> But GoL is purely mathematical Is it though? Humans play GoL on computers made out of matter, think about GoL using brains made out of matter, and learn or c

> But GoL is purely mathematical Is it though? Humans play GoL on computers made out of matter, think about GoL using brains made out of matter, and learn or communicate about GoL using artifacts made of matter. We can port GoL to various devices, so it seems that the essentials of GoL are not tied to a particular physical substrate. But then again, these are only approximations to GoL in that storage, etc. is limited. Anytime we actually run GoL, we're doing it in some embodied form. GoL doesn't play itself in some non-material plane. I think we get in trouble with these sweeping thought experiments and extrapolations. I might agree in principle that a mind like mine could exist in GoL, but it could turn out that to implement it would take some enormous combinatorial number multiple of universes. Then does it exist in a form that could operate, or only in a form that I can sketch out to others without understanding or giving any details? We really need to be careful about 1, 2, ..., infinity style arguments. They're second-nature to mathematicians, but the history of mathematics is full of cases where we had to clean up the mess left over after inviting infinity to the party. EDIT> "2) both mind-in-GoL and its entire reality are fully deterministic and their existence is thus entirely independent of them ever being "simulated" (or instantiated) on an "actual" computing device. If they can exist, they can be said to actually exist" How is this not just restating the same unsupported argument? Now we'll just have to debate what "exist" means, which is more or less where we started. EDIT 2> This is what I mean by keeping philosophers employed. Instead of making progress and deepening our understanding, we just end up debating and then agreeing-to-disagree on what word X means, and what it means to mean, and whether meaning can be said to exist, and ..., and ..., recursion