On 6/19/2021 4:17 AM, smitra wrote:
Information is the key. Conscious agents are defined by precisely
that information that specifies the content of their consciousness.
This means that a conscious agent can never be precisely located in
some physical object, because the information that describes the
conscious experience will always be less detailed than the information
present in the exact physical description of an object such a brain.
But that doesn't imply that the content is insufficient to pick out a
specific brain. My house can be specified by a street address, even
though that is far less information required to describe my house. That
is possible of different houses to have been at this address doesn't
change the fact that there is only this one.
Brent
There are always going to be a very large self localization ambiguity
due to the large number of different possible brain states that would
generate exactly the same conscious experience. So, given whatever
conscious experience the agent has, the agent could be in a very large
number of physically distinct states.
The simpler the brain and the algorithm implemented by the brain, the
larger this self-localization ambiguity becomes because smaller
algorithms contain less detailed information. Our conscious
experiences localizes us very precisely on an Earth-like planet in a
solar system that is very similar to the one we think we live in. But
the fly walking on the wall of the room I'm in right now may have some
conscious experience that is exactly identical to that of another fly
walking on the wall of another house in another country 600 years ago
or on some rock in a cave 35 million year ago.
The conscious experience of the fly I see on the all is therefore not
located in the particular fly I'm observing. This is i.m.o. the key
thing you get from identifying consciousness with information, it
makes the multiverse an essential ingredient of consciousness. This
resolves paradoxes you get in thought experiments where you consider
simulating a brain in a virtual world and then argue that since the
simulation is deterministic, you could replace the actual computer
doing the computations by a device playing a recording of the physical
brain states. This argument breaks down if you take into account the
self-localization ambiguity and consider that this multiverse aspect
is an essential part of consciousness due to counterfactuals necessary
to define the algorithm being realized, which is impossible in a
deterministic single-world setting.
Saibal
On 18-06-2021 20:46, Jason Resch wrote:
In your opinion who has offered the best theory of consciousness to
date, or who do you agree with most? Would you say you agree with them
wholeheartedly or do you find points if disagreement?
I am seeing several related thoughts commonly expressed, but not sure
which one or which combination is right. For example:
Hofstadter/Marchal: self-reference is key
Tononi/Tegmark: information is key
Dennett/Chalmers: function is key
To me all seem potentially valid, and perhaps all three are needed in
some combination. I'm curious to hear what other viewpoints exist or
if there are other candidates for the "secret sauce" behind
consciousness I might have missed.
Jason
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