I think that the algorithm used to compute the brain states is also important.
How about a different thought experiment?
A computer program is computing pi, and stumbles upon a stream of numbers which happen to perfectly describe the brain state of a person being tortured for 3 seconds. The program is doing no neural simulation on any level, and its just happening across this sequence. Did torture happen?
The computer is doing calculations to reach the brain-state, but the calculations have nothing to do with torture.
(Another example: a computer computes
, and stumbles across the beginning of the sequence
A computer program is computing pi, and stumbles upon a stream of numbers which happen to perfectly describe the brain state of a person being tortured for 3 seconds. The program is doing no neural simulation on any level, and its just happening across this sequence. Did torture happen?
The computer is doing calculations to reach the brain-state, but the calculations have nothing to do with torture.
I doubt it. Mind processes aren’t static. A person who’s been frozen isn’t consciously feeling that they are frozen. They just aren’t feeling. In the same way, a picture of someone is not a trapped version of them, and a recording of a tortured person’s brain state isn’t a tortured person itself.
Those numbers are just an output of a calculation, but there’s nothing special about the order. The only way that the sequence of digits in pi could “perfectly describe” the brain state is if there is someone to interpret it as such. But there are numbers all around us. There are seven drawers on my desk. There are nine pieces of visual art in this room. Why couldn’t I just interpret those numbers in such a way to describe a tortured person? The actual torture would occur if, as you were looking at the sequence of numbers, you fed them into a simulator of a human brain, and ran the simulation from there.
I think that the algorithm used to compute the brain states is also important.
How about a different thought experiment?
A computer program is computing pi, and stumbles upon a stream of numbers which happen to perfectly describe the brain state of a person being tortured for 3 seconds. The program is doing no neural simulation on any level, and its just happening across this sequence. Did torture happen?
The computer is doing calculations to reach the brain-state, but the calculations have nothing to do with torture.
(Another example: a computer computes
I doubt it. Mind processes aren’t static. A person who’s been frozen isn’t consciously feeling that they are frozen. They just aren’t feeling. In the same way, a picture of someone is not a trapped version of them, and a recording of a tortured person’s brain state isn’t a tortured person itself.
Those numbers are just an output of a calculation, but there’s nothing special about the order. The only way that the sequence of digits in pi could “perfectly describe” the brain state is if there is someone to interpret it as such. But there are numbers all around us. There are seven drawers on my desk. There are nine pieces of visual art in this room. Why couldn’t I just interpret those numbers in such a way to describe a tortured person? The actual torture would occur if, as you were looking at the sequence of numbers, you fed them into a simulator of a human brain, and ran the simulation from there.