Re: On the computability of consciousness
Bruno: Does the following relate at all to your theory of Comp? Each life is an equation. Each person is given parts of the equation with many variables on both sides of the equals sign. Most equations have only one solution which, however, can be solved in different ways: simple or complex. The solutions might allow for many variations: e.g. algebra, geometry, logic, psychology, language etc. The number of possible methods and steps might represent degrees of freedom. But freedom doesn't necessarily bring happiness. Any method can result in emotional experiences placed along a continuum between bliss and misery. Some lives (like some equations) have two or more solutions. A person may devote his life to solving one or he may attempt to solve several or all. In any case the degrees of freedom are increased accordingly, but the chances of experiencing happiness or misery in the solving are the same as for the previous group. A few lives (like some equations) have an infinite number of solutions. Infinite degrees of freedom offer vast creativity, but equal chances of pain or pleasure. Some people never arrive at even one solution and their lives, even if pleasant, seem to them pointless and unfulfilled. Some do find solutions but such as indicate that those lives had been trivial or meaningless. No sense of fulfillment here. The luckiest both enjoy the quest and also arrive at solutions that prove their lives to have been meaningful and important. These people feel fulfilled no matter which group they come from. marty a. - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 1:59 PM Subject: Re: On the computability of consciousness On 24 Feb 2010, at 08:22, Rex Allen wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 8:02 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 23 Feb 2010, at 06:45, Rex Allen wrote: It seems to me that there are two easy ways to get rid of the hard problem. 1) Get rid of 1-p. (A la Dennettian eliminative materialism) OR 2) Get rid of 3-p. (subjective idealism) For the reasons I've touched on above I don't see that introducing the idea of a material world explains anything at all. Therefore, I vote for getting rid of 3-p, except as a calculational device. The idea of a material world that exists fundamentally and uncaused while giving rise to conscious experience is no more coherent than the idea that conscious experience exists fundamentally and uncaused and gives rise to the mere perception of a material world (as everyone accepts happens in dreams). What is the problem with this solution? You forget 3) 3) get rid of physical-3-p, but keep mathematical (arithmetical) 3- p. That is objective idealism. And this you need in any account ... if only as 'calculational device'. Then computer science solves the hard part of the mind problem, with the price of having to derive the physical laws from the belief that the numbers develop naturally from self-introspection. And it is not so amazing we (re)find the type of theory developed by the greeks among those who were both mystic and rationalist. They did introspect themselves very deeply, apparently. Wait my next post to David for how comp does solve the hard problem of consciousness. Bruno Marchal H. Well, I think that your proposal suffers from the same explanatory gap as physicalism. No. Physicist have not yet addressed really the problem of consciousness. With computationalism we can formulate the question. And yes, there is also a gap. But the gap is made precise, justified, and has a mathematical geometry. So numbers and their relations and machines and whatnot exist platonically. Okay. So far so good. BUT I don't see why these things in any combination or standing in any relation to each other should give rise to conscious experience - any more than quarks and electrons stacked in certain arrangements should do so. You can do it with quark and electron, but if it works because those quark and electron compute the releant digital number relation, then, if you say yes to the doctor, I have to derive the observability of quark and electrons from the number relations, of the combinator relations (uda). I believe you that there is some mathematical description or representation of my experiences... But I have never said that, although I am aware it may look superficially like that. I will say belief for your representation (and indeed beliefs are represented, it is roughly speaking the 'body' of the person). Then experiments appear when beliefs cross consistency, and experience appears when beliefs cross truth. And I have no proof of consistency to offer, nor real name or definition of truth. Except for more simpler (than us) Löbian machines. but I don't see why the existence of such a representation, platonic OR physically embodied, would
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 25, 2010, at 1:56 AM, Charles charlesrobertgood...