” but rather “Tegmark IV or no qualia in a simulation”.
And of those alternatives, Tegmark is by far the simpler hypothesis: it doesn’t require privileging a complex carving out of categories to support it.
Meanwhile, the only thing “no qualia in simulation” offers as a selling point is that it appeals to human intuition… which should make it a suspicious alternative, indeed, where science is concerned.
(After all, the history of science seems to be a never-ending march of finding out ways the world doesn’t really work like our intuitions and biases say they do.)
Meanwhile, the only thing “no qualia in simulation” offers as a selling point is that it appeals to human intuition...
Actually, it might appeal to the intuition in the abstract as we talk about it now, but if someone were really watching a simulation of a person—and better, interacting with it—then, given a perfect simulation it would very difficult for them to believe anything but that the simulated person was real, conscious, and had genuine emotions.
Because I understand the word “simulation” to mean an algorithm which can answer questions about the states of the thing it simulates; not something which actually performs those same processes. The simulation of an Boeing can’t actually fly actual people to actual America. Why should the simulation of a brain actually experience actual qualia?
The problem with this argument is that an external observer cannot tell apart the output of a simulated mind from the output of a real actual brain, other than by looking at its substrate. Thus, the simulated mind is sort of like a zombie: it will talk about its own subjective experience, but the only real basis to that claim will be a portion of its algorithm.
I think it can still be argued that subjective experience is physically “real”, on Occam’s razor grounds: but it’s not an easy claim to make.
You have exactly the same evidence for other people having qualia, as you do for > a simulation of a person having qualia: namely, that the person or simulation says >they do.
No,. there is extra evidence that other people have qualia: you know they are made
out of stuff that can generate qualia, because it is the stuff you are made of.
Then the question is whether reality is Turing computable, and we currently have no reason to believe it isn’t.
No, that isn’t the question: it is naturalistically possible for qualia to only
exist “on the metal”. And the computability of physics is a much more complex
subject than you are assuming.
“A decisive refutation of any claim that our reality is computer-simulated would be the discovery of some uncomputable physics, because if reality is doing something that no computer can do, it cannot be a computer simulation. (Computability generally means computability by a Turing machine. Hypercomputation (super-Turing computation) introduces other possibilities which will be dealt with separately). In fact, known physics is held to be (Turing) computable,[11] but the statement “physics is computable” needs to be qualified in various ways. Before symbolic computation, a number, thinking particularly of a real number, one with an infinite number of digits, was said to be computable if a Turing machine will continue to spit out digits endlessly, never reaching a “final digit”.[12] This runs counter, however, to the idea of simulating physics in real time (or any plausible kind of time). Known physical laws (including those of quantum mechanics) are very much infused with real numbers and continua, and the universe seems to be able to decide their values on a moment-by-moment basis. As Richard Feynman put it:[13]
"It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do? So I have often made the hypotheses that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed, and the laws will turn out to be simple, like the chequer board with all its apparent complexities".
The objection could be made that the simulation does not have to run in “real time”.[14] It misses an important point, though: the shortfall is not linear; rather it is a matter of performing an infinite number of computational steps in a finite time.[15]”
I treated qualia the same way I treated gravity—does that mean I must also believe gravity to be a purely mental property outside physical reality?
The question wasn’t if machines can duplicate qualia, but if Turing Machines can duplicate qualia.
Turing machines can’t duplicate gravity. Turing machines can’t duplicate sound. Turing machines can’t duplicate lots and lots of physical phenomena. Machines can duplicate these things, Turing machines can’t.
Actually, you didn’t.
You have exactly the same evidence for other people having qualia, as you do for a simulation of a person having qualia: namely, that the person or simulation says they do.
Then the question is whether reality is Turing computable, and we currently have no reason to believe it isn’t.
(Or, more precisely, we have no evidence that we would experience anything differently if our universe were itself a simulation running on a Turing machine.)
Not exactly the same. My own internal experience is applicable with more certainty to other flesh brains that use the same physical processes as mine than it is to electronic simulations thereof.
And my whole point is that reality being Turing computable doesn’t mean that reality is Turing-producable. Same way that a black hole can be Turing computable but not Turing-producable.
We have no evidence to believe that anyone would experience anything on a Turing machine algorithm. Turing machines produces an output whose meaning is deciphered by external observers according to their own definitions. There’s no magic in the Turing Machine that creates an independent universe with its own internal meaning and internal experience—the Turing Machine returns some computations to us, to our universe, not to some different internal one.
It’s the belief the Turing Machine creates an internal universe with its own life that is a confusion.
Unless Tegmark IV—in which case we don’t even need the Turing machine, the math alone would sustain said internal universe.
Why, if it’s a complete simulation of those “same physical processes”?
You’re missing the privileged hypothesis here. The hypothesis you’re privileging is, “consciousness or qualia are physical side-effects of the brain’s operation”… a proposition for which no evidence exists, first of all.
You’re then using this hypothesis as a basis for an extended argument for the possibility that, if this hypothesis were true, then simulation of consciousness wouldn’t really be the same as regular consciousness.
But, you’re not only privileging that hypothesis (i.e., putting it forward without any evidence), you’re not even thinking through the ramifications of it being true!
Because if it’s true, then either those physical effects feed back into the operation of your brain, or they don’t.
And if they don’t, then, what do they matter? Why should we care about them, any more than we care about how much heat your brain radiates as a side-effect of its operation? (And how could this side-effect be perceived by you as “qualia” in that case?)
And conversely, if they do feed back into your brain’s operation (as they would have to in order for you to perceive them!), well, then a simulation which lacks this element will diverge in behavior from a real human, and thereby make apparent what is missing from the simulation.
