Note that future states of the simulation are stored in memory instead of being computed on demand, so this cannot be a necessary condition for producing consciousness
How are you defining “state”? If a future state is a snapshot of the outer world, like a movie frame that hasnt been projected yet, and it is sent to the brain by something like normal sensory channels, then all the “producing consciousness” is happening in the brain , and the pre-arranged nature of the snapshots being fed in is irrelevant.
I am defining it as you said. They are like movie frames that haven’t been projected yet. I agree that the pre-arranged nature of the snapshots is irrelevant—that was the point of the example (sorry that this wasn’t clear).
The purpose of the example was to falsify the following hypothesis: “In order for a simulation to produce conscious experiences, it must compute the next state based on the previous state. It can’t just ‘play the simulation from memory’”
Maybe what you are getting at is that this hypothesis doesn’t do justice to the intuitions that inspired it. Something complex is happening inside the brain that is analogous to ‘computation on-demand.’ This differentiates the computer-brain system from the stack of papers that are being moved around.
This seems legit… I just would like to have a more precise understanding of what this ‘computation on-demand’ property is.
How are you defining “state”? If a future state is a snapshot of the outer world, like a movie frame that hasnt been projected yet, and it is sent to the brain by something like normal sensory channels, then all the “producing consciousness” is happening in the brain , and the pre-arranged nature of the snapshots being fed in is irrelevant.
I am defining it as you said. They are like movie frames that haven’t been projected yet. I agree that the pre-arranged nature of the snapshots is irrelevant—that was the point of the example (sorry that this wasn’t clear).
The purpose of the example was to falsify the following hypothesis:
“In order for a simulation to produce conscious experiences, it must compute the next state based on the previous state. It can’t just ‘play the simulation from memory’”
Maybe what you are getting at is that this hypothesis doesn’t do justice to the intuitions that inspired it. Something complex is happening inside the brain that is analogous to ‘computation on-demand.’ This differentiates the computer-brain system from the stack of papers that are being moved around.
This seems legit… I just would like to have a more precise understanding of what this ‘computation on-demand’ property is.
Well, you can believe that its some kind of physical causation without breaking physicalism.