On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 1:54 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:
May be you could study the UDA, and directly tell me at which step
your theory departs from the comp hyp.
Okay, I read over your SANE2004 paper again.
From step 1 of UDA:
The scanned (read) information is send by traditional means, by mails
or radio waves for instance, at Helsinki, where you are correctly
reconstituted with ambient organic material.
Okay, so this information that is sent by traditional means is really
I think where consciousness lives. Though not literally in the
physical instantiation of the information. For instance if you were
to print out that information in some format, I would NOT point to the
large pile of ink-stained paper and say that it was conscious. But
would say that the information that is represented by that pile of ink
and paper represents, or identifies, or points to a single
instant of consciousness.
So, what is the information? Well, let's say the data you're
transmitting is from a neural scan and consists of a bunch of numbers
indicating neural connection weights, chemical concentrations,
molecular positions and states, or whatever. I wouldn't even say that
this information is the information that is conscious. Instead this
information is ultimately an encoding (via the particular way that the
brain stores information) of the symbols and the relationships between
those symbols that represent your knowledge, beliefs, and memories
(all of the information that makes you who you are). (Echoes here of
the Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) stuff that I referenced before)
From step 8 of UDA:
Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to [a
machine state] at space-time (x,t), we are obliged to associate [the
pain I feel at space-time (x,t)] to a type or a sheaf of computations
(existing forever in the arithmetical Platonia which is accepted as
existing independently of our selves with arithmetical realism).
So instead I would write this as:
Instead of linking [the pain I feel] at space-time (x,t) to [a
machine state] at space-time (x,t), we are obliged to associate [the
pain I feel at space-time (x,t)] to an [informational state] existing
forever in Platonia which is accepted as existing independently of
ourselves.
You have to see that, personally, I don't have a theory other than the
assumption that the brain is emulable by a Turing machine
I also believe that, but I think that consciousness is in the
information represented by the discrete states of the data stored on
the Turing machine's tape after each instruction is executed, NOT in
the actual execution of the Turing machine. The instruction table of
the Turing machine just describes one possible way that a particular
sequence of information states could be produced.
Execution of the instructions in the action table actually doesn't do
anything with respect to the production of consciousness. The output
informational states represented by data on tape exists platonically
even if the Turing machine program is never run. And therefore the
consciousness that goes with those states also exists platonically,
even if the Turing machine program is never run.
OK. So, now, Kelly, just to understand what you mean by your theory, I
have to ask you what your theory predicts in case of self-
multiplication.
Well, first I'd say there aren't copies of identical information in
Platonia. All perceived physical representations all actually point
to (similarly to a C-style pointer in programming) the same
platonically existing information state. So if there are 1000
identical copies of me in identical mental states, they are really
just representations of the same source information state.
Piles of atoms aren't conscious. Information is conscious. 1000
identically arranged piles of atoms still represent only a single
information state (setting aside putnam mapping issues). The
information state is conscious, not the piles of atoms.
However, once their experiences diverge so that they are no longer
identical, then they are totally seperate and they represent (or point
to) seperate, non-overlapping conscious information states.
To see where does those probabilities come from, you have to
understand that 1) you can be multiplied (that is read, copy (cut) and
pasted in Washington AND Moscow (say)), and 2) you are multiplied (by
2^aleph_zero, at each instant, with a comp definition of instant not
related in principle with any form of physical time).
Well, probability is a tricky subject, right?
An interesting quote:
Whereas the interpretation of quantum mechanics has only been
puzzling us for ~75 years, the interpretation of probability has been
doing so for more than 300 years [16, 17]. Poincare [18] (p. 186)
described probability as an obscure instinct. In the century that
has elapsed since then philosophers have worked hard to lessen the
obscurity. However, the result has not been to arrive at any
consensus.
