Re: Numbers, Machine and Father Ted

From: David Nyman <david.nyman.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 18:55:59 -0000

1Z wrote:

> > I think we're in agreement, Stathis, but I'm trying to focus on a
> > problem, and what I think is a non-trivial aspect of evolved brain
> > functionality that would be required to overcome it. Of course, I agree
> > with you that each aspect of the experience '.....falls perfectly into
> > position in each case by virtue of its content alone' - it's precisely
> > what I've been arguing.
>
> I don't think that is a necessary or obvious truth. If there
> is an external time parameter, it might be possible to
> return to the same state of mind (or the universe)
> at different points in time, just as it is possible to
> for identical duplicates to exist simultaneously at different
> points in space).

Yes, I think this could have been better put. I meant that each aspect
of the experience could be treated as if self-contained, with an
independent 'pov'. etc.

> What does "informationally closed" mean?

'Isolated' might be a better term. As DD puts it 'other times are
special cases of other worlds'.

> Errmm.. if by "recover" we are able to replay them as
> conscious (re)experiences. The memory-trace need
> only contain time-stamps indicating the order
> and timing of the contents of the experience. The
> total structure of time-stamped-stored-experience
> can co-exist simultaneously, just as a the frames
> of a movie stored on a shelf co-exist simultaneously.

Precisely, my dear Watson.

> The stored experience is not conscious in itself
> any more than the stored movie involves any (ilusion of) motion.
>
> In both cases, that comes in with the recovery.

And I'm saying that the recovery *is* a structure that implements a
specific set of relations between the 'time-stamped' data and the
perceptual apparatus - what I've termed the perceiver-percept dyad. The
dyad's function is to render the time-stamped data in the form of
environmentally-embedded dynamic processes centred on a 1-person pov.
If you press me for the detail of 'render' I'm afraid I can only
respond 'in some way', as you do with respect to RITSIAR. My point is
that the dyad is rendered as a simultaneously compresent structure. As
to *why* the structure is experienced as an 'A'-series, I can but refer
you to my previous suggestions, which you may or may not find
persuasive.

> That all depends on what you mean by "individual occasion".
> In physics that a purely 3d (0 time-dimensional)
> doesn't contain enough information to recover
> standard dynamics, and instead a kind of "specious present"
> known as "instantaneous velocity" is used -- i.e.
> the snapshot is of an infinitessimal slice, not a 0-width slice.
> (Barbour's Machianism keeps the 0-slices and does without
> some features of standard dynamics).

We don't have to define the occasion in this way. Rather, we look at
what information is available for 'dyadic rendering'. My point to
Stathis was that unless the information representing all stages of a
specific dynamic experience is simultaneously compresent in a single
occasion, however delimited, there could be no such experience present
in that occasion.

> > and it seems that we almost can't stop ourselves imaginatively invoking
> > some sort of continuity over multiple occasions, in order that coherent
> > experiences can somehow be recovered by summing over the sequence.
>
> Hmmm. Well, sequence per se doesn't require continuity.

No, but the temptation is to try to assemble the information from
different OMs or occasions by surreptitiously invoking 'continuity' -
peeking, IOW.

> Soo...what you are saying is that experiences of
> (seemingly) continuous processes are incompatible with
> "presentism", the idea that everything must be recovered
> from a 0-width (temporally) slice. Well, maybe,
> but not even physics goes in for presentism in exactly *that* sense.

Am I? I'm saying that the information driving the experience of
(seemingly) continuous processes must be recovered from simultaneously
compresent sources. The reason is that if one assumes the opposite -
that such information is just recovered from individual events 'smeared
over time' - then you keep losing bits of the (psychological) 'specious
present' because, as the information sequence moves forward, the
earlier bits *just aren't available any longer*. So I'm saying that in
the B-series events are indeed sequentially 'laid out', but that this
of itself is insufficient to account for our own species of episodic
dynamic experience. The A-series (i.e. time-as-experienced) seems to
proceed via sequences not of single events, but simultaneously rendered
'dynamic capsules' generated by (god-knows-what) brain mechanisms that
have specifically evolved towards this end.

