On 7/4/2021 4:46 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 19 Jun 2021, at 13:17, smitra <smi...@zonnet.nl> 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. 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 seems to equate "a conscious experience" with "an algorithm". But
an algortihm is an extended thing that in general has branches
representing counterfactuals.
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
What is this "self" of which you speak?
Brent
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.
OK. Not only true, but it makes physics into a branch of mathematical logic,
partially embedded in arithmetic (and totally embedded in the semantic of
arithmetic, which of course cannot be purely arithmetical, as the machine
understand already).
I got the many-dreams, or many histories of the physical reality from the many
computations in arithmetic well before I discovered Everett. Until that moment
I was still thinking that QM was a threat on Mechanism, but of course it is
only the wave collapse postulate which is contradictory with Mechanism.
We cannot make a computation disappear like we cannot make a number disappear…
Bruno
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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