RE: Maudlin's argument
Russell Standish writes: If the same QM state is associated with different observer moments, you must be talking about some non-functionalist approach to consciousness. The QM state, by definition, contains all information that can be extracted from observation. Functionalism explicitly allows that different physical states may implement the same observer moment. For example, OM1 could be implemented on a computer running Mac OS going through physical state S1, or by an equivalent program running on the same computer emulating Windows XP on Mac OS going through state S2. In this way, there is potentially a large number of distinct physical states S1, S2... Sn on the one machine all implementing OM1. Is there any reason to suppose inclusion of a physical state in this set S1... Sn prevents it from implementing any OM other than OM1? It seems that you would quickly run out of useful states on a finite state machine if this were so. Perhaps it would be possible in the case of any state Si to reverse engineer a language or operating system under which Si is implementing OM1 (I don't know if this can be shown rigorously), which would mean that any Si implementing another observer moment OM2 would also be implementing OM1. The conclusion would be that the relationship between QM states and OMs could be one-many. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: To observe is to......
On Oct 14, 5:32 am, Colin Geoffrey Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Indeed I would hold that our subjective experience (subjectivity)is our one and only intimate and complete connection to the underlying reality and it is the existence of it (subjectivity) 'at all' which is most telling/instructive of the true nature/structure of the underlying reality, not the appearances thus delivered by subjectivity. Yes, and as I've said, I was trying to convey the essence of this thought with what became (unfortunately) confused with 1-person primacy on this list. I'd be grateful for help on reformulating this more coherently if possible. The heart of it is the primary intension of 'exists', whose fons et origo I take to be: 'exists in the sense that I exist subjectively'. The problem is that as soon as one formulates it in this way, all sorts of unlooked for windmills spring up for the Don Quixotes of the logical mind to struggle with. Somehow one must avoid being distracted into grappling with pseudo-problems of pansychism, idealism, solipsism etc. - in their timeworn academic clothing - and focus on the embeddedness, or 'here-ness' that is central to this primary sense of 'exists', and see that everything else is somehow derivative of, or emergent from, this primary intension. And, as you say, by this token we are of course ourselves directly rooted in this reality, whatever it is. The belief that the 'underlying reality is actually made of quantum mechanics (as opposed to being merely described by it) to me looks like a mass delusion of the most bizarre kind. One implication of this (which I think is also implied by comp) is that 1-person experience derives from a more complex instantiation than the 3-person narrative that emerges from it. That is, there is a global instantiation level of sufficient complexity to express 1-person existence 'qualitatively'. At this level, qualitative modalities - 'qualia' - also function as stripped-down 'relata', encoding '3-person worlds' of structure, relation, transaction, and locality. We may speculate, for example, that our experientially dynamic discrimination (A-series) of relation and structure (B-series) emerges from the 'unmediated intuitive grasp' of such relational locality within qualitative globality. All this strongly entails that we will never find the 1-person within the 3-person. The evidence of course is perhaps already staring us in the face, were we to accept it as such. There is nothing at all in the 3-person that looks like, or that we have any notion could possibly look like, the 1-person. Maybe this is why. David snip [Colin Hales] No, it's better visualised as 'being a not-mirror' :-) Imagine you embedded a mirror in your head, but you were only interested in everything the mirror was not. That is, the image in the mirror is manipulating the space intimately adjacent to the reflecting surface. Keep the space, throw the reflecting surface and glass away. What you are interested in is 'being' that space, not the mirror. When you do that the 'movie screen' that is the experiential field becomes part of you. Yes it's a play, only 1 viewer who literally 'is' the theatre, no regressing homunculi. [David Nyman] Oddly, I think I *see* what you mean (and I use the term advisedly). One of the problems we experience in discussing these issues (certainly I do, anyway) is the lack of a really effective way to share powerful *visualisations* of what we're proposing. Not everything we're trying to express is formalisable (at this stage anyway) in mathematical or strictly logical terms. I've tried to express before this image of the relationship between what-is-functioning-as-perceiver and what-is-functioning-as-percept, and the picture in my head was always something like you describe. And the key aspect is that you *are* this relationship, your grasp of the situation is unmediated, there is no regress. For me, this is the primary intension of 'exists', and it lies at the heart of what I confusingly referred to as 1-person primacy - meaning only that you can't come by any of this unless you *are* the entity in question. The commitment is total - there is no way of climbing outside of this to study the situation 'objectively'. [Colin Hales] Glad to 'see' that you 'see'. :-) It is very interesting to see how much trouble people have with this and it is very ironic because it is the position we naturally inhabit (all observation is subjectivity), yet the subjectivity delivers the capacity to behave objectively so brilliantly we think we have actually stepped back from it... but as you say... there is no way of climbing outside of this to study the situation 'objectively' Yet that is what we scientists insist we are doing! Without subjectivity there's no 'objectivity' (in the form of an 'as-if' or virtual objectivity) to be had. The descriptions we define as 'objective' and describe 'objectively' are merely
