tom

What does that question even mean? Nails? Computational universality has nothing to do with mathematicians, or nails. You've lost me.

Our brains cannot be more than computers, according to physics.

It has been proved that, according to known physics, a universal computer can emulate any physical system exactly. It's not odd, it's reality.

Done? You mean hoist by your own petard.

Null sets, though. Humans have something other animals do not - a computationally universal brain, and a self aware mind.

Do you seriously think I claimed robots are conscious? How many processing stages are required to create qualia? 2, 3, 4? How does the last one create...

Other species don't possess qualia, so we are different. Animals don't possess computationally universal brains, so we are different. That is false an...

I think you might be assuming too much here. When a robot sees red, the seeing-red is definitely occurring in physical space Again, in a robot, when i...

It's not an assumption, it is a consequence of known physics. Stones are not and cannot be self aware, or even aware.

What does it mean to be "completely self aware" as opposed to just self aware?

If animals possess qualia - i.e. they can create "what-it-is-like" knowledge, then what is to stop them from creating, as humans do, any kind of knowl...

You had the opportunity to be true to your word, but you declined. In reality what else could you do? Anyway, keep erecting fantasy epistemological ba...

So, you think pretending an arbitrary epistemological barrier exists, constitutes what? An analogy or an argument? No you can't. If you think you can,...

I see. I show you in the most striking way that science is exclusively about explanation, a fact that you deny, and you chide me because I lack humili...

This recent paper on quantum mechanics should clarify the matter for you. Science is about explanation. https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.02048 The laws of n...

Software and hardware are not the same thing. Your brain is hardware, your mind is software.

What makes you think a computer could ever be aware? Only software can do that.

You've spotted something very interesting. The various "arrows of time" in physics have been unified under the "thermodynamic arrow of time" or someth...

Yes, but it would need more memory and a lot of time.

I don't need to "expand", you expressed it well enough. It's standard nomenclature for what special relativity (your choice) and its generalisation to...

The whole point is that Universal Computers are real devices, which can exist according to known physics. We are painfully aware of the classical rest...

Universal Computing is about physics, the way reality is structured, how information flows, and also about computers. If we accept for the sake of arg...

But you're happy with a stationary space-time block, because it does not "smack of the new religion of the materialist"? The statonary space-time bloc...

It is impossible in principle to know which futures you will inhabit, not even a "god" can do that. Also, it is possible to set the quantum amplitude ...

But quantum mechanics tells us that we don't inhabit a space-time, rather we inhabit a multiverse, which to a good approximation, is a countably infin...

How do you do that?

That's like saying Microsoft Word is greater than your laptop. Comparisons don't work unless you are comparing things of the same type. It is proved, ...

There is no such thing as a universal computer that can do something that other universal computers cannot. There is no such thing as a physical syste...

Ignoring the fact that Turing machines don't exist - they are a mathematical abstraction - and assuming by "subjects of experience" you mean something...

The Church-Turing-Deutsch Principle tells us (proves based on known physics) that all computationally universal devices are equivalent. Now, there is ...

The Principle does not "just say it is so". The CTD Principle does not mention consciousness at all.

I thought is standard practice to deny the thing you can't explain, at least amon a sizeable minority of philosophers? Anyway, it is also standard pra...

Irrelevant. The difference within males is greater than the difference within females.

How else do you explain the 6 point difference between Asians (of the far eastern variety) and Europeans?

The groups are quite different. Their standard deviations are different.

Success in life has nothing to do with evolution. Look at all the successful, rich and powerful people whose genes have been deselected via the choice...

So, when someone choses to be barren, that is irrelevant to the evolutionary success of their genes?

So animals can construct niches, but people can't make choices?

Free Will may not be a "survival advantage" because the freely chosen preferences of the individual need not align with the survival of the genes. We ...

It can't, no more than a rhinoceros can be correctly and accurately described as a collection of the letters A, G, C, and T. Which is one of the main ...

The difference is a lot less than the standard deviation, being approximately 0. The SDs are not the same though.

I'm not sure it's true to describe Microsoft Word as a collection of bytes. The source-code archive is as much Word, and with different computer archi...

That is just an example of the typical anthropomorphizing that people do. There is no evidence that animals possess qualia, and let's hope robots don'...

So, if you attach a camera to your PC, the PC has qualia? Do you really think so?

Robots can be programmed to do all that without qualia. You are simply making an unwarranted assumption, when the opposite is practically certain. Wha...

Fish, lizards and robots don't have minds though. None of them possess qualia.

We're getting there. If the host instead told you that he could see that behind one of the other two doors, there was nothing. Do you think he is tell...

You are confusing information with theatrics. The Monty Hall problem and its analysis is identical to choosing 1 door, or choosing 2 doors. There is n...

You know it's true from psychological experiments on fish, lizards, and robots. I doubt it.

Science knows.