On 12/21/2010 5:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 20 Dec 2010, at 20:01, Brent Meeker wrote:
Russell has given the correct answer. Here by mind I mean the
conscious first person mind. By UDA-8 (MGA), consciousness is not
attached to the physical running of a computer, but is attached to
the logical number-theoretical relations describing that computation
... and all similar (with respect to the relevant levels)
computations which exist in Sigma_1 (computational) arithmetical
truth (and which might bear on beliefs and proofs which extends far
beyond the computable).
But do you mean to assert that all computations have consciousness
attached? In what sense does this allow us to distinguish human
introspection from human perception from my dog's awareness from a
snail's awareness from a rock's awareness?
Not at all. Only very special computations have consciousness,
although it is better to attach consciousness to the sheaf of
equivalent computations, going through the relevant (relative) states.
For example, assuming many things by default, for any different
electron positions in the atoms in your brain you have a different
computations. Your actual consciousness is attached to all those
computations.
When you express it that way it sounds as if you take consciousness to
be something apart from the sheaf of equivalent computations - something
I have but maybe a snail does not. Don't you rely on Everett's idea
that consciousness just goes with the computations - so that when
computations of quantum events become classically inconsistent then
there is a different consciousness associated with the each
(classically) consistent sheaf?
Brent
If electrons are specified by continuous variable, your consciousness
will be related to a continuum of computations generated by the UD. In
that case you have to consider the dovetailing of the UD on the real
and complex numbers. Of course that continuum is an internal first
person view which existence is due to your non-awareness of the delays
made by the UD. It belongs to the epistemology, not the ontology where
everything is finite (can be considered as finite once we assume
digitalism).
Humans, dogs, snails and even rock (immaterial rock patterns) share
histories, notably thanks to the plausible linearity of the
computations at the bottom, and the computational depth of our very
long history. Actually I begin to think that computationalism makes
the big bang a cosmic explosion among an infinity of similar
explosions. First person computational depth is probably infinite (but
here I speculate a little bit, and I will not insist on that).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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