On Apr 20, 8:14 am, Stathis Papaioannou <stath....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> The drawback is that any physical system (which could be mapped onto
> any information or any computation) would be conscious. This is only a
> drawback if you believe, I guess as a matter of faith, that it is
> false.
Right, the "Putnam mapping" thing. And the related idea that with the
correct "one-time pad" you can extract any information from any
source. And the whole "rock implementing every finate state automata"
thing.
Given that information is so ubiquitious, I think it's best to just
bite the bullet and go with th idea that information exists
independently of any physical substrate, and without needing a source,
(as in some variation of platonic realism). But, if you combine this
with the idea that consciousness is information, and take this as your
fundamental basis of reality, then there really are no other
questions. Everything else follows I think.
This does lead one to conclude that most conscious observers see
chaotic and nonsensical realities, because most possible information
patterns are random-ish and chaotic. BUT, so be it. We have examples
of such conscious observers right here in every day life. People with
schizophrenia, dementia, hallucinations, etc. All of these conditions
are caused by disruptions in the information represented by the brain.
Which is why I think that even starting with the assumption of
physicalism, you're still lead back to idealism.
And of course, you have experience of nonsensical realities yourself,
when you dream. I would say the worlds we encounter in our dreams are
just as real (or unreal) as the world we see when we are awake, BUT we
don't spend much time there, and when we wake our memories of the
dream worlds fade and lose intensity. So we give them subordinate
status.
I would say that every possible conscious observer exists in a reality
of their own perceptions. And every perceivable reality (both hellish
and heavenly) IS perceived by every observer capable of perceiving it.
And the reason for this is that the information for these perceptions
exists in a platonic sense.
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Received on Mon Apr 20 2009 - 20:24:11 PDT