Re: computationalism and supervenience

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2006 12:25:53 +0200

Le 06-sept.-06, à 10:48, Russell Standish a écrit :

> On Wed, Sep 06, 2006 at 12:25:10AM -0700, "Hal Finney" wrote:
>> I'd think that in the context of a multiverse, physical supervenience
>> would say that whether consciousness is instantiated would depend only
>> on physical conditions here, at this point in the multiverse, and
>> would
>> not depend on conditions elsewhere. It would be a sort of "locality
>> condition" for the multiverse.
>
> Why do you say this? Surely physical supervenience is simply
> supervenience on some physical object. Physical objects are spread
> across the multiverse, and are capable of reacting to all
> counterfactuals presented to it.


I agree with Hal Finney objection. A "simpler" one is that if the
physics needed is of the type MW or quantum (without collapse), then IF
this is relevant for solving the maudlin's paradox then a quantum
physical system should NOT been turing emulable.

Put in another way: suppose that a quantum system is conscious, and
that comp is correct. Then a classical computer emulation of the
quantum system should be conscious, but for this one only the classical
counterfactual can play a role, and Maudlin's paradox will reappear at
that level.

In your preceding posts, Russel says:

> I think what you're trying to say is move Maudlin's construction one
> level up. The computer (eg Klara) actually emulates a Multiverse, and
> Olympia is some kind of recording of the Multiverse.

This is not clear. The many Klaras are just inactive computers during
PI, which should be activated in case of counterfactuals. They are
inactive in the "normal" parallel world too.

> But in this case
> I would say that Olympia and Klara are actually identical, and linking
> the two is not of much conceptual value.

?

> I also have difficulty in
> saying that a Multiverse is conscious when some interior views of the
> Multiverse experience conscious states


Comp implies two things:
- The multiverse is not a priori conscious (unless you are the
multiverse, it means the substitution level is as low as possible).
   (As Plotinus realized this is the major problem with Aristotle: the
consciousness of the big One).
- The observable (multi)-universe is not a priori computable (the
physics is given by an 1-indeterminacy average on an infinity of
computations).


> t is the fallacy of assuming
> that a collection of things is always more (complex) than the
> individual things themselves.


I agree, both with comp and the quantum, although the notion of
subsystem is rather complex in those settings.

> Multiverses are rather simple things -
> about the simplicity of Schroedinger's equation, and hardly what I'd
> call conscious.

We agree. Normal: it is the basic assumption of the everything-list,
above comp...


> But I think we are headed in the direction of whether computable
> Multiverses really satisfy what we mean by computationalism. If
> someone copies the entirety of reality, do I still survive in a "folk"
> psychology sense. I am still confused on this point.

How could you not survive that?

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Received on Wed Sep 06 2006 - 06:28:14 PDT

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