On 27 March 2015 at 17:35, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > On 3/26/2015 7:16 PM, LizR wrote: > > On the subject of counterfactual correctness, isn't that the point of > Olimpia and Klara? My problem with counterfactual correctness is (probably > the same as Maudlin's?) -- how does the system *know* it's > counterfactually correct if it doesn't actually pass through any of the > "what-if" states? To put it another way, when you have a recording of the > conscious computational states being replayed, what difference could be > made by the presence (or absence) of all the extra bits that *would* deal > with counterfactual correctness if a different computation was being > replayed, but happen in this case not to be used? I can't see how this > could make any physical difference to the states being replayed (unless > counterfactual correctness introduces some nonphysical magic into the > system?) > > I see two possible answers. First, in a quantum world there is a > superposition of all those "counterfactual" states, so they are really > present, but only observable as different relative states. Of course this > already invokes QM and physics, rather than deriving them. But maybe it > can be shown that the infinite threads of the UD serve to test all the > counterfactual states. >
Quantum physics definitely makes a difference here, but I believe Bruno's argument assumes digital mechanism which is classical, so QM has to drop out of it, if anything? > > Or, secondly, although there is no physical difference in the sequence of > states in the replaying, consciousness is not physical and so could be > absent. This doesn't require that consciousness be magic. If it is the > abstract thing called "computation" then in the abstract it needs to > counterfactually correct to count as computation. > That appears to throw out the physical supervenience thesis, like the MGA. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
