Brent Meeker wrote:
>OK, I understand - I think. But as I understand your ontology,
>everything is immaterial - even matter. So the question is, are there
>consciousness' that are not associated with material things.
Well, in a sense no "consciousness" are associated with, let us
say, substancial things. (Matter in a general sense can survive, for
exemple as sharable stable appearances (like the first person plural
point of view which appears when *population of machines* are
differentiating (like in the multiverse))).
>Can there
>be disembodied consciousness as supposed by mystics and people who have
>OBE's (out of body experiences)?
I don't know. Each time I go out of my body I wake up, or I made
lucid dream (dreams where you bet you are dreaming).
With comp a substancial spirit cannot go out of a substancial body,
because neither exist.
Nevertheless a success in psychokinesis would not refute comp. It would
be a powerful argument that our level of substitution is very low,
perhaps.
(I find it not very plausible imo).
I was used to say I will believe in psychokinesis if someone
writes a program in FORTRAN capable to bend a fork. Note that the
special quantum KILL-THE-USER machine can probably do that succesfully
from the point of view of the user! (appendice on QM in my thesis).
But it is hard to imagine a more pathetic and egocentric way to bend
reality! (Also you must be sure that the probability of a quantum bending
is higher that the probability you should die with the killing
instruction.
>I was (in some context)
I know someone who, after some shock, has the OBE *experience* every
ten seconds, and it seems to be rather handicaping, especially for
concentration.
>I'm not sure I grasp the concept of duplicates in arithmetic.
It is not so easy. You see, Godel proves his incompleteness
theorem by "duplicating" PEANO ARITHMETIC (PA) *in* arithmetic.
Today you can more easily prove incompleteness phenomenon for
machines by duplicating the machine in the language of the
machine. But for my purpose it seems at some time we should
take the time to work on a particular "duplication" of this
type. The main point is that you can represent the functionning
of a machine (or an axiomatiosable theory) in term of purely
arithmetical relation between number. If you know how a (classical)
computer work, you should guess that such a translation is
possible. In fact a small (and generable) subset of the set
of arithmetical true proposition is rich enough for being a
universal programming language. Basically logic + positive
integer addition and multiplication are enough.
>Arithmetic is abstract and immaterial. There can be duplicate
>representations of 2+2=4 but I don't see how there can be duplicate
>facts in Platonia corresponding to 2+2=4. As an immaterial fact of
>logic it can't be duplicated because there can be no distinction
>between two instances of it.
But 2+2=4 is really what I take to be true in Platonia, by
which I mean essentially "true independently of myself.
An arithmetical representation of "2+2=4" would be something like
2^(Godel number of '2') * 3^(Godel number of '+')
* 5^((Godel number of '2') * 7^(Godel number of '=')
* 11^(Godel number of '4')
That is, a number.
('4' is s(s(s(s(O)))), and its godel number is generated
in a similar way. Note the use of prime numbers for being
sure of univocity in encoding).
But 2+2=4 can incarnate itself in long computations, like
I dring 2 cups of coffee this morning and two at noon, which
mades already 4 cup of (strong italian) coffee today, ouh la la!
Here 2+2=4 has been incarnate in a incredible story mixing
superstrings (in the electron of the hydrogen atom of the
water molecule of my coffee), but also in my brain, etc.
By comp such histories are generated by the arithmetical UD
and "feeled" (if that is english) by "me" many "times".
The arithmetical relation corresponding to those
computational histories are atemporally, asubstancially,
aspatially, if I can say, in Plato Heaven, well, even in
Pythagore Heaven (by Church-Turing-Post-Markov-Kleene thesis).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal
Received on Thu Oct 11 2001 - 09:28:43 PDT