[aneil]

You could execute a loop that reflects on an internal model using pen and paper. Is that system conscious? Imagine only one computational step of that loop happening everyday. Does qualia arise from that? What is detecting that that one step is part of a larger series of steps that can be considered a computation? What provides the continuity?

This is why the strange loop idea implemented using traditional computation doesn't make sense to me.

[simonh]

That's just a restating of the Chinese room argument. Like Searle you're bamboozling yourself with scale. If I was put in a magnetic field of some kind that slowed down my physical and neurological processes by 1000x would I be any less conscious? Would I be any less a human being? It would seem so to people observing me for sure, but would it change my essential nature?

[tarsinge]

And as Searle responded to that argument you are bamboozling yourself with speed. There is nothing that prove that accelerating the computation to a given speed that will make the consciousness emerge.

[simonh]

Of course not, that seems equally absurd, I don't understand why you are ascribing that position to me.