Thanks for the comment. Note (for others) the sentence you are quoting is from Brian Tomasik.
I don’t think it’s necessarily misunderstanding how language works. I think there are plenty of cases where it doesn’t make sense to ask questions with a similar linguistic or grammatical structure. For example, “Does a simulation of a phage (or a virus, or a self-replicating robot) really instantiate life?”, or “You may enjoy liquorice ice cream, but is it really tasty?”
It’s appropriate to complain that it doesn’t make sense to speculate whether X really instantiates Y when Y is vague, ambiguous, subject-dependent, etc., and where it’s pretty clear extant usage of “Y” is compatible with different more precise operationalisations which give different answers. To these questions the answer is, “Well, it obviously depends what you mean by “Y”, and otherwise the question doesn’t have a single discoverable or consistent answer.” The life sciences did not discover the ‘true’ referent of “life”, and not for lack of data or good explanations.
Cases where it is less appropriate to complain that it doesn’t make sense to speculate whether X really instantiates Y, are cases where either we do agree on a crisp definition of Y, or we have some reason to believe we will discover one. I’m arguing that we have less reason than we might intuitively think to believe that we’ll ever “discover what the ontological nature of conscious states is”. I agree that if you’re confident there is a crisp, discoverable answer to exactly which things should count as “conscious”, then it totally does make sense to speculate about which things are conscious.
On your point about qualia computations, the standard questions pop up: if qualia are functionally inert computations, how would the ‘subject’ of consciousness know it is experiencing them, and so on. And isn’t the idea of computationalism about consciousness that the ‘computations’ can be pinned down by the computational relationship between inputs and outputs; in which case wouldn’t the qualia-generating computations be abstracted away?
For example, “Does a simulation of a phage (or a virus, or a self-replicating robot) really instantiate life?”
Yes, no (outside the host, yes inside), yes. Given what we mean by life, a simulation of life is life.
“You may enjoy liquorice ice cream, but is it really tasty?”
This question doesn’t make sense, because taste is relative to the consumer. What is really tasty for one person might not be really tasty for another. Consciousness isn’t like that—what is consciousness for one person is consciousness for everyone, people just don’t know what the definition of consciousness fixed by their implicit beliefs is.
On your point about qualia computations, the standard questions pop up: if qualia are functionally inert computations, how would the ‘subject’ of consciousness know it is experiencing them, and so on.
Right.
And isn’t the idea of computationalism about consciousness that the ‘computations’ can be pinned down by the computational relationship between inputs and outputs; in which case wouldn’t the qualia-generating computations be abstracted away?
I don’t know. The way I understand (and don’t subscribe to) computational functionalism is that you can have different computations implementing the same behavior.
Thanks for the comment. Note (for others) the sentence you are quoting is from Brian Tomasik.
I don’t think it’s necessarily misunderstanding how language works. I think there are plenty of cases where it doesn’t make sense to ask questions with a similar linguistic or grammatical structure. For example, “Does a simulation of a phage (or a virus, or a self-replicating robot) really instantiate life?”, or “You may enjoy liquorice ice cream, but is it really tasty?”
It’s appropriate to complain that it doesn’t make sense to speculate whether X really instantiates Y when Y is vague, ambiguous, subject-dependent, etc., and where it’s pretty clear extant usage of “Y” is compatible with different more precise operationalisations which give different answers. To these questions the answer is, “Well, it obviously depends what you mean by “Y”, and otherwise the question doesn’t have a single discoverable or consistent answer.” The life sciences did not discover the ‘true’ referent of “life”, and not for lack of data or good explanations.
Cases where it is less appropriate to complain that it doesn’t make sense to speculate whether X really instantiates Y, are cases where either we do agree on a crisp definition of Y, or we have some reason to believe we will discover one. I’m arguing that we have less reason than we might intuitively think to believe that we’ll ever “discover what the ontological nature of conscious states is”. I agree that if you’re confident there is a crisp, discoverable answer to exactly which things should count as “conscious”, then it totally does make sense to speculate about which things are conscious.
On your point about qualia computations, the standard questions pop up: if qualia are functionally inert computations, how would the ‘subject’ of consciousness know it is experiencing them, and so on. And isn’t the idea of computationalism about consciousness that the ‘computations’ can be pinned down by the computational relationship between inputs and outputs; in which case wouldn’t the qualia-generating computations be abstracted away?
Yes, no (outside the host, yes inside), yes. Given what we mean by life, a simulation of life is life.
This question doesn’t make sense, because taste is relative to the consumer. What is really tasty for one person might not be really tasty for another. Consciousness isn’t like that—what is consciousness for one person is consciousness for everyone, people just don’t know what the definition of consciousness fixed by their implicit beliefs is.
Right.
I don’t know. The way I understand (and don’t subscribe to) computational functionalism is that you can have different computations implementing the same behavior.