Bruno Marchal wrote: > > On 02 Dec 2008, at 03:33, Brent Meeker wrote: > >> Bruno Marchal wrote: >>> On 01 Dec 2008, at 03:25, Russell Standish wrote: >>> >>>> On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 07:10:43PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote: >>>>>> I am speaking as someone unconvinced that MGA2 implies an >>>>>> absurdity. MGA2 implies that the consciousness is supervening on >>>>>> the >>>>>> stationary film. >>>>> ? I could agree, but is this not absurd enough, given MEC and the >>>>> definition of the physical superveneience thesis; >>>> It is, prima facie, no more absurd than consciousness supervening >>>> on a >>>> block universe. >>>> >>>>>> A block universe is nondynamic by definition. But looked at >>>>>> another >>>>>> way, (ie from the inside) it is dynamic. It neatly illustrates why >>>>>> consciousness can supervene on a stationary film (because it is >>>>>> stationary when viewed from the inside). >>>>> OK, but then you clearly change the physical supervenience thesis. >>>>> >>>> How so? The stationary film is a physical object, I would have >>>> thought. >>> >>> I don't understand this. The physical supervenience thesis associate >>> consciousness AT (x,t) to a computational state AT (x,t). >> Stated this way seems to assume that the causal relations between >> the states are >> irrelevant, only the states matter. > > > Ah, please, add the delta again (see my previews post). I did wrote > (dx,dt), but Anna thought it was infinitesimal. It could be fuzzy > deltas or whatever you want. Unless you attach your consciousness, > from here and now, to the whole block multiverse, the reasoning will > go through, assuming of course that the part of the multiverse, on > which you attach your mind, is Turing emulable (MEC). > > > >> >>> The idea is >>> that consciousness can be "created" in real time by the physical >>> "running" of a computation (viewed of not in a block universe). >> Well we're pretty sure that brains do this. > > Well, my point is that for believing this, you have to abandon the MEC > hypothesis, perhaps in a manner like Searle or Penrose. Consciousness > would be the product of some non Turing emulable chemical reactions. > But if everything in the brain (or the genralized brain) is turing > emulable, then the reasoning (uda+mga) is supposed to explain why > consciousness (an immaterial thing) is related only to the computation > made by the brain, but not the brain itself nor to its physical > activity during the physical implementation. Your locally physical > brain just makes higher the probability that your consciousness > remains entangled with mine (and others). > > >> >>> With the stationary film, this does not make sense. Alice experience >>> of a dream is finite and short, the film lasts as long as you want. I >>> think I see what you are doing: you take the stationary film as an >>> incarnation of a computation in Platonia. In that sense you can >>> associate the platonic experience of Alice to it, but this is a >>> different physical supervenience thesis. And I argue that even this >>> cannot work, because the movie does not capture a computation. >> I was thinking along the same lines. But then the question is what >> does capture >> a computation. Where in the thought experiments, starting with >> natural Alice >> and ending with a pictures of Alice's brain states, did we lose >> computation? Is >> it important that the sequence be time rather than space or some >> other order? >> Is it the loss causal relations or counterfactuality? > > > We "lose a computation" relatively to us when the computation is not > executed by a stable (relatively to us) universal machine nearby, be > it a cell, a brain, a natural or artificial universal computer. > > In the case of the movie, it is no so bad. Consciousness does not > supervene on the movie or its projection, but the movie can be used as > a backup of Alice's state. We can re-project a frame, of that movie, > on a functionally well working Boolean optical graph, and Alice will > be back ... with us. > > Of course the computations themselves, and their many possible > differentiations, are already in Platonia (= in the solution of the > universal Diophantine equation, in the processing of the UD, or > perhaps in the Mandelbrot set). > > Alice's brain and body are "just" local stable artifacts belonging to > our (most probable) computational history, and making possible for > Alice consciousness to differentiate through interactions with us, > relatively to us. > > Bruno
OK, that clarifies things and it corresponds with my intuition that consciousness is relative to an environment. I can't seem to answer the question is MG-Alice conscious "yes" or "no", but I can say she is conscious within the movie environment, but not within our environment. This is similar to Stathis asking about consciousness within a rock. We could say the thermal motions of atoms within the rock may compute consciousness, but it is a consciousness within the rock environment, not in ours. Brent --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
