Robert Ettinger wrote (in the FOR Deutsch List): > [...] >And yet again: There is no reason that we cannot (eventually) describe >subjective conditions in objective terms, and transfer feelings (qualia) >from >one person to another. It's not a question of self-reference or anything to >do with logical paradoxes--it's just biophysics.
I partially agree with you. I believe you can "transfer qualia", and also that it is first (practically) biophysics. But, and *this* is linked to Cantor-Godel-Turing sort of diagonalisations (mathematical self-references) developped by many people like Benaceraff, Reinhardt, Wang, and myself too, although I believe you can transfer a quale, I don't believe you can transfer a quale *and* at the same time prove (to a third person) that the right quale has been transfered. I mean there will be a bet, there. To sum up you can transfer a quale (or even duplicate yourself) but not provably so. This is an important nuance IMO. With sufficiently precise form of the computationalist hypothesis you can prove that nuance. More correctly: you can prove that comp entails that nuance. This is done in http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal, (french thesis, short english paper) where you will find references. Short summary: I extract from the computationalist hypothesis (existence of a level such that I survive a substitution at that level) a "consciousness" theory from which I derive an explanation where the parallel worlds come from. (The worst is that I am serious :-)) Bruno
