Quentin Anciaux writes:
> > That makes sense, assuming the UD is running and your
> > consciousness is a result of the UD. On the other hand, if your
> > consciousness is the result of physical processes in a single human brain,
> > you *can* point to the computer.
>
> When you mean computer, do you mean turing machine ?
> Do you mean consciousness is a program ? thus it could be duplicated and run
> at infinity (or a big number of times ;). Which part (instance) of this
> infinity/big running of the same program are you then ? Your current moment
> is not part of a single possible logical history... There are many past and
> many future from the present with this view and so many programs who go
> through your state.
This is true, assuming that the UD is running, or that some other generator of every possible program is running. Now, I am attracted to the idea that every computation is in fact "run" by virtue of its existence as a platonic object, which is in part (I think) step 8 of the UDA, but I am not completely convinced by this. What if there is a single, finite physical world containing brains and digital computers, and only these devices are actually capable of performing the kinds of computations needed for consciousness to occur?
> Another thing if consciousness is a program/computation :
> Imagine I run the program for 5 minutes, make a memory dump, continue the
> running from the dump on another machine for 5 minutes and so on... When I
> change machine it takes times... do you thing you're dead in between ? that
> you could be aware of any delays, of the number of instance running the same
> computation ? Then how could you say that these 5 minutes of your life was
> this computation on this machine, and not any machine which have come to go
> through exactly this state ?
Again, you could not know this for certain. The world may just be an illusion created for your benefit five minutes ago, even if there is no UD or its equivalent. However, in general we should have a good reason for saying that things are other than what they seem, or else we go crazy. What it comes down to again is: how can we be sure that the UD is being run?
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Wed Jul 19 2006 - 05:12:48 PDT