On 7/05/2017 11:59 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 06 May 2017, at 21:08, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 5/6/2017 1:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Exactly why I used arithmetic as the example. Arithmetic,
according to your theory of consciousness, is independent of
perception and physics. Conscious thoughts, beliefs are entailed
by arithmetic and so should be independent of tequila.
That does not follow. Even Robinso Arithmetic can prove that a
machine drinking some amount of tequila will prove anything.
That would be impressive. Is this proof published?
It is trivial. RA computes all states reaction in all computational
histories. RA is a universal dovetailer, to be short. In the
simulation of tequila + brain, people get drunk.
That's what I was afraid of. Your theory successfully predicts it
because it predicts "everything", including people drink tequila and
don't get drunk.
But that fact is confirmed by our best current empirically derived
theory: quantum mechanics.
QM also predicts ""everything", including people drink tequila and
don't get drunk".
But QM has a well-defined measure over these possibilities, given by the
Born Rule acting on the appropriate wave function. That theory predicts
that the probability that people can drink substantial quantities of
alcohol and not get drunk is vanishingly small. Computationalism has no
comparable measure that would give the observed relative probabilities.
And I give the means to compare the measure, so let do the test, and
encourage people to pursue the study of the "material hypostases".
First derive your measure (without assuming physical laws), then we can
do the empirical testing.
We must "just "compare if people get less or more drunk in the
physical reality than in arithmetic, so to speak.
I think we first have to establish that there are entities recognizable
as "people" in arithmetic. Viz., that conscious moments are not just
isolated events in a sea of white noise.
Bruce
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