2015-10-07 7:49 GMT+02:00 Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au
<mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>>:
On 7/10/2015 3:58 pm, Jason Resch wrote:
On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 10:37 PM, Bruce Kellett
<bhkell...@optusnet.com.au <mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>> wrote:
They do affect you, because identical conscious states are,
(by definition), indistinguishable from that point of view.
So when you are experiencing a particular conscious state,
and there are different paths, or future extensions of that
conscious state, you can never be certain of which one will
follow. Consider these various sequences of conscious states:
H->N->J
W->N->Q
X->N->Y
If each letter represents a conscious state, then anyone
experiencing conscious state "N" cannot predict with any
certainty whether their next experience will be that of "J",
that of "Q", or that of "Y". The reason this is relevant is
because the statistics of computations appears to share many
of the properties/consequences of quantum mechanics, in
particular with the many-worlds/many-minds interpretations:
there exist an infinite number of conscious minds (all minds
perhaps), which differentiate/combine when as they diverge or
converge upon common states.
This is an oversimplification. It is not at all clear what a
"conscious state" actually is.
Here a conscious state is that which you cannot (even in theory)
subjectively differentiated from another identical "conscious state".
Hmmmm! 'Identical' *means* that they cannot be differentiated,
theoretically or subjectively. How do you know that two conscious
states are identical?
For instance, how long does it last? Does it consist of one
thought or two? Or the space between thoughts?
Make it as long or as short as you'd like, it doesn't matter for
the purposes of the above reasoning to work.
There is a similar problem with the simplistic equation of brain
states with conscious states. How many brain states make up a
conscious state?
This is physicalism. A physical time slice of a brain is not the
same as a conscious state (under computationalism).
OK. Since I do not accept computationalism, I am cool with that. I
believe, in accordance with all the available evidence, that
consciousness supervenes on the physical brain. So states of the
physical brain are relevant to consciousness.
What is a brain state? How long does it last? Is it an
instantaneous snapshot? Or a Planck time, Or a femtosecond?
Or what?
Like a CPU, a complex computation and computational state may
require many sub-computations to occur and accordingly occurs
over a long period of time (especially for a highly serial CPU).
The computation of a conscious state by a brain is spread out
over time and space.
Hence it is almost impossible to duplicate. Once the time scale
increases, environmental interference becomes increasingly
important. And you still haven't specified how you determine that
two conscious states are identical.
Quantum mechanics is of little relevance here. The brain is
hot, and quantum events decohere so rapidly that it is clear
that any conscious processes in the brain are entirely
classical. So quantum analogies are seriously misplaced. It
is even more misguided to hang you theory of mind on a
particular interpretation of quantum mechanics.
I don't. This is not QM explains the mind/consciousness. It's the
mind/consciousness explains QM.
Bullshit. In spades.
MWI is an interpretation of a theory, not a theory in its own
right.
MWI is so far, the only theory of quantum mechanics, in so far as
its the only well-defined, mathematical and consistent account of
quantum mechanics. Collapse theories, say that the laws of QM are
only obeyed some of the time, and are unclear about those times
it supposedly does not. As such, they are incomplete half-baked
ideas, not theories; they offer no explanations about when QM's
equations are or aren't followed.
Bullshit, in double spades. You seem to think that QM is a *final
theory*. This is by no means clear. The best one can do is treat
it as an effective theory: it is a calculational tool that enables
one to calculate probabilities with remarkable precision. Beyond
that, one cannot claim anything.
And why do MWI enthusiasts think that collapse theories are the
only alternative to many worlds? That is simply not the case --
there are many other possibilities. Including my favourite, which
is that QM is merely an effective theory that is useful for
calculating probabilities in the quantum domain. Eschew
ontological commitments!
So again, as it seems, you dislike metaphysical discussions, yet, you
do that for months... you don't want to commit to anything, nor
discuss ontology, fine, but please stop implying this is stupid or
bullshit. Here we *don't* make ontological commitments, we discuss
ontological possibilities... what we believe (or not) is our personnal
choice.
