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Article 6182 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott)
Subject: Quantum consciousness
Message-ID: <1992Jun9.213723.15570@cs.yale.edu>
Keywords: quantum mechanics, consciousness
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Organization: Yale University, Department of Computer Science
References: <1992Jun5.205056.18070@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Jun8.133106.293@cs.ucf.edu>
Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1992 21:37:23 GMT
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In article <1992Jun8.133106.293@cs.ucf.edu>, clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke) writes:
|> In article <1992Jun5.205056.18070@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>  
|> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
|> > 
|> > There doesn't need to be any "selection" of a "single observational
|> > track".  All of these "observational tracks" will have conscious