On 30 Jan 2014, at 21:44, LizR wrote:
On 30 January 2014 22:44, Kim Jones <[email protected]> wrote:
Meanwhile - back at the ranch:
Tegmark wants to think of consciousness as - wait for it - a state
of matter. This is very confusing. He is just making this up as he
goes along, I'm afraid...
I think to be fair he wants to work out the properties of conscious
matter, e.g. (by assumption) brains, which is in line with the SF
idea of "computronium" (assuming consciousness is in some sense a
computation).
?
Assuming consciousness is related (and preserved) through computation,
assumes computer, that is Church thesis.
What is a computronium?
I share with Kim that Tegmark is well erring from his previous work,
contradictiing his own previous mathematicalism, and succumbing to the
identity of of what we don't understand (like many use of the quantum
in consciousness).
It contradicts his own analysis of the brain, as a hot non quantum
machine.
And its still ignores the comp constraints on the mind-brain identity
thesis.
There might be interesting insights, but all in all, it looks like a
regression from the comp, or even just his mathematicalist picture. A
priori.
Which isn't a completely flakey idea, because we already have
"computronium" to some extent.
We do have universal computer, yes. With Church thesis.
He's stating that assumption up front, at least in the paper I read
recently, and just seeing what follows.
(Also, Tegmark's previous definition of consciousness was "what
information feels like when it's being processed" which is in line
with this approach, so he isn't making it up 100%)
It is the materialist approach. It uses infinities not affordable by a
comp theory. And in that paper, he use quantum information, which is
something else? The term "information" should be banned, as people
abuse of it a lot. I have that feeling sometime. It is a term which
equivocates the 1p and 3p meaning. It looks serious thanks to the
Shannon 3p meaning, and it looks "mental" because of its 1p meaning,
which is related to some understanding.
If he can show how physical supervenience works, he could even be
onto something.
Surely! But I am not sure he even address the question. The very
notion of "conscious matter" seems to elude the question, it seems to
me.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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