On 04/07/07, Torgny Tholerus <torgny.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
TT: You can look at the Game-of-Life-Universe, where you can see how the
"gliders" move. If you look at "Conway's game of Life" in Wikipedia, you
can look at how the Glider Gun is working in the top right corner. This is
possible although there is no observer integral to that Universe.
DN: Please, if we are to make progress, may we have more precision? You
clearly specified a hypothetical B-Universe which you invited us to consider
might be different in some fundamental way to ours. GoL is clearly in no
way a different 'universe' in this sense - you're making a loose,
conversational use of the term which has an entirely different entailment.
GoL is a part of the A-Universe just as we are, so as integral observers of
course we can observe it.
You have however drawn our attention to something very interesting and
important IMO. This concerns the necessary entailment of 'existence'. When
we perform the thought experiment, we cause a B-Universe to 'exist'. What
kind of existence is this? Well, it's a thought pattern, so you may wish to
consider it as an aspect of brain, or mind, or both. Either way, its part
of us, and as such, its 'existence' consists of participation in the
A-Universe. Simply put, the entailment of 'existence' is participation.
So we may grant real existence to the *idea* of the B-Universe whilst
recognising that its putative reference is non-existent in the A-Universe.
Nevertheless, we may still 'flesh-out' the metaphor of the B-Universe, but
crucially, if we are to do so without misleading ourselves, we must grant
events within it the equivalent category of actual - not metaphorical -
existence as that possessed by events within the A-Universe: that of
participation, or self-relation.
David
David Nyman skrev:
>
> 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.
>
> You can look at the Game-of-Life-Universe, where you can see how the
> "gliders" move. If you look at "Conway's game of Life" in Wikipedia, you
> can look at how the Glider Gun is working in the top right corner. This is
> possible although there is no observer integral to that Universe.
>
> The same is true about the B-Universe. You can look at it as an outside
> observer.
>
> --
> Torgny Tholerus
>
> >
>
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Received on Wed Jul 04 2007 - 15:01:35 PDT