Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> >> The question whether my ego self survives can also not be >> mechanistically >> determined, since it depends on what we identitify the local ego >> with and >> this question cannot be mechanistically determined (as it is a >> matter of >> taste or opinion). > > > But in the "yes doctor" we talk of surviving in the mundane sense. > Your subjective life remains as intact as after any mundane medical > operation, or lighter. The point here is that your consciousness > remains unchanged, except for some waiting times, and possible > anesthesia. Yes, OK. But surviving in the mundane sense, or consciousness remaining unchanged is relative. Consciousness always changes. That's why it is not possible to say whether you "really" survive, because there is no objective way to tell. Subjectively everything may be true from always surviving (if the subjective life is seen to be all-inclusive) to never surviving (because inevitably something will change). I think the notion of consciousness remaining unchanged through a digital substitution is quite incoherent. As soon as you know that you are being substituted (and you know that because you said "Yes"), the very fact that you can reflect on the brain being substituted will influence your consciousness in a non-trivial (and possibly radical) way, making it impossible for consciousness to remain invariant. It can only remain invariant if you don't know your being substituted and in this case there is no way to distinguish being substituted and not being substituted, making the very notion of 1p substitution (of the 3p body) meaningless.
Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> If I identify my ego with the computation 1+1=2, > > May be your higher self can do that, but I doubt that your ego could. Regardless whether we call it ego, we can identify with the computation 1+1=2; it is just the faith of surviving being substituted with something that computes 1+1=2. Bruno Marchal wrote: > > Usually the ego is the one having your memory and your particular > life. Or you are talking about some highly non trivial computation of > 1+1=2, with dummy subroutines generating your computational states in > passing? A computation is not defined by its result, but by its > sequences of relative states. In reality, we can't tell what computation is happening, so if we compute 1+1=2 on a pocket calculator, we don't know what's really being computed on the quantum level. Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> then I >> can survive in your pocket calculator, if I identify with some vague >> particular form of experience, we can't say whether I will survive, >> because >> my identification is too vague for that (I may still say "Yes, >> doctor", just >> hoping that some noncomputational component will naturally occur >> alongside >> the substitution). > > But this is no more saying yes *qua computatio*. Not necessarily, we can say "yes" because of the computation that is happening *in a specific (noncomputational) way* and/or because of the computation *and something beyond* happening. If saying yes means *only* saying yes because of the *specific abstract* computation that is happening - that is, we suppose only abstract computations matter -, the conlusion that only the abstract computations have to determine everything (because only they matter) is merely a restatement of the assumptions that only computations matter, making the whole reasoning tautological. Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> but also from the 3p we are related to all >> computations, in an uncomputable way, unless we fix the 3p to be >> purely >> computational (which won't help us much in the experiental/physical >> world, >> since here there are no seperable computations). > > That's too much unclear, sorry. We can just say that 3p body is purely abstractly computational if we presume that it is, or we presume something which leads to the conlusion that it is. No reasoning is sufficient to derive that from saying "Yes, doctor" - even though the reasoning *may* be valid according to our premises (it may be valid for most forms of materialism). Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> Saying "yes" does, by the way, not entail that we do that, since our >> 3p >> identification may shift, or be noncomputational, regardless whether >> we >> expect to survive a substitution (your step 8 leading to the >> conlusion just >> works if we assume materialism, which we don't have to do). > > ? > > The step 8 assume materialism and mechanism and leads to an absurdity. > It is just an argument showing the following equivalent proposition: > > mechanism --> not materialism > materialism --> not mechanism > (not mechanism) or (not materialism) > not (mechanism and materialism) > > With materialism = weak materialism (the doctrine that there is > primary matter (and that it has a relationship with consciousness: I > use usually a weak form of Occam razor here). I wasn't specific enough. I meant that step 8 can be used to eliminate a need for a concrete physical instantiation / a physical reality realizing (some part of) the computations, but not the need for a transcendental reality. This transcendental reality may not generate the whole UD* (making something other than abstract computations matter), or may generate the whole UD* with a non-computational measure, or may generate too much more than the UD* (making the computation of only relative importance, because there is more than just the computational measure). benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/The-consciousness-singularity-tp32803353p32869104.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
