On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 03:00:30PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > comp assumes only that the sequence 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ... "lives" in > Platonia. 3-person time apparantly does not appear. 1-person time > appears through the S4Grz logic. >
Fair enough - I realised it was a consequence of your mind model.
OK. I should come back later on the relation between time, consciousness, Brouwer intuitionist logic and the modal logic S4Grz.
> >In terms of the above assumptions, 1) is a consequence of > >computationalism, which I take is a basis of your theory (although > >I've never understood how computationalism follows from COMP). > > > > ? Wait a bit. COMP refers to computationalism. I don't understand. >
As I understand it, COMP refers to the conjunction of:
1) Arithmetic realism 2) Church-Turing thesis 3) Survivability of consciousness under duplication
...and annihilation of the "original" (if not it could be trivial). I guess that's what you intended to mean.
Computationalism (as I understand it) is the strong AI principle - that a program running on a Turing machine (or equivalent) is sufficient to generate consciousness. A stronger version might be that all conscious processes can be represented by a program. I can see how 3) follows from this stronger version - but I don't see how computationalism follows from COMP.
Well, that's really a question of vocabulary. I prefer to say Strong AI for ... the strong AI thesis. I guess also you intended to say that COMP does not follow from the Strong AI thesis, because the fact that machines can think does not entail that we are machine (machine can think does not entail that *only* machines can think). But COMP entails the strong AI thesis, because if I am a machine then machines can think. (accepting the perhaps foolish idea that *I* can think :) Computationnalism is really the "modern" digital version of "Mechanism" a philosophy guessed by early Hindouist, Plato, ... accepted for animals by Descartes, for humans by La Mettrie, Hobbes, etc. With Church thesis mechanism can leads to pretty mind/matter theories.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
