> On 22 Oct 2019, at 15:21, Philip Thrift <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Tuesday, October 22, 2019 at 6:59:52 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> On 22 Oct 2019, at 13:06, Philip Thrift <[email protected] <javascript:>> >> wrote: >> >> >> >> On Tuesday, October 22, 2019 at 4:55:33 AM UTC-5, Cosmin Visan wrote: >> I never understood this "if consciousness is all there is, then it is >> allpowerful". How does that follow ? >> >> You posit consciousness is all there is. >> >> How do you account for it having a finite existence (bounded by birth to >> death of an individual)? >> >> With matter, there is an explanation. > > Only through an identity thesis (brain-mind) which requires actual infinities > incompatible with Mechanism. > With mechanism we explain consciousness (the feeling of appearances) and > matter (why some of those feeling are first person plural and sharable, and > why it stabilises, … or not, which we can test). > > That does not make the mechanist explanation true, but it becomes testable, > and rather well test if we are willing to take seriously quantum mechanics > without collapse (à-la Everett). > > Bruno > > > > But with pure arithmetic, it's the same problem as pure consciousness. > > If consciousness is a pure arithmetical machine (PAM),
To be a bit strict, obviously consciousness is not a pure arithmetical machine, as consciousness is a “pure" FIRST PERSON notion, and an arithmetical machine is a third person notion, so those things cannot be equated. Mechanism just assume that consciousness is a mental state capable of being preserved in a relative copy of my body, at some description level. But consciousness, like knowledge can be proved to be not identifiable to anything third person descriptible. > why should PAM have a lifetime beginning (birth) and end (death)? Yet, I understand the question. Interesting and very complex question. You are right on this, the soul (the first person consciousness associated to a machine) is immortal: no birth, no death, indeed. With Mechanism mortality is … wishful thinking. That never happens. > > A purely mathematical Turing machine exists outside time. It doesn't have a > birth and a death. But the arithmetical time (the sequence 0, 1, 2, 3, …) is not directly related to the physical time. So, the physical incarnation of a digital machine can still “die” in the local third person, or first person plural way. Indeed, typically a program run by some universal machinery can stop. What remains true, and foreseen by Plato and many others, is that the first person cannot die from its first person perspective. > It just exists as Platonic mathematical abstraction for all time. In some sense, yes. But that is not the usual sense of immortality, which is related to physical time, which is en emerging first person plural pattern. Ask for more if interested. Eventually you need to study Gödel universal sigma_1 complete predicate “beweisbar”, []p, which is used to define all the modes of self-reference. There is a sense where []p can be said to die “all the time”, as it can access to could-de-sac world from any world. But ([]p & p), the Theaeteus’ “opinion” can access to itself eternally, and does not seem able to die. Bruno > > @philipthrift. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/aae72905-9dcb-47fa-8cff-f61025e80996%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/aae72905-9dcb-47fa-8cff-f61025e80996%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/583DC0DC-8FC2-478E-9348-1BC42DFE5ED2%40ulb.ac.be.
