Consciousness is not computation

It becomes less clear when you consider theories like the “user interface” theory of reality by Donald Hoffman. The tl;dr is under that model the chemical and physical alterations we undertake are perceptual models far removed from the nature of underlying reality, and so causality is less obvious with regards to how much those chemicals being administered are determined upstream. “The case against reality” is a book with the longer form of this.

He makes any number of unsupported leaps.

E.g "consciousness is observer independent". It seems likely, but it's not at all clear it needs to be the case. E.g. let's say the universe is a simulation for your benefit which optimises away everything that does not directly impact your experience. Maybe my consciousness is just a side effect of currently having an impact on your experience. I have no way of telling whether I blink out of existence the moment I'm not conjured up in order to write this to generate the page you're now reading. It may sound far fetched, but the point is that there is an infinite number of possible observer-dependent universes. As such just ruling it out by default is a gap in his argument.

With respect to his definition of computers, he's glossing over just how little it takes to end up with something which computes. The simplest possible turing machine is ridiculously simple, requiring only 6 rules T(2,3) [1]. While I agree with his argument that such things arising out of nothing by chance is unlikely, it's not at all clear that it's unlikely enough to rule out an infinite number of such devices running mostly "junk" programs that'll crash.

But we also know that it doesn't need to be entirely random - such computation can provide mechanisms for the propagation of life. While cells themselves are not universal turing machines (they have limited "tape"), any number of living things are conceptually universal turing machines (humans being the obvious example), in that they/we can process "tape" without any inherent limitations on length (though practical limitations, certainly).

He then goes on to use his claim that consciousness must be observer independent to claim that even if we have such a computational process, we can't just pick encoding to make a claim of consciousness. But this stretches the claim of observer independence further, and rather than strengthen it, to me it weakens it. Since we don't know what consciousness is, it's not clear that consciousness could not arise from a subjective observation of a process. It's not even clear that this isn't the very core of consciousness. That hypothesis is as supported (in other words: it's not) as the argument he's making. It may be a very weak possibility, but he's not even considered it and given any justification for ruling it out.

I stopped reading there. This is typical of a whole lot of philosophy that makes a whole lot of embedded assumptions that are glossed over because the writer see them as so obvious that they fail to consider that they are assumptions at all. Most of it descends into sophistry without even realising it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram%27s_2-state_3-symbol_T...

I would say that life is an emergent phenomenon, as is consciousness. I suspect that whether conscious systems can be computational is related to the question of weak versus strong emergence. If weak emergence pertains in physical systems then, just as physical systems are therefore entirely tractable to computation, then so is consciousness. If strong emergence pertains, then computational consciousness may not be possible. I subscribe to weak emergence.

BTW thanks for the article, it's a very clear and well reasoned explanation of your position, even though I happen to disagree.

A lot of conversations around the term consciousness mix up a couple of things. First, there is the term consciousness which is a word given to something that humans observe. It encapsulates an idea, and we know[0] that it's a shared experience because the term arose in other languages as well.

The concept of consciousness may be not limited to humans, for example an alien race may have also discovered this concept and given their own symbolic representation of it that they use to communicate between each other, but the frame of this whole debate needs to keep in mind that we are the ones that needed a term for this. So we are the ones that are the best judges of what consciousness is and isn't to the best of our knowledge, leaving spirituality aside.

The encoding of consciousness into states of heat or rocks in the beach is a flawed example because the mapping of encoding is a non-arbitrary decision. Any length can encode any number, for example, the meaning is in the parameters set by the agent, not the other way around. The example falls on its face anyway because it seeks to compress the evaluate the heated iron in a static state. Real consciousness amongst humans has varying states. For example, if one were to evaluate the heated iron and then ask it to evaluate a new situation, it wouldn't. It would simply keep being heated iron.

Real AI wouldn't pass a consciousness test without demonstrating real reasoning about a completely novel situation. For example, I would expect to ask it to evaluate a design for a solution to an as-yet-unsolved problem and have it reliably communicate drawbacks. Current AI does nothing of the sort.

[0] As much as anything can be known, anyway.

I'd say the biggest slight of hand is that human's understand other humans "knowing" something as something happening internal to an individuals brain. Holding a biology book in front of you doesn't mean you know everything in the book. What you "know" are the things from the book that you've stored in your brain.

We can modify the thought experiment so that it's something internal to the persons brain. The person doesn't learn Chinese as most people do, but a computer rewires their mind to be the same as someone who did. Think of The Matrix, when Neo says "I know Kung Fu." Would people then say this person speaks Chinese? I imagine just about everyone would say yes.