On 07 Oct 2015, at 05:37, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 7/10/2015 12:38 pm, Jason Resch wrote:
On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 6:49 PM, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]
> wrote:
On 6/10/2015 9:54 am, Brent Meeker wrote:
It's not clear to me who is arguing for what. Stathis may think
that consciousness is independent of it's physical substrate, but
I don't see that he's arguing that here. He's arguing that there
can be more that one instance of "the same" consciousness. But
it's not clear what is meant by "the same". Does one think of
one's own consciousness as being the same as it was a second ago?
an hour? a year? twenty years? I think there must be degrees of
"sameness". Similarly, the degree will depend on the
environmental context and interaction. If you became completely
immobilized I think it would change your consciousness. Stephen
Hawking is quite different than he was 50yrs ago. If you had a
chip implanted that allowed you perceive the whole EM spectrum,
including polarization, it might well change your consciousness.
Drugs and accidents change people's personality and so, by
inference, their consciousness. So does just plain learning.
I agree. The argument has become a little unclear. As I understand
Stathis's position, he is arguing that since consciousness is a
computation, any physical instantiation of that computation lead to
the same consciousness -- the same person in fact. My objection was
really that such an idea makes no sense if you are considering
instantiations of that computation in different universes, or times
and locations outside out light cone. That is for two reasons --
first: there is no proof that any such 'copies' of our brain
activity actually exist; and second, even if they exist you can
never know that they exist, when or where. In addition, even if
they do exist, they can have no effect on you here and now -- they
are outside the light cone, after all.
They do affect you, because identical conscious states are, (by
definition), indistinguishable from that point of view. So when you
are experiencing a particular conscious state, and there are
different paths, or future extensions of that conscious state, you
can never be certain of which one will follow. Consider these
various sequences of conscious states:
H->N->J
W->N->Q
X->N->Y
If each letter represents a conscious state, then anyone
experiencing conscious state "N" cannot predict with any certainty
whether their next experience will be that of "J", that of "Q", or
that of "Y". The reason this is relevant is because the statistics
of computations appears to share many of the properties/
consequences of quantum mechanics, in particular with the many-
worlds/many-minds interpretations: there exist an infinite number
of conscious minds (all minds perhaps), which differentiate/combine
when as they diverge or converge upon common states.
This is an oversimplification. It is not at all clear what a
"conscious state" actually is. For instance, how long does it last?
Does it consist of one thought or two? Or the space between thoughts?
There is a similar problem with the simplistic equation of brain
states with conscious states. How many brain states make up a
conscious state? What is a brain state? How long does it last? Is it
an instantaneous snapshot? Or a Planck time, Or a femtosecond? Or
what? Quantum mechanics is of little relevance here. The brain is
hot, and quantum events decohere so rapidly that it is clear that
any conscious processes in the brain are entirely classical. So
quantum analogies are seriously misplaced. It is even more misguided
to hang you theory of mind on a particular interpretation of quantum
mechanics. MWI is an interpretation of a theory, not a theory in its
own right. Any other interpretation of that theory gives exactly the
same results. So the interpretation is of no physical or
psychological significance.
As to your light-cone argument, the issue here is, I think, a
confusion between tokens and types. The word "the" is a type. But
the particular instance you see before you, made up of light and
dark pixels on your computer screen is a token representing that
word "the". A hydrogen atom is a type containing one proton and one
electron. But the particular hydrogen atom at very tip of your
right pinkie's fingernail is a token. This token hydrogen atom
cannot leave your future light cone. However, many other identical
types (other hydrogen atoms) exist beyond your future light cone.
We don't need to travel outside your light cone to reach this
conclusion, as it is a consequence of our current, and most widely
accepted theories.
This is all highly Platonic -- the theory of forms and their
instances all over again. As with quantum mechanics, it is a serious
weakness to hang your whole account of mind on an outmoded philosophy.
That is an authoritarian argument. In my opinion computationalism and
QM throws some doubt on this. I would say that the current facts are
more in favor of Plato than Aristotle materialism.
I would argue, that so long as any token instance of a particular
type exists, we can say that this type continues to exist. If the
type refers to some living being, or conscious state, or conscious
mind, then so long as any token (anywhere) exists, we might say
that this living being, or conscious state, or conscious mind
exists. This follows regardless of whether the other token
implementing that type is within or outside the future light cone
of some other previous token implementing that type.
Is a particular mind a natural type? Or is it only the generic
'mind' that is a natural type? Maybe the particular mind is only a
token of the generic type 'mind', not a type in its own right. You
beg the question in your analysis.
Comp leads to Many-types No token. We can, conventionally decide that
the natural numbers are the only token. It simplifies some matter, but
that is not important.