Re: Maudlin's argument
Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, Oct 13, 2006 at 07:03:18AM -, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Also see my reply to Russell below: Russell Standish The Multiverse is defined as the set of consistent histories described by the Schroedinger equation. I make the identification that a quantum state is an observer moment, and the set of consistent quantum histories is the set of observer histories. As such all observer moments are in the Multiverse. But I appreciate this is not a widely held interpretation... Indeed so. And there's a good reason why it isn't a widely held interpretation, as J.barbour explained in 'The End Of Time'. In order to define 'the Multiverse' in terms of QM one needs a *static* wave-function solution for the entire universe (one which doesn't change) , whereas conventional QM solutions to real world problems are *dynamic* wave-function solutions (wave functions which evolve with time). No one has yet succeeded in demonstrating a static wave-function solution for the entire universe. I haven't read Barbour's book, but if that is what he is saying, he would be wrong. Consider a universe of a single electron living in a potential well V(x)=|x|^2, x\in R^3. There is a well defined solution \psi(t,x) = \sum_j \psu_0|jj| exp(-iE_j t) given the initial condition \psi_0. The function \psi: R x R^3 - C is a static (time independent) mathematical object (I wrote it the mathematicians write to emphasize this point). Why wouldn't you identify this with the Multiverse of that electron? Now I am aware that several people (Hawking included I gather) have proposed various wave functions of the universe, which tend to be solutions of the Wheeler de Witt equation, which is a time independent equation. However, I'm not so interested in following that literature. Barbour argues the same way you do. But he does concede that his argument is not yet proven. The trouble is that in the case of, for instance, the electron, in the example you give, there is still an environment external to the electron, but for the entire universe there could be nothing external to the wave function of the universe. And the wave function of the universe, if the block-universe picture is right, would have to be a static equation as well, as I mentioned above. Apparently, none of the proposals for time-independent equations of the entire universe have yet been made to work. See what I said above. If the *same* QM state could be associated with *different* observer moments, then observer moments would not be reducible to QM states and the set of consistent quantum histories could not be said to be fully identified with the set of observer histories. If the same QM state is associated with different observer moments, you must be talking about some non-functionalist approach to consciousness. The QM state, by definition, contains all information that can be extracted from observation. Cheers See above. As was pointed out, functionalism allows for one-to-many relationships between conscious experiences and the physical substrates on which these experiences are instantiated. What I really mean by 'observer moment' in the fullest sense of the phrase is 'conscious experience'. Conventional QM cannot yet explain how the actual consciously observed reality is supposed to emerge from the QM wave-function. As has been pointed out, the observed reality can only be derived from QM+Additional Assumptions. There are implicit theories of consciousness in any account of how the actual observed reality is supposed to emerge from the QM wave-function and convincing explanations for how or why these assumptions are supposed to work are not yet forth-coming. How does the *observed* (classical) reality emerge from the QM wave-function? Not explained! Coarse graining, decoherence, consistent histories etc etc don't yet convincingly explain it. Until these questions are fully resolved, doubt must remain about the static timeless 'block universe' picture put forward by hard-core multiverse fans. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Maudlin's argument
