On Mon, Jan 18, 1999 at 07:53:57PM -0500, Jacques M Mallah wrote: > However, the whole problem with trying to determine when a > computation is implemented (or instantiated as you call it) is precisely > that we don't have a definition of when a physical system contains the > proper information. Implementation has two critera: a mapping to formal > states must have the correct causal relationships (which is trivial for a > system which is an initial value problem) and it must be true to the > information structure (e.g. index labeling) of the formal states.
A definition of when a physical system contains some information may not be necessary. If the measure of a conscious experience is related to the measure of the associated state information, then all we need is a measure on the set of all possible states. We can simply say that the universe is this measure, and any perceived physical systems are just illusions produced by our own minds. Similarly, if the measure of a conscious experience is related to the measure of the associated computation, then it would suffice to have a measure on the set of all possible computations. So maybe we should work in the opposite direction. Instead of trying to determine what computations a physical system implements or what information a physical system contains, we should take the consciousness measure (definied either by a measure on states or by a measure on computations) as a given try to figure out what kind of physical system one should expect to perceive.
