For your moral questions, I think it would help if you replace “morally significant dormant turing machine with no input devices” with “comatose human”.
Ah, but presumably if we were to wake up the comatose person, they would start interacting with the world; and their output would depend on the particulars of the state of the world. In that case I clearly want to wake them up.
I was thinking of a morally significant dormant Turing machine that was not designed to have input devices. For example, a comatose person with no sensory organs. If they woke up, they would awaken to a life of dreams and dark solitude, proceeding deterministically from their initial state. Let’s assume there is absolutely no way to restore this person’s senses. It’s not clear to me that it’s morally desirable to wake them up.
Ah, but presumably if we were to wake up the comatose person, they would start interacting with the world; and their output would depend on the particulars of the state of the world. In that case I clearly want to wake them up.
I was thinking of a morally significant dormant Turing machine that was not designed to have input devices. For example, a comatose person with no sensory organs. If they woke up, they would awaken to a life of dreams and dark solitude, proceeding deterministically from their initial state. Let’s assume there is absolutely no way to restore this person’s senses. It’s not clear to me that it’s morally desirable to wake them up.