[tsimionescu]

I wasn't trying to use that as a definition of what computation means. My point is that regardless of how we define it, the fact is that the devices we build to do some form of computation are objectively successful at doing what they were built to do.

For example, you can say that Firefox is a human-centric abstraction, and that my computer isn't running Firefox right now in an objective sense, that this is is just a human-centric interpretation of what the physical device is doing, and that there exist other computations that we could assign to it.

But what you can't say is that the device is not affecting the physical world in ways that are consistent with performing the Firefox computation, such as causing certain specific wavelengths of light to be emitted by the screen based on state that is stored in a server in the YCombinator data center. This is a measurable fact of the physical world that is independent of the model of computation you chose to ascribe to the physical device - any consistent mapping will have to preserve this same physical property.

[bch8_]

The paper addresses this point in section 3.2. They aren't debating the fact that a physical process is taking place in a computer running a program. They are arguing that the semantic interpretation of the output of that program is indeterminate and dependent on the mapping function:

> A single physical vehicle (bottom) possesses a fixed causal trajectory. However, it does not instantiate a unique computation. Depending on the alphabetization key applied (fA or fB ), the same physical states can be mapped to entirely different abstract computations (Top Left vs. Top Right). Therefore, computation cannot be intrinsic to the physics (p).

So yes there is a physical process generating your Firefox browser, but there is also a mapping function taking that program and interpreting that it should display your Firefox browser. There are any number of mapping functions that could be applied to the physical state in order to display other things on your screen besides the browser. Therefore, the Firefox browser being displayed is not inherent or intrinsic to the physical state of your computer. If we did not have the right mapping function, we would have no way of knowing or inferring or discovering which mapping function is correct.

[tsimionescu]

But the results that the computer screen shows, and the inputs fed into the machine, are entirely physical, observer-independent processes. Just like an inscribed papyrus contains letters in a physically observable, provable sense - even if the semantics of those letters are entirely man made.

This is in fact very similar to the notion of text - text is a physical medium, that provably contains a message that one human intended to convey to other humans. The same physical text can be interpreted in an infinite number of ways, and they are all equally valid in that they are self-consistent, but only one is the intention of the original author.

[bch8_]

To the best of my understanding I believe the response from the position taken by the paper is that this is still committing the abstraction fallacy (Assuming you aren't just agreeing with them here, which I don't think you are). The book itself doesn't physically instantiate the information it contains in its text. In a vacuum it is informationally inert. That doesn't mean it doesn't physically exist. Likewise the computer running Firefox obviously physically exists. The fallacy is the next jump from there - assuming that the semantic content of the book or software is physically present in those items. Another example given in the article is an analog clock:

> Consider an analog clock. Physically, the device is a collection of gears and springs governed by continuous dynamics (P). It only “computes” time because a mapmaker intervenes, mapping a specific set of continuous angles to a semantic concept (e.g., “3:00 PM”). Without this semantic imposition, the clock is just metal moving in accordance with Hamilton’s equations; it contains no intrinsic “time.” Thus, the physical substrate does not “process information” absent a prerequisite alphabet of intrinsic symbols; rather, it generates continuous dynamics that an external mapmaker interprets as information.

In this example the time "3:00 PM" is instantiated in the mind of the person reading the clock, it is not a real physical property of the clock itself.

[tsimionescu]

I think the book example muddied the waters, unfortunately. I agree that the concept "3:00 PM" only exists in the mind of the observer. But I don't agree that this means the clock's mechanism isn't intrinsically, objectively, a time keeping mechanism. The clock is a physical instantiation of a time keeping algorithm, in an objective sense. The meaning of a particular time, or even the interpretation of time, is a subjective human experience, but that doesn't mean that computation is as well. If the clock wasn't a correct instantiation of the time keeping computation, it wouldn't be possible to interpret it as such, it wouldn't work - that's what makes me believe it's more than semantics.

[bch8_]

First I want to say I don't think this is an unreasonable position nor does it appear to be one without some degree of support in the expert debates. The position taken by this paper is not, as far as I can tell, a universally accepted argument (It isn't some tiny minority either FWIW). The bottom line is that in this field there are simply not many universally accepted positions whatsoever. A helpful framing I came across recently is that the field of consciousness research is still in a "pre-scientific" period in the same sense that astronomy and physics were "pre-scientific" prior to general relativity. Science could be done and theories existed, but something so fundamental was missing that you couldn't even reach a broad consensus on where to direct research.

