CF Debate

Individuation Problem

IdentityMethodologyEpiphenomenalism

Overview

Implementing an algorithm on part of our causally-interconnected physical environment requires three choices that are typically considered arbitrary, i.e. no single option is innately privileged without invoking an external observer perspective:

  1. How to delineate one set of local causal relationships from the environment.
  2. Within this delineation, which inputs and outputs to designate for attention.
  3. What meaning to assign to particular states of the designated inputs and outputs.

While the third can be defeated by CF algorithms that focus on causal/syntactic structure rather than meaning/reference, the other two remain challenging. If there is always more than one option available for which algorithm is taking place in a sufficiently complex system, it becomes an arbitrary observer choice whether they deem the system to have a CF algorithm generating consciousness or some alternative. In this sense, algorithms do not 'exist' outside the eye of a beholder. However, consciousness should not depend on how an observer models me as a system.

Responses

  1. Invoke specific methods for defining computation, such as robust mapping in Anderson & Piccinini (2024).

    BUT: Need to address the separate debate around computation definitions.

  2. Allow all possible identifiable computations to be taking place in a given system.

    BUT: In any complex system, this results in a combinatorial explosion of possible computations. With nested and overlapping computations in the same system all being equally valid, they cannot all be assigned 'credit' for the causal behaviour of the system. Without reason to choose one, it seems all must be identified as epiphenomenal, with causality identified instead at the physical mechanism level rather than the algorithm that is defined in the eye of the beholder.

  3. Define a CF algorithm such that this situation never occurs in reality.

    BUT: Need to define the CF algorithm in order to explore this possibility.

Further reading