I’m just asking you what the word means to you, because it demonstrably means different things to different people, even though they are all English users.
I have already stated those aspects of the meaning of “consciousness” necessary for my argument to go through. Why should I explain more?
I am saying it is not conceptually possible to have something that precisely mimics a biological entity without being biological.
The claim then rules out computationalism.
I mean data about individuals like resumes and qualifications That racial-group info correlates with important things is unimportant, unless it correlates significantly more than individual data. However, the reverse is the case.
If you use the word “consciousness”, you ought to know what you mean by it.
The same applies to you. Any English speaker can attach a meaning to “consciousness”. That doesn’t imply the possession of deep metaphysical insight. I don’t know what dark matter “is” either. I don’t need to fully explain what consc. “is”, since ..
“I don’t think the argument requires consc. to be anything more than:
1) something that is there or not (not a matter of interpretation or convention).
2) something that is not entirely inferable from behaviour.”
What makes you think I know?
This cybernetic replacement fully emulates all interactions that it can have with any neighboring cells including any changes in those interactions based on inputs received and time passed, but is not biological.
Why would that be possible? Neurons have to process biochemicals. A full replacement would have to as well. How could it do that without being at least partly biological?
It might be the case that an adequate replacement—not a full replacment—could be non-biological. But it might not.
Therefore a WBE will have different consciousness (i.e. qualitatively different experiences), although very similar to the corresponding human consciousness.
That would depend on the granularity of the WBE, which has not beens pecified, and the nature of the superveninece of experince on brains states, which is unknown.
I wasn’t arguing that differences in implementation are not important. For some purposes they are very important.
I am not arguing they are important. I am arguing that there are no facts about what is an implementation unless a human has decided what is being implemented.
We should not discuss the question of what can be conscious, however, without first tabooing “consciousness” as I requested.
I don’t think they argument requires consc. to be anything more than:
1) something that is there or not (not a matter of interpetation or convention).
2) something that is not entirely inferable from behaviour.
Personally, I think there are good arguments for the functionalist view, and the biological view seems problematic: “biological” is a fuzzy, high-level category that doesn’t seem like it could be of any fundamental importance.
“Biological” could be taken as a place holder for the idea that there are very specific, but unknown, bits of phsycis and chemistry involved in consciousness. That there are specific but known bits of physics and chemistry involved in some things is unconentious: you can’t make a magnet or superconductor out of just anything, You can, however, implement an abstract function, or computer out of just about anything, Hence the Blockhead objection to functionalism (etc).
You’ve chosen one of the easier aspects of cosnciousness: self-awareness rather than, eg. qualia.
The “necessarily biological” could be aposteriori nomic necessity, not apriori concpetual necessity, which is the only kind you knock down in your comment.
A successful WBE should exhibit all the externally observable behaviors of a human—as a black box, without looking at implementation details. This definition seems to restrict the things you could be unsure about to either implementation details (“only biological machines can be conscious”), or to things that are not the causes of anything (philosophical zombies).
This question is more subtle than that.
without looking at implementation details.
Is there any variation in “implementation” that could be completely hidden from outside investigation? can thre be completely indetectable phsycial differences?
A successful WBE should exhibit all the externally observable behaviors of a human—as a black bo
We can put something in a box, and agree not to peek inside the box, and we can say that two such systems are equivalent as far as what is allowed to manifest outside the box. But differnt kinds of black box will yield different equivalences. If you are allowed to know that box A needs and oxygen supply, and that box B needs an electrcity supply, that’s a clue. Equivalence is equivalence of an chosen subset of behaviours. No two things are absolutely, acontextually equivalent unless they are phsycially identical. And to draw the line between relevant behaviour and irrelevant implementation correctly would require a pre-existing perfect understanding of the mind-matter relationship.
Why would IQ matter more than academic and job performance?
Nobody has yet shown that racial-group data is more correlated with important things than individual data.
Rational self-interest?
Not necesarily a fatal one.
Utilitarianism, and all ethical systems, are usually discussed with the flawed assumption that there is one single proper ethical algorithm, which, once discovered, should be chosen by society and implemented by every individual
That flaw is not obvious to me. But the flaw in anything-goes ethics is.
Something About Sapience Is What Makes Suffering Bad.
I woudn;t hasten to describe them a confused. How about the modest proposal of growing acephalus humans for consumption? Is that too far down the slope?
Yep. They weren’t an exhaustive definition of consc, and weren’t said to be. No-one needs to infer the subject matter from 1) and 2), since it was already given.
Tell me, are you like this all the time? You might make a good roommate for dr Dr Sheldon Cooper.