On 10/6/2015 4:35 PM, smitra wrote:
On 07-10-2015 00:06, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 7/10/2015 7:51 am, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 10/6/2015 1:18 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
I'm not sure I understand what you are getting at. I meant that if
the normal sequence of brain states is s1-s2-s3 with corresponding
mental states m1-m2-m3 and s2 is omitted, there is nothing in m3 to
give any indication of the discontinuity. Of course, normally s2 is
necessary in order to generate s1, but that doesn't change the
argument.
But I think that's wrong. Brains are not like ideal von Neumann
computers or Turing machines that have "brain states" corresponding
to "mental states". If you simulated a brain using a computer you
would find that an enormous number of "brain states" were required
to instantiate a single conscious thought and furthermore the brains
states necessary for one thought overlapped with those necessary for
the next thought. So this overlap at the low level is part of the
physical continuity needed for consciousness. The fact that the
physics can be simulated by discrete computation doesn't imply that
the conscious states are discrete.
I think that is an important insight, Brent. One thing that it means
is that two brains can, by chance, be in the same physical state at
one instant, but those two brains might be supporting quite different
thought processes. The consequence is that there is one person per
brain -- the same person can't be spread over several brains.
Bruce
That's impossible, two identical physical states within an isolated
system will yield the same (statistical) results when measured. So, if
one person would be experiencing something different compared to the
other person at that very instant then, by definition, they were not
in the same physical state at that very moment, because that's how we
define physical states to begin with.
No, the contention is that a physical state, a state that obtains at a
single moment (Planck time?), does not instantiate a thought or an
experience. A thought or experience requires a sequence many physical
states and having two sequences share some subsequence of states is not
enough to make the two experiences the same. Consider an airport: the
fact that two runways cross doesn't make them the same runway.
Brent
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