Can computation exist without a conscious mapmaker?

The Abstraction Fallacy identifies a logical dependency that computational functionalism inverts. For physical dynamics to count as computation, continuous physics must be partitioned into a finite set of discrete, semantically meaningful states — an "alphabetization." This partitioning requires an active, experiencing cognitive agent (the "mapmaker") who selects which invariants matter and assigns symbols to them.

The ontological inversion: Claiming that algorithmic complexity generates consciousness commits a category error — it assumes the map can produce the mapmaker. But the mapmaker's activity (alphabetization) is logically prior to the computation the map describes. Making the algorithm more complex does not undo this order of dependence.

Two distinct causal modes:

• Vehicle causality (simulation): physical substrate pushes symbols through gates; the semantic interpretation is external. This is what digital computers do.
• Content causality (instantiation): the intrinsic physical dynamics themselves carry meaning. This is what experiencing systems do.

Simulation and instantiation are structurally dissociated. A perfect behavioral simulation (vehicle causality) cannot constitute experience (content causality) because the semantic dimension was never intrinsic to the physical process.

Key distinction from Searle: The Chinese Room relies on reductio (surely understanding doesn't arise from symbol shuffling). The Abstraction Fallacy goes further: it traces how abstraction arises in the first place and shows computation is a description-dependent activity, not an intrinsic physical process. The argument is structural, not intuitive.

Since Does AI generate genuine utterances or just text patterns?, the mapmaker argument reinforces the Language as Event thesis: humans are the mapmakers who alphabetize LLM outputs into meaningful communication. Without the human mapmaker, there is only continuous physics (token probabilities) — not computation in any semantically loaded sense.

Source: Philosophy Subjectivity Paper: The Abstraction Fallacy