Your statement, 'without consciousness you can't incorporate the anthropic
principle into your fundamental theory', is wrong. You can, it's just that
you look for conditions that would support this observer-moment (a
'self-referential thought'), rather than conditions that support some
physical object like a brain.
In your last paragraph you seem to concede that s single observer-moment can
be 'conscious' and stand-alone. What need is there for this extra word,
'conscious'? What does it add to 'observer-moment'?
James
----- Original Message -----
From: Jesse Mazer <lasermazer.domain.name.hidden>
To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2001 1:19 PM
Subject: Re: Consciousness schmonscioisness
> "James Higgo (co.uk)" wrote:
>
> >It's been almost two years you guys have been hung up on this 'I'
nonsense
> >-
> >can't you conceive, for one moment, that there is no 'I'? Can you grasp
the
> >indisputable fact that this debate is meaningless if there is no 'I',
just
> >observer-moments without an 'observer'? Has anybody out there understood
> >this point?
>
> How does it make sense to talk about "observer-moments" if you don't
believe
> in consciousness? Those who don't believe in consciousness at all should
> really just talk about the probability of various physical configurations,
> computations, or something similar. But without consciousness you can't
> incorporate the anthropic principle into your fundamental theory--no
reason
> to say some patterns/computations can be "experienced" while others can't.
>
> However, for those who do believe in consciousness, it is still possible
to
> disbelieve in *continuity* of consciousness--there could just be a lot of
> separate observer-moments that don't "become" anything different from what
> they already are (so there'd be no point in asking which copy I'd become
in
> a replication experiment).
>
> Jesse Mazer
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>
Received on Sat Feb 10 2001 - 05:36:03 PST