| The conscious part of that system is the interpretation, not the bar itself. You have skipped directly over the observer, who is actually performing the conscious computation. Think about how you would actually write a program to achieve this. The iron bar is just a bunch of atoms with random bit states that flip at random intervals - we'll model it as a contiguous 1D array of bits. You have a 1 second consciousness mapping, which is most likely rather large in size. Our interpretation process maps the random bits in the bar to a time instant of the conscious process by interpreting some bits in the bar as themselves, and the other bits in the bar as the reverse of themselves. In other words, our interpretation of which atom-bits are telling the truth and which are lying is itself a 1D array of bits that satisfies the following property: BAR bitxor INTERPRETATION = CONSCIOUS_INSTANT As time progresses, BAR and CONSCIOUS_INSTANT continuously change, therefore necessitating INTERPRETATION to change as well to keep the above formula consistent. In fact, by the rules of XOR, we can compute exactly what INTERPRETATION is at any given moment: INTERPRETATION = CONSCIOUS_INSTANT bitxor BAR But wait! This means that to dynamically know INTERPRETATION, you _must_ know all of the information associated with both CONSCIOUS_INSTANT and BAR. But if you know all the information associated with CONSCIOUS_INSTANT, haven't you already simulated a conscious process...? So there is in fact a consciousness here, but not in the {BAR} system: it is in the {BAR,INTERPRETATION,CONSCIOUS_INSTANT} system. (Note: If you squint at this for long enough, it starts sounding a lot like a motivation for Death of the Author.) |