Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Le 27-oct.-06, à 13:04, Quentin Anciaux a écrit :
>
> >
> > Hi Stathis,
> >
> > Le Vendredi 27 Octobre 2006 12:16, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :
> >> Here is another thought experiment. You are watching an object moving
> >> against a stationary background at a velocity of 10 m/s. Suddenly, the
> >> object seems to instantly jump 10 metres in the direction of motion,
> >> and
> >> then continues as before at 10 m/s. You are informed that one of the
> >> following three events has taken place:
> >>
> >> (a) your consciousness was suspended for 1 second, as in an absence
> >> seizure;
> >>
> >> (b) you were scanned, annihilated, and a perfect copy created in your
> >> place
> >> 1 second later;
> >>
> >> (c) nothing unusual happened to you, but the object you were watching
> >> was
> >> instantly teleported 10 metres in the direction of motion.
> >>
> >> Would you be able to guess which of the three events took place?
> >>
> >> Stathis Papaioannou
> >
> > The problem with these kind of thoughts experiments is that we don't
> > know how
> > consciousness "works", we don't know if we can make a "perfect copy",
> > we
> > can't know (currently) if such a copy would be conscious as we don't
> > know how
> > conscious experience arise.
>
>
> That is why we are proposing theories. It seems to me that the
> computationalist hypothesis entails the answer "no" to Stathis
> question.
> Are you OK with this? (Of course, other hypotheses (like some weakening
> of comp for example) could also lead to the answer no.
>
>
>
> > Taking the premises of the problem you gave, it
> > is impossible to give a (right) answer (if there is one...). You
> > presupose
> > too much on what is consciousness and how it works (not that it is a
> > bad
> > thing, but I think these examples won't convince someone who have not
> > the
> > same view on you about what is consciousness and how it works).
>
>
> I think that the point of Stathis was illustrating comp or some
> weakening of it.
>
> Is there someone in the list who find simultaneously both comp *and* a
> "yes" answer to Stathis' question plausible?
>
>
> Bruno
Is there a difference in the answer to Stathis' question for this
thought experiment, and the answer to Stathis' question for the
equalivent thought experiment except for the following?
(a) your consciousness was suspended for 0 seconds
(b) you were scanned, annihilated, and a perfect copy created in your
place 0 seconds later
(c) nothing unusual happened to you, but the object you were watching
was instantly teleported 0 metres in the direction of motion.
At first (a) and (c) seem identical, but I take "teleported" here to
mean (for the sake of simplicity!) the same thing as was done to you in
(b).
What is happening in (a)? Let's say that the same rigamarole as in the
original thought experiment (to keep as much as possible equal between
the two experiments!) is done, except that 1 is replaced by 0.
I mean, why would a delay make any difference to the argument? That's
equivalent to one of the steps in Bruno's UDA.
Actually, let's change the 0 to epsilon and let epsilon approach zero,
so instead of a "0 second" argument, we have an "epsilon second"
argument.
Well then, what have we here in the "epsilon second" experiment? It
seems to simply argue that we don't know what the heck is happening in
our universe from one instant to the next. I can think of a lot of
TOEs that say that.
But on the other hand, we do have some very good models in physics that
say we actually can predict with minimal uncertainty what will happen
over time.
So the conclusion of my thought is that perhaps such thought
experiments, as well as Bruno's UDA, are just inserting white rabbits
constructively into the universe. No wonder the conclusion is that we
don't know what's happening (a la Bruno's indeterminacies).
Tom
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Received on Mon Oct 30 2006 - 15:26:33 PST