With that out of the way, in my opinion the response from the position of the paper would be something along these lines. The problem with your claim that a clock intrinsically contains a time keeping algorithm/computation is that by this definition, almost anything you can imagine is a clock. For example, given the right mapping function, a rock can perform all computations necessary to be a clock. It may sound extreme but this is an internally consistent position, if you want you can look up the Putnam triviality argument for more info. Under this argument, not only can a rock perform all the computations necessary to be a clock, it can in fact implement every possible computation imaginable (given the right mapping function). This next bit isn't essential to the argument but just because I find it fascinating, we can take this point a step further. If you imagine an organism/mind capable of using a rock as a clock, it isn't impossible but it would require such a radically different way of perceiving reality that they may in fact not recognize our versions of clocks as clocks at all.

Backing out, the examples above clarify just how essential the mapping function is to imputing meaning to a physical process, and makes it harder to see how the physical processes taking place in our computers have any intrinsic meaning whatsoever. To put my cards on the table, the whole reason I ended up on this thread in the first place is because I have become somewhat obsessed with this paper in the past week or so. I did not expect to agree with it or even to find it particularly convincing. Not that I had given it tons of thought but if you asked me, my operating assumption has always been that the human brain is some form of a computer and, more to the point, that consciousness experienced by human brains is a result of some form of computation. Taken on its own terms, I believe this paper really does challenge that view fundamentally, and in a manner that cannot be easily dismissed.

[Teever]

If this mechanical clock mechanism was part of some sort of Von Neumann probe that was sitting dormant in a star system waiting for the clock to strike a specific time and when that occurs it triggers another mechanism in the probe that combines stored nucleotides to produce a particular sequence of RNA and DNA that is seeded into a suitable world and that soup of RNA and DNA eventually evolves into intelligent biological life that finds the Von Neumann probe and learns to interpret the symbols and purpose of the probe and comes to understand what 3:00 PM means, does that whole system have the real physical property of 3:00 PM in it?

[bch8_]

No because it doesn't physically instantiate the concept of 3:00pm. By the author's contention if you go and find an analog clock right now and read the time, the clock still doesn't have an intrinsic property of "X AM/PM", so it wouldn't in this scenario either.

In a vacuum (Without an observer/mapmaker) there would be no way to derive the semantic content of an analog clock purely from its real physical properties. Additionally, the physical state of an analog clock that we read (map) to say 3PM could be representative of any time whatsoever, because it is purely dependent on the mapping function. The same physical properties could mean "3pm" or "4pm" or "5:48:00 AM" etc etc.

To put it differently, think about (instantiate the concept of) the time 3:00PM right now. Okay, so that thought just existed. When it existed it was comprised of physical processes. Those physical processes bear no relation to the analog clock set to "3PM". Neither are less real, they are just completely distinct physical phenomena. There is no reason in particular to think that a machine capable of computing the time "3PM" bears resemblance to a machine capable of having the thought "It is 3pm" or "[thinking about] the time of 3pm". By the same token there is no particular reason to think that a mind capable of having the thought "It is 3pm" necessarily contains a computer in it, or that a computer is a necessary, constitutive component of that physical thought.

[Teever]

The implication of the argument that you're making is that humans could never understand any alien artifact that we come across. Or that we could never understand the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs or Linear B, or that we could ever understand the purpose of the Antikythera mechanism.

It may be the case that it will be impossible for us to understand a particular alien artifact if we came across it because it is too complex for us to understand, but that doesn't mean that we wouldn't be able to understand all alien artifacts that have ever existed (if they exist)

One could say that hieroglyphs are different because they were made by people, so they have a mapmaker but all that indicates is that meaning can persist across the lifespan of the creators and then if that's the case it's just a question of for how long, and through what casual chains can that meaning persist.

You might also suggest that the function of the Antikythera mechanism is just something that we arbitrarily project onto it but that's not likely. The gear ratios correspond to actual astronomical periods that we didn't just arbitrarily decide, instead we discovered them. That means that the meaning as an astrological clock was fixed into the mechanism by the creators and transmitted to us.

It's the same thing with DNA. It has no mapmaker and yet it contains meaning, meaning that we've made tremendous strides to understand. How is that possible for a thing that doesn't have a mapmaker to have meaning?