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Why would these viewpoints be regarded as mutually exclusive? What's wrong with X and Y being functionally equivalent in every respect, yet different in impleme
by mannykannot 2y ago
Why would these viewpoints be regarded as mutually exclusive? What's wrong with X and Y being functionally equivalent in every respect, yet different in implementation? See the last paragraph of my reply to goatlover for why I feel that identity is a red herring.
- jhickok 2y agoWell for the functionalist I am describing, their view is that identity *doesn't* matter, and that consciousness is multi-realizable by any appropriately arrange substrate. That's why my reply to OP's statement-- "simulating something isn't the same as being that thing" is wrong to a large group of people who work in this field, who claim that there is nothing more to being a thing than their functional arrangement, whether it's a brain or a neural network etc.
- slowmovintarget 2y agoIn the real world, identity tends to matter, especially for complex systems. Genetic algorithms, for example, given enough time, will optimize differently on different hardware, or even in a different environment. What's amazing is how resilient organic creatures are, humans in particular, to changes in "identity."
- mannykannot 2y agoIndeed - substrate independence is behind my example of a computer simulation of a cryptographic machine. I chose to use the term 'the same' strictly, by which the simulation is not strictly the same as the machine (the substrate is different), yet in the ways that matter (i.e. functionally), they are the same. I find that putting it this way makes it less easy (or likely) to be summarily dismissed by people who feel that "a simulation is not the same as the thing it is simulating" is a decisive argument against the possibility of conscious computers.