I really don’t see any issue with abstracting away complexity. My view is strictly binary: either there is something about the biological substrate which sustain consciousness in a way silicon cannot, or a silicon-based system can, in theory, simulate consciousness. It seems to be “relatively minor” to me whether silicon-based consciousness would be practical or not in terms of resources required, e.g. needing more silicon than can be found on earth in order to simulate a human mind. I say this in the sense that I’d love to know whether it’s possible, before worrying about how practical it is. Suppose it really takes prohibitively vast computers to simulate consciousness, in which case there might be ways to combine the use of silicon and biological substrates that solve the material resources problem.
But you don’t have data on that, I don’t have data on that, neither of us know whether it’s even meaningful to debate complexity. If anything, I would be tempted to interpret debate about complexity as implying weak faith in rebuttals of the substrate argument.
I really don’t see any issue with abstracting away complexity. My view is strictly binary: either there is something about the biological substrate which sustain consciousness in a way silicon cannot, or a silicon-based system can, in theory, simulate consciousness. It seems to be “relatively minor” to me whether silicon-based consciousness would be practical or not in terms of resources required, e.g. needing more silicon than can be found on earth in order to simulate a human mind. I say this in the sense that I’d love to know whether it’s possible, before worrying about how practical it is. Suppose it really takes prohibitively vast computers to simulate consciousness, in which case there might be ways to combine the use of silicon and biological substrates that solve the material resources problem.
But you don’t have data on that, I don’t have data on that, neither of us know whether it’s even meaningful to debate complexity. If anything, I would be tempted to interpret debate about complexity as implying weak faith in rebuttals of the substrate argument.