@gmail.com wrote: On Feb 23, 8:42 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: I think it's an example of the radiation arrow of time making a time-reversed process impossible - or maybe just vanishingly improbable. Bruce Kellet has written a paper about these problems, see pp 35. http://members.optusnet.com.au/bhkellett/radasymmetry.pdf I am reading this, and have just come across this passage: One possibility that is sometimes raised is that the overall expansion of the universe provides the local arrow for the direction of time. While cosmology, particularly the cosmological initial conditions, might be relevant to any final understanding of the arrow of time, particularly the thermodynamic arrow, it is difficult to see the expansion of the universe as being sufficient to explain the local asymmetry of every single independent radiation event. The basic reason is that the expansion of the universe is a cosmological phenomenon; the usual understanding of the Friedmann-Roberston-Walker solution to Einstein’s equations of Gener al Relativity that governs the overall evolution of the universe is that, although the fabric of spacetime expands on the large scale, individual galaxies do not expand, they merely move apart. The expansion actually takes place only on the scale at which the universe can be seen as homogeneous and isotropic. This is the scale of galaxies and galactic clusters—only there is the ‘Friedmann dus t’ model applicable. The model that describes the expansion of the universe simply does not apply within galaxies, much less within the solar system or on the surface of the earth. So the universal expansion is simply unable to provide an effective arrow of time that is locally available for every independent radiation event. This seems to me to miss a fundamental point, namely that emission and absorption events are only local if you ignore what happens to the photon beforehand or afterwards. If you trace the trajectory of the photon, you will arrive at some other event, and this event in turn is linked to a previous / future one. Ultimately all chains of trajectories of photons, electrons, quarks and so on connect to either the Big Bang or the distant future (timelike infinity, say). If the trajectories (or, presumably, waves) are constrained by whatever is at either end of their trajectory, as time-symmetry implies, then this stops them being local. They are part of a universe-filling web, which is anchored to whatever boundary conditions obtain on the universe as a whole. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . One approach to the problem that I heard regarding the arrow of time relates to the fact that storing information (either by the brain or in a DNA molecule in the course of evolution) requires the expendature of energy. The expendature of energy results in an increase in entropy of the universe. Thus life evolves and we remember new things in the same direction of time. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 25, 6:41 am, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, this is the mainstream point of view, not unique to Price. It's generally thought that reason we see an arrow of time at the macroscopic level--including the arrow of time inherent in the fact that we can look at records in the present and gain knowledge of past events, but we can't do the same for future events--is ultimately explained by the low-entropy boundary condition at the Big Bang. In a deterministic universe, information about the future actually would be implicit in the total distribution of matter/energy and the present, but the problem would be that the relation between future events and present information about them would be a one-to-many relationship--you'd basically have to know the precise position and velocity of every single particle in the past light cone of a future event in order to reconstruct what that future event would actually be. Because of the entropy gradient, with past events and present records you can have a one-to-one relationship (or at least a one-to-few relationship), where localized collections of particles can function as records of past events. Yes, I agree that is the mainstream view as you say - it was a side issue that people seem to regularly try to extract a local reason for the arrow of time using for example causal dynamical triangulation (or whatever it's called), and in my opinion unnecessary. The problem I was alluding to had to do with the fact that Price is arguing for retrocausation not just in the broad sense of any arbitrary time-symmetric theory, where the entire distribution of particles in the past light cone of some future event can be said to contain information about that future event (and thus to 'anticipate' it in a sense), but in a more narrow one-to-one sense. He's saying that the hidden variables states of just *two* entangled particles will depend in a lawlike way on the future measurements performed on these particles. If these variables weren't hidden--if you could actually know the hidden-variables states of particles before they were measured--then you could use them to know in advance what measurement was going to be performed in the future. And the experimenters could base their decision on what experiment to perform on the outcome of some complicated future event involving many particles (say, a horse race!), so in a sense you can even have a many-to-one relationship between future events and present records of these events in the form of hidden-variables states for individual pairs of particles. This is the sticking point for me.I can't see how an experimenter can measure a future influence on a quantum system in any direct way. I mentioned amplification because normal measurements amplify the signal, and a past-directed signal would need to be similarly amplified (but presumably in a retrocausal manner), but that isn't the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that to detect a future influence, you need to measure the state of what is, in your time sense, the photon you are generating. (Taking photons as a simple example.) Suppose you arrange something like one of Price's polariser experiments. You will set up your apparatus to emit a photon, and at a later date arrange for it to pass through a polariser, orienting the polariser horizontally if you want to send a '1' bit to your earlier self, and vertically for a '0'. The problem