On 11 Jun 2012, at 15:09, David Nyman wrote:
On 11 June 2012 13:04, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
Why do you think that pure indexicality (self-reference) is not
enough? It
seems clear to me that from the current state of any universal
machine, it
will look like a special moment is chosen out of the others, for the
elementary reason that such a state individuates the "present
moment here
and now" from her point of view.
Yes, but the expression "from the current state of any universal
machine" (different sense of universal, of course) already *assumes*
the restriction of universal attention to a particular state of a
particular machine.
But is that not the result of the fact that each machine has only
access to its own configuration?
Hoyle on the other hand is considering a
*universal state of attention* and hence needs to make such isolation
of particulars *explicit*. The beam stands for the unique, momentary
isolation in experience of that single state from the class of all
possible states (of all possible machines).
Why could not each machine do the same? Consider the WM-duplication.
The body reconstituted in Moscow has access only to the memory
reimplemented in M, + the further new change, which includes the
feeling "Oh I am the one in Moscow". From the point of view of the
"universal person" this is only a particular windows, and both are
lived, but not (at this stage at least) from the point of view of the
subject in M. I am not sure a beam has to focus on him, for making his
experience more genuine. Would the beam have to dovetail on the two
reconstitution, making recurrently one of a them into a zombie?
It seems to me that the beam introduces only supplementary
difficulties. The reason why we feel disconnected is related to our
self-identification with our "most recent memories", which become
disconnected in the differentiation of consciousness.
We are all the same person, in a sense similar to the W-guy and the M-
guy are the same Helsinki-guy, just with different futures, and by
work, they can understand the significance of this, or even experience
it through some induced amnesia. The beam is like to reintroduce a
sort of "conscious selection" on some conscious order, which seems to
me made unnecessary by the use of indexicals (self-reference being
what theoretical computer science handles the best).
Thus, momentarily, the
*single* universal knower can be in possession of a *single* focus of
attention, to the exclusion of all others.
"He" always focus on the whole experience of consciousness, which
might be the same for similar creature, and the *relative* truth
differentiate by themselves. "He" lives them "out of time", and time
+personal differentiation is the fate of those machine which
individuates themselves to such personal memories. It is useful when
doing shopping or any concrete things locally. No doubt evolution has
put some pressure, and every day life pushes a bit in that direction,
but eventually your first person identity remains a private matter,
and there is matter of choice.
This is the only
intelligible meaning of mutually-exclusive, considered at the
*universal level*.
I don't see this. It looks like adding something which seems to me
precisely made unnecessary with comp.
If you remove such a principle of isolation, how can the state of
knowledge of the universal knower ever be anything other than a sum
over all experiences, which can never be the state of any single mind?
Hmm... You don't know that!
Jouvet, others, including myself in my dream diary notes, have
described (experimented) the possibility of awakening from two
simultaneous dreams. I can conceive this "easily" for any finite
number of experiences, and less easily for an infinite numbers. The
implementation is simple, just connect the memories so that the common
person in all different experiences awaken in a state having all those
memories personally accessible. For the two experiences/dreams case,
Jouvet suggested that it might be provoked by the "paralysis" of the
corpus callosum, indeed, in some REM sleep.
And the UD generates all possible type of "corpus callosum" *possible
(consistent)*. In such a state we might be able to relativize more the
difference, and build on more universal things, and then differentiate
again.
Sure, the states are "all there at once", but what principle allows
"you", in the person of the universal knower, to restrict your
attention to any one of them?
He looks at all of them, from "out of time" (arithmetic). It is only
from each particular perspective that it looks like it is disconnected
from the others. That is, with comp, "just" an illusion, easily
explainable by the locally disconnected memories of machines sharing
computations/dreams.
It seems to me that, if one wants to
make sense of the notion of a *universal* locus of experience, with
personal identity emerging only as a secondary phenomenon, you are
bound in the first place to consider matters from that universal point
of view.
But that is what I think I sketched in arithmetic by the self-
reference logic (on which all machines obeys as long as they are self-
referentially correct relatively to the local more probable
computations).
It is the "I" of a universal baby. It lives in all of us, and he
experiences all or dissimilarities, but locally, it is in that
disconnected manner, until he recognizes itself.
And then you must not forget that this point of view, *as a
knower*, is also *your* point of view. Hence to the extent that you,
*as a merely subsidiary characteristic of such a universal point of
view*, are restricted to "one place, one time", so must it be equally
restricted.
Why? It is only the extension that makes the restriction. And a sort
of amnesia that we are still there without the restriction. It is
attachment. The fear of death is a useful program, for the evolution
of life, and too quick illumination can impedes its flow, although it
can speed it also in other occasion. The human "G*" does contain truth
which we are not supposed to justify or even say. A theoretical
theology is always eventually a *very* near inconsistency type of
study, and that is why it is very important to make clear the
assumptions, and the ways of reasoning.
Do remember that I accept that this is a heuristic, or way of
thinking; I do not know how, or if, it corresponds to any fundamental
principle of reality. But I think that if one purges one's mind of
the implicit assumptions I mention above, one can see that the notions
of "a single universal point of view" and "everything considered
together" are actually mutually exclusive. So pick one or the other,
but not both together.
Frankly I don't see the problem. The single universal point of view is
the consciousness of the universal baby, say. We are all
simultaneously that baby, in the sense similar that the W and M guys
are the same than the Helsinki one, except that we have forget to be
that baby. Imagine that the W and M people forget they have been the
person in Helsinki, and are no more able to "recognize" themselves.
The universal consciousness might be the consciousness of the virgin
universal machine, and exists out of time and space. But with all the
personal relations that universal numbers can develop with respect of
other universal numbers, such a consciousness will, from all the other
points of view, super-differentiate and fuse, and do things we have
not the imagination to figure. Comp makes us humble, for machines can
only scratch infinities, even if their consciousness supervenes on
those infinities.
Yet we might be able to remember or understand intellectually that we
are "that" universal baby-person, making us quite ignorant as "he"
posses much more variate extensions than "our local "me"", and our
single life does not answer his original questioning (it adds
complexity, at first sight).
At least with comp, "it" has the same physical laws, at the root
level, and the same classical theology (the set of true sentences
involving itself). All this grows up in complexity, from the average
machine points of view, and the first pov of the machine is really not
even nameable by that machine. It is big. Hubble galaxies, our
observable and apparently sharable physical universe describes an
infinitesimal village in comparison to that.
The idea that such a single universal point of view can considered and
memorize every points of view, like if that universal baby can awaken
and remember all dreams, in case of super coherent arithmetical
"corpus callosum" is, I'm afraid, a complex open problem (in
theoretical computer science and machine's theology).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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