From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!mips!munnari.oz.au!yoyo.aarnet.edu.au!sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au!adelphi!jbaxter Thu Feb 20 15:20:12 EST 1992
Article 3673 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!mips!munnari.oz.au!yoyo.aarnet.edu.au!sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au!adelphi!jbaxter
>From: jbaxter@physics.adelaide.edu.au (Jon Baxter)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Pansychism
Message-ID: <jbaxter.697880577@adelphi>
Date: 12 Feb 92 07:42:57 GMT
Sender: news@ucs.adelaide.edu.au
Lines: 88
Nntp-Posting-Host: adelphi.physics.adelaide.edu.au

This is a bit late as I have had some trouble with our news server.

chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:

>In article <jbaxter.697533284@adelphi> jbaxter@physics.adelaide.edu.au (Jon Bax
ter) writes:
>>
>>I am not a philosopher (at least I'm not paid to be a philosopher), however
>>the key issue for me in this "where do qualia come from" debate is whether
>>it really is "Logically possible to imagine a universe identical to ours
>>in all respects, except that there are no qualia."
>>
>>From a materialist's viewpoint such a universe seems entirely plausible

>Hang on: it's precisely because I accept the possibility you mention
>that I'm *not* a materialist.  If there's a possible universe that's
>physically identically to ours but lacks qualia, then that means that
>the facts about qualia are something over and above the physical facts.

Ok, what I meant was that materialism as it currently stands seems to
provide no explanation for the existence of qualia, hence a materialist
would hold that such a universe is indeed possible. I believe that
materialism needs modification, and not just trivial "epiphenomenal"
type modifications either; such as: "qualia just *are* the result of
information processing, ok? Don't ask me why". The universe is just not
that simple. A lot more thought about some of the mysteries in physics should
lead us to a far richer and more uniform description of the universe, a
description that doesn't need anything so ugly as dualism to explain qualia.

>>Maybe, just maybe, the solution to a 60 year-old problem in physics will
>>furnish a solution to a 2000 year-old problem in philosophy (or vice-versa).

>My guess is that's it's more likely to go the other way around -- i.e.
>thinking clearly about consciousness might allow us to come to grips
>with the measurement problem in quantum mechanics.  To do this, one
>might e.g. start by imagining a universe like the possibility above --
>a universe without consciousness that works the way one would expect
>it should according to quantum principles.  [Apologies for quantum
>illiteracy in the below.]  Presumably, such a universe would be a big
>superposition of states, not just at the microscopic level but at the
>macroscopic level as well.

>Now, bring consciousness into the picture.  This is where, according
>to the usual account, the picture above is refuted: according to
>the contents of our consciousness, there is no macroscopic superposition,
>so some collapsing must be going on between the micro and macro levels.

>But, with a decent theory about consciousness in hand -- e.g. that
>consciousness arises from information-processing -- is it really true
>that this observation is inconsistent with the predicted picture?
>It seems to me that it's actually consistent -- i.e. that even in a
>universe with macroscopic superposition, one would expect there to
>be some consciousnesses with non-superposed contents.  The reason
>being that any information-processing in the eigenstates is more or
>less implicit in the full superposed state; so any consciousness
>that's present in the eigenstate should equally be present in the
>full state.

I have one problem with this viewpoint, namely that there is no canonical
set of eigenstates within the big superposition. A set
of eigenstates is simply an arbitrary choice of basis vectors in terms of which
we express the universe's total state. We usually choose these basis states
to be eigenstates of relevant operators (e.g energy, position, etc) but
by doing so we automatically force other operator's eigenstates to be
superpositions of these basis states. So if consciousness is non-superposed
with respect to one set of operators, it will definitely be superposed with
respect to another. Why then, do "I" only ever experience the non-superposed
part. Seems to be an astonishing coincidence to me.

>Of course this has some counterintuitive consequences, e.g. that there's
>much more going on in the full state of the universe than we're aware of,
>that there are counterparts of us going about their business elsewhere in
>the universe, in places that our consciousness doesn't have any access
>to, and so on, but it's not so counterintuitive after a while, when you
>come to the realization that it's just what one would expect.  This is
>more or less the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum physics, of

As above, it doesn't seem to me to be what one would expect. Why do we
have no access to these superposed states? I would have thought that just
once in my life I could see a dead and alive cat, or does the very nature
of information processing preclude that. If so, why?

Do you have any references for this "Many Minds" interpretation of QM?
Maybe they address the issues I've raised here.

Jon Baxter
School of Information Science an Technology,
Flinders University of South Australia.


