On 8/05/2017 8:48 pm, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 08 May 2017, at 05:53, Bruce Kellett wrote:
I think the problem here is the use of the word "consistent". You
refer to "internally consistent computations" and "consistent and
hence intelligible 'personal histories'." But what is the measure of
such consistency? You cannot use the idea of 'consistent according to
some physical laws', because it is those laws that you are supposedly
deriving -- they cannot form part of the derivation. I don't think
any notion of logical consistency can fill the bill here. It is
logically consistent that my present conscious moment, with its rich
record of memories of a physical world, stretching back to childhood,
is all an illusion of the momentary point in a computational history:
the continuation of this computation back into the past, and forward
into the future, could be just white noise! That is not logically
inconsistent, or comutationally inconsistent. It is inconsistent only
with the physical laws of conservation and persistence. But at this
point, you do not have such laws!
In fact, just as Boltzmann realized in the Boltzmann brain problem,
Can you give the reference please?
There are many book which give accounts of Boltmann's work, but an
accessible introductory overvies is given by Carroll himself in his book
"From Eternity to Here".
states of complete randomness both before and after our current
conscious moment are overwhelmingly more likley than that our present
moment is immersed in a physics that involves exceptionless
conservation laws, so that the past and future can both be evolved
from our present state by the application of persistent and pervasive
physical laws.
Did Boltzman took into account QM? QM without collapse.
Why would he? Thermodynamics applies to both classical and quantum
physics and taking QM, with or without collapse, makes absolutely no
difference to the arguments here.
Obviously he did not take into account mechanism and its measure
problem, and still believe in some brain mind identity link.
So what?
Unless you can give some meaning to the concept of "consistent" that
does not just beg the question, then I think Boltzmann's problem will
destroy your search for some 'measure' that makes our experience of
physical laws (any physical laws, not just those we actually observe)
overwhelmingly likely.
No problem, but you will need a non computationalist theory of mind to
assure the identity link. But most such theories are highly
speculative, and of the negative kind, as they need to add non Turing
emulable magic, nor non-FPI-recoverable magic, to just keep a belief
intact, when that belief is not sustained by any evidence, just an
habit since long.
That is just a lot of meaningless blather, with no relevance to the
questions at issue here. You still rely on the notion of "consistent
relative states", and all I am asking for is that you define what you
mean by "consistent", and what determines the presence or absence of
such consistency.
Bruce
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