Mark Buda wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Le 27-janv.-10, à 01:39, Mark Buda a écrit :
Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 25 Jan 2010, at 23:15, Mark Buda wrote:
On 25 Jan 2010, at 04:39, Mark Buda wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
I would suggest the SANE 2004 paper:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm
In step 8, you seem to be doing away with the need for a physical
universe
of any sort, since it doesn't actually do anything.
If it was even there
in the first place. Is that correct?
OK, but you are using a rather strong Occam razor. You have either to
believe strongly in comp, or to have extracted already a big part of
physics to use it with some assurance.
I believe strongly in comp. One part at a time:
Yes, Doctor hypothesis: Physically, there is no part of my body that can't
be replaced with a functional equivalent. At the subatomic level, all the
protons, neutrons, and electrons are indistinguishable anyway. Any cell in
my body could be replaced by a functional equivalent and I'd still be me.
Any cell in my body could, in fact, just die, and I'd still be me, and
this happens all the time, and nobody finds it unusual.
We think there's a problem when it comes to replacing the brain because we
believe that's where our consciousness "is", but it isn't. Consciousness
isn't anywhere. Ask a primitive who believes he thinks with his heart
whether he'd go for a brain transplant and he'd have no more issues with
self-identity than a modern-day human having a heart transplant.
But he'd be wrong. We know we can affect consciousness more generally
by probing a brain.
What would Phineas Gage have to say about comp, I wonder?
In "The Emperor's New Mind" Roger Penrose mentions a split-brain patient,
P.S., who appeared to have two distinct consciousnesses after his
commissurotomy. This is consistent with the idea that for each "human"
there exists an infinite number of conciousnesses, each with a similar set
of beliefs (including beliefs about the past). Before the surgery, no
omniscient being could have told P.S. which hemisphere his subjective
experience would end up in, because of the first person indeterminacy.
Because there were an infinite number of P.S. consciousnesses all along,
Or none at all.
Brent
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