Making Sense with Sam Harris - Subscriber Content cover image

#264 - Consciousness and Self (Rebroadcast)

Making Sense with Sam Harris - Subscriber Content

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The Importance of Substrate Independence in Conscious Experiences

It's not clear to me in the only existence proofs of conscious systems that we have, other biological organisms in ourselves, what substrate independence really means. So I don't find that intuitive to go from making a direct physical replica all the way up to simulations and therefore simulations of lots of possible life histories. We don't expect simulation to instantiate certain properties and we do expect it to instantiate other properties. And to just assume that consciousness is the kind of thing that can be instantiated through simulation is just to fully take on board functionalism... These metaphors are plausible, but I don't think should be taken for granted.

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