Leibniz's Mill / Chinese Nation
Overview
If you expand a computer to the size of a galaxy and walk among its parts, you would see each part interacting locally according to its mechanistic rules. Where in this system is the conscious entity?
Responses
The system as a whole is conscious.
BUT: Need to either accept that consciousness of this style is epiphenomenal (see phenomenal binding problem) or identify some specific causality that cannot be explained by the interaction of its parts, where that causality is also relevant for the nature of consciousness in the system. The latter would typically require adopting a different view of causality/existence to the usual CF approach (in which logic gates/algorithms can be fully reduced to their parts), e.g. a mereology which creates (ontological) emergence perhaps by removing intrinsic existence from lower level entities, being the approach in Integrated Information Theory.
Further reading
- Duncan S (2012). Leibniz's Mill Arguments Against Materialism
- Block N (1981). Troubles with Functionalism