In other words, you’re simply making another zombie-world argument. (That is, you’re making another “epiphenomena” argument—that some mysterious thing exists which has no effects and yet somehow matters, thereby providing a rationale for the bottom-line intuitions you started out with.)
For the same reason that a complete simulation of a plane, down to the quark level, still won’t fly.
That’s vaguely phrased. There may be no direct evidence that qualia are epiphenomenal side effects, but there is plenty of evidence that they covary with brain operation.
It is perfectly possible for qualia to be causally effective in brains, and to be missing from simulations, and for the simulation to be behaviourally identical. It For instance, transistors are causally effective in electronic computers. But any electronic computer can be rebuilt as a behaviourally identical optical, mechanical, hydrualic (etc) computer.
Because I understand the word “simulation” to mean an algorithm which can answer questions about the states of the thing it simulates; not something which actually performs those same processes. The simulation of an Boeing can’t actually fly actual people to actual America. Why should the simulation of a brain actually experience actual qualia?
The confusion doesn’t lie with me about this—nobody, not even you, has ANY problem understanding why the simulation of a physical phenomenon (e.g. gravity, flight, fire, weather patterns) is different to the physical phenomenon itself. And yet many people have trouble understanding why the simulation of a mental phenomenon may be different to the mental phenomenon itself.
Not so. The zombie-world argument is about an atom-for-atom identical to our world reality whose people nonetheless don’t experience qualia, even though they talk about them.
A simulation of a thing isn’t atom-for-atom identical to the thing it simulates. It might compute every single atom, so that it produces answers which an outside observer can somehow use their own cognitive processes to map its responses onto the relevant thing. But the map isn’t the territory.
Unless, again, Tegmark IV—keep in mind that my own position is NOT actually “No qualia in simulation” but rather “Tegmark IV or no qualia in a simulation”.
I certainly believe qualia have an effect, including the fact I’m talking about them right now. Same as mass, gravity, sound waves, radiation, etc… I treat them as a physical phenomenon, which can be reproduced by machines, but only simulated and not reproduced in a Turing machine.
Yes, generally speaking. But certain kinds of simulation necessarily perform that which they simulate. For example, a perfect simulation of a scientific calculator necessarily is a scientific calculator, because in reporting what a scientific calculator would show as the answer, it necessarily itself shows that same answer.
Let’s re-word that last bit:
See above.
Certainly a Turing machine can be anything which is strictly defined by the return of an abstract output after the manipulation/transformation of a symbolic map it receives as input/initial state—so, a Turing machine can be a simulator, a calculator, a chess playing program, etc, etc.
Are mental phenomena are like calculations, or like physical event and processes? That is the question. You don’t seem to have answered it.
But first, you have to demonstrate that this “qualia” thing is physical, which you haven’t done. When you can show qualia are physical in this same way, you might have a case.
But at this point, you’re still arguing the purely-theoretical possibility of a very-privileged hypothesis.
And of those alternatives, Tegmark is by far the simpler hypothesis: it doesn’t require privileging a complex carving out of categories to support it.
Meanwhile, the only thing “no qualia in simulation” offers as a selling point is that it appeals to human intuition… which should make it a suspicious alternative, indeed, where science is concerned.
(After all, the history of science seems to be a never-ending march of finding out ways the world doesn’t really work like our intuitions and biases say they do.)
Actually, it might appeal to the intuition in the abstract as we talk about it now, but if someone were really watching a simulation of a person—and better, interacting with it—then, given a perfect simulation it would very difficult for them to believe anything but that the simulated person was real, conscious, and had genuine emotions.
“no qualia in simulations” requires qualia to be physical. “Tegmark IV” requires mathematical constructs to be physical.
I’m not at all sure which is the simplest hypothesis. Tegmark IV does have the benefit of explaining a larger chunk of reality though.
The problem with this argument is that an external observer cannot tell apart the output of a simulated mind from the output of a real actual brain, other than by looking at its substrate. Thus, the simulated mind is sort of like a zombie: it will talk about its own subjective experience, but the only real basis to that claim will be a portion of its algorithm.
I think it can still be argued that subjective experience is physically “real”, on Occam’s razor grounds: but it’s not an easy claim to make.
No,. there is extra evidence that other people have qualia: you know they are made out of stuff that can generate qualia, because it is the stuff you are made of.
No, that isn’t the question: it is naturalistically possible for qualia to only exist “on the metal”. And the computability of physics is a much more complex subject than you are assuming.
“A decisive refutation of any claim that our reality is computer-simulated would be the discovery of some uncomputable physics, because if reality is doing something that no computer can do, it cannot be a computer simulation. (Computability generally means computability by a Turing machine. Hypercomputation (super-Turing computation) introduces other possibilities which will be dealt with separately). In fact, known physics is held to be (Turing) computable,[11] but the statement “physics is computable” needs to be qualified in various ways. Before symbolic computation, a number, thinking particularly of a real number, one with an infinite number of digits, was said to be computable if a Turing machine will continue to spit out digits endlessly, never reaching a “final digit”.[12] This runs counter, however, to the idea of simulating physics in real time (or any plausible kind of time). Known physical laws (including those of quantum mechanics) are very much infused with real numbers and continua, and the universe seems to be able to decide their values on a moment-by-moment basis. As Richard Feynman put it:[13]
The objection could be made that the simulation does not have to run in “real time”.[14] It misses an important point, though: the shortfall is not linear; rather it is a matter of performing an infinite number of computational steps in a finite time.[15]”