Hi Stephen,
If the "non active piece of matter" plays a role in the computation,
it means that we have not choose the correct substitution level. For
example the brain would be a quantum computer. But quantum computer
are Turing emulable, and so its work is emulated by the Universal
Dovetailer, and the UDA (+MGA) goes trough. That applies to Maudlin's
argument as well.
Bruno
On 25 Jan 2011, at 10:04, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Dear Bruno and Friends,
I was re-reading the Mauldin paper again and something struck me
that I had not noticed before. I hope that I am not way over my head
on this one, but I think that there is something of a straw man in
Mauldin’s definition of the supervenience thesis! He assumes the
principle of Locality .
We read on page 409 of “Computation and Consciousness”:
“If an active physical system supports a phenomenal state, how
could the presence or absence of a causally disconnected object
effect that state? How could the object enhance or impede or alter
or destroy the phenomenal state except via some causal interaction
with the system? Since the phenomenal state is entirely realized at
the time of the experience, only the activity of the system at that
time should be relevant to its production. The presence or absence
of causally isolated objects could not be relevant. This is all the
supervenience thesis needs to say.”
Now, let us take a look at Bell’s theorem. From the wiki article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_theorem
“Bell's theorem has important implications for physics and the
philosophy of science as it indicates that every quantum theory must
violate either locality or counterfactual definiteness. In
conjunction with the experiments verifying the quantum mechanical
predictions of Bell-type systems, Bell's theorem demonstrates that
certain quantum effects travel faster than light and therefore
restricts the class of tenable hidden variable theories to the
nonlocal variety.”
end quote
While we are considering the idea of “causal efficacy” here and
not hidden variable theories, the fact that it has been
experimentally verified that Nature violates the principle Locality.
Therefore the assumption of local efficacy that Mauldin is using for
the supervenience thesis is not realistic and thus presents a flaw
in his argument. We cannot claim that only those objects in some
near distance or time of flight to the system that we propose is a
generator of phenomenal states are the only ones that are involved
in the emergence of the phenomenal states.
We have overwhelming experimental evidence that the classical
assumptions must be carefully examined to be sure that they are
correct. The locality assumption is flawed. So what if instead we
question the contrafactual definiteness aspect? If we disallow for
the definiteness of contrafactuals then Mauldin cannot construct
Olympia and thus his argument does not work either.
Onward!
Stephen
PS, It is interesting that you mention reincarnation, Bruno. I too
am friendly toward that idea and I am a little bit motivated in my
questions about interactions with you by something that my wife
mentioned to me in a conversation that we had about the idea of
reincarnation of souls. She asked me” “Could bodies be necessary so
that souls can interact with each other and thus evolve?” By the
way, the Syfy television channel’s series “Caprica” explored a very
cool computational version of reincarnation that you might find
amusing.
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