On 10/3/2011 4:48 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 9:47 AM, meekerdb<[email protected]> wrote:
But this doesn't
change the argument that, to the extent that the physics allows it,
the machine states may be arbitrarily divided. It then becomes a
matter of definition whether we say the conscious states can also be
arbitrarily divided. If stream of consciousness A-B-C supervenes on
machine state a-b-c where A-B, B-C, A-B-C, but not A, B or C alone are
of sufficient duration to count as consciousness should we say the
observer moments are A-B, B-C and A-B-C, or should we say that the
observer moments are A, B, C? I think it's simpler to say that the
atomic observer moments are A, B, C even though individually they lack
content.
I think we've discussed this before. It you define them as A, B, C then the
lack of content means they don't have inherent order; where as AB, BC,
CD,... do have inherent order because they overlap. I don't think this
affects the argument except to note that OMs are not the same as
computational states.
Do you think that if you insert pauses between a, b and c so that
there is no overlap you create a zombie?
I have trouble thinking how you would create those pauses. As a classical device a brain
or a computer cannot just be stopped and restarted. You have to save all the variable
values *and* their first derivatives. The abstraction of what the computer (or brain)
does as a Turing computation ignores the derivatives and just considers a sequence of
discrete states. In the real computer the CPU clock provides the physical connection
between successive states. In the brain it's a lot of distributed action potentials and
chemical diffusion in parallel. Of course a computer can emulate what the brain or the
simpler computer is doing by simulating all the rates-of-change and intermediate states at
some finer level of time and space resolution. You could create pauses in that level of
emulation. But those states don't correspond to Observer Moments - something in
consciousness. In Bruno's Washington/Moscow thought experiments it seems obvious to me
that he would lose some period of consciousness in being transported; e.g. at least 80ms
according to Eagleman. So if you teleported every 80ms, you would prevent consciousness.
You wouldn't create a zombie though, just an unconscious person.
Brent
--
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.
