Re:Consciousness is not computation
by denton-scratch on Sunday June 26, 2022 @01:17PM
(#31885803)
> Please imagine that my response is "I said good day sir!"
That sounds a lot like "Anyway, why do I think I have time for this ... "
It's clear to me that "stuff" can be arranged to work as a Turing Machine (or some other kind of computer) without design or intent. Whether it is such a thing or not depends on how it is used; a Turing Machine that is given random inputs, or whose outputs don't mean anything to anyone, is a computer only in a formal sense. If nobody knows that some thing is a computer, I'm not sure that it's computer-ness is meaningful.
So that's why I think intent and interpretation are relevant.
You're not understanding what I said. Last time:
Turing Machines have a specific set of necessary ingredients.
That's not a "bald assertion" or an "appeal to authority". It's an observation about the theory of Turing machines [1].
Whether or not a physical system has those ingredients is an _objective_ matter.
Also an observation. In case you need to think it through, there was a simple argument which you cannot rationally refute:
i) If one of the ingredients is missing, "subjectively" wishing something is a Turing Machine will not make it so.
ii) If all the ingredients are present, "subjectively" wishing that something isn't a Turing Machine will not change the fact that it is.
Conclusion: subjectivity has no effect on whether something is or is not a Turing machine. QED.
----
You're the one making unsupported assertions and talking in circles.
I can see that you're going to reply with more disagreement. Please imagine that my response is "I said good day sir!"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine#Description