Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> On 01 Dec 2008, at 03:25, Russell Standish wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 07:10:43PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>> I am speaking as someone unconvinced that MGA2 implies an
>>>> absurdity. MGA2 implies that the consciousness is supervening on the
>>>> stationary film.
>>>
>>> ? I could agree, but is this not absurd enough, given MEC and the
>>> definition of the physical superveneience thesis;
>> It is, prima facie, no more absurd than consciousness supervening on a
>> block universe.
>>
>>>> A block universe is nondynamic by definition. But looked at another
>>>> way, (ie from the inside) it is dynamic. It neatly illustrates why
>>>> consciousness can supervene on a stationary film (because it is
>>>> stationary when viewed from the inside).
>>> OK, but then you clearly change the physical supervenience thesis.
>>>
>> How so? The stationary film is a physical object, I would have
>> thought.
>
>
> I don't understand this. The physical supervenience thesis associate
> consciousness AT (x,t) to a computational state AT (x,t).
Stated this way seems to assume that the causal relations between the states are
irrelevant, only the states matter.
>The idea is
> that consciousness can be "created" in real time by the physical
> "running" of a computation (viewed of not in a block universe).
Well we're pretty sure that brains do this.
>
> With the stationary film, this does not make sense. Alice experience
> of a dream is finite and short, the film lasts as long as you want. I
> think I see what you are doing: you take the stationary film as an
> incarnation of a computation in Platonia. In that sense you can
> associate the platonic experience of Alice to it, but this is a
> different physical supervenience thesis. And I argue that even this
> cannot work, because the movie does not capture a computation.
I was thinking along the same lines. But then the question is what does capture
a computation. Where in the thought experiments, starting with natural Alice
and ending with a pictures of Alice's brain states, did we lose computation? Is
it important that the sequence be time rather than space or some other order?
Is it the loss causal relations or counterfactuality?
Brent
>The
> universal interpreter is lacking. It could even correspond to another
> experience, if the graph was a movie of another sort of computer, for
> example with NAND substituted for the NOR.
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>>>> The "film", however does need
>>>> to be sufficiently rich, and also needs to handle counterfactuals
>>>> (unlike the usual sort of movie we see which has only one plot).
>>>
>>> OK. Such a film could be said to be a computation. Of course you are
>>> not talking about a stationary thing, which, be it physical or
>>> immaterial, cannot handle counterfactuals.
>>>
>> If true, then a block universe could not represent the
>> Multiverse. Maybe so, but I think a lot of people might be surprised
>> at this one.
>
>
> I am not sure I can give sense to an expression like "the multiverse"
> or the "block universe" can or cannot handle counterfactuals. They
> have no inputs, nor outputs.
>
>
> Bruno
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
> >
>
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Received on Mon Dec 01 2008 - 21:34:09 PST