Hi Günther, I make a quick comment on Bostrom's paper. For the others, I sum up Bostrom's question. Bostroms ask if two physically identical brain entails two identical consciousness experience or only one. He called "duplication thesis" the thesis saying that two identical brains generates two identical experience, and he called "unification thesis" the thesis that two identical brain generate only one experience. I think that the paper is a bit unclear on identity criterion for both brains and experiences. But if you accept the physicalist (or near physicalist) background, I think that his defense of his duplication thesis is valid, and that the epistemic inferences he makes from comp and his duplication thesis are valid too. But the UD Argument undermines the whole approach and some of his fractional account of experiences (although I should think a bit more on this to be sure). In particular, by putting the measure on the histories generated by the UD (and not on the OMs or the instatneaous state) then his duplication thesis can be seen as a consequence of the computationalist hypothesis, as his epistemic inferences. So yes, it is a good paper, despite the context used and despite the (rather unclear) supervenience thesis presupposed. The (unclear) supervenience thesis in used is not coherent with the consequence of the computationalist hypothesis. But a careful reading of his paper can help to understand the seven first step of the UDA. Now a good understanding of the UDA should make clear all this, and I will not insist. A pity he does not refer to UDA, given that Bostrom has followed my talk in Brussels at the consciousness ASSC meeting in Brussels, ... where Chalmers quit the audience at the third step of UDA. Chalmers seemed not to accept the subjective or first person comp indeterminacy. And Chalmers should (unless he has changed his mind) to be troubled by Bostrom's paper too, but this is made plain in the paper.
Let me quote a passage of Bostrom: <<Recent cosmological data indicate that our universe is quite likely infinite and contains an infinite number of galaxies and planets.1 Moreover, there are many local stochastic processes, each one of which has a nonzero probability of resulting in the creation of a human brain in any particular possible state.2 Therefore, if the universe is indeed infinite then on our current best physical theories all possible human brain-states would, with probability one, be instantiated somewhere, independently of what we do. But we should surely reject the view that it follows from this that all ethics that is concerned with the experiential consequences of our actions is void because we cannot cause pain, pleasure, or indeed any experiences at all. It is much more plausible to hold that even if the universe is the way it now seems to be, we can still influence what experiences there are. Since this would be impossible on Unification, we should accept Duplication.>> This is not an argument, but wishful thinking. The reason why ethics is preserved despite all experiences occur, is that they occurs in a relative way (a bit like realtive quantum state a-la Everett), and this relatively to infinities of computation (in the complete UD deployment, which I often called UD*). Some histories are relatively rare or many. Of course to show this you have to solve the first person white rabbit comp problem. Bruno Le 02-avr.-08, à 20:20, Günther Greindl a écrit : > > Dear List, > > I searched through the archive, this paper does not seem to have been > discussed. > > Quantity of Experience: Brain-Duplication and Degrees of Consciousness > > If two brains are in identical states, are there two numerically > distinct phenomenal experiences or only one? Two, I argue. But what > happens in intermediary cases? This paper looks in detail at this > question and suggests that there can be a fractional (non-integer) > number of qualitatively identical experiences. This has implications > for > what it is to implement a computation and for Chalmer's Fading Qualia > thought experiment. [Minds and Machines, 2006, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. > 185-200] > > > http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/experience.pdf > > It raises some issues the UDA is concerned with. > What do you think of it? > > Best Regards, > Günther > > > -- > Günther Greindl > Department of Philosophy of Science > University of Vienna > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/ > > Blog: http://dao.complexitystudies.org/ > Site: http://www.complexitystudies.org > > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