I don't quite follow your argument. OMs are not computations. Whatever they are under computationalism, they must be defined by a set of information, a particular meaning to a particular observer. Quantum states have this property. For observables that the state is an eigenvalue of, the state contains precise information about those observables. For observables that the state is not an eigenvalue of, there is still information about relative proportions of different outcomes of measurement. If I understand your argument correctly, you say that 1 string of bits could be interpreted in multiple ways by multiply different observers. This is true regardless of whether we accept computationalism. But you can't associate quantum states with uninterpreted strings - each quantum state is an interpretation. Perhaps where some confusion lies is when we use a quantum state to refer to a subsystem of the universe, eg that experiemental apparatus over there on the lab bench. This is the typical situation in QM calculations. What this state is is the projection of the full QM state onto the subspace of interest (the apparatus) with all other dimensions summed over (traced out in mathematical parlance). In this case, this projected QM state describes not a full observer moment, but only a component of one. And of course there will be multiple observer moments sharing that component. Cheers On Sat, Oct 14, 2006 at 04:39:17PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Russell Standish writes: If the same QM state is associated with different observer moments, you must be talking about some non-functionalist approach to consciousness. The QM state, by definition, contains all information that can be extracted from observation. Functionalism explicitly allows that different physical states may implement the same observer moment. For example, OM1 could be implemented on a computer running Mac OS going through physical state S1, or by an equivalent program running on the same computer emulating Windows XP on Mac OS going through state S2. In this way, there is potentially a large number of distinct physical states S1, S2... Sn on the one machine all implementing OM1. Is there any reason to suppose inclusion of a physical state in this set S1... Sn prevents it from implementing any OM other than OM1? It seems that you would quickly run out of useful states on a finite state machine if this were so. Perhaps it would be possible in the case of any state Si to reverse engineer a language or operating system under which Si is implementing OM1 (I don't know if this can be shown rigorously), which would mean that any Si implementing another observer moment OM2 would also be implementing OM1. The conclusion would be that the relationship between QM states and OMs could be one-many. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Maudlin's argument
Russell Standish wrote: I don't quite follow your argument. OMs are not computations. Whatever they are under computationalism, they must be defined by a set of information, a particular meaning to a particular observer. Quantum states have this property. For observables that the state is an eigenvalue of, the state contains precise information about those observables. For observables that the state is not an eigenvalue of, there is still information about relative proportions of different outcomes of measurement. A wavefunction itself does contain information about the 'relative proportions of different outcomes of measurement' (as you put it) but extracting this information requires 'extra assumptions' apart from QM. We don't see half-dead, half-alive cats after all. Why not? Why do we only 'observe' classical reality (i.e objects in definite states)? This is what is not fully explained by QM. Perhaps I should revise what I said somewhat: I can agree with you that the 'consistent histories' that you mentioned earlier are equiavlent to observer histories. But it's the supposed derivation of these 'consistent histories' from the QM multiverse picture that I'm doubting. In other words I think that somewhere along the way some 'extra non-QM assumptions' have slipped in ;) --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Maudlin's argument
On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 02:37:10AM -, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Barbour argues the same way you do. But he does concede that his argument is not yet proven. The trouble is that in the case of, for instance, the electron, in the example you give, there is still an environment external to the electron, but for the entire universe there could be nothing external to the wave function of the universe. And In the example I gave, there was only one electron in the universe. There is no external environment. Sure it is only a thought experiment, since the only universe we know about is not like this, but it was deliberately constructed to expose the flaw in your argument. the wave function of the universe, if the block-universe picture is right, would have to be a static equation as well, as I mentioned above. Apparently, none of the proposals for time-independent equations of the entire universe have yet been made to work. I guess this is not something I care about much one way or the other... See what I said above. If the *same* QM state could be associated with *different* observer moments, then observer moments would not be reducible to QM states and the set of consistent quantum histories could not be said to be fully identified with the set of observer histories. If the same QM state is associated with different observer moments, you must be talking about some non-functionalist approach to consciousness. The QM state, by definition, contains all information that can be extracted from observation. Cheers See above. As was pointed out, functionalism allows for one-to-many relationships between conscious experiences and the physical substrates on which these experiences are instantiated. Sure, but it also says these conscious experiences will be unable to to detect which hardware they are running on (otherwise they'd be different conscious experiences). If the two different physical implementations differed in their quantum state, then there would be a physical measurement that could distinguish them (disregarding the nonphysical arbitrary complex-valued scaling factor). So the quantum states describing these different physical systems must