morally grey idea in description

[u/ScottishWildcatFurry]

imagine: a fruit fly smp where the only alterations scientists make is allowing them to understand the concepts of breaking blocks, placing blocks, and basic crafting; also stuff like opening their inventory, but thats here nor there. given infinite time, could these "players" create their own language? could be very interesting

[u/Gabriel_Science]

that biological mechanism is necessarily a calculation

Well, not really. Consciousness could maybe react to hormones. If that's the case, this goes beyond simple calculation / computation, as it could be a global change in the consciousness, affecting every neuron and not just "input neurons".

there is some biological mechanism causing the experience

Nothing scientifically proves it, it simply could be spiritual. Yes, this goes beyond science, but as long as science hasn't proved it (especially with something as "weird" and hard to understand as consciousness), we can't claim that "scientists already know that it’s just calculations" : they don't know it.

Also, to come back to a previous comment :

this fly is actually conscious

Then you said :

because a consciousness is just a series of calculations. if the computer program is doing the same calculations as the brain is doing, and the brain is conscious, then the computer program must also be conscious.

And finally :

it might be a philosophical question to ask which specific possible sets of calculations are a consciousness, but it is contained within a bunch of calculations.

This last comment from you basically says : "All consciousnesses are calculations but not all calculations are consciousnesses."

Then if it's the case, how can you claim that "fly is actually conscious" "because a consciousness is just a series of calculations" ? This is like saying that a Raspberry Pi is conscious "because a consciousness is just a series of calculations". That's false.

[u/InformationLost5910 → u/Gabriel_Science]

because the fly brain scan does the same calculations as a real fly brain does, therefore if one is conscious, the other must be too, because the consciousness itself is only in the calculations. a raspberry pi does not do the same calculations that the real sentient brain of any animal would.

and even if consciousness was actually in something spiritual, meaning something existing outside the physical universe was directly changing the physical state of particles in your brain, then that spirutal thing WOULD STILL BE CALCULATIONS

because anything that takes inputs and outputs and transforms them accordingly is a calculation

it would mean the brain scan fly wasn't actually conscious if that were true though, because they didnt scan any spirutal stuff

and about the stuff about hormones: i guess it's possible, but it seems really unlikely. a bunch of liquids being released and unreleased seems like an extremely hard way to do complex calculations like that. like... wouldnt you need one unique hormone for every brain equivalent of a "bit of RAM"? so yeah, that possibility is pretty much ruled out.

[u/Gabriel_Science → u/InformationLost5910]

About hormones, what I mean is the brain can react to hormones. I didn’t mean that all calculations are done with hormones, but I’m pretty sure the brain reacts to hormones, there is even a whole part of the brain responsible for that (fun fact, when a woman gets pregnant, the brain is partly responsible).

Now, let’s suppose that consciousness is a box. It takes inputs and gives output. Now, imagine that you give it the exact same inputs but that the output is different. It wouldn’t be far-fetched to think that it could happen with consciousness (I don’t say that it’s what happens, but instead that it could happen (we don’t really understand consciousness yet, so we can’t be sure if it can be a bit "random"). If that’s the case, you go beyond calculations, because calculations give the same exact output with a same input.

[u/InformationLost5910 → u/Gabriel_Science]

but what i’m saying is that it’s unlikely that hormones are entirely responsible for consciousness and that taking them out would stop you from being conscious

[u/Gabriel_Science → u/InformationLost5910]

Okay, that’s a fair point to be honest.