On 9/24/2014 12:33 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2014-09-24 8:58 GMT+02:00 meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>:
On 9/23/2014 10:52 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
And I said it was also functionalism, because it was suggested that copying
the
arrangement of matter in the same fashion would result in the same
consciousness...
that could be false even under materialism (because it could be impossible
to
rearrange matter in the desired way infinitesimally and that no scale was
specified
at which two arrangement are the same).
QM's no cloning theorem says it would be impossible to make a copy of a
brain, a
copy faithful to the quantum state. And I think that making an imperfect
copy, as
QM would permit, would very likely make a difference in the stream of
consciousness. In other words the Washington man and the Moscow man, even
assuming
they were as perfect copies as QM allows, would have divergent thoughts
even before
they opened the door of their transporter booth. Does this make any
difference to
the argument - I don't think so.
If infinite precision is required, computationalism is obviously false... The level in
Bruno's argument can be arbitrary low, it can't be infinitely low... and if it involves
duplicating the entire causal universe, it would likely point toward computationalism
being false and unhelpful to explain anything.
We're not talking about *infinite precision*, as in real valued computations. The quantum
state may well be finitely definable, yet it still can't be cloned (except by accident).
So it's not obvious to me that first-person-indeterminancy is removed by the no-cloning
theorem. The Moscow man and the Washington man would both still remember being from
Helsinki and they would still be "that same person" in terms of every possible objective test.
But I do agree about the scope of duplication and in fact I think the holistic character
of quantum entanglement implies that duplication would have to include at least a
considerable part of the local spacetime and that this does imply computationalism is not
so radical as it at first seems, even if it's true.
And the only thing I wanted to convey is that I disagree with John Clark assertion about
his definition of what is computationalism... his definition about matter arrangement
has nothing to do about computationalism.
I wonder if Bruno's UD model of the world implies the same no-cloning
theorem?
Yes, any piece of matter under Bruno's model is non-cloneable, only because *matter* is
an invariant of the infinity of computations supporting your conscious state here and now.
I'll have to think about that.
Brent
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