Re: Consciousness is information?

From: Jason Resch <jasonresch.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:41:54 -0500

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 1:55 AM, Kelly <harmonk00.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> On Apr 21, 11:31 am, Bruno Marchal <marc....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>> We could say that a state A access to a state B if there is a
>> universal machine (a universal number relation) transforming A into B.
>> This works at the ontological level, or for the third person point of
>> view. But if A is a consciousness related state, then to evaluate the
>> probability of personal access to B, you have to take into account
>> *all* computations going from A to B, and thus you have to take into
>> account the infinitely many universal number relations transforming A
>> into B. Most of them are indiscernible by "you" because they differ
>> below "your" substitution level.
>
> So, going back to some of your other posts about "transmitting" a copy
> of a person from Brussels to Moscow.  What is it that is transmitted?
> Information, right?  So for that to be a plausible scenario we have to
> say that a person at a particular instant in time can be fully
> described by some set of data.
>
> It would seem to me that their conscious state at that instant must be
> recoverable from that set of data.  The only question is, what
> conditions must be met for them to "experience" this state, which is
> completely described by the data set?  I don't see any obvious reason
> why anything additional is needed.  What does computation really add
> to this?
>

I think I agree with this, that consciousness is created by the
information associated with a brain state, however I think two things
are missing:

The first is that I don't think there is enough information within a
single Plank time or other snapshot of the brain to constitute
consciousness. As you mention below, under the view of block time,
the brain, and all other things are four-dimensional objects.
Therefore the total information composing a moment of conscious may be
spread across some non-zero segment of time.

The second problem is immediately related to the first. Lets assume
that there is consciousness within a 10 second time period, so we make
a recording of someone's brain states across 10 seconds and store it
in some suitable binary file. The question is: Are there any logical
connections between successive states when stored in this file? I
would think not.

When the brain state is embedded in block time, the laws of physics
serve as a suitable interpreter which connect the information spread
out over four-dimensions, but without computer software running the
stored brain state, there is no interpreter for the information when
it is just sitting on the disk. I think this is the reason some of us
feel a need to have information computed as opposed to it simply
existing.

Jason

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Received on Wed Apr 22 2009 - 13:41:54 PDT

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