On 28 March 2014 09:37, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > On 27 March 2014 23:42, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 27 March 2014 19:11, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> On 26 Mar 2014, at 22:30, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >>> >>> On Thursday, March 27, 2014, Russell Standish <[email protected]> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 05:06:46PM +1100, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >>>> > >>>> > The engineering tolerance of the brain must be finite (and far higher >>>> than the Planck level) if we are to survive from moment to moment, and that >>>> implies there are only a finite number of possible brains and hence mental >>>> states. >>>> > >>>> >>>> Steady on, I don't think it does that at all, unless you constrain the >>>> physical world to be bounded somehow in both space and time. >>>> >>>> I think you were just trying to say that the space of brains (and >>>> mental states) is discrete, something I could agree with. >>>> >>> >>> Unless you allow brains to grow infinitely big, there are only a finite >>> number of possible brains even in an infinite universe. >>> >>> Assuming comp. If the brain is defined by its "material" quantum state, >>> and assuming electron position is a continuous observable, then we can have >>> an infinity of brains, even when limiting their size. >>> >> >> Is electron position a continuous observable? Even if it is and there are >> an infinity of brains, why should that result in an infinity of minds? It >> would seem unlikely that brains would evolve so that an arbitrarily small >> change in the position of an electron would cause a change in >> consciousness, and we know that even gross changes in the brain, as occur >> in stroke or head injury, sometimes have remarkably little effect. >> > > I think Bruno must have a materialist hat on here?! In comp the > substitution level isn't necessarily at the level of individual electrons, > surely... > > But that raises another question, for me at least - in comp are there only > finitely many possible states of mind? So one would literally be able to > travel full circle through all possible minds - eventually? > > I would say there is only a finite number of possible biological human minds, but an infinite number of possible minds if you are running them on the Turing machine in Platonia.
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