6 ms·

I don't think you can say that life is built on computational processes unless you use a definition of "computation" that is so vague and all-encompassing that

I don't think you can say that life is built on computational processes unless you use a definition of "computation" that is so vague and all-encompassing that it becomes effectively meaningless. The Wikipedia definition of "computation" is "any type of calculation that includes both arithmetical and non-arithmetical steps and which follows a well-defined model". But this only makes sense in the context of a designer or observer external to the computation who can identify what that model is and thereby make sense of the output. So you can't say that brain processes are computational, much less life itself, without committing some variation of the homunculus fallacy. John Searle (famously known for his Chinese Room thought experiment) made this argument in a paper called "Is the Brain a Digital Computer?" [1] He points out that "if we are to suppose that the brain is a digital computer, we are still faced with the question 'And who is the user?'" A related problem is qualia. There is no computational process that will produce the sensations of colour or sound or touch. At best you will have some representation that requires having actually experienced those sensations to understand it. So a computational process cannot be the basis of or an explanation for those sensations, and therefore consciousness generally. [1] https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Is%20the%20Brain%20a%20Digital%20Computer%20-%20John%20R.%20Searle.pdf https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Is%20the%2...

astrophysician 6y ago
> I don't think you can say that life is built on computational processes unless you use a definition of "computation" that is so vague and all-encompassing that it becomes effectively meaningless. I mean, there's nothing physically stopping us from simulating a brain, right? It's a finite object with a finite amount of physical ingredients, and therefore with a finite amount of computing power we can simulate what it does. To me personally, that's a computational process. Maybe that's an overly broad definition of computation, but I think these debates tend to be about whether there is something fundamentally different about "life" (by which I assume you include consciousness). But maybe that's not what you're saying. > He points out that "if we are to suppose that the brain is a digital computer, we are still faced with the question 'And who is the user?'" What does that question even mean? I think it seems deep because we humans have a tendency to ascribe some sort of supernatural aura to our lived experience. Life is something incredible but that (at least to my knowledge) is not uncomputable... > There is no computational process that will produce the sensations of colour or sound or touch. Got one: the brain! > At best you will have some representation that requires having actually experienced those sensations to understand it. Why does a computer not "experience" something?
- happythomist 6y ago
  I think you're missing the central point, which is that computation is observer relative. Anything can be interpreted as a computational process. Searle: "Thus for example the wall behind my back is right now implementing the Wordstar program, because there is some pattern of molecule movements which is isomorphic with the formal structure of Wordstar. But if the wall is implementing Wordstar then if it is a big enough wall it is implementing any program, including any program implemented in the brain." That's why Searle asks "who is the user?" At some point things have to stop being observer relative and have an intrinsic meaning or essence of their own. > Got one: the brain! That's circular reasoning. The point is that qualia are not something which, in principle, can be the subject of computation. There is no way to represent the fullness of sensation itself, like the redness of red or the softness of silk, as information. So how can our brains be "computing" it?
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    Presumably the redness of red is VERY hard to communicate fully brain to brain because the experience of it is dependent upon every input and computation before that point however we manage to do it well enough. Its like saying that some deficits in computability prevent us us from doing arithmetic and therefore from launching rockets successfully at distant targets. I might never know the exact pattern in my brain of the "redness of red" as experienced by you but it seemed to work well enough for my brain to form a pattern similar enough to communicate thoughts just as the incompleteness or inherent lack of precision of measurement don't prevent the rocket from being launched successfully.
    - happythomist 6y ago
      The issue is not whether we can pragmatically communicate the concept of "red" by piggybacking on some (presumed) common experience, but whether that experience of redness itself is information. It is obviously not, and I do not understand why you insist otherwise.
      - 6y ago
michaelmrose 6y ago
In this case let us substitute the narrow definition of thought and computation by an imitation human as a process which given the current state of the brain/computer and the current state of the universe induces changes in the brain so as to model the state of the universe both now and in response to a hypothetical possible pool of actions such that the actions of model and world become entwined in a way that could be modeled from the inside as the world being the result of choices and from the outside as choices being the result of the world. This is true even of a chess program that attempts to model the current and possible states to the chess board in a fashion as to bring about a goal by way of selection of moves. Suppose we take a very precise process and produce an exact physical copy of you. For being artificial it ought to experience the same sorts of experiences as you. The same ought to be true of a computer simulation of same. The same ought to be true for a variety of increasingly large modifications of the original design. After all if billions of humans can pop out divergent versions of humans who are all conscious it seems hard to argue that you are a unique configuration. In fact if we imagine working for the next 1000 years on producing a better human being that we ought to be able to produce beings who no longer regard us as truly human because we lack both subjective experiences they regard as essential and computational capability. Maybe they can hold a million times more data in their head at once and they regard us as squirrels. These beings might regard our workings as completely explicable and replicatable in many substrates while regarding their own workings at the far limit of their own understanding as inherently beyond all possible understanding. Both you and they are probably wrong. Searle was an asshole.
tsimionescu 6y ago
All physical processes that we understand are computational. The sun and Earth for example are a computer which is constantly computing the velocity and position of a two-body system (the sun and the earth). Computation is essentially a mechanical process, in the sense that it requires no interpretation, so the question of 'who is the user of a computer' is completely meaningless. It is disturbing that a philosopher who writes books about these concepts does not understand even this elementary fact about computation. The whole point of developing computer theory was in fact to rid mathematics of the need for human ingenuity, to find simple mechanical rules that can be followed even by a machine to arrive at the same results that a mathematician would. Related to qualia and the Chinese room experiment and so on, those are arguments about something we perceive, but they do not describe something that we know for sure is fundamental about the world. They may well be descriptions of an illusion we have. You can't assume the existence of qualia as proof that something can't be computational, it mostly goes the other way around: you would have to prove that qualia are real to prove that something can't be computational.

