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.
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.