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Article 6012 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke)
Subject: Re: Hypothesis: I am a Transducer (Formerly "Virtual Grounding")
Message-ID: <1992Jun1.183817.10392@cs.ucf.edu>
Sender: news@cs.ucf.edu (News system)
Organization: University of Central Florida
References: <1992Jun1.161622.23110@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1992 18:38:17 GMT

In article <1992Jun1.161622.23110@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil  
Rickert) writes:
> In article <1992Jun1.142749.8520@cs.ucf.edu> clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas  
Clarke) writes:
> 
> >SH (and others) argue plausibly that computation alone cannot give 
> >consiousness.  If physicality is not abandoned, then either the C-T
> >thesis is false or Laplace's view is wrong.  C-T is only a hypothesis,
> 
>   What has C-T to do with anything.  C-T is neither true nor false.  It
> is not the type of thing that can ever be true or false.  It is merely
> a cultural belief withi mathematics.  People can stop believing it
> if they like.  But you can't talk about it being false.
> 
C-T says that recursive, Turing machine computation is the only effective
way to compute.  If the formalisms of the science of physics can compute
anything physical and C-T is true, then a Turing machine properly programmed
could predict (simulate) anything, including the behavior of 
intelligent critters.

C-T could be falsified by the discovery of another means for effective, 
that is precisely specifiable, scientifically reproducible calculation.
Something like Douglas Adam's computational bistro would qualify :-) 
More seriously David Deutsch has speculated that there may exist quantum
mechanical computers that transcend Turing computation.

A comment on your other posting:
>nonsense, that there is nothing special in the analog representation of
>information, and that digital representation is often preferable due to

This is precisely the point I am trying to get at:  there may well
be something special about raw, analog, undigitized information.

To make my case more succinctly, according to QM, one can predict the
probability of given experimental outcomes, but not the experimental
outcome itself.  Thus a Turing machine can only calculate the probabilities
of quantum events, not the events themselves.  The only way to determine
the outcome of events is to look at the physical (e.g. analog) outcomes
themselves.  Nor can heuristics such as randomly throwing non-quantum 
dice be used to determine outcomes since nastinesses such as 
Bell's inequalities will cause the simulation to depart from reality.  
The only way to simulate quantum events is to carry out the full  
complex-valued, superimposed wave state calcualtion.  Even then 
the only result is probabilities of events, not predictions of 
the actual events.

QM is not relevant to your digitally interfaced room, but may well
play a role in the observer within the room in a way consistent with 
Harnad's transducer idea.  Were the digital data fed directly into a 
Turing machine-equivalent, the result might not be conscious perception 
in much the same way as a Turing machine cannot predict quantum events.

--
Thomas Clarke
Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central FL
12424 Research Parkway, Suite 300, Orlando, FL 32826
(407)658-5030, FAX: (407)658-5059, clarke@acme.ucf.edu


