On 17 August 2014 17:45, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 8/16/2014 10:19 PM, LizR wrote: > > On 17 August 2014 07:14, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Both consciousness and physics supervene on the computations, which >> exist necessarily. Consciousness does not supervene on the physics. >> >> Yes, I agreed to that. The question was can consciousness supervene on >> computations that do not instantiate any physics? I think not. >> > > Would you mind clarifying this? I'm not what it means that consciousness > can only supervene on computations that instantiate physics. For example - > assuming my brain is doing computations, how is it instantiating physics? > Or did you mean that the brain is a physical object, and hence instantiated > within physics, so to speak? > > > No I mean you need something to think about that has the consistency and > stabiltiy of an external world. You need to be able to think in terms of > objects, bodies, motions, numbers, perceptions,... Of course language > gives you this, but you have some of it prior to language which I think is > "hardwired" by evolution. >
So you need something to be conscious of - or, not just that - you need something specific (consistent and stable) to be conscious of. This would appear to be the case - the world is consistent and stable (ish) - is this related to the white rabbits and suchlike that are discussed in "Theory of Nothing" ? > And then the other question is can physics supervene on computations >> that do not instantiate any consciousness? I'm not sure about that. >> > > If I read this arright, which I probably don't, this would be equivalent > to comp generating universes with no observers, which I imagine is by > definition impossible. > > Yes, that's what it would mean. But if comp can't generate universes with > no observers what does it mean that there were no people (or even jumping > spiders) for most of the duration of the universe? > Indeed. This is generally my objection to theories that *require* conscious observers (and also my objection to people who say 1+1=2 is a human invention, by the way, since the laws of physics, which appear to be based on arithmetic, still worked fine without any conscious beings to "invent" them). > And what about distant parts of the universe that we can't observe? And > do we have to actually *be* observing for them to exist? Do we suppose > that they don't exist or do we take or theories of cosmology that indicate > they should exist as proof that there are observers of them? > Yes. Although of course it is hard to get away from us observing them, since everything we know is what we observe (this might also be the reply of people who think maths is a human invention, or any sort of invention, to those of us who think they are necessary even in places we can't observe. It's a bit of a two edged sword.) "I cannot believe that the Moon exists only because a mouse looks at it." -- Albert Einstein -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
