Le 04-mai-05, à 01:53, Russell Standish a écrit :
On this list, we seem to have two fairly clear camps: those who identify observer moments as the fundamental concept, and those who regard relationships between observer moments with equal ontological status.
OK. As you know I take the relationship into account.
With my TIME postulate, I say that a conscious observer necessarily experiences a sequence of related observer moments (or even a continuum of them).
With my COMP postulate I say the same. The purely mathematically state transition function plays the role of your TIME. We do experience a continuum of observer moments simultaneously (provably with comp) but just because we are related to a continuum of execution in the "mathematical" execution of the UD.
To argue that observer moments are independent of each other is to argue the negation of TIME. With TIME, the measure of each observer moment is relative to the predecessor state, or the RSSA is the appropriate principle to use. With not-TIME, each observer moment has an absolute measure, the ASSA.
OK. You know I "belong" to the RSSA.
On this postulate (which admittedly still fails rigourous statement,
and is not as intuitive as one would like axioms to be), hinges the
whole QTI debate, and many other things besides. With TIME, one has
the RSSA and the possibility of QTI. With not-TIME, one has the
ASSA,and Jacques Mallah's doomsday argument against QTI is valid. See
the great "RSSA vs ASSA debate" on the everything list a few years ago.
Now I claim that TIME is implied by computationalism.
The "illusion" of time (and even of different sort of time like 1-person subjective duration to local 3-person parameter-time) is implied by comp.
Time is needed for machines to pass from one state to another, ie to actually compute something.
I guess our divergence relies on the word "actually". If you need such a "concrete time" then you need even a "universe". Such actuality is an indexical. The only time I need is contained in arithmetical truth, in which I can embed all the block-space of all computational histories.
Bruno apparently disagrees, but I haven't heard his disagreement yet.
I am not sure I understand your TIME. Is it physical or mathematical?
Cheers,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
