--- GSLevy.domain.name.hidden wrote:
>jackmallah.domain.name.hidden writes:
> > > How can we be aware of and affected by worlds which
> > > are inaccessible?
> > > There are interference effects, indicating that
> > they are part of the same mathematical structure.
> > They don't just evolve in parrallell, they
> > co-evolve.
>
>Easy said but hard to justify. For "interference" to
>occur there must be a (linear) summation process with
>the inputs being each of those worlds and the output
>being made available to our senses. How is this
>summation done? What is the summation device? Why do
>we perceive the sum and not the components? You say, the worlds just "add
>up" as complex
>numbers. Why is that so?
QM is the laws of physics that best explains what we see. I think that
says it all. I should point out that there is really no summation involved,
especially not a sum over worlds. There is just -i hbar d/dt psi = H psi.
Of course, you could write psi as a sum of orthogonal functions and you
could choose nearly decoherent such functions.
>You are too glib. It's not that simple. If we lived
>in only one of the worlds we would not see the (summation)
>interference. Yet we see it. The question is "in how many worlds do we live
>and how is Planck's
>constant related to this problem?"
Meaningless.
In the computationalist view, there is a wavefunction, and it implements
computations. These implementations may resemble those that would be
produced by classical mechanics, modified by interference terms that may be
small.
> > I don't know what you're trying to say, but
> > as I said, with computationalism the [zombie]
> > problem does not arise.
>
>You don't have a problem because the phenomenon of
>consciousness does not get in your way. By itself pure 3rd person
>computationalism (your
>version) could explain the behavior of a machine,
>a computer, a zombie, or a person.
You still don't know what computationalism means? It means that certain
computations give rise to consciousness. It does not explain behavior at
all, and does not allow zombies.
>I agree with you that you could have measures and so on.
>However, it is only a third person perspective and does not explain the
>first person phenomenon of consciousness.
Dunno about "explain", but by definition it does assert that there would
be consciousness.
- - - - - - -
Jacques Mallah (jackmallah.domain.name.hidden)
Physicist / Many Worlder / Devil's Advocate
"I know what no one else knows" - 'Runaway Train', Soul Asylum
My URL:
http://hammer.prohosting.com/~mathmind/
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Received on Fri Jun 16 2000 - 16:44:26 PDT