On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 Terren Suydam <terren.suy...@gmail.com> wrote: >1. > You assume computationalism, or the idea that consciousness supervenes on > the physical brain. >
Yes, and can anybody logically dispute my claim? A change in the physical brain ALWAYS causes a change in consciousness. And a change in consciousness is ALWAYS associated with a change in the physical brain. What more proof is necessary? What more proof is even possible? > > 2. > Starting with a Many Worlds thought experiment (such as Schrodinger's > Cat), there is one conscious subject supervening on one conscious brain > prior to the duplication. > To avoid confusion when dealing with Many Worlds I will call it a split, and when dealing with copying machines I will will call it a duplication, but basically I agree with the above. > > 3. > After the duplication above, there are two physical brains which diverge > as a consequence of observing the different outcomes of the experiment > If they observe different things after leaving the duplicating chamber then their brains will no longer be identical, and as a consequence neither will their consciousness. > > 4. > Therefore there are two consciousnesses, supervening on the two physical > brains. > Not necessarily, it's not clear if you're talking about Many Worlds or not. With duplication chambers the two physical brains could still be identical and thus produce two identical consciousnesses. And two identical consciousnesses are exactly the same as one consciousness. With Many Worlds if things remain physically identical then nothing splits. > > 5. > You accept the idea that in a Many Worlds experiment like the above, the > subject is duplicated, and prior to the experiment, the subject can > sensibly assign probabilities to which outcome will be experienced > post-duplication. > I think this is the key point. In Many Worlds both before and after the split it's perfectly clear to both the subject of the experiment and to third party observers exactly who the experimental subject is because the laws of physics demand that there is only one thing that fits the description that anyone can see. On the other hand with duplicating chambers the laws of physics make no such demand. It's clear before the machine is turned on who the experimental subject is, but after it's turned on it wouldn't even be clear to the Moscow Man or the Washington Man who the experimental subject is, at least not unless emotion replaced their reason and both started chanting "it's me not him" for no logical reason. And if there is no way for ANYONE (not the first person, not the third person, not anyone) to identify the experimental subject then there is no way to know if any prediction made before the duplication was correct or not. And I want to emphasis again that predictions, good bad or mediocre, have nothing to do with a sense of continuity and personal identity which was what Bruno was trying to explain. And the one great virtue that Many Worlds has that most other quantum interpretations do not is that Everett doesn't need to explain what a observer is or how consciousness works because those things have nothing to do with it. Yes when a brain changes the universe splits but that doesn't imply there is something special about brains, the universe splits when ANYTHING changes. > > 5. > Moving on to a duplication machine experiment, such as the one postulated > in Bruno's step 3, there is one conscious subject supervening on one > conscious brain prior to the duplication (identical to #2 above) > OK. > > 6. > After the duplication above, there are two physical brains which diverge > as a consequence of observing the different outcomes of the experiment > Yes, the two physical brains encounter different environments, when that happens the 2 identical brains are no longer identical anymore and so neither is the consciousness they produce. > > 7. > Therefore there are two consciousnesses, supervening on the two physical > brains. > OK. > > 8. > Therefore, as in #5 above, prior to the experiment the subject can > sensibly assign probabilities to which outcome will be experienced > post-duplication. > No, not as in #5 above! After the duplication machine is turned on there is no way for anyone, and I do mean ANYONE, to know who "the subject" is. After duplication who is the experiencer? There is more than one answer to that question and that shouldn't be surprising because the experiencer has been duplicated. That's what the word "duplicated" means. > > > > The only thing that is needed to make Step 3 go through is a conscious > experiencer pre-duplication, and a split into two bodies post-duplication. > It is *not* important whether anyone observing this experiment can make > sense of the identity of the bodies. > That is incorrect. If it's a scientific experiment then afterwards its important for somebody to point to "THE" conscious experience r , but nobody can do that with just one finger, not even the conscious experience rs can do that. John K Clark > > Terren > > -- > 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. > -- 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.