is, although the polariser may affect the state of the photon before it arrives (in our time frame), the emitting device will *also* affect it. The photon's wave function will be constrained at both ends of its path. It isn't at all clear to me how we could arrange this system so that we can read any retrocausal influence by measuring the photon's earlier state. The idea doesn't seem to make sense, because we *have* to place a past boundary condition on the photon, simply because we and our apparatus are on the entropy gradient. We can't generate photons that are unaware of the generating apparatus, and hence only have a wave function with only a future constraint, and then somehow detect those photons' past states in order to read their future states. But without the ability to detect a past influence, we can't do any future prediction. Which is precisely what we find happens in practice: we get unexpected results in experiments as though the photon knew what measurement we'd ultimately choose to make - or as though the photon's state, while traversing the experiment, was affected by both the emitter and the detector. So it seems to me that the idea that this view fails because it should allow signalling from the future falls down at the first hurdle, namely how one could make such measurements, even in principle. (The fact that we're also dealing with quantum systems that are disturbed by normally time-directed measurements, never mind past-directed ones (whatever that would mean in practice)
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 26, 6:38 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: One approach to the problem that I heard regarding the arrow of time relates to the fact that storing information (either by the brain or in a DNA molecule in the course of evolution) requires the expendature of energy. The expendature of energy results in an increase in entropy of the universe. Thus life evolves and we remember new things in the same direction of time. This is all true. All biological processes are driven by the entropy gradient. However this doesn't explain the AOT; it's a consequence of it. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: [Fwd: The Brain's Dark Energy Scien amer]
On Feb 23, 9:02 am, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: But recent analysis produced by neuroimaging technologies has revealed something quite remarkable: a great deal of meaningful activity is occurring in the brain when a person is sitting back and doing nothing at all. The best way to come up with an idea or solve a problem is often to sleep on it, or to at least to take a break, maybe go for a walk and let your mind idle. I used to find that cigarette breaks were very useful in my work as a software developer before I gave up smoking (now I have to enforce breaks), and in my attempts at writing a novel I often find that the way forward - resolving a scene, say - often comes to me if I happen to wake up in the middle of the night. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
Charles wrote: On Feb 25, 6:41 am, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, this is the mainstream point of view, not unique to Price. It's generally thought that reason we see an arrow of time at the macroscopic level--including the arrow of time inherent in the fact that we can look at records in the present and gain knowledge of past events, but we can't do the same for future events--is ultimately explained by the low-entropy boundary condition at the Big Bang. In a deterministic universe, information about the future actually would be implicit in the total distribution of matter/energy and the present, but the problem would be that the relation between future events and present information about them would be a one-to-many relationship--you'd basically have to know the precise position and velocity of every single particle in the past light cone of a future event in order to reconstruct what that future event would actually be. Because of the entropy gradient, with past events and present records you can have a one-to-one relationship (or at least a one-to-few relationship), where localized collections of particles can function as records of past events. Yes, I agree that is the mainstream view as you say - it was a side issue that people seem to regularly try to extract a local reason for the arrow of time using for example causal dynamical triangulation (or whatever it's called), and in my opinion unnecessary. The problem I was alluding to had to do with the fact that Price is arguing for retrocausation not just in the broad sense of any arbitrary time-symmetric theory, where the entire distribution of particles in the past light cone of some future event can be said to contain information about that future event (and thus to 'anticipate' it in a sense), but in a more narrow one-to-one sense. He's saying that the hidden variables states of just *two* entangled particles will depend in a lawlike way on the future measurements performed on these particles. If these variables weren't hidden--if you could actually know the hidden-variables states of particles before they were measured--then you could use them to know in advance what measurement was going to be performed in the future. And the experimenters could base their decision on what experiment to perform on the outcome of some complicated future event involving many particles (say, a horse race!), so in a sense you can even have a many-to-one relationship between future events and present records of these events in the form of hidden-variables states for individual pairs of particles. This is the sticking point for me.I can't