Re: The Game of Life

From: <GSLevy.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1999 14:16:51 EST

In a message dated 12/22/1999 10:48:19 AM Pacific Standard Time,
marchal.domain.name.hidden writes:

> For
> very more sophisticated beings than us, your "theory" would literally
> justify for them a right to kill us. I think that such being, although
> they
> can predict our behavior, should be wise to realise that we can't, but
> that
> maybe we can infer that, so they should realise that from our point of
> view
> we could be "really" conscious, and that it is not an illusion.
> That is at least an "ethical" critics of your theory.

OK. I agree with this. And, isn't it how we treat animals? We hunt them, kill
them, eat them, torture them in the name of science. Yet from their own
points of view they are suffering.


>But without changing
> a lot your theory, you could accept that consciousness from the 1-person
> point of view is absolute, and still relative from the 3-person
> description.

Yes, I could agree with this. The first person perspective is "absolute" in
the sense that both observer and observee are one. I guess, trying to use a
mathematical terms, this is a degenerate case of a more general situation. In
physical terms could this be called an "invariant?" There may be invariant
properties in making observer and observee identical. Hence the corollary
that we are all the same "inside." Our own sense of ourselves is the same.

> This would even enlarge the link I propose between consciousness and
> instinctive inference of self-consistency.
> I must still think about it.
>
> Bruno
>
>


George
Received on Sat Dec 25 1999 - 11:19:15 PST