Bruno wrote on Saturday, November 12, 2005 3:37 PM

> Indeed the link with quantum suicide and comp suicide are in my
> older paper "Informatique théorique et philosophie de l'esprit,
> Toulouse 1988". Also explained in my 1991 paper "Mechanism
> and personal identity".
>

So you say that that is your key paper to the quantum suicide ! So
I will spend more time on that one. But I see that you claim a
"Strong Mechanistic" viewpoint. I take it from that and your other
comments that we therefore have to accept 'strong mechanism'
through the series of papers. If it does not we probably need to
know at this point.

To me, that is not an unreasonable point of view as physics is a
very mechanical or mathematical subject. But it does rather make
the presupposition that physics and all its applications are to be
grounded in old quasirationalist values. That does not allow much
space for epiphenomenalism even, let alone dualism if we need
to use 'isms'. I am not bothered about a humanism aspect, it is
more the logical and philosophical aspect

> 1-death and 1-loss-of-consciousness have no
> meaning, I would say, although lack of coffee in the morning can
> create some trouble which we could easily confuse with some
> first person paradoxical apprehension of its own lack of
> consciousness, like a zombies complaining nobody want to
> believe they are zombies!
>

So you seem not to mind if people are zombies (in the sense of
Chalmers). But

> 3-death and 3-loss of consciousness are alike, except we can have
> more hope in the latter.

Interesting. So 'hope' will somehow ultimately arise as a parameter in
the system or is it somehow disgarded as a relatively worthless
semantic concept, which I am sure is logically possible in such a
scheme. I begin to see "the baby being thrown out with the
bathwater" in 'strict mechanism'.

So we end up with 'no zombies' and 'no hope'. Or possibly still 'we
don't know'. Modern computer science is full of 'parameters
which we will eventually sort out' but have not done in 100 years.

However the point here is that consciousness and related phenomena are
not easily categorised in your system. There are so many ways that
individual consciousness can be eliminated or partly eliminated from
the system , by quantum suicide or otherwise.

It seems a very great weakeness to me that a simple statement like

> 1-death and 1-loss-of-consciousness have no meaning, I would say

has to be made. There are so many intermediary conditions between life
and death that exist or are manmade. I mentioned two of them. Jail
imprisonment and hypnagogic myoclonus. Another could be simple
dreaming. All these are different in your 3-system to what they would
be in a 1-system. This make your 3-system (if I can call it that) more
immediately manageable but much less descriptive. SO MAYBE
YOUR 3-SYSTEM IS SOME MANY-ONE MAPPING FROM A
"REAL" SYSTEM !!!? (Maybe that can be stated in category theory
terms).

One problem with 'strong mechanism' is that it only allows
20th Century computer level explication of the human mind at this
time. That is like assuming that the sun goes around the earth.
The fact that Occam's razor must be watched for in other
interpretations, does not prove their lack of validity, rather
the converse.

> Could you tell me what is a myoclonus?

From http://ruv.net/infopedia/my/Myclonic_jerk.html
"A myclonic twitch or hypnagogic myoclonus consists of one or more
sudden full-body twitches, and often preceded by a sensation of
falling. The twitches occur during very light sleep as the conscious
brain relinquishes control of the body's motor functions. While not a
cause for medical concern, these twitches can be startling. The cause
of myclonic twitching is unknown: they appear to be associated with
(a) anxiety and (b) faint stimulus."

There is a lot more that can be written on the topic. Some claim a
similar effect occurs with 'lucid dreaming' as well.