Counterfactuals, Computation, and Consciousness

摘要

Using a specially designed cellular automaton capable of emulating completely the function of a human brain, we explore ways in which counterfactual sensitivity, that is, the ability of a computational system to respond to any valid inputs, relates to discrete-state machine consciousness. In this computational framework, the distinction between a computation and the recording of a computation can be blurred arbitrarily, yet the physical implementation of the computation itself is unchanged. From this, we conclude that a purely computational account of consciousness is unsatisfactory.