Re: ASSA and Many-Worlds

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 15:39:07 +0100

Le 28-janv.-07, à 20:21, Brent Meeker a écrit :



> OK, but that means "observer moments" are not fundamental and the
> "illusion" of their continuity may be provided by the continuity of
> their underpinning. But I don't see how a strictly stepwise discrete
> process as contemplated in the UD can provide that continuity. It was
> my understanding that it assumed consciousness could be provided by a
> series of disjoint states.




Yes. But a series of discrete states (or their godel number) has to be
related by a computation for making sense.

So it makes no sense to say that a sequence of number is a computation.
You have to fix a "universal environment". Let us fix once and for all
a godel numbering. Then it is only relative to some universal number
that a sequence of number can be counted as a computation.

Now, from a first person point of view, we don't know in which
computation we belong. So from a first person point of view, we have to
take all equivalent computations (number sequence) relative to all
universal number.

This is enough to explain why from first person points of view,
computations seem to require a continuum. In a sense we have to be
related to the continuum of computations going through our states (it
includes the infinity of computations describing finer grained
histories with respect to our comp level of substitution.

Consciousness is typically a first person notion. Strictly speaking it
cannot be associated to one third person computation. Only this one can
be described by a sequence of discrete states (more or less arbitrarily
from a choice of a universal number/system). First person consciousness
is associated with a uncountable ("continuous") third person
computation.

That is why all notion of self-correctness can make sense only
relatively to the most *probable* computational histories. OK?


Bruno


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


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Received on Mon Jan 29 2007 - 09:39:15 PST

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