see how an experimenter can measure a future influence on a quantum system in any direct way. I mentioned amplification because normal measurements amplify the signal, and a past-directed signal would need to be similarly amplified (but presumably in a retrocausal manner), but that isn't the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that to detect a future influence, you need to measure the state of what is, in your time sense, the photon you are generating. (Taking photons as a simple example.) Suppose you arrange something like one of Price's polariser experiments. You will set up your apparatus to emit a photon, and at a later date arrange for it to pass through a polariser, orienting the polariser horizontally if you want to send a '1' bit to your earlier self, and vertically for a '0'. The problem is, although the polariser may affect the state of the photon before it arrives (in our time frame), the emitting device will *also* affect it. The photon's wave function will be constrained at both ends of its path. It isn't at all clear to me how we could arrange this system so that we can read any retrocausal influence by measuring the photon's earlier state. The idea doesn't seem to make sense, because we *have* to place a past boundary condition on the photon, simply because we and our apparatus are on the entropy gradient. We can't generate photons that are unaware of the generating apparatus, and hence only have a wave function with only a future constraint, and then somehow detect those photons' past states in order to read their future states. But without the ability to detect a past influence, we can't do any future prediction. But isn't the EPR experiment a way of avoiding a past constraint. The past constraint is just that the net angular momentum is zero, so there is no constraint on the polarization of either photon. When one is measured it can be thought of as sending a message back to the origin and forward to the other photon so as to produce the QM correlation. So the amplification takes place on the other particle in the forward direction. Of course you can't send a signal via a correlation. Here's a good discussion of this and some other retrocausation ideas by William Wharton: file:///G:/Physics/QM/Reverse-causation.htm Brent Which is precisely what
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 25, 2010, at 2:46 PM, Charles charlesrobertgood...@gmail.com wrote: On Feb 26, 6:38 am, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: One approach to the problem that I heard regarding the arrow of time relates to the fact that storing information (either by the brain or in a DNA molecule in the course of evolution) requires the expendature of energy. The expendature of energy results in an increase in entropy of the universe. Thus life evolves and we remember new things in the same direction of time. This is all true. All biological processes are driven by the entropy gradient. However this doesn't explain the AOT; it's a consequence of it. Charles Isn't the AOT explained in terms of probability? E.g. There are far more combinations for a system to be disordered rather than ordered, as such the universe overall will tend to fall into these more likely configurations. You are right things on earth are very different but we benefit from the sun's creation of far more combinations in the distribution of photons and neutrinos vs the number of ways hydrogen atoms might be arranged in the core. So our perspective is fairly atypical. Another consideration: we experience time backwards, the universe is actually collapsing from equilibrium to a sinularity and will end in about 13.7 billion years. Could we explain why most photons seem to only travel on intercepting paths which coincidentally strike and split helium atoms? Of course on a particle by partical interaction everything makes sense, but in terms of all the coincidences in the universe as a whole, things would not. This effect appears even if you only considered a few particles, how often would they all come together if left on their own to bounce around? We also live in a gravity well which helps hold things together and further distorts our perspective (but even then our atmosphere is slowly leaking away, as mar's did.) Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: On the computability of consciousness
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 7:17 AM, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 24 February 2010 07:03, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: With this in mind, I'm not sure what you mean by two undeniably manifest perpectives. Only ONE seems undeniable to me, and that's 1-p. My proposal is that seeming is all there is to reality. It's all surface, no depth. However, using reason to build models with ontologies that are consistent with our observations provides the illusion of depth. The danger here is that we get distracted from real questions by linguistic ones. What I'm saying is manifest is that there are two distinguishable analyses available to us, one in terms of our direct perceptual experiences, the other in terms of what those experiences encourage us to infer about our environment, and our own place in it. We can accept that these two accounts exist without committing ourselves, prematurely, to questions of primacy, or ultimate explanation or ontology. My recent questions and remarks have focused on the puzzles inherent in the seeming existence of the two accounts Seeming is only an aspect of one of the two accounts. 