On 27 Sep 2012, at 15:08, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 6:06 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
You can approximate consciousness by "belief in self-consistency".
This has
already a "causal efficacy", notably a relative self-speeding
ability (by
Gödel "length of proof" theorem). But "belief in self-consistency"
is pure
3p, and is not consciousness, you get consciousness because the
machine will
confuse the belief in self-consistency with the truth of its
self-consistency, and this will introduce a quale. The machine can
be aware
of it, and (with enough cognitive ability) the machine will be
aware of its
non communicability, making it into a personal quale.
I think you are doing a confusion level, like if matter was real, and
consciousness only emerging on it. I thought that some times ago
you did
understand the movie graph argument, so that it is the illusion of
brain and
matter which emerges from consciousness, and this gives another
role for
consciousness: the bringing of physical realities through number
relations
being selected (non causally, here). Consciousness is what makes
notions of
causal efficacy meaningful to start with.
I object to the idea that consciousness will cause a brain or other
machine to behave in a way not predictable by purely physical laws.
But this cannot be entirely correct. Consciousness will make your
brain, at the level below the substitution level, having some well
defined state, with an electron, for example, described with some
precise position. Without consciousness there is no "material" brain
at all.
Of course, you will argue that this is what physics already describes,
with QM. In that sense I am OK, but consciousness is still playing a
role, even if it is not necessarily the seemingly magical role invoked
by Craig.
Some people, like Craig Weinberg, seem to believe that this is
possible but it is contrary to all science.
I agree with you on this. As an argument against mechanism, your point
is valid. My point is that the way you talk might been misleading as
it looks like it is bearing on some notion of primitively causal
matter, but it does not. That plays some role when comparing the "comp
matter" and the QM matter.
This applies even if the
whole universe is really just a simulation, because what we observe is
at the level of the simulation.
Not if we observe ourselves or our neighborhood below our substitution
level. In that case we can see only the trace of all infinitely many
possible simulations, or computations, leading to our actual current
computational states. Again we can say that QM confirms this a
posteriori.
In that case an observation will determine a brain state, in the same
way a self-localization after duplication determines a self-localized
state (like I am in this well defined city).
Bruno
I think it is the same error as using determinacy to refute free-
will. This
would be correct if we were living at the determinist base level,
but we are
not. Consciousness and free-will are real at the level where we
live, and
unreal, in the big 3p picture, but this concerns only the "outer
god", not
the "inner one" which can *know* a part of its local self-
consistency, and
cannot know its local future.
--
Stathis Papaioannou
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