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    Operational Weak Soft) : 1 5 F!J F!J

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    Manoel Galvão
    This document discusses different viewpoints on the relationship between consciousness and computation. It presents four different viewpoints labeled α, β, γ, and δ. The author believes they are closest to viewpoint δ, which asserts that consciousness arises from physical objects like brains and that the effects of consciousness cannot be fully simulated by a computer. The author will later argue that present-day physics may allow for physical actions that cannot be computationally simulated and that a new understanding of physics may be needed to account for phenomena between the quantum and classical scales.

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    Operational Weak Soft) : 1 5 F!J F!J

    Uploaded by

    Manoel Galvão
    30 views1 page
    This document discusses different viewpoints on the relationship between consciousness and computation. It presents four different viewpoints labeled α, β, γ, and δ. The author believes they are closest to viewpoint δ, which asserts that consciousness arises from physical objects like brains and that the effects of consciousness cannot be fully simulated by a computer. The author will later argue that present-day physics may allow for physical actions that cannot be computationally simulated and that a new understanding of physics may be needed to account for phenomena between the quantum and classical scales.

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    This document discusses different viewpoints on the relationship between consciousness and computation. It presents four different viewpoints labeled α, β, γ, and δ. The author believes they are closest to viewpoint δ, which asserts that consciousness arises from physical objects like brains and that the effects of consciousness cannot be fully simulated by a computer. The author will later argue that present-day physics may allow for physical actions that cannot be computationally simulated and that a new understanding of physics may be needed to account for phenomena between the quantum and classical scales.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    30 views1 page

    Operational Weak Soft) : 1 5 F!J F!J

    Uploaded by

    Manoel Galvão
    This document discusses different viewpoints on the relationship between consciousness and computation. It presents four different viewpoints labeled α, β, γ, and δ. The author believes they are closest to viewpoint δ, which asserts that consciousness arises from physical objects like brains and that the effects of consciousness cannot be fully simulated by a computer. The author will later argue that present-day physics may allow for physical actions that cannot be computationally simulated and that a new understanding of physics may be needed to account for phenomena between the quantum and classical scales.

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    Consciousness and computation 15

    interrogation. Indeed, 'II is much more of an operational viewpoint than is f!J­


    and it is more like .91 than f!J in this particular respect.
    What about f!J then? I think that it is perhaps the viewpoint that many
    would regard as 'scientific common sense'. lt is sometimes referred to as weak
    (or soft) AI. Like .9/, it affirms a view that all the physical objects of this world
    must behave according to a science that, in principle, allows that they can be
    computationally simulated. On the other hand, it strongly denies the
    operational claim that a thing that behaves externally as a conscious being
    must necessarily be conscious itself. As the philosopher John Searle has
    stressed, 7 a computational simulation of a physical process is a very different
    thing from the actual process itself. (A computer simulation of a hurricane, for
    example, is certainly no hurricane!) On view f!8, the presence or absence of
    consciousness would depend very much upon what actual physical object is
    'doing the thinking', and upon what particular physical actions that object is
    performing. It would be a secondary matter to consider the particular
    computations that might happen to be involved in these actions. Thus, the
    action of a biological brain might evoke consciousness, whilst its accurate
    electronic simulation might well not. It is not necessary, in viewpoint f!J, for
    this distinction to be between biology and physics. But the actual material
    constitution of the object in question (say, a brain), and not just its
    computational action, is regarded as all-important.
    The viewpoint 'II is the one which I believe myself to be closest to the truth. lt
    is more of an operational viewpoint than f!J since it asserts that there are
    external manifestations of conscious objects (say, brains) that differ from the
    external manifestations of a computer: the outward effects of consciousness
    cannot be properly simulated computationally. I shall be giving my reasons
    for this belief in due course. Since 'II, like f!J, goes along with the physicalist
    standpoint that minds arise as manifestations of the behaviour of certain
    physical objects (brains-although not necessarily only brains), it follows that
    an implication of 'II is that not all physical action can be properly simulated
    computationally.
    Does present-day physics allow for the possibility of an action that is in
    principle impossible to simulate on a computer? The answer is not completely
    clear to me, if we are asking for a mathematically rigorous statement. Rather
    less is known than one would like, in the way of precise mathematical
    theorems, on this issue.8 However, my own strong opinion is that such
    non-computational action would have to be found in an area of physics that
    lies outside the presently known physical laws. Later on in this book, I shall
    reiterate some of the powerful reasons, coming from within physics itself, for
    believing that a new understanding is indeed needed, in an area that lies
    intermediate between the 'small-scale' level, where quantum laws hold sway,
    and the 'everyday' level of classical physics. However, it is not by any means
    universally accepted, among present-day physicists, that such a new physical
    theory is required.

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