For clarity: when I say "computation", I refer to any physical process ("physics") which involves information.
For instance, sorting a list is a computational process. It doesn't matter what kind of computer I run a sorting algorithm on, if I follow the algorithm, I end up with a sorted list. If I use quicksort, it takes me on average O(n log n) steps. It doesn't matter if I'm doing this on a Lego computer or if I'm simulating a Lego computer on a virtual computer. I always end up with a sorted list in an average of O(n log n) steps.
By contrast, if I construct a collection of chemicals that matches the positions of those of a real bacterium, I have created a new bacterium. However, if I simulate the activity of those chemicals on a computer, I have not created a bacterium. I have just created a simulation of a bacterium. I haven't created a living thing.
My argument is that the same is true of consciousness. If you create a perfect simulation of a brain in a computer, you have not created a new consciousness. You just have a simulation of a brain.
None of this to say that a computational paradigm cannot sometimes be useful in understanding what is going on in life or consciousness. Just that it is not fundamentally a computational process, it's a physical process.
I suspect the same, but I think there is tremendous value in taking a cosmic step back and seeing everything through the lens of information. It's the most reductionist neutral approach to the universe I can conceive us at this point in my life.
> By contrast, if I construct a collection of chemicals that matches the positions of those of a real bacterium, I have created a new bacterium. However, if I simulate the activity of those chemicals on a computer, I have not created a bacterium. I have just created a simulation of a bacterium. I haven't created a living thing.
I agree, but I think the context matters: you may not have created a bacteria, but that's because you've emulated a bacteria in a totally different environment. The bacteria makes no sense as a computational engine if you separate it from its environment, which is chemical in nature: this chemical environment must also be emulated inside the computer. So if we're going to take the idea of life as a computation seriously and to the extreme, we need to conceive of it as it exists within its environment and in the context within which it evolved. Otherwise what you've created, grossly speaking, is a function that is never called, which of course is much less interesting.
Similarly for the brain, it must also be embodied, and you must also simulate its afferent inputs, and you must also give it an environment with which to interact and within which to exhibit features of agency. If you emulate the embodied brain with its environment, I contend that it doesn't matter what the substrate is: the brain you will have created will "feel" just as real to itself. It will perceive itself as being "conscious" just as well as you and I.
Note that for this to make any sense in a relatable way to a human, it's not enough to just throw large numbers of neurons together, as I understand is common practice in AI work even today: a long-learned lesson in both neuro and biochem is that function follows structure, so you must emulate the gross organizational structure of the human brain in order to observe the same sorts of features that make up human-flavoured consciousness.
If you compute consciousness, there will be zero distinction between how the computation feels real to itself, and how you and I feel to ourselves. That "magic" feeling we get where we have the impression that we're "someone", with a personal identity, that we're real, that we're alive, that we're aware, that we can make our own decisions... All of that stuff, your emulated consciousness will also experience. It won't be just bits turning on and off from its point of view: it will feel alive.
What is your definition of "information"? I view the concept of computation so deeply entwined with consciousness that I fail to see how it can be meaningfully applied to physically phenomena that would be completely independent of a subject that can determine something to be a computation (i.e. the mathematical intuitionistic understanding),so I'm interested in what you mean by information and computation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructor_theory
The purely materialist argument is that "information" is just a pattern in the signal processing apparatus of carbon based lifeforms (i.e. it's a representation of the universe in our neurons, not the universe) which very loosely maps to physical processes. Very loosely is important here too: humans can identify equivalent patterns in things as dissimilar as the LCD output of a pocket calculator and beads on an abacus and act accordingly, but I'm not sure the constituent atoms of the calculator and abacus have any view on the matter.
There's no neuroanatomic basis for a "soul", but there is at least some extremely fuzzy mapping from neuroanatomy to the concept of "consciousness". It's a bad mapping, but it means more than nothing at all.
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And I reject the idea that taking the perspective of information is taking a dualist perspective. I am advocating for the opposite: taking "information" seriously as some sort of low-level quantum substrate of the universe. It's a purely materialist view, where the material is literal information.
An extreme version of this, which I find quite intellectually useful, is the mathematical universe. [1]
Note that in your examples of information, you are pointing to higher-level information, which emerges in complex systems. It's not an incompatible view!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothes...