You can simulate every molecular interaction in a fire, but that does not mean the simulation gives off the same heat. You can write a perfectly accurate equation for splitting an atom, but the equation does not release energy.
It would to a simulated being standing next to the fire.
> You can write a perfectly accurate equation for splitting an atom, but the equation does not release energy.
It releases simulated energy inside the simulation.
Every material interaction is simulated. If you believe that consciousness can't exist in the simulation, then you believe that consciousness is not a material interaction, q.e.d.
Unless your “computer” is identical matter in the same arrangement and state is the original, actually doing stuff.
This is why the “what if you slowly simulated the entire universe on an infinite beach moving rocks around to represent the state? Could anything in it be conscious?” thing isn’t my very interesting.
No, you’re just shoving rocks around on sand. They don’t mean anything except what you decide they do. Easy answer.
I think that is missing the point. You are literally changing the material and medium by conducting a simulation.
Releasing simulated energy within a simulation is not identical to releasing real energy in the real world. The former is purely representational, and even a perfectly simulated object retains this property, and lack of equivalence.
a simulated atom is not a real atom, no mater their similarlity.
In other words, why think consciousness is a physical property of some specific kind of matter rather than an abstract property that can supervene on any sufficiently robust physical substrate?
Im open to the idea that consciousness could arise on different substrates, but hold that the substrate is relevant, and we dont have a working definition of "robustness".
This is part of a bigger challenge in which I claim there is no such thing as a perfect simulation.
Simulation requires representation, which requires requires remaining differences unrepresented. Otherwise you just have just created the same thing, not a simulation.
You can simulate the interaction of physical object with other physical objects using electronic object interacting with other electronic objects, but the two are not the same. The electronic object still can not interact with a physical object.
Right. But presumably not all physical properties of brains are necessary for consciousness. For example, the fact that action potentials happen on the order of 1ms to 1 second probably isn't intrinsic to consciousness. That is, there is no in principle problem with having consciousness supervene on neural networks that have much longer cycles for the basic substrate of communication. It also probably doesn't matter that neurons communicate through opening and closing ion channels, are made of carbon atoms, are constructed by protein assemblies produced from DNA, etc.
What we need is to represent every necessary feature and relationship involved in manifesting consciousness. As a first pass estimation, it seems very likely that only the information-bearing structures are necessary for consciousness. But the information-bearing structures are substrate independent. It follows that a perfect simulation of these information-bearing structures engaged in their typical dynamics would be conscious.
>You can simulate the interaction [...] but the two are not the same.
This idea that something needs to be "the same" is doing a lot of work in your argument. But most relationships involved in brains are incidental to consciousness. We need to get clear on what the necessary features of consciousness are. This is the only measure of sameness that matters, not superficial resemblance.