1-p. There is no seeming in 3-p, which is of course the problem. But our knowledge of 3-p is strictly limited to what we infer from 1-p. So the two accounts are not on equal footing. We can doubt the reality of what we observe, but not *that* we observe. and the variety of ways in which their possible relations can be understood and reconciled. Of course, if the possibility of intelligibility is dismissed in advance as illusion, then not much of interest will be found in the enterprise. But I would say that such a view is premature. When would it not be premature? The tendency to pursue 'ultimate explanations' is inherent in the mathematical and experimental method in yet another way (and another sense). Whenever the scientist faces a challenging problem, the scientific method requires him to never give up, never seek an explanation outside the method. If we agree - at least on a working basis - to designate as the universe everything that is accessible to the mathematical and experimental method, then this methodological principle assumes the form of a postulate which in fact requires that the universe be explained by the universe itself. In this sense scientific explanations are 'ultimate,' since they do not admit of any other explanations except ones which are within the confines of the method. However, we must emphasise that this postulate and the sense of 'ultimacy' it implies have a purely methodological meaning, in other words they oblige the scientist to adopt an approach in his research as if other explanations were neither existent nor needed. - Michael Heller, The Totalitarianism of the Method. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: On the computability of consciousness
Hi, -Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Rex Allen Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 10:31 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: On the computability of consciousness On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 7:17 AM, David Nyman david.ny...@gmail.com wrote: On 24 February 2010 07:03, Rex Allen rexallen...@gmail.com wrote: With this in mind, I'm not sure what you mean by two undeniably manifest perpectives. Only ONE seems undeniable to me, and that's 1-p. My proposal is that seeming is all there is to reality. It's all surface, no depth. However, using reason to build models with ontologies that are consistent with our observations provides the illusion of depth. The danger here is that we get distracted from real questions by linguistic ones. What I'm saying is manifest is that there are two distinguishable analyses available to us, one in terms of our direct perceptual experiences, the other in terms of what those experiences encourage us to infer about our environment, and our own place in it. We can accept that these two accounts exist without committing ourselves, prematurely, to questions of primacy, or ultimate explanation or ontology. My recent questions and remarks have focused on the puzzles inherent in the seeming existence of the two accounts Seeming is only an aspect of one of the two accounts. 1-p. There is no seeming in 3-p, which is of course the problem. But our knowledge of 3-p is strictly limited to what we infer from 1-p. So the two accounts are not on equal footing. We can doubt the reality of what we observe, but not *that* we observe. snip I take this as supporting the argument that 3-p is a construction, in the sense of its properties, of an intersection of many 1-p's. All that we can know of 3-p is that it could exist, but can say nothing about its properties. Onward! Stephen P. King -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: On the computability of consciousness
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 7:28 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: Hi Rex and Members, There is a very compelling body of work in logic that allows for circularity. Please take a look at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/m06t7w0163945350/ and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nonwellfounded-set-theory/ It could make some progress toward the why this and not some other question. Is there a definitive book or article on the 1-p and 3-p aspect? None that I know of, unfortunately! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 26, 10:34 am, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: But isn't the EPR experiment a way of avoiding a past constraint. The past constraint is just that the net angular momentum is zero, so there is no constraint on the polarization of either photon. When one is measured it can be thought of as sending a message back to the origin and forward to the other photon so as to produce the QM correlation. So the amplification takes place on the other particle in the forward direction. Of course you can't send a signal via a correlation. Here's a good discussion of this and some other retrocausation ideas by William Wharton: Good point. (Mind you, that link you posted doesn't seem quite right! :-) Should it be this? http://www.fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Wharton_time_and_causality.pdf -- it looks interesting, anyway!) Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: On the computability of consciousness