David

> David Nyman wrote:
> > Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> >
> > > The point is, whatever you are thinking during t1t2, you are thinking *something*,
> > > and you are thinking the same something in (a), (b) and (c). Whatever complex
> > > brain processes are occurring during t1t2 in (a) are also occurring in (b) and (c), and
> > > therefore whatever conscious processes are occurring during that interval in (a) will
> > > also occur in (b) and (c), and you will not lose your place in the sentence or your sense
> > > of continuity of consciousness. The OM t1t2 is exactly the same in each case, and falls
> > > perfectly into position in each case by virtue of its content alone.
> > >
> >
> > I think we're in agreement, Stathis, but I'm trying to focus on a
> > problem, and what I think is a non-trivial aspect of evolved brain
> > functionality that would be required to overcome it. Of course, I agree
> > with you that each aspect of the experience '.....falls perfectly into
> > position in each case by virtue of its content alone' - it's precisely
> > what I've been arguing.
>
> I don't think that is a necessary or obvious truth. If there
> is an external time parameter, it might be possible to
> return to the same state of mind (or the universe)
> at different points in time, just as it is possible to
> for identical duplicates to exist simultaneously at different
> points in space).
>
> > But there's a subtler point here also, I think,
> > that leads to the problem. Let's take the 'cat sat on the mat': now
> > 'cat' starts at t1 and 'mat' ends at t2. Let's subdivide t1t2 into
> > occasions o1-o1000, and let teleportation occur between each. Each
> > occasion o1-o1000 is as informationally closed
>
> What does "informationally closed" mean?
>
> > as OMt1t2 (the
> > 'teleportation' is of course inserted precisely to make this point),
> > but now it has become implausible to believe that any individual
> > occasion, say o492, is of sufficient extent to recover any coherent
> > component whatsoever of the conscious thought 'the cat sat on the mat'.
> > And yet, we know that we *are* in fact able to routinely recover such
> > components, corresponding loosely to a 'specious present' of some 1.5
> > seconds extent.
>
> Errmm.. if by "recover" we are able to replay them as
> conscious (re)experiences. The memory-trace need
> only contain time-stamps indicating the order
> and timing of the contents of the experience. The
> total structure of time-stamped-stored-experience
> can co-exist simultaneously, just as a the frames
> of a movie stored on a shelf co-exist simultaneously.
>
> The stored experience is not conscious in itself
> any more than the stored movie involves any (ilusion of) motion.
>
> In both cases, that comes in with the recovery.
>
>
> > Now comes the problem: how do we account for our manifest ability to do
> > this without invoking some form of illicit 'continuity' between
> > informationally separated occasions of arbitrarily fine granularity? No
> > individual occasion apparently contains all the necessary information,
>
> That all depends on what you mean by "individual occasion".
> In physics that a purely 3d (0 time-dimensional)
> doesn't contain enough information to recover
> standard dynamics, and instead a kind of "specious present"
> known as "instantaneous velocity" is used -- i.e.
> the snapshot is of an infinitessimal slice, not a 0-width slice.
> (Barbour's Machianism keeps the 0-slices and does without
> some features of standard dynamics).
>
> > and it seems that we almost can't stop ourselves imaginatively invoking
> > some sort of continuity over multiple occasions, in order that coherent
> > experiences can somehow be recovered by summing over the sequence.
>
> Hmmm. Well, sequence per se doesn't require continuity.
>
> > I think, if true, this would be a real problem in reconciling our
> > experience with the facts, and I think therefore that it requires a
> > real solution (actually an aspect of Barbour's time capsule theory
> > which I'm extrapolating a bit further). Simply, if what I'm arguing is
> > valid, it must follow that my assumption about individual occasions
> > 'not containing the necessary information' *must be wrong*.
>
> Soo...what you are saying is that experiences of
> (seemingly) continuous processes are incompatible with
> "presentism", the idea that everything must be recovered
> from a 0-width (temporally) slice. Well, maybe,
> but not even physics goes in for presentism in exactly *that* sense.
>
> (I think this is relevant to Maudlin. I don't
> think the physical "activity" of a system can be
> separated from its latent casual dispositions).
>
> > Consequently, sufficient information to recover 'speciously present'
> > dynamic experiences *must* in fact be *simultaneously* represented by
> > the brain - be present on one occasion - and that this simultaneous
> > 'dynamic' presentation must be the engine that renders both the
> > duration and the dynamism of the experience. And, to complete the
> > (evolutionary) circularity, this would be precisely *why* the brain
> > would possess this capability - because without it, extended, dynamic
> > environmental presentations would simply be *unavailable* to the
> > organism.


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Received on Sat Oct 28 2006 - 14:56:19 PDT

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