On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 07:00:19PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>
> Russell Standish writes:
>
> > I don't quite follow your argument. OMs are not computations. Whatever
> > they are under computationalism, they must be defined by a set of
> > information, a particular meaning to a particular observer.
>
> Computationalists do sometimes say things like "cognition is computation" and leave
> it at that. A more common formulation is that consciousness supervenes on the
> physical activity underlying computation. It was Donald Davidson in 1970 who
> introduced the term "supervenience" in philosophy of mind:
>
> "Mental characteristics are in some sense dependent, or supervenient, on physical
> characteristics. Such supervenience might be taken to mean that there cannot be
> two events exactly alike in all physical respects but differing in some mental respects,
> or that an object cannot alter in some mental respects without altering in some
> physical respects.
>
> [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/#2.1]
>
> That seemed perfectly reasonable and obvious to me a few years ago, but the more I
> think about it the more problematic it becomes. The subject of the present post is that
> it seems two objects or processes may in fact be physically identical but mentally different.
>
Indeed.
>
> I was using "quantum state" as synonymous with "physical state", which I guess
> is what you are referring to in the above paragraph. The observer sees a classical
> universe because in observing he collapses the wave function or selects one branch
> of the multiverse. Traditional computationalism ignores the other branches/ other
> elements of the superposition, but you have implied previously that these are
> necessary for consciousness because they allow implementation of counterfactuals.
> Does that mean consciousness would be impossible in a classical universe?
No - just computationalist consciousness supervening on a classical
physical systems.
I am open to machines + random oracles being conscious, and I am also
open to computational Multiverses. What I'm not open to is abandoning
supervenience, due to the problem of the Occam catastrophe.
>
> > In this case, this projected QM state describes not a full observer
> > moment, but only a component of one. And of course there will be
> > multiple observer moments sharing that component.
>
> I didn't think an OM could have components, being the smallest unit of subjective
> experience. Do you mean a component of the physical structures giving rise to the
> OM? And how can you be sure that other OMs share that component?
>
OMs are defined by some information. Very clearly more than 1 bit is
involved, but it is presumably finite.
Let us say that within this OM I am aware of two apples - 1 red and 1
green. The information describing one of these apples is the
"component" I was referring to.
As for other OMs sharing that component, this comes down to the usual
suspect arguments against solipsism. I don't feel like rehashing those
at the moment :)
--
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list-unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Sun Oct 15 2006 - 05:28:59 PDT