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 12:08 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Rex Allen wrote: Is hard determinism as bad an outcome as solipsism? If not, why not? I don't know about good or bad - but since you post on the internet I infer that you are not a solipist. Since posting on the internet produces interesting responses, I would do it even if I were a solipsist. Maybe I have no choice but to post on the internet...deterministic solipsism? But, regardless, if you mean solipsism in the sense that only I exist, then that's not entailed by my position. Why not? You (I assume) have experiences which you regard as only yours. You don't have any other experiences. If for some reason, or on mere faith, you suppose there are other people then you may on the same bases suppose there is an external world. The external world could very well exist, and be the cause my experience. But as I've said, this just changes my questions from why do my experiences exist? to why does the external world exist, and why does it cause my experiences? SO...the external world hypothesis doesn't provide a satisfactory answer, and it introduces new questions. If I have to eventually say, the external world exists uncaused and for no reason, then I could just as easily have said that about my conscious experience...it exists uncaused and for no reason. So what have I gained by introducing this whole external world thing? Saying that I am willing to believe that conscious experiences other than mine exist doesn't really introduce any new questions. By allowing the possibility of their existence I'm not introducing any new *kinds* of things, and thus no new questions. Ya? So there are still laws that govern the transitions from 1-p to 3-p and back, right? I think the same argument applies. Why this particular virtuous circle with it's particular causal laws and not some other virtuous cirlce? Not necessarily causal laws - I think the laws of science we infer are descriptions. So if we can find explanations of 1-p experiences in terms of 3-p events and our experience of 3-p events in terms of 1-p experiences and we don't have to introduce any other stuff besides 1-p experiences and 3-p events I'd say we have a virtuous circle of explanation. Well. Maybe. IF such explanations exist. See the Heller quote in my response to David. And why not no circles at all? You were the one that said there must be either an infinite regress or a first cause. Why not neither? It seems like the circular explanation is just a special case of infinite regress. In that you can follow the circular chain around an infinite number of times...which would seem to be the same thing as following an infinite chain with a repeating pattern. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 26, 2:05 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Isn't the AOT explained in terms of probability? E.g. There are far more combinations for a system to be disordered rather than ordered, as such the universe overall will tend to fall into these more likely configurations. You are right things on earth are very different but we benefit from the sun's creation of far more combinations in the distribution of photons and neutrinos vs the number of ways hydrogen atoms might be arranged in the core. So our perspective is fairly atypical. That isn't an explanation for the AOT, it's a consequence of it. An explanation for the AOT would require showing *why* the universe is in an improbable state in the past. Once you've explained that, the fact that it then evolves into more probable states is to be expected. As you say, a universe could have a future constraint on its entropy, and everything would evolve towards less likely states - but if conscious beings existed in that universe, they would view whichever time direction had the low entropy constraint as the past...A universe, like the one envisaged by Thomas Gold, with such a constraint at both temporal extremities, would be a very weird place to live (unless it existed for a long enough time to come to thermal equilibrium in the middle). Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
Charles wrote: On Feb 26, 2:05 pm, Jason Resch jasonre...@gmail.com wrote: Isn't the AOT explained in terms of probability? E.g. There are far more combinations for a system to be disordered rather than ordered, as such the universe overall will tend to fall into these more likely configurations. You are right things on earth are very different but we benefit from the sun's creation of far more combinations in the distribution of photons and neutrinos vs the number of ways hydrogen atoms might be arranged in the core. So our perspective is fairly atypical. That isn't an explanation for the AOT, it's a consequence of it. An explanation for the AOT would require showing *why* the universe is in an improbable state in the past. If it were in an improbable state in the future, the future would be the past. :-) Once you've explained that, the fact that it then evolves into more probable states is to be expected. As you say, a universe could have a future constraint on its entropy, and everything would evolve towards less likely states - but if conscious beings existed in that universe, they would view whichever time direction had the low entropy constraint as the past...A universe, like the one envisaged by Thomas Gold, with such a constraint at both temporal extremities, would be a very weird place to live (unless it existed for a long enough time to come to thermal equilibrium in the middle). Schulmann has written a nice little book about this considering both a classical and quantum universe. /Time's Arrows and Quantum Measurement/. L. S. Schulman. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997 Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: R/ASSA query
