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A person could create the same knowledge that biological evolution does, if only by simulating it. But it could still be true that only people can create explanatory knowledge. (That they can create all possible explanatory knowledge is Deutsch's criterion for personhood.)

"No unconscious creativity" seems the simpler option. But here we arrive again at biological evolution, which is unconscious, yet is creating knowledge. Does this serve as a distinction between explanatory knowledge and non? Explanatory knowledge can only be created by a conscious process?

Either there is no unconscious creativity, or only evolutionary/creative epochs with certain properties are conscious. The most obvious candidate for the property is complexity (in the sense of sophistication): only programs (existing knowledge) of a certain sophistication, once subjected to the evolutionary process, necessitates consciousness. Complex problem solving seems to require consciousness. Meanwhile, we do not seem to be conscious of "simpler" creative tasks, like... Like what? What is a "simple" creative task? What is an example of a creative task we perform unconsciously? How could we determine it was an act of creation (new knowledge), and not an act of deductive inference of the kind characterizing AI?

This suggests that all experience is determined by what programs are being subjected to evolution at any given time, the niches that are being adapted to. But why is not all creativity in the mind conscious? (All consciousness might necessarily be creativity).

But if the evolution is the defining feature of personhood, and the evolution is non-computational, then the personhood is non-computational. And consciousness would then not be a software property.

It could be simulated, but maybe it's very hard/intractable to do so. Maybe personhood harnesses physics to do the evolving, like a windmill harnesses the wind. Programs implemented such that the laws of physics cause them to evolve (unboundedly)?

Programs could be evolved non-computationally. But that process could itself still be simulated, per the Church-Turing-Deutsch Thesis.

By the Church-Turing Thesis, all computation can be specified/programmed. So the evolutionary aspect of a person can be specified/programmed, if it is computational.

The system may not have perfect knowledge of all programs present in it. The repeated independent emergence of winged flight in the biosphere comes to mind.

Because programs present in the system at one time could be no longer present at another time. Previously well-adapted programs could have decayed, been destroyed or consumed. So the same evolutionary path (approximately or not) could be travelled again, in principle.

But why would the system ever re-evolve to the satisfaction of a niche already satisfied previously? If the programs evolved by the evolutionary aspect of the person already exist, there is no more need for evolution of them.

Actually this is not implied. One experience and an identical later one could be caused by the same program(s) being run again at a later time; if the program which is identical to the given experience is part of an "evolutionary personhood program", that still qualifies: If the second experience is identical, under the above solution that just means that the exact same evolutionary steps are taken in the second case. Maybe this would virtually never happen, but poses no problem of principle.

SOLUTION: The apple programs give rise to consciousness only in a given context. Only when run a certain way (by a person).

By the latter standard, neither nature nor random number generators are people, which is sensible; nor can nature create any given possible knowledge tractably -- this is true because the fact that all possible knowledge exists is only by way of the multiverse, which is a process that cannot be simulated in its entirety, even by a quantum computer.

This wrongly implies speed is a property of programs, but it's a property of hardware.

This is a bad criterion because then random program generators are sometimes people.

An alternative criterion for personhood is speed: a person is a program that can synthesize any explanation in less than the lifetime of the universe, say.

It is mistaken to apply probabilistic thinking to human affairs, because they involve knowledge, and the growth of knowledge cannot be predicted.

I will probably not want to learn a new language in the next year.

In summer in the desert, will it "probably" be sunny in the afternoon?

Events occur or don't, and conjectures are refuted or aren't. So is it irrational to say something will "probably happen?

Can there be people who are not Turing Complete?

Is all conscious experience not the running of programs, but computation that is realizing the evolution of programs? Computation which cannot be abstracted to any program, then? So in what sense can a person "be programmed"? Is personhood computational, but "non-programmatic"?

This implies that no two instances of experience, even if seemingly identical, are caused by the same programs.

SOLUTION: The apple programs give rise to consciousness only in a given context. Only when run a certain why, by a person.