Given these considerations, I would argue that since we cannot know
they exist, and they can have no effect even if they do exist, we
can simply ignore the possibility. It can make no difference to our
understanding of anything, one way or the other.
I think the basic problem arises from an attempt to reify Bruno's
computational theory.
Define what the process of "reify"-ing involves.
Exactly what it says: making "real". It means taking a theoretical
construct from your theory or model and saying that it is real, that
it "really" exists in the objective external world.
But you reify the "objective external world" here.
Bruno's idea seems to be that our consciousness is essentially a
particular computation,
This isn't Bruno's idea, but the leading and currently dominant
position in the philosophy of mind.
and that particular computation will exist many times (probably an
infinite number of times) in arithmetic. So our particular
consciousness, and the environment in which it is found, is made up
of the statistics of the computations going through that conscious
state.
I'd say this is a good assessment of computationalism, in the
context of any theory that presumes arithmetical realism.
But an essential element of this is that these computations exist
only in arithmetic
What do you mean by "only"? How is a computation in arithemetic
less or more real than any other computation?
A computation might use arithmetic, or combine arithmetical
entities. But that does not happen in arithmetic. As John Clark is
known to have said: arithmetic cannot compute diddly-squat! Only a
physical computer (person) can compute anything.
But here Clark contradicts all the textbook on the subject. In fact
all what John Clarks says here is that you cannot get a physical
object from an arithmetical computations, which is trivial, but does
not prove the existence of the physical object, as physical is a
relative relational notion in arithmetic.
Those type of argument are only the usual knocking on the table.
-- they do not exist in a physical world
How do you define a physical world? Is there any test to
differentiate a "physical" world from a mathematical object
isomorphic to that physical world?
Yes. Kick it and it kicks back. Mathematics does not kick back.
I beg to disagree on this. If math did not kick back, we would still
believe all geometrical length are commensurable. It does not kick
back physically, sure. But that begs the question.
Or more specifically, a conscious experience within a presumed
physical world, from a conscious experience of a simulation
computed by a physically or arithmetically instantiated computer/
computation?
If you want to believe that we are living in a simulation run on a
super-computer devised by some superior alien race, then be my
guest. I do not believe this, and see no relevance in the
possibility. Solipsism is always the last refuge of the seriously
deluded.
I agree. But being run by a simulation is not solipsistic a priori.
Arithmetic emulated many computations which are sharable by collection
of different universal machines.
-- they are not physical operations of a physical "computer".
What if physical worlds are just arithmetical worlds?
What if?????????
I agree. We can equate objects from different domains. But the
physical *appearance* might need to be explained by arithmetical
relations, once we bet that a brain is Turing emulable.
So the attempt to identify these many computations running through
my consciousness with the existence of multiple copies of me in the
level one multiverse is simply a confusion of categories -- a
confusion of the (Platonic) arithmetic level with the (real-world)
physical level.
Maybe the confusion stems from the belief that there is some "real"
difference between "concrete" and "abstract".
I can think of a perfect cube. But I can't kick it. I can also think
of a brick, and when I kick that I hurt my toe. That is the
difference between "concrete" and "abstract": concrete things exist,
abstract things don't.
But that beg the question, which here can be put into: is there any
physical kickback? The antic dream argument shows that what we feel
when kicking back does not necessarily point on something physical.
Computationalism explains this easily too.
Not unnaturally, this confusion leads to nonsense, such as the idea
that one's consciousness might continue in another universe if
something goes wrong in this universe.
Types can have many tokens. If someone in another universe writes
Moby Dick, then Moby Dick continues in that universe, even after
the heath death of our own (assuming time comparisons between
distinct universes could ever make sense).
Ah, the perfect form again.
Well, I believe more in the prime numbers than in the moon. Physicist
assumes the perfect form too, to interpret the facts they study.
You don't seem interested in the mind-body problem, nor in computer
science. No problem doing physics when interested in physics, but the
metaphysical naturalism is just epistemologically inconsistent with
the idea that the brain is turing emulable. I give a proof, we can go
through it step by step. It might help to see if we differ really, or
just use different theories.
Bruno
The only way you can copy your consciousness, if that is indeed
possible, is to gather the information and make a copy using
standard physical processes.
Proof?
There is no magical "dual" fact about consciousness such that it
exists without that substrate. Consciousness supervenes on the
physical brain: if you have two physical brains, you have two
consciousnesses.
If you have a hard cover copy and a soft cover copy of Moby Dick,
you have two books, but only one story. If the characters in the
story were complex enough creatures to have an inner view and life,
their correlates across the two copies would be identical and the
same. Copying the book would not create new conscious states, only
more instances of the same conscious states.
The characters in a book are not conscious. Copying a book produces
new books. Copying a person produces new persons.
Bruce
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