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 11:02 PM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On 25 February 2010 14:46, Charles charlesrobertgood...@gmail.com wrote: However, I agree that the statement evolution has programmed us to think of ourselves as a single individual, etc is rather contentious as an explanation of why we think this way. It seems to imply that there are many other ways we *could* think of ourselves, and that evolution has been at work on our genes to choose those of us who think of ourselves this way because it confers some survival / reproductive advantage. However, it's possible that there are no other choices: we move forward in time, for example, because the entropy gradient won't allow any other form of creatures to exist, we think of ourselves as individuals because, fictional ant colonies aside, that's the only realistic (or simple) way to build conscious creatures (actually, it's quite possible we aren't individuals - we seem to contain at least two individuals who share a lot of their resources, as split-brain operations show). We could, for example, have the belief that we only survive for a day, and the entity who wakes up in our bed tomorrow is a different person. We would then use up our resources and plan for the future as if we only had hours to live. But people who acted as if they believed this would not be very successful. Could we actually? I can imagine such a thing, but is it really possible? So, for arguments sake, let's just assume that deterministic physicalism holds for our universe. In that case, are there *any* initial conditions for our universe which would lead to the existence of someone similar to me who holds the belief that he only survives for today and that the entity who wakes up in his bed tomorrow will be a different person? Could our universe *actually* produce such a being by applying our presumably deterministic laws to any set of initial conditions over any amount of time? Let's go further and assume quantum indeterminism. With this extra wiggle room, is there any set of initial conditions plus subsequent random events (constrained by the framework of QM) that would lead to the existence of a person with such beliefs? Whether it's possible or not has nothing to do with evolution. It is entirely a question of the fundamental laws of physics as applied to initial conditions. So, since evolution can't answer this question, what good is it? Okay. Let's say I have some light blue butterflies, and I want to breed a strain of dark blue butterflies. One might think that the theory of evolution would predict that the best way to go about this would be to repeat the process of selecting the darkest colored butterflies and interbreeding them over several generations. BUT...if we are physicalists, we have to put this into context within the big picture. What explains me knowing about Darwin, having light blue butterflies, wanting dark blue butterflies, and actually going through the process of selecting for the darker color over many generations? The initial conditions of the universe, plus the causal laws of physics as applied over 13.7 billion years. That's what. Whether I actually succeed in breeding dark blue butterflies is also entirely dependent on the initial conditions and causal laws. Given those, maybe it's just not possible to get from light blue to dark blue butterflies using nothing but selective breeding. So again, evolution does no work, and explains nothing. If you think it's a useful concept, that's entirely because of the initial conditions of the universe plus the causal laws of physics as applied over 13.7 billion years. And (still assuming physicalism) what explains initial conditions plus causal laws? Ultimately, nothing. They just are what they are what they are. And so the world just is what it is. Right? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 26, 6:19 pm, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: That isn't an explanation for the AOT, it's a consequence of it. An explanation for the AOT would require showing *why* the universe is in an improbable state in the past. If it were in an improbable state in the future, the future would be the past. :-) Exactly! (Which is why a Gold universe would be a rather strange place to live...) Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
Schulmann has written a nice little book about this considering both a classical and quantum universe. /Time's Arrows and Quantum Measurement/. L. S. Schulman. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997 Thank you, if I have worlds enough and time (and money) I will get a copy. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
On Feb 26, 10:34 am, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: But isn't the EPR experiment a way of avoiding a past constraint. The past constraint is just that the net angular momentum is zero, so there is no constraint on the polarization of either photon. When one is measured it can be thought of as sending a message back to the origin and forward to the other photon so as to produce the QM correlation. So the amplification takes place on the other particle in the forward direction. Of course you can't send a signal via a correlation. Here's a good discussion of this and some other retrocausation ideas by William Wharton: file:///G:/Physics/QM/Reverse-causation.htm I broadly agree with what he's saying, with a couple of caveats. His insistence that his view *contrasts* with the block universe is rather puzzling, as is his idea that there is some form of becoming in nature that in some way isn't embedded in space-time (or a multiverse equivalent) - this appears to be postulating an extra time dimension in which things change outside the normal one? Also, his comments about atomic nuclei being in stationary states and therefore not experiencing time (if that's what he's saying, I may have misunderstood) seems at odds with the existence of radioactivity. Charles -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
