meekerdb wrote:
On 3/28/2015 12:33 AM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
You're saying the static written out calculation instantiates a bit of
consciousness? Does it matter in what language it is written or whether
anyone can read it? In some language it might just be a single line, as
Feynman joked, X=0. How does it get it's meaning?
It is the sequence of brain states that gives rise to consciousness --
the calculations are relevant only for the simulation of this sequence
of states. That is how the calculations get their meaning.
It is only if you insist that your computing mechanism is
counterfactually correct that you can say that a recording cannot
reconstitute consciousness, but the computing mechanism is not the
calculation that corresponds to consciousness.
That agrees with Bruno's view that the mechanism is irrelevant, it is
the abstract computation, that exists in Platonia, that corresponds to
consciousness. Since all physics is simply inferred from conscious
experiences and thoughts then the material world should be explained in
terms of those abstract computations that instantiate thoughts. He then
goes onto to suppose that all possible computations are done, in the
abstract, by the Universal Dovetailer running of the UTM in Platonia.
Then the state his problem is to show that the apparent order we observe
and agreement in perception can be recovered from within this potential
infinitude of computation.
Quite. I do not think that Russell's 'White Rabbit' arguments do much in
this direction. Bruno has to derive QM from the UD, not just point to
some chance similarities between FPI and the MWI. Actually, he just
needs to derive Newtonian physics, or even some basic symmetries of
spacetime. The problem of miracles in the UD will not go away easily.
Bruce
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