On 5/09/2017 10:02 am, Russell Standish wrote:
On Tue, Sep 05, 2017 at 09:40:01AM +1000, Bruce Kellett wrote:
I think you are trying to have your cake and eat it too. When I
suggested that your idea of an observer interpreting strings was
dualist, I meant property/function dualism, not Cartesian substance
dualism. So you want an OM (bitstring) to "interpret" other
bitstrings (data). You say: "The whole point of the bitstrings is
that they are interpreted by something we call an observer." That,
in my understanding, is a dualist position -- you have two things:
an observer, and things that are observed. But if bitstrings are all
that there is, then I do not understand bitstrings "interpreting"
other bitstrings. The conscious observer consists, in this picture,
of the set of all bitstrings that are compatible with that
particular OM. There is no distinction between observer bitstrings
and data bitstrings.
In such a picture, a different observer moment is some different set
of strings compatible with some different conscious moment. If you
are to make this into a theory of mind/consciousness, you have to
specify how these sets are related to each other to make up a
continuous stream of consciousness; or not related directly, so that
the two sets we are considering belong to different conscious
observers.
What is it about a bitstring that makes if part of an OM? Clearly,
not all bitstrings are part of consciousness -- not all infinite
bitstrings are necessarily included in OMs. What is it about a
bitstring that makes it part of your OM?, while this other bitstring
is part of my OM? What makes one bitstring a past OM and another
bitstring a future OM? I suspect that answering questions such as
this will inevitably lead to (functional) dualism, and you will not
have actually succeeded in explaining the observer at all.
(Bitstrings would have no different role in such a theory than
quarks and electrons have in a physicalist theory: in both,
consciousness is an emergent phenomenon; emergent from the
underlying ontological substrate, but with no more fundament
explanation.)
Observation is all about interpreting data, which is what the
bitstrings are. Sure, I'm assuming that all forms of data must be
represented by bitstrings, but given we know of no other possibility,
that is surely a rather weak assumption.
I have no problems with the assumption that all forms of data can be
represented by bitstrings. On the other hand, I do have some difficulty
accepting off-hand that all possible bitstrings exist in some sense or
the other. Quantum MWI does not entail this. It might be Tegmark's level
IV multiverse, but that is problematic too.
OTOH - quarks and electrons are already rather structured things -
having properties like like mass, spin, charge, colour charge, lepton
and baryon number, all of which are presently unexplained and taken as "given".
Your bitstrings are highly structured objects, too, but they are taken
as unexplained "givens".
These elementary paticle properties do appear to be related to various
symmetries, such as mass being the conserved property related to
space-time translational symmetry
That is energy. Despite E = mc^2, rest mass is not explained by
time-translation invariance -- mass requires the equivalence principle;
which may be a symmetry, but not one subject to Noether's theorem.
- so ISTM that the path to
explaining them will be to connect these symmetries to necessary
properties of conscious observation
This seems to be rather like Vic Stenger's idea of deriving much of
physics from POVI -- basically from symmetry principles. My problem with
Vic's idea was always that he took the symmetries he wanted from
experience and observation, while ignoring the multitude of other
possible symmetries. So his approach gave a very convenient introduction
to, and summary of, much of known physics, but it was based on
experience; not in any sense an /a priori /derivation.
- it may be that these can be
derived from partitioning sets of bitstrings in the way I propose, or
more may be required, such as considering how Turing machines or
neural networks classify things. That remains to be seen.
BTW - my goal is not to explain the observer, but to explain
appearances in terms of the observer. The former is probably all to
hard a nut to crack at present, but the latter might just be doable.
I think that if you are to explain QM in terms of observer moments, you
have to give some account of the observer, and what distinguishes an
observer moment from an arbitrary bit string. It is all very well to
interpret data strings if you already have an interpreter, but that is
not a fundamental theory. You end up with accepting those data strings
that the observer wants, while rejecting all others, which seems to
depend very much on the unexplained properties of that observer.
Which is why I'm not hung up on the question of whether my theory is
dualist or not. It's kind of irrelevant. (Or maybe that should be
irrelephant - cf story of the blind men that I quote at the end of my book).
I think you have acknowledged that your theory is dualist in the sense
of which I am accusing it of being.
Bruce
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