Carl, a very interesting post, thanks!
> I was particularly struck by Greg Egan's statement: > > "The only “Copernican principle” I’d consider worth defending would be > one that avoids coincidences, rather than one that assumes typicality. " I think he was talking about the cosmological perspective here; "coincidences" at the level of biological systems etc would then be theoretically, if not practically derivable from the ultimate theory. > The BB discussion has value as a catalyst, however, in that it shows > that we have few mature conceptual tools with which to have such a > discussion. I agree! > In particular, most of the discussants exhibit some chagrin > that not only do they not share a notion of what an 'observer' might be, > but that their individual notions about the definition of such an entity > have begun to seem to them less than coherent. Have you looked at this?: The information integration theory of consciousness by Giulio Tononi in Velmans, M. & Schneider, S. The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness Blackwell Publishing, 2007, pp. 287-300 An overview can be found here: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jun08/6315 > The study of Complexity lacks a coherent theory of the emegence of > (complex) observers. I'm speaking of such a theory in the abstract, and > not about humans or fruit flies or whether an observer must be > self-aware, autonomous or able to recognize itself in a mirror. I'm > particularly groping for something beyond a simple notion of whether an > observer is 'typical' in some given environment and more how > observerness emerges and operates in coevolutionary or epigenetic > situations. Would the above theory fit your desiderata? Or are you looking for something different? Cheers, Günther -- Günther Greindl Department of Philosophy of Science University of Vienna [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/ Blog: http://dao.complexitystudies.org/ Site: http://www.complexitystudies.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
