On 9/21/2014 9:41 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 19 Sep 2014, at 21:10, John Clark wrote:
On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 10:33 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be
<mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:
> In some post you have acknowledge that consciousness is not something
located in
a brain.
I don't even know what the location of a consciousness even means.
Good.
> Two identical brains in different space-time locations will determine
(assuming
computationalism, c, hereafter to be short) the same consciousness.
Agreed.
> A universal machine cannot distinguish a "physical reality" (and what
that means?)
I don't know what that means.
> from an arithmetical reality,
Agreed.
Nice. But then you might be OK with the idea that our relevant computational states are
distributed in infinitely many arithmetical relations, and that we differentiate along
the relation where we get different inputs.
> so the consciousness (the token consciousness "here and now" of someone)
is
related to all number relations defining a genuine computation
Well... consciousness certainly has something to do with relationships, but whether
it's a relationship between numbers or between something else I'm not sure. Numbers can
describe a relationship between many different types of things, but to produce
consciousness it could be that the relationship must be between matter,
What would that mean?
It could men that
1) the substitution level was not low enough, like if some genuine information transfer
between some gluons, or quarks in our protons played some role. Then we say to the
doctor "try again".
2) The substitution level is infinitely low, but then computationalism is false.
in particular between neurons or their electronic counterpart. The fact that a computer
program printed on a paper and sitting in a desk drawer can't do anything until it is
implemented in a certain arrangement of matter that we call a "computer" makes me think
that this may be the case.
But arithmetic realizes both the programs, relatively to universal numbers, or
relatively to just the laws of addition and multiplication (which are Turing-complete).
To say that it has to be implemented in physics, seems like saying that there is one
universal machine, the physical equations, which has that magic ability that the
conscious computation are "really" conscious. But then the physical equation needs
something a bit magical, and non Turing emulable, and different from the non computable
statististics on all computations going through my states.
> Aristotle makes the inevitable errors of the pionniers,
Aristotle made the errors of a fool, not only did he think he was too good to perform
experiments he didn't even realize that some of his ideas, like the one about heavy
objects falling faster than light ones, led to a logical contradiction. It's hard to
think of one his theories that was even approximately true and today physics would be
more advanced than it is if Aristotle had never been born.
Hmm...
> and get corrected on the physical level, not on the metaphysical level
Being a metaphysician is easy, being a good physicist is not.
No. Being a non serious metaphysician is easy. Being a serious metaphysician, like
Einstein in his EPR paper, is difficult. Even for someone like Einstein, or Gödel.
Without John Bell, most scientists would still disqualified the EPR paper as
"philosophy", where on the contrary, Einstein saw the difficulty, and Bell use the EPR
paper as a seed to show that such a "philosophy" could be tested experiementally.
>> As Niels Bohr, the greatest physicist of the 20th century after
Einstein,
> You astonish me. I would reserve my judgment on a guy who refuse to even
talk
with Everett
That was around 1960 when Bohr was a old man, his most important work was done between
1910 and 1930.
> I think the quantum wave collapse is nonsense.
Forget its collapse, without Bohr we wouldn't even know about the quantum wave;
It has been discovered by De Broglie, and it is very easy actually (to guess f(x,t) =
e^iH(x,t) and its linear combination). Then it was not that difficult to guess the
equation of Schroedinger: -ihdf/dt = Hf.
Bohr get the atom, but it is de Broglie wave around the atom which explained the
orbitals, and the Planck levels of energy for the electron, which at that time was
believed only for the photon.
Well, anyway, let us discuss things, and not person.
Bohr proposed his model of the atom in 1913. He knew of Planck's constant and since it
had the same units as angular momentum that suggested quantizing orbits in units of
angular momentum. De Broglie's proposal that all particles have wave character came in
1924 and this completed the picture of the "old quantum mechanics".
although his name wasn't on the original paper Bohr was without a doubt the greatest
teacher of quantum mechanics who ever lived and he was extraordinarily generous in
giving away his good ideas to his students.
> You don't like Aristotle, but for a Platonist QM is rather natural, if
not obvious.
Then why didn't Plato discover Quantum Mechanics 2500 years ago? Because no sane person
would propose such a crazy idea if they weren't forced to do so by the crazy outcome of
certain experiments.
Plato got the most crazy idea of all time: the idea that perhaps reality is not what we
see. It is at the origin of science and religion, with science = the tool, and religion
the goal. Unfortunately we have separate them, and science took a look of
pseudo-religion (in the metaphysical domain) and religion took the look of political
power having no genuine relation with the original theological idea: to unify all
branches of knowledge, including the mystical one, which "are in our head".
I think you've got that backwards. Plato's idea that reality is not what we see got
distorted into we need not observe, we can discover the truth by just thinking, feeling,
wishing, imagining perfect forms. This led to the Christian Dark Ages in Europe when
reason and curiosity bordered on sin and faith and belief based on authority was the
cardinal virtue. It was eventually broken by astronomical observation and a conflict
between what is observed and what was deduced from armchair philosophizing.
Brent
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