Bruno Marchal writes:
>Le 01-déc.-05, à 07:17, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :
>
>>Why does an OM need to contain so much information to link it to other OMs
>>making up a person? [the complete message is below].
>
>
>I am not sure I understand. Are you saying, like Saibal Mitra, that OMs
>(Observer-Moments) are not related? How, in this case, would you interpret
>your own talk about "next observer moment" (those which could be dead end)?
>Is there not a confusion between the idea of physicalist (causal) view of
>the relation between OMs (which, as Brent meeker said should be explained
>from a more primitive (mathematical, immaterial, not causal, ...) notion
>of OM, with those very (more primitive) OMs.
>Are you assuming some notion of multiverse richer than (or just different
>from) a notion of multi-OMs?
In our ordinary experience, the OMs making up an individual's stream of
consciousness are causally related by virtue of the fact that that they
occur inside the same brain. If we consider thought experiments involving
teleportation or mind uploading, again the sequential OMs are causally
related due to transfer of the relevant brain pattern (or whatever)
information. However, this information tranfer is not actually *necessary*
for the OMs to be experienced as moments in the same stream of
consciousness. Say an observer experiencing OM a1 enters a teleporter which
then causes another observer experiencing OM a2 to be created at the
receiving station. Then a1 and a2 are sequential OMs, constituting a stream
of consciousness a1a2 sampled from the life of an individual. If this is so,
then if a1 occurs anywhere in the multiverse, and a2 occurs anywhere else,
the same stream of consciousness a1a2 should be experienced - even if a1 and
a2 occur completely at random, with no "causal link" between them.
I am agnostic regarding the question of whether OMs are primitive or
derivative. The world could be as it appears: the physical universe
(whatever that means) gives rise to certain special physical processes which
result in moments of conscious experience, and those moments which are
related through being the product of circumscribed subsets of physical
processes constitute a stream of consciousness in an individual life. On the
other hand, in a world where exactly the same OMs as postulated in the
previous sentence exist, but all mixed up and not connected to any (or any
particular) physical process, exactly the same individual streams of
consciousness would result.
Stathis Papaioannou
_________________________________________________________________
On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to
get there!
http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement
Received on Sat Dec 03 2005 - 05:41:16 PST