Jesse Mazer wrote (replying to [EMAIL PROTECTED]) (in the everything mailing list).
>My question for you [hpm] is, does your Platonic view of things >rule out the idea >of a single global theory of consciousness? I'm not talking about different >Platonic worlds having their own unique definitions of consciousness...if >that was true we'd still have the problem of why I'm any less likely to >experience the laws of physics suddenly breaking down than I am to >experience the world continuing as normal. We need a truly global, >"objective" theory of consciousness to deal with this problem, I think (and >possibly a global measure on the space of all possible laws of physics, >although not necessarily). Exactly. I cannot agree more. Actually this is what I (try to) provide in http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal. Look in the list archive at: http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m1417.html for a short exposition of the godelian modal logics (G and G*) which gives an embryo of an objective consciousness theory, and the link with the global measure problem. Consciousness can be seen as a logical descendant of Consistency. It explains why perception can be seen as unconscious (automatic, instinctive) anticipations, like in Helmholtz's perception theory. There are two modal logics G and G*. This is Solovay's discovery. At the propositional level you can axiomatize the provable self-referential statements *by* the machine *on* itself (G), but you can axiomatise also *all* the true statements including the non-provable one (G*). It is the gap between G and G* which makes a theory of qualia possible. It is the gap between G ang G* which makes possible the distinction between measuring and feeling, between physical measurement and physical sensation. (Actually it is the gap between Z and Z* which play that role, where Z and Z* are intensional variant of G and G*). The original paper on G and G* is : Solovay Robert, "Provability Interpretations of Modal logics" Israel Journal of Mathematics, 25, 287-304, 1976. >This shouldn't be so hard to swallow, even for a strict Platonist--after >all, we expect the laws of arithmetic to be the same in all possible >universes, and I don't really see how something like information theory >could change either. If there's really a theory of consciousness out there, >my hope is that it would be similar to information theory, deducible from a >few basic first principles which perhaps could be justified on philosophical >grounds. Yes. Although I use more computability theory and provability theory than information theory, but this one is needed for polishing the approach. Bruno PS I send this to the FOR list where there is an interesting discussion on self-referential statement and Godel's theorem in relation with physics.
