On 18 Jan 2009, at 06:38, Brent Meeker wrote:
>> >> Are you stopping at UDA step 1? > > No. There's a difference between your idea of running a world and > making a copy > of me within this world. I think the latter will necessarily incur > a gap in my > consciousness because of the need to gather the information about my > state (plus > some environment), but not the former. I could agree, but then are you OK with UDA 7, where this difference is not relevant. > > >> With some effort Stathis, Quentin or me, or some other will succeed >> in >> making you say directly "no" to the doctor. > > Do I have to say "no" just because I suppose I'd incur a gap in > consciousness? :-) To be honest, I have still not understand where that gap of consciousness comes from, nor am I sure the notion of gap of consciousness makes sense. I think those could be amnesia or distraction. I don't think we can loose consciousness, we can only forget, this asks for work. >> >> >> I have no doubt that digital mechanism and materialism are >> incompatible, >> though. > > Is that because, under materialism, consciousness depends on causal > links? No, it is because of UDA. And yes consciousness depends on causal links. As being first person, consciousness depends on infinitely many causal links, due to the fact that comp truncates the histories at some level, below that level material or observable reality sums on all alternate computations. Of course I identify here "causal link" and computation. The advantage is that "causality" and its many higher level versions are explained through number and classical logic, in that case. The modalities emerge through the correct self-reflexion. We get for free mind, and matter (and other hypostases). Also, materialist have hard time to define the notion of causality, like "matter" or "energy", it is hard to interpret the physical facts and the theories we make from observation already. The UDA approach consists in taking seriously a "theological" hypothesis: the yes doctor *qua computatio*, and to follow the consequences. If you say "yes" to the doctor, you can understand that your next instant of consciousness is determined by all computations going through your actual state (described at the lowest level). Here: 2^aleph_0 histories, a priori. No universal machine, like us (this by assumption), can distinguish "real reality", from "virtual (emulated) reality", from "arithmetical reality", from analytical reality, from set theoretical reality, etc. (and this by theorem). The base ontology is not important to be named. When Turing emulable and universal, it generates all (internal and relatively external) notions of causalities, even ladders of higher and higher order notion of causality. And to explain the observable universe by its mere "existence" is a bit creationist for me. I like comp showing us that the inquiry game just begin: the laws of physics have a reason, a beginning of explanation. Numbers reflect Numbers. Bruno 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
