Re: Observer-Moment Measure from Universe Measure

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2005 09:02:23 +0200

Le 05-juin-05, à 05:53, Hal Finney a écrit :

> Lee Corbin writes:
>> But in general, what do observer-moments explain? Or what does the
>> hypothesis concerning them explain? I just don't get a good feel
>> that there are any "higher level" phenomena which might be reduced
>> to observer-moments (I am still very skeptical that all of physics
>> or math or something could be reduced to them---but if that is
>> what is meant, I stand corrected). Rather, it always seems like
>> a number of (other) people are trying to explain observer-moments
>> as arising from the activity of a Universal Dovetailer, or a
>> Platonic ensemble of bit strings, or something.
>
> I would say that observer-moments are what need explaining, rather than
> things that do the explaining. Or you could say that in a sense they
> "explain" our experiences, although I think of them more as *being*
> our experiences, moment by moment. As we agreed:
>
>>> An observer-moment is really all we have as our primary experience of
>>> the world. The world around us may be fake; we may be in the Matrix
>>> or
>>> a brain in a vat. Even our memories may be fake. But the fact that
>>> we
>>> are having particular experiences at a particular moment cannot be
>>> faked.
>>
>> Nothing could be truer.



All right. So you both (Hal Finney and Lee Corbin) with the first axiom
defining a knower. It is the incorrigibility axiom: let us write Cp for
"to know p" (or to be aware of p, or to be conscious of p).
incorrigibility can be stated by:

     Cp -> p

Meaning that for any proposition p we have that Cp -> p is true.
The implication arrow "->" is just the classical implication. It has
nothing to do with notions of causality, or deduction or whatever ...
We can define A -> B by ((not A) or B) or (not (A and not B)) as this
can be verified by truth-table. I recall:

A -> B
1 1 1
1 0 0
0 1 1
0 1 0

OK?


>
> That is the sense in which I say that observer-moments are primary;
> they are the most fundamental experience we have of the world.
> Everything else is only a theory which is built upon the raw existence
> of observer-moments.

All right. I guess you agree that this is compatible with the fact that
such a theory, built upon the raw existence of OMs, could infer the
existence of more primitive objects, could explain how the "raw
existence of OM" emerges from those more primitive objects and explain
also how the theory of those more primitive objects emerge from the
(only apparently raw, now) observer moments. All this without being
circular. OK?

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Sun Jun 05 2005 - 03:09:09 PDT

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