astrophysician 6y ago

> I don't think you can say that life is built on computational processes unless you use a definition of "computation" that is so vague and all-encompassing that it becomes effectively meaningless. I mean, there's nothing physically stopping us from simulating a brain, right? It's a finite object with a finite amount of physical ingredients, and therefore with a finite amount of computing power we can simulate what it does. To me personally, that's a computational process. Maybe that's an overly broad definition of computation, but I think these debates tend to be about whether there is something fundamentally different about "life" (by which I assume you include consciousness). But maybe that's not what you're saying. > He points out that "if we are to suppose that the brain is a digital computer, we are still faced with the question 'And who is the user?'" What does that question even mean? I think it seems deep because we humans have a tendency to ascribe some sort of supernatural aura to our lived experience. Life is something incredible but that (at least to my knowledge) is not uncomputable... > There is no computational process that will produce the sensations of colour or sound or touch. Got one: the brain! > At best you will have some representation that requires having actually experienced those sensations to understand it. Why does a computer not "experience" something?

happythomist 6y ago
I think you're missing the central point, which is that computation is observer relative. Anything can be interpreted as a computational process. Searle: "Thus for example the wall behind my back is right now implementing the Wordstar program, because there is some pattern of molecule movements which is isomorphic with the formal structure of Wordstar. But if the wall is implementing Wordstar then if it is a big enough wall it is implementing any program, including any program implemented in the brain." That's why Searle asks "who is the user?" At some point things have to stop being observer relative and have an intrinsic meaning or essence of their own. > Got one: the brain! That's circular reasoning. The point is that qualia are not something which, in principle, can be the subject of computation. There is no way to represent the fullness of sensation itself, like the redness of red or the softness of silk, as information. So how can our brains be "computing" it?
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  Presumably the redness of red is VERY hard to communicate fully brain to brain because the experience of it is dependent upon every input and computation before that point however we manage to do it well enough. Its like saying that some deficits in computability prevent us us from doing arithmetic and therefore from launching rockets successfully at distant targets. I might never know the exact pattern in my brain of the "redness of red" as experienced by you but it seemed to work well enough for my brain to form a pattern similar enough to communicate thoughts just as the incompleteness or inherent lack of precision of measurement don't prevent the rocket from being launched successfully.
  - happythomist 6y ago
    The issue is not whether we can pragmatically communicate the concept of "red" by piggybacking on some (presumed) common experience, but whether that experience of redness itself is information. It is obviously not, and I do not understand why you insist otherwise.
    - 6y ago

michaelmrose 6y ago

In this case let us substitute the narrow definition of thought and computation by an imitation human as a process which given the current state of the brain/computer and the current state of the universe induces changes in the brain so as to model the state of the universe both now and in response to a hypothetical possible pool of actions such that the actions of model and world become entwined in a way that could be modeled from the inside as the world being the result of choices and from the outside as choices being the result of the world. This is true even of a chess program that attempts to model the current and possible states to the chess board in a fashion as to bring about a goal by way of selection of moves. Suppose we take a very precise process and produce an exact physical copy of you. For being artificial it ought to experience the same sorts of experiences as you. The same ought to be true of a computer simulation of same. The same ought to be true for a variety of increasingly large modifications of the original design. After all if billions of humans can pop out divergent versions of humans who are all conscious it seems hard to argue that you are a unique configuration. In fact if we imagine working for the next 1000 years on producing a better human being that we ought to be able to produce beings who no longer regard us as truly human because we lack both subjective experiences they regard as essential and computational capability. Maybe they can hold a million times more data in their head at once and they regard us as squirrels. These beings might regard our workings as completely explicable and replicatable in many substrates while regarding their own workings at the far limit of their own understanding as inherently beyond all possible understanding. Both you and they are probably wrong. Searle was an asshole.

tsimionescu 6y ago

All physical processes that we understand are computational. The sun and Earth for example are a computer which is constantly computing the velocity and position of a two-body system (the sun and the earth). Computation is essentially a mechanical process, in the sense that it requires no interpretation, so the question of 'who is the user of a computer' is completely meaningless. It is disturbing that a philosopher who writes books about these concepts does not understand even this elementary fact about computation. The whole point of developing computer theory was in fact to rid mathematics of the need for human ingenuity, to find simple mechanical rules that can be followed even by a machine to arrive at the same results that a mathematician would. Related to qualia and the Chinese room experiment and so on, those are arguments about something we perceive, but they do not describe something that we know for sure is fundamental about the world. They may well be descriptions of an illusion we have. You can't assume the existence of qualia as proof that something can't be computational, it mostly goes the other way around: you would have to prove that qualia are real to prove that something can't be computational.