be the same (up to a scaling factor). What I really mean by 'observer moment' in the fullest sense of the phrase is 'conscious experience'. Conventional QM cannot yet explain how the actual consciously observed reality is supposed to emerge from the QM wave-function. As has been pointed out, the observed reality can only be derived from QM+Additional Assumptions. There are implicit theories of consciousness in any account of how the actual observed reality is supposed to emerge from the QM wave-function and convincing explanations for how or why these assumptions are supposed to work are not yet forth-coming. How does the *observed* (classical) reality emerge from the QM wave-function? Not explained! Coarse graining, decoherence, consistent histories etc etc don't yet convincingly explain it. Until these questions are fully resolved, doubt must remain about the static timeless 'block universe' picture put forward by hard-core multiverse fans. My guess is that it will arise from things like Stenger's point of view invariance (POVI) principle. But you are right that there is still much to be worked out, starting from why we experience living in a 3+1 spacetime. My point on the block universe picture is that it is a valid picture (but not the only one) iff physics is deterministic. Standard quantum mechanics without collapse is deterministic. Hence the block Multiverse. If you follow Copenhagen or Bohm, then there can't be a block Multiverse, nor a block universe for that matter. -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Maudlin's argument
On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 03:21:52AM -, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Russell Standish wrote: I don't quite follow your argument. OMs are not computations. Whatever they are under computationalism, they must be defined by a set of information, a particular meaning to a particular observer. Quantum states have this property. For observables that the state is an eigenvalue of, the state contains precise information about those observables. For observables that the state is not an eigenvalue of, there is still information about relative proportions of different outcomes of measurement. A wavefunction itself does contain information about the 'relative proportions of different outcomes of measurement' (as you put it) but extracting this information requires 'extra assumptions' apart from QM. We don't see half-dead, half-alive cats after all. Why not? Why do we only 'observe' classical reality (i.e objects in definite states)? This is what is not fully explained by QM. Perhaps I should revise what I said somewhat: I can agree with you that the 'consistent histories' that you mentioned earlier are equiavlent to observer histories. But it's the supposed derivation of these 'consistent histories' from the QM multiverse picture that I'm doubting. In other words I think that somewhere along the way some 'extra non-QM assumptions' have slipped in ;) Perhaps you should read my paper Why Occam's Razor - available from my website, or an arXiv mirror near you (http://www.arXiv.org). The assumptions I run off are called TIME and PROJECTION, as well as the Kolmogorov probability axioms (and the set theoretic axioms underlying them). From this, I can derive the main QM postulates, aside from the odd man out Correspondence principle. The CP itself can be obtained from Stenger's POVI, but needs 3+1 Minkowski spacetime. Probably what you think of as the extra non-QM assumptions are the TIME and PROJECTION postulates, but these are relatively minimal models of consciousness. Things like thermostats probably also satisfy TIME and PROJECTION :). Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
*Off topic* Puzzle challenge for $US 2 million
Because I'm fascinated by high-complexity type puzzle contests (i.e puzzles lasting 6 months or more) as a possible way to test really high IQ's. It's also indirectly relevent to 'theories of everything' since 'the universe' is one giant puzzle ;) The Challenge 'Secret's of the Alchemist Dar' (released end of Sep, 2006). It's a childen's book. But buried in the illustrations and text are clues leading to $US 2 million in prizes. You're looking for 'diamond rings' - there are 100 on offer for the first people to crack the puzzles but I think that no physical searching is involved. You're not told what to do or how to claim your prizes though. This is part of what you have to solve. No advanced math is required - the book is a *children's book* and I think the puzzle is designed such that a bright child should in theory be able to solve it. The contest is open to every-one in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, NZ, France, Germany, Signapore, Hong Kong and Japan. It's world-wide. Books are avaliable in all book-shops (New Releases and/or Children's Section). Be the first to crack the top puzzle and win a red diamond of 'eternal life' valued at $US 1 million (or take substitute cash prize). Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Alchemist-Dar-Treasures-Trove/dp/0976061880/ Official puzzle web-site and forums: http://www.atreasurestrove.com/Public/News-Updates/SecretsoftheAlchemistDar/index.cfm -- Puzzles like this might be good practice for constructing theories of everything. I've been doing this for a week or two and there's a very entertaining code in the back section. Who wants to take up the challenge then? (Be warned though: Treasure hunts like this are very addictive and puzzles of this level of complexity usually take between 6-9 months before a solution emerges). --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
