On Wed, Jan 20, 1999 at 01:54:06PM -0500, Jacques M Mallah wrote: > I don't think that avoids the problem. Suppose you start off with > some kind of uniform measure on the space of computations. You then have > to consider that computation A can implement computation B. To find the > real measure you would have to take such secondary implementations into > account, perhaps along the line I suggested in one of my first posts to > this list. It is essentially the same problem to determine when one > computation implements another as it is to determine when a physical > system (which is like the first computation) implements one. > You could arbritrarily rule out secondary implementations, but > then you'd be stuck with a trivial uniform measure, with no mechanism for > Darwinian natural selection.
Ok, this is a problem for the idea that the measure of a conscious experience is related to the measure of the associated computation. But that idea seems to have a more basic problem, which is what exactly is an element of the set of all possible computations? I don't think this set has been well defined, nor has the uniform measure on this set been clearly specified. But what about the idea that the measure of a conscious experience is related to the measure of the associated state information? We can take the set of all possible states to be the set of finite binary strings, and the measure to be the universal a priori distribution. The problem you mention does not apply here. There are no secondary implementations, and Darwinian natural selection is already "embeded" in the measure.
