Re: Maudlin's Machine and the UDist

From: Russell Standish <r.standish.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 20:49:53 +1000

On Sun, Aug 07, 2005 at 11:35:42PM -0700, "Hal Finney" wrote:
> Russell Standish writes:
> > The take home message I get from Maudlin's experiment is that a
> > computationalist consciousness is supervenient on a physical process
> > _spread_ over the multiverse, ie the counterfactuals must really exist
> > as alternate branches of the Multiverse.
>
> So what does that tell you about Olympia? Is she conscious or not,
> by this criterion?

Not Olympia, nor Olympia + Klara with Klara blocked an immobile. Only
Olympia and Klara without the blocks is conscious.

> I guess that you would say that if the unused
> counterfactual machinery would actually work if tested, then she is
> conscious; but if the counterfactual machines were broken or blocked
> such that they wouldn't work (even though they are not used) then she
> is unconscious. And perhaps you can say that the machines are in fact
> tested in other branches of the multiverse, so the criterion is more
> than merely a hypothetical difference between unused working machines
> and unused broken machines. I see some difficulties with this position
> but I better first hear whether this is what you have in mind before
> trying to extrapolate further.
>

That is indeed my meaning. What difficulties do you see?

Cheers

-- 
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish                  Phone 8308 3119 (mobile)
Mathematics                         	       0425 253119 (")
UNSW SYDNEY 2052         	         R.Standish.domain.name.hidden             
Australia                                http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
            International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02
----------------------------------------------------------------------------



Received on Mon Aug 08 2005 - 06:54:12 PDT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Feb 16 2018 - 13:20:10 PST