[ExI] Consciousness theory slammed as "pseudoscience"

[Jason Resch]

By its own definitions IIT is not falsifiable, for it proclaims that a
computer program that gave identical behavior in all situations to another
conscious system, would not be conscious. But since it has identical
behavior there is no objective way to prove this assertion of IIT (that one
system is conscious while the other is not).

This also implies the possibility of philosophical zombies (which IIT
proponents freely admit), which also implies consciousness is
epiphenomenonal, with all the problems of philosophical zombies and
epiphenomenonalism entail.

So is it pseudoscience? I don't know if I would call it that, but I think
it is almost certainly wrong as it is currently framed.

I do find some strengths in some of the ideas that have come out of it, in
particular how a system must be capable of affecting itself for it to be
aware of its consciousness. I also think it is right to put the focus on
information.

I think where it errs is in confusing a logical-informational state with a
instantaneous physical state. This leads to the mistaken belief that a
parallel computation is more conscious than a serial computation, even when
they compute the exact same function (IIT proponents don't consider
space-time symmetry).

I think that if IIT corrected these problems, it would be no more than
functionalism. I think of IIT is a kind of "functionalism in denial", as it
makes many similar claims to functionalists, placing emphasis on the causal
organization of a system, but at the last moment, it insists that a
computer implementing that same causal organization would not be conscious.

Jason

On Thu, Sep 21, 2023, 2:08 PM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> Consciousness theory slammed as "pseudoscience"
> <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02971-1?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=84936ca310-briefing-dy-20230921&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-84936ca310-44221073>
>
> John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis
> <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>
> jqq
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3KhiA9tJXvhos5RRSStwh6hSWm6SFVfz-vpRZDrYGM%2BA%40mail.gmail.com
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3KhiA9tJXvhos5RRSStwh6hSWm6SFVfz-vpRZDrYGM%2BA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
> .
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230921/fe8f7d63/attachment.htm>