On 1 January 2012 02:04, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: >>> Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up 1- >>> p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only experience >>> myself on one branch at a time, probabilistically according to the >>> measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one sense >>> a single consciousness that experiences every possible state. > > > That seems incoherent to me. How is it different from there are many > experiences? "I" is just a construct from a subset of experiences and there > can be many different subsets from which many different "I"s can be > constructed. But I don't know what it would mean to say there is just > one "I" or to say that "I" can jump from one thread of experience to > another. That would presuppose that consciousness, the "I", is something > apart from the experiences it jumps to.
This is a tricky one. Pierz says above that "from 3-p, all branches are conscious". But perhaps it might be more accurate to say something more like "from 3-p, all branches are in some measure accessible to consciousness". Consciousness indeed supervenes on all branches, but never "all at the same time". Supervenience is not an identity claim. The putative supervenience base is an inclusive category embracing all 3-p descriptions indifferently, whereas 1-p experiences are characterised precisely by their mutual exclusivity. I agree with you that ""I" is just a construct from a subset of experiences and there can be many different subsets from which many different "I"s can be constructed". "I" in this objective sense can be coherently understood as an ensemble of co-existing 3-p descriptions. But any conscious experience, by contrast, is always a singular occasion - a unique "moment in time", if you like. So we mustn't be misled into imagining arrays of conscious moments as somehow sitting there "all together" in timeless identity with their 3-p supervenience base, because to do so would be to destroy all logical possibility of recovering the uniqueness of the experiential moment. It is this very "numerical problem" - the fact that there are many bodies but only one conscious experience - that led Schrödinger to make his remark about our consciousness being "not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole". Because whenever we try to think of it as merely a "piece", the question will always obtrude "but why only THIS piece right NOW?". A criterion of selection is implied which would be capable of transforming the totality of 3-p indifferent co-existence into a unique 1-p manifestation. And this in turn entails, as Schrödinger observed, that in some sense (to be resolved!) each individual conscious "fragment of the present" must be a unique summation, by the system as a whole, of itself. David > On 12/31/2011 5:07 PM, David Nyman wrote: >> >> On 31 December 2011 23:35, Pierz<pier...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up 1- >>> p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only experience >>> myself on one branch at a time, probabilistically according to the >>> measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one sense >>> a single consciousness that experiences every possible state. > > > That seems incoherent to me. How is it different from there are many > experiences? "I" is just a construct from a subset of experiences and there > can be many different subsets from which many different "I"s can be > constructed. But I don't know what it would mean to say there is just > one "I" or to say that "I" can jump from one thread of experience to > another. That would presuppose that consciousness, the "I", is something > apart from the experiences it jumps to. > > Brent > >> Yes, and the sense in which there is "a single consciousness that >> experiences every possible state" is indeed an unusual one. It's as >> if we want to say that all such first-personal experiences "occur" >> indifferently or even "simultaneously", but on reflection there can be >> no relation of simultaneity between distinguishable conscious events. >> The first-person is, by definition, always in the singular and present >> NOW. >> >> As Schrödinger remarked: >> >> "This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this >> entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is >> not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance." >> >> David >> >> >>>> When you write things like that I'm left with the impression that you >>>> think one's >>>> consciousness is a thing, a soul, that moves to different bundles of >>>> computation so there >>>> are some bundles that don't have any consciousness but could have if you >>>> "jumped to them". >>>> >>> Not to wish to pre-empt Bruno's reply, but I think you're mixing up 1- >>> p and 3-p. From 3-p, all branches are conscious, but I only experience >>> myself on one branch at a time, probabilistically according to the >>> measure of computations. There's no individual soul, just in one sense >>> a single consciousness that experiences every possible state. >>> >>> As for Mars Rover I'm curious to know this: If we programmed it to >>> avoid danger, would it experience fear? Until we understand the >>> qualia, you're as in the dark as we are on this question. You assume >>> the affirmative, we assume the negative. That's why I sigh. Such >>> arguments go nowhere but a reassertion of our biases/intuitions, and >>> the result is unedifying. >>> >>> -- >>> 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. >>> > > -- > 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. > -- 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.
