At 10:33 28/02/04 +1100, Russell Standish wrote:
>I deliberately leave vague what is in the theory of the mind, but
>simply assume a small number of things about consciousness:
>
>1) That there is a linear dimension called (psycholgical) time, in which the
>conscious mind find itself embedded
>2) The observations are a form of a projection from the set of subsets of
>possibilities onto the same set. We identify a QM "state" with a
>subset of possibilities.
>3) The Kolmogorov probability axioms
>4) The anthropic principle
>5) Sets of observers are measurable
>
>Also I assume the existance of the set of all descriptions (which I
>call the Schmidhuber ensemble, but perhaps more accurately should be
>called the Schmidhuber I ensemble to distance it from later work of
>his). This is roughly equivalent to your Arithmetic Realism, but
>probably not identical. It is the form I prefer philosophically.
>
>(I think this is the exhaustive set of assumptions - but I'm willing
>to have other identified)
>
>I only treat continuous time in Occams razor (hence the differential
>equation) however I do reference the theory of timescales which would
>provide a way of extending this to other types of time (discrete,
>rationals etc). In any case, contact with standard QM is only achieved
>for continuous time.
>
>The justification for assuming time is that one needs time in order to
>appreciate differences - and differences are the foundation of
>information - so in order to know anything at all, one needs to
>appreciate differences hence the need for a time dimension.
>
>Note - computationalism requires time in order to compute mind -
>therefore the assumption of time is actually a weaker assumption than
>computationalism.
comp assumes only that the sequence 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ... "lives" in
Platonia. 3-person time apparantly does not appear. 1-person time
appears through the S4Grz logic.
>In terms of the above assumptions, 1) is a consequence of
>computationalism, which I take is a basis of your theory (although
>I've never understood how computationalism follows from COMP).
? Wait a bit. COMP refers to computationalism. I don't understand.
>2) corresponds to your 1-3 distinction. Indeed I refer to your work as
>justification for assuming the projection postulate.
That is not clear for me.
>3) Causes some people problems - however I notes that some others
>start from the Kolmogorov probability axioms also.
No problem at all with Kolmogorov proba axioms.
>4) I know the Anthropic principle causes you problems - indeed I can
>only remark that it is an empirical fact of our world, and leave it as
>a mystery to be solved later on.
No problem with the so called Weak Anthropic Principle. Although
obviously I prefer a Turing-Universal-Machine--thropic principle ...
>5) Measurability of observers. This is the part that was buried in the
>derivation of linearity of QM, that caused you (and me too) some
>difficulty in understanding what is going on. I spoke to Stephen King
>on the phone yesterday, and this was one point he stumbled on
>also. Perhaps this is another "mystery" like the AP, but appears
>necessary to get the right answer (ie QM !)
>
>Of course a more detailed theory of the mind should give a more
>detailed description of physics. For example - we still don't know
>where 3+1 spacetime comes from, or why everything appears to be close
>to Newtonian dynamics.
>
>Stephen King is cooking up some more ideas in this line which seems
>interesting...
Thanks for your clarification,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Mon Mar 01 2004 - 09:01:19 PST