Sophistry has a smell. Sometimes an argument smells of it, but it may be a lot harder to pin down where the specious logic is – especially when it’s all dressed up in a mathematical formalism that may be inaccessible to the non-mathematician/logician. However the problem with the arguments relating to consciousness in this paper is not so hard to pin down, and indeed Stephen King is on the right track with his objection.
Eastmond argues that an infinite conscious lifetime is impossible because, in ‘finding oneself’ at a particular point in that lifetime, one would have to gain an infinite amount of knowledge, which is absurd. He concludes that such an infinite lifetime is in principle impossible. The flaw lies in the way the author glosses over the notion of “gaining information”. In examining the problem, he treats this “gaining of information” as if it occurred magically the moment one finds oneself at a certain point in a lifetime, but in fact such information has to be acquired by a concrete computation. For example, if I am to gain information about my current lifetime position, I need to examine a calendar and compare this to stored or acquired knowledge about my date of birth. In the case of an infinite lifetime, the size of the computation required is arbitrarily large (but finite) in the case of an infinite lifetime with a lower bound (a life time with a starting point), or simply uncomputable in the case of an infinite lifetime with no lower bound. This is the same as saying that one cannot calculate the age of a person who has always existed. The fact that such a person’s age is uncomputable does not however mean that such a person cannot exist. The favoured theory in modern cosmology suggests that the universe is spatially infinite. How then do we calculate the position of our planet in this universe? If astronomers had infinite access to the map of the universe, they could still never calculate our position, because the calculation would be infinite. Given that time is known to be interconvertible with space, it follows that the same logic would apply to locating an event on an infinite timeline. The situations are mathematically indistinguishable, yet this does not prove away the spatially infinite universe theory. In an infinite lifetime with no lower bound, we can never know our age, and the amount of information ‘gained’ when we find ourselves at a point of time in such a lifetime is a function of how much information we can process (concrete processing limitations) and the amount of information available to us about our position. Whichever is smaller forms the limit. There is also a flaw in the reasoning in relation to the proposed conscious computer which resets itself in order to generate repeated (and therefore infinite) conscious moments. We must remember that the information gain is made by the conscious entity and must form part of its conscious computation. Otherwise where is the supposed gain occurring? All we would have is an objective description of a perfectly mathematically conceivable situation – an infinite set of values for the set of conscious moments, or an infinitely long string to define a moment within that set. So the computer must gain the information. But it cannot do so if it continually resets. The invocation of thermodynamics does not help if the computer cannot access information about entropy. It can escape this problem with an endless incrementing loop, but then it needs an infinite memory to store this growing string. Its computational limitations inevitably force its incrementing register to 'clock over' (like Y2K) at some point, causing it to repeat itself. So unless we grant the possibility of an infinite mind/computer, an infinite lifetime necessarily entails the repeat of conscious experience (just as cosmologists grant that the spatially infinite universe with locally finite information must entail a Nietzschean infinite recurrence). Such a lifetime is perfectly imaginable. Indeed, theoretically an infinite lifetime with no repetition is possible with infinite computational resources. With these flaws the remaining argument regarding the impossibility of a deterministic and conscious computer need not even be addressed, since they are built on unsound foundations. On Aug 25, 8:12 am, David Nyman <[email protected]> wrote: > This paper presents some intriguing ideas on consciousness, computation and > the MWI, including an argument against the possibility of consciousness > supervening on any single deterministic computer program (Bruno might find > this interesting). Any comments on its cogency? > > http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0208038 > > David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
