On 04/07/07, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
SP: We can imagine an external observer looking at two model universes A
and B side by side, interviewing their occupants.
DN: Yes, and my point precisely is that this is an illegitimate sleight of
imagination where the thought experiment goes amiss. When one imagines the
'external' observer 'looking' at two universes, one constructs precisely the
false relationship that is the source of the confusion with respect to
consciousness. Any possible observer must in fact be integral to their own
universe.
David
> On 04/07/07, David Nyman < david.nyman.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> > TT: This B-Universe looks exactly the same as A-Universe.
> >
> > DN: IMO your thought experiment might as well stop right here. No
> universe
> > can "look" like anything to anyone except a participant in it - i.e. an
> > 'observer' who is an embedded sub-structure of that universe. The
> "looking"
> > that you refer to here is an illusory artefact of syntax - i.e. the
> relation
> > is to an imaginative construct which in fact is part of A-Universe. IOW
> > this sort of 'existence' is a metaphor which is relative to *us*, not
> the
> > self-relation of any realisable B-Universe. What you describe as
> B-Universe
> > "looking exactly the same" is really an implicit relation to an observer
> in
> > *that* universe, and consequently that observer is already accepted as
> > conscious. Alternatively, it doesn't "look" like anything to anyone,
> and
> > hence is by no stretch of the imagination "exactly the same".
>
> We can imagine an external observer looking at two model universes A
> and B side by side, interviewing their occupants.
>
>
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
> >
>
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Received on Wed Jul 04 2007 - 04:13:02 PDT