The Incompatibility of Special Relativity and Conscious State Duplication: A Logical Argument Against Computational Teories of Mind

Andrew Knight

Brain-in-a-Vat Research

Abstract

The  possibility of algorithmic consciousness depends on the assumption that conscious states  can be copied or repeated by sufficiently duplicating their underlying physical states.  Whether or not this is physically possible has profound implications for physics, biology, computer science, and philosophy. By assuming that a conscious state supervenes on some sufficient underlying physical state, I show that the existence of the transtemporal identity commonly associated with consciousness is logically incompatible with the ability to copy or repeat conscious states. This incompatibility arises from relativistic constraints on spacelike and time like separated physical instantiations of a conscious state. This result has significant  implications for strong artificial intelligence, mind uploading, teleportation, Boltzmann brains, and other philosophical problems.