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Article 2464 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Wigner's self
Message-ID: <61265@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 1 Jan 92 17:00:16 GMT
References: <1991Dec28.194855.16543@galois.mit.edu> <61194@netnews.upenn.edu> <12834@pitt.UUCP>
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Reply-To: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
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In-reply-to: geb@speedy.cs.pitt.edu (Gordon Banks)

In article <12834@pitt.UUCP>, geb@speedy (Gordon Banks) writes:
>>Here's some supposing for you.  What is our internal representation of
>>"self"?  It has a peculiarity compared to other such, in that it is not
>>transferable.  One way to achieve this directly is with a Wigner's friend
>>situation.  The internal wave function for "self" can be inspected by our
>>"Wigner's friend" of a mind, collapsing it, while to others this "self"
>>wave function is permanently uncollapsed.

>But is an abstraction such as self something appropriately
>represented by a wave function?

What is the language of the mind?  You and I agree that *something*
physical inside our heads corresponds to our sense of self.

>				  This sort of argument seems rather
>bizarre to me.

Philosophically speaking, wave functions are no more bizarre than RNA
molecules or neural nets or chemical cycles or feedback loops.  They've
all been implicated upstairs.  And out of this pool, "Wigner's friend"
provides a rather straightforward model for sense of self.

>	         Maybe I don't really understand what you are saying.

Could be.  I did not mean wave function _for "self"_ in the sense of
wave function _of an electron_.  The "for" is short for "that gets used
by the mind for".

>Aren't wave functions supposed to represent real objects?

Right.  But the mind can use them for whatever purpose it finds handy.

I can point out real objects that it is *not* the wave function of: the
body (other people see you), the cerebral cortex (as it's been exposed
while conscious without destroying self), proprioception (as people have
lost this sense but not that of self).
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu)


