On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 02:36:21PM +0100, Jochen Fromm wrote: > Hi, > > Russell Standish was right, the definitions in the wiki contradict the > definitions of Mark A. Bedau. They are more like Chalmers, and less like > Bedau. Obviously I have not read Bedau carefully enough. I know the paper > from Alex Ryan, but I haven't read it carefully enough, either.. I found it > a bit boring. I added you as an "Author" to the blog (I will send the login > and password separately). Anyone else from the FRIAM list is of course > invited, too. The CAS-Group wiki has a different login, it is possible to > register yourself. > > Best regards, > Jochen >
I just flicked through the Chalmers paper that you sent me (http://consc.net/papers/granada.html), and I think that Chalmers' position in that paper is closer to Bedau's that you give credit. Which is not surprising, given that Chalmers credits Bedau with the ideas. Chalmers uses different words, to be sure, and this can create misunderstandings, but I think that Chalmers' "reducible in principle" means something like supervenience - there is no extra physical law at the higher (or what I call semantic level). Note that contra Bedau, I think there is a role for strong emergence, as defined by Bedau. In a multiverse with an operating anthropic principle (we can only observe those worlds compatibel with our existence), the anthropic principle which constrains the observable physics is an extra layer of causality not reducible to the underlying micro world. No magic. Of course, for some, a multiverse is magic enough, and many people are highly suspicious of the anthropic principle (the WAP and SAP become equivalent in the Multiverse). I had lunch with Chalmers one day, and gave him a copy of my book. He was rather bemused by the whole thing actually - I suspect he'd be happy to consign the Multiverse to the same "magical" bin. PS - I just realised when I read on that Chalmers is arguing that consciousness is an example of strong emergence. In fact he makes the claim that it is _the only_ such example. I won't really brook an argument here - my opinion is that consciousness is wrapped up in the definition of emergence _simpliciter_ (where does the separation of syntactic and semantic layers come from, if not from conscious observation), so naturally strong emergence will always be closely tied to consciousness (the anthropic principle being just one such quite obvious example). Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [email protected] Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================ 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
