Gilles wrote:
>I agree, but it [QM] is must be still considered as an incomplete >theory, such >as Newton's gravitation. So the point is that computing Schroedinger >equation for a brain does not obviously insure that the computation is >actually thinking. Only the use of a computable TOE would escape this >issue. You are absolutely right, although my feeling (through and not-through comp) is that QM is essentially correct, as is her classical part. You are right. Only a TOE would escape the issue. But with comp, alas, we can prove that there are no computable TOE. >>To use the phenomenological quantum weirdness as a argument against >>comp will not work with me because I take the QUANTUM as the most >>convincing (a posteriori, I confess) confirmation of the DIGITAL ultimate >>nature of reality. >>Of course a confirmation is not a proof, and computerland would >>be a sad country if all machines are betting comp :-) >> >>Bruno > >Sure! :-) >I still have the impression that in the absence of a TOE, you are not >allowed to identify any (practical or "theoretical") computation with any >physical phenomenon, including the thought...and again even if it were >true, the problem of the emergence of consciousness would not be easier. But with comp there is a TOE ! I show that explicitly in my thesis. The TOE is Arithmetical/informatical Truth. That that is not computable follows from *Goedel* (or by typical diagonalisations). To paraphrase Kronecker: God creates the natural numbers, Everything else is dreamed by natural numbers. What is a dream ? A ``collection" of relative computational states of a sufficiently reflexive universal machine. What is Physical Reality ? It is the sharable and inferable (provable and consistent) part of the *dreams* of all self-referentially correct sufficiently reflexive universal machine. What is Geographical Reality ? The same as physical reality entangled with a bunch of probably very long (deep) *stories*. What is consciousness ? The proposition 'I am conscious" is, among other propositions, a first-person perspective of an unconscious (instinctive) inference of a true but unprovable proposition concerning the concistency of a self-referentially correct sufficiently reflexive universal machine. You can see it as an inference of self-concistency. It is always an interrogative "self-concistency", but by infering it instinctively and continuously for a time, there is a tendency to be a little blase about it. You can also interpret the ``self-consistency proposition" as a representation of our most immediate accessible possible *worlds*. Bruno