On 12 June 2012 17:36, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
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? That's too quick for me. To say that "each machine has only access to its own configuration", is still merely to generalise; to go from this to *some particular machine* requires one instance to be discriminated from the whole class. So what, you may retort, "your" states just "discriminate themselves as you". The problem to my mind, with looking at things in this way, is that for there to be a *universal* knower, each state must * primarily* belong to "you qua that knower" (which is what makes it universal) and only secondarily to "you qua some local specification". If this be so, it is circular to invoke those secondary characteristics, which become definite only after discrimination, to justify the discrimination in the first place. ISTM that the two of us must actually be thinking of something rather different when we conceive a universal person or knower. For you, IIUC, this idea is consistent with many different states of consciousness obtaining "all together"; consequently the viewpoint of this species of universal person can never be reducible to any particular single perspective. I'm unsatisfied with this (as presumably was Hoyle) because it leaves me with no way of justifying "why am I David" that isn't circular. I can of course say that I'm David because the given state (here, now) happens to be one of David's states of mind, but the problem in this view is that this is completely consistent, mutatis mutandis, with Bruno's saying exactly the same. By contrast, Hoyle's heuristic allows me to say I'm David because a state of David happens momentarily to be the *unique perspective* of the whole. As Schrödinger puts it, not a *piece* of the whole, but in a *certain sense* the whole; Hoyle's heuristic makes explicit that "certain sense". I suspect that the difference between us is that it is not your intention to justify the feeling of change directly from your mathematical treatment, but rather to demonstrate the existence of an eternal structure from which that experience could be recovered extra-mathematically. You often refer to the inside view of numbers in this rather inexplicit manner (forgive me if I have inadvertently missed your making the details explicit elsewhere). Hoyle however seemed to be directly concerned with rationalising this feeling by associating it with a unique dynamic process operating over the system as whole. That's the difference, I think, and it may be irreconcilable. David -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
