On 27 Oct 2015, at 06:54, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 27/10/2015 9:37 am, Russell Standish wrote:
The only clarification I would make is that (with computationalism)
the system is formal, but the observer (individual in your
terminology) and environment (universe with its physics in your
terminology) are a non formal partition of the system.
How is that partition into observer and universe made? If it is
purely formal then it doesn't do the necessary work. But then, how
does a purely formal system generate a non-formal division? I think
your division builds in semantic content from the outside by fiat --
not in a principled way.
This is similar to my objection to the many worlds interpretation of
QM. You have to distinguish between the different worlds in some way
-- unitary evolution cannot do this. Decoherence always leaves
residual correlations, and although these may be small, there are a
very large number of them, so the original superposition is, in
fact, still intact. Everett wants to make the world relative to the
particular observer (hence 'relative state' interpretation). But to
make sense of this mathematically you have to get rid of the
unwanted correlations.
I don't see why. We can fuse again by amnesia, and exploit the
unwanted correlation. They disappears only relatively, nothing is
lost, evolution is time symmetric.
Most do this by fiat -- the worlds are orthogonal FAPP. But that is
not principled either. Mathematically, we take a partial trace. But
we take the trace, it is not in Schroedinger's equation.
It is in the relative choice made by our histories (long
computations), relatively to us. Zurek explains this rather well in my
opinion, I mean why our type of brain needs orthogonal positioning,
why position is favored by brain-like structures, for consciousness to
stabilize enough to make prediction in our deep environment(universal
computations).
Bruno
Similar problem, afaict.
Bruce
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