On 18 Jan 2009, at 06:38, Brent Meeker wrote:
>>
>> Are you stopping at UDA step 1?
>
> No. There's a difference between your idea of running a world and
> making a copy
> of me within this world. I think the latter will necessarily incur
> a gap in my
> consciousness because of the need to gather the information about my
> state (plus
> some environment), but not the former.
I could agree, but then are you OK with UDA 7, where this difference
is not relevant.
>
>
>> With some effort Stathis, Quentin or me, or some other will succeed
>> in
>> making you say directly "no" to the doctor.
>
> Do I have to say "no" just because I suppose I'd incur a gap in
> consciousness? :-)
To be honest, I have still not understand where that gap of
consciousness comes from, nor am I sure the notion of gap of
consciousness makes sense. I think those could be amnesia or
distraction.
I don't think we can loose consciousness, we can only forget, this
asks for work.
>>
>>
>> I have no doubt that digital mechanism and materialism are
>> incompatible,
>> though.
>
> Is that because, under materialism, consciousness depends on causal
> links?
No, it is because of UDA. And yes consciousness depends on causal
links. As being first person, consciousness depends on infinitely many
causal links, due to the fact that comp truncates the histories at
some level, below that level material or observable reality sums on
all alternate computations. Of course I identify here "causal link"
and computation.
The advantage is that "causality" and its many higher level versions
are explained through number and classical logic, in that case. The
modalities emerge through the correct self-reflexion. We get for free
mind, and matter (and other hypostases).
Also, materialist have hard time to define the notion of causality,
like "matter" or "energy", it is hard to interpret the physical facts
and the theories we make from observation already. The UDA approach
consists in taking seriously a "theological" hypothesis: the yes
doctor *qua computatio*, and to follow the consequences.
If you say "yes" to the doctor, you can understand that your next
instant of consciousness is determined by all computations going
through your actual state (described at the lowest level). Here:
2^aleph_0 histories, a priori.
No universal machine, like us (this by assumption), can distinguish
"real reality", from "virtual (emulated) reality", from "arithmetical
reality", from analytical reality, from set theoretical reality, etc.
(and this by theorem). The base ontology is not important to be
named. When Turing emulable and universal, it generates all (internal
and relatively external) notions of causalities, even ladders of
higher and higher order notion of causality.
And to explain the observable universe by its mere "existence" is a
bit creationist for me. I like comp showing us that the inquiry game
just begin: the laws of physics have a reason, a beginning of
explanation. Numbers reflect Numbers.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Sun Jan 18 2009 - 11:08:48 PST