On 19 Mar 2014, at 18:58, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:
I think the argument usually goes like this:
Suppose there's an infinite ensemble of the computations that
include a mental state that remembers having been you as you are
now. There are a lot of details needed to support such a mental
state. Let's say it takes a minimum of N bits. Longer programs in
the universal dovetailing may contain smaller subroutines, so we
might expect that a given N-bit subroutine is twice as dense as a
given (N+1)-bit subroutine. In consequence, we would expect our
subsequent mental states to find themselves well explained by the
simplest compatible program, and [insert handwaving here] the Big
Bang with subsequent inflation is that simplest compatible scenario.
That type of explanation does not met the FPI problem, where by the
invariance of the first person experience for "delays in the UD*"
inherit, notably below its substitution level, infinitely many
experiences brought by very large, even aberrant, computational
histories.
Qm solves this through phase randomization, and computer science
justifies the existence of a quantization in arithmetic which might
provide a similar solution.
You can also translate the above from terms of "computations" to
terms of "mathematical structures" or if you prefer a different ToE
ontology.
Only for the notion of computation, do we have a Church's thesis. Then
if the brain works like a machine, the TOE can use any Turing
universal system. I use Robinson Arithmetic for the ontology, and
Peano Arithmetic for the "observer".
You can probably also translate into physicalist terms given the
right kind of infinitely varied physical multiverse. Any ontology
that you can wrangle into being isomorphic to computation should do,
I suppose.
It looks like you have not yet grasped the UDA.
It is not a matter of choice, just of taking seriously the idea that
the brain is not a analogous machine using actual infinities.
I just show a problem, and show how we can solve it thanks to computer
science and mathematical logic.
In any case: yeah, it's a wonderful post-hoc rationalization, not
science.
It is a theorem: if comp is correct then the mind-body problem is
reduced into the problem of justifying the physical and the sensible
from arithmetic and arithmetical self-reference, and this in some
precise ways.
Nobody's deriving real testable predictions from it yet. If we're
lucky it's proto-science and maybe someday we can make it science.
I am sorry that you are judging without having read the work. On the
contrary the propositional logic of the observable have already been
derived, and compared to quantum logic. It is an open problem if we
can derive the full universal quantum machinery, that would explain
why below our substitution level, or at least why at some level,
things looks like a quantum topology.
Please follow the thread where I explain how to derive physics from
the "machine's interview", but you might study the UDA to understand
the "obligation" to proceed in that way, to avoid person elimination.
It is hard science, and very modest science, Gabe, so be cautious
being negative on it, unless you find a flaw, of course. It shows that
comp is a big problem, but then shows that computer science provides a
sort of solution, whose shape is closer to a Platonic view of reality,
than an aristotelian one. It is modest, yet radical, but the subject
itself, the mind-body problem, is radical by itself, especially for
the fundamentalist aristotelians.
You must understand the problem, and the UDA exposes the main
problem.. You might read the argument and the "solution" (path toward
an infinite domain of investigations) here:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html
The math part assumes some familiarity with logic, and incompleteness.
Boolos 79 and Boolos 93 are very good book, but you need to study
Mendelson, or some other good introduction to logic.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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