On 22 Nov 2008, at 21:45, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> Telmo Menezes wrote:
>> Quentin,
>>
>> Ok, but what if consciousness is a computational process that
>> potentially depends on the entire state of the universe? Let's
>> suppose
>> for example that quantum particles are the fundamental building
>> blocks, i.e. the hardware, and that consciousness is a computational
>> process that emerges from their interactions. We still have MEC+MAT,
>> and due to quantum entanglement, any quantum particle in the universe
>> can potentially interfere in the consciousness computation. How can
>> you store Bruno's film in such a universe?
>>
>> Telmo.
>
>
> But brain functions are essentially classical (see Tegmark's
> paper). Thought
> would be impossible if quantum entanglement was more that a
> perturbation. From
> a classical viewpoint, your brain can only be causally affected by a
> finite
> portion of the universe.
Right. And , even if the brain is a quantum computer, the argument
will go through, if only because a quantum computer can be simulated
by a classical computer (albeit very slowly: but this is not relevant,
the UD is very "slow" but first person cannot be aware of that). As
Quentin suggested you have to identify yourself completely with the
entire quantum multiverse to prevent the conclusion, and even in that
case, this has to be extracted from the MEC part of the MEC+MAT
hypothesis, which is the point. But yes in that case you can postulate
a sort of primitive matter having some relevance with your
consciousness. (Making them both very mysterious, and making their
link also rather mysterious, btw).
MGA 1 and MGA 2 are sometimes confronted with "super ad hoc move",
which, from a logical point of view have to be taken into account. I
expect I will have to go up to MGA 4, but I can imagine making some
MGA 5 to make such move invalid, relatively to some inductive
rationality principle explicited. Sort of a vaccine against such
"super ad hoc move". They appears also "against many worlds", against
experience testing Bell's inequality, etc. Also if you want to use
entanglement throughout the whole universe (or multiverse), you will
have difficulties in relating measurements and conscious memory of
experiences (but of course this is not yet solved the pure comp view),
I think.
So Tegmark work is not really relevant here. A good thing for me
because, although I think and tend to believe that Tegmark is
accurate, I don't have the personal knowledge of practical quantum
mechanics to be assure personally about the meaningfulness of the
chosen unities.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Sun Nov 23 2008 - 08:57:56 PST