On 05 Jan 2010, at 19:57, Brent Meeker wrote:
Yes but the UD will generate infinitely more often the in order S1/ S2/S3than out of order... with what you are saying I don't even understand what is a computation if not a rules ordered sequential state order. QuentinIt seems strange that we start with the hypothesis that consciousness is a kind of computation - a sequential processing of information - and then arrive at picture in which there is no processing and sequence is just inferred. On the one hand consciousness is a process, on the other hand it is static state. I suspect there is something wrong with the slicing of the stream of consciousness into zero-duration, non-overlapping states.
But that problem occurs also with physics, as illustrated by the debate on "time" and "block universe". Also, we have to be careful: no where it has been said that consciousness is a kind of computation. Obviously "consciousness" is not a kind of computation. It is a property of (first) person, which, assuming mechanism, is invariant for a set of functional substitution. Then a reasoning shows that we cannot distinguish a "physical computation" from a mathematical one, and that we have to take this into account for justifying the (conscious) appearance of the physical laws.
Slicing the stream of consciousness, or just the stream of time like the physicists do a lot, into zero-length interval is a critics of the use of real number, and somehow comp escapes it, given that real numbers does not (necessarily) exists at the ontological level. They exist necessarily at the epistemological level though.
I can see that states can encode information that, when coarse grained, define a sequence of increasing entropy, but is it legitimate to identify having the information "in memory" with "remembering"?
In my opinion, time is far less problematical in comp than in physics, given that we assume a form of primitive time, first by the number order, then by the length of computations or of proofs. Arithmletic and provability logic are so "antisymmetrical" that I was afraid the comp physics would contradict the very symmetry of nature (laws of physics are reversible, most computations are not). But the "intelligible and sensible" comp "matter" (the probability one defined by Bp & Dt (& p), luckily enough seems able to restaure the symmetry, or at least some symmetry. Enough? Open problem.
Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/--
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