Brent Meeker wrote: >OK, I understand - I think. But as I understand your ontology, >everything is immaterial - even matter. So the question is, are there >consciousness' that are not associated with material things.
Well, in a sense no "consciousness" are associated with, let us say, substancial things. (Matter in a general sense can survive, for exemple as sharable stable appearances (like the first person plural point of view which appears when *population of machines* are differentiating (like in the multiverse))). >Can there >be disembodied consciousness as supposed by mystics and people who have >OBE's (out of body experiences)? I don't know. Each time I go out of my body I wake up, or I made lucid dream (dreams where you bet you are dreaming). With comp a substancial spirit cannot go out of a substancial body, because neither exist. Nevertheless a success in psychokinesis would not refute comp. It would be a powerful argument that our level of substitution is very low, perhaps. (I find it not very plausible imo). I was used to say I will believe in psychokinesis if someone writes a program in FORTRAN capable to bend a fork. Note that the special quantum KILL-THE-USER machine can probably do that succesfully from the point of view of the user! (appendice on QM in my thesis). But it is hard to imagine a more pathetic and egocentric way to bend reality! (Also you must be sure that the probability of a quantum bending is higher that the probability you should die with the killing instruction. >I was (in some context) I know someone who, after some shock, has the OBE *experience* every ten seconds, and it seems to be rather handicaping, especially for concentration. >I'm not sure I grasp the concept of duplicates in arithmetic. It is not so easy. You see, Godel proves his incompleteness theorem by "duplicating" PEANO ARITHMETIC (PA) *in* arithmetic. Today you can more easily prove incompleteness phenomenon for machines by duplicating the machine in the language of the machine. But for my purpose it seems at some time we should take the time to work on a particular "duplication" of this type. The main point is that you can represent the functionning of a machine (or an axiomatiosable theory) in term of purely arithmetical relation between number. If you know how a (classical) computer work, you should guess that such a translation is possible. In fact a small (and generable) subset of the set of arithmetical true proposition is rich enough for being a universal programming language. Basically logic + positive integer addition and multiplication are enough. >Arithmetic is abstract and immaterial. There can be duplicate >representations of 2+2=4 but I don't see how there can be duplicate >facts in Platonia corresponding to 2+2=4. As an immaterial fact of >logic it can't be duplicated because there can be no distinction >between two instances of it. But 2+2=4 is really what I take to be true in Platonia, by which I mean essentially "true independently of myself. An arithmetical representation of "2+2=4" would be something like 2^(Godel number of '2') * 3^(Godel number of '+') * 5^((Godel number of '2') * 7^(Godel number of '=') * 11^(Godel number of '4') That is, a number. ('4' is s(s(s(s(O)))), and its godel number is generated in a similar way. Note the use of prime numbers for being sure of univocity in encoding). But 2+2=4 can incarnate itself in long computations, like I dring 2 cups of coffee this morning and two at noon, which mades already 4 cup of (strong italian) coffee today, ouh la la! Here 2+2=4 has been incarnate in a incredible story mixing superstrings (in the electron of the hydrogen atom of the water molecule of my coffee), but also in my brain, etc. By comp such histories are generated by the arithmetical UD and "feeled" (if that is english) by "me" many "times". The arithmetical relation corresponding to those computational histories are atemporally, asubstancially, aspatially, if I can say, in Plato Heaven, well, even in Pythagore Heaven (by Church-Turing-Post-Markov-Kleene thesis). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal