On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 07:00:19PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > Russell Standish writes: > > > I don't quite follow your argument. OMs are not computations. Whatever > > they are under computationalism, they must be defined by a set of > > information, a particular meaning to a particular observer. > > Computationalists do sometimes say things like "cognition is computation" and > leave > it at that. A more common formulation is that consciousness supervenes on the > physical activity underlying computation. It was Donald Davidson in 1970 who > introduced the term "supervenience" in philosophy of mind: > > "Mental characteristics are in some sense dependent, or supervenient, on > physical > characteristics. Such supervenience might be taken to mean that there cannot > be > two events exactly alike in all physical respects but differing in some > mental respects, > or that an object cannot alter in some mental respects without altering in > some > physical respects. > > [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/#2.1] > > That seemed perfectly reasonable and obvious to me a few years ago, but the > more I > think about it the more problematic it becomes. The subject of the present > post is that > it seems two objects or processes may in fact be physically identical but > mentally different. >
Indeed. > > I was using "quantum state" as synonymous with "physical state", which I > guess > is what you are referring to in the above paragraph. The observer sees a > classical > universe because in observing he collapses the wave function or selects one > branch > of the multiverse. Traditional computationalism ignores the other branches/ > other > elements of the superposition, but you have implied previously that these are > necessary for consciousness because they allow implementation of > counterfactuals. > Does that mean consciousness would be impossible in a classical universe? No - just computationalist consciousness supervening on a classical physical systems. I am open to machines + random oracles being conscious, and I am also open to computational Multiverses. What I'm not open to is abandoning supervenience, due to the problem of the Occam catastrophe. > > > In this case, this projected QM state describes not a full observer > > moment, but only a component of one. And of course there will be > > multiple observer moments sharing that component. > > I didn't think an OM could have components, being the smallest unit of > subjective > experience. Do you mean a component of the physical structures giving rise to > the > OM? And how can you be sure that other OMs share that component? > OMs are defined by some information. Very clearly more than 1 bit is involved, but it is presumably finite. Let us say that within this OM I am aware of two apples - 1 red and 1 green. The information describing one of these apples is the "component" I was referring to. As for other OMs sharing that component, this comes down to the usual suspect arguments against solipsism. I don't feel like rehashing those at the moment :) -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
