On 06 Mar 2011, at 16:16, 1Z wrote:
On Mar 4, 5:49 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 04 Mar 2011, at 17:31, 1Z wrote:
On Mar 4, 2:20 pm, Andrew Soltau <andrewsol...@gmail.com> wrote:
I suspect we all may.
Wong states that, important as a grand unified theory might be,
"... it
is lacking in one important fundamental aspect, viz., the role of
consciousness [which] could in fact be considered the most
fundamental
aspect of physics."
How does he know consciousness is fundamental?
Consciousness has been put under the rug by physicists since about
1500 years.
Really? Have daffodils and shopping centres likewise? Physicists
cannot be accused of neglecting something unless it can be
shown to be something they should prima facie be dealing with.
They do use it all the time. They have just use the primary matter (as
simplifying assumption), and the identity thesis (as simplig-fying
assumption), so that they can correlated observation with predictive
theories. This leads to problem with respect to the new physics
(quantum physics), and with respect to the computationalist
hypothesis. But the Platonist were aware of this (mainly by the dream
argument), and kept us vigilant of not reifying matter.
Physics is the science of the fundamental.
Then I am a physicist.
If consciousness
is another high level phenomenon, like shopping centres,
it is no business of the physicist.
"IF" consciousness emerges ...
That might be a big "IF".
If you think cosnc. is
fundamental, you are making an extraordinary claim and the
burden of proof is on you.
I am not making any claim about the fact that consciousness is
fundamental or not. I just try to understand that phenomenon, among
other phenomenon. And I show that if we suppose that consciousness can
be related to some computation, then matter is not fundamental. Matter
"emerges" as a modality of self-reference (the material hypostases).
And the point is that it makes comp + the classical theory of
knowledge testable.
It has come back through the doubtful idea of the collapse of the
wave
packet. It is a way to avoid the literal many-worlds aspect of the
linear quantum evolution. This has been debunked by many since. See
the work of Abner Shimony, for example.
I remind you that we are in the everything list which is based on the
idea that "everything" is simpler than "something".
Of course Everett has given a comp phenomenological account of the
collapse with the linear equation, so that if consciousness collapse
physically "the wave, you need a non-comp theory of consciousness.
Then comp by itself is a theory of consciousness, and does provide a
transparent (I mean testable) link with consciousness, not by
identifying the mystery of consciousness with a non linear and non
mechanical phenomenon (the collapse) but by providing an explanation
of the quantum and the linear from the computationalist hypothesis.
Given that conciousness seems all too clearly to be centrally
involved
in quantum mechanics,
That isn't clear at all
It is. In the collapse theory, it has to be the collapser (the other
theories are too vague, or refuted).
Not at all. Objective collapse theories such as GRW have not been
refuted,
and "spiritual interpretations", like von Neumann's are the vagues of
the lot
I refer you to Shimony for a refutation that consciousness can
collapse the Q wave.
And GRW proposes a new theory, which they admit themselves to be ad
hoc, and makes no sense in QM+relativity. I am not sure at all it
works even for non relativistic QM. It would reduce Quantum
computation to classical probabilistic computation, in particular.
That might still be possible (forgetting relativity). I can imagine
that it could lead to the collapse of many comp complexity classes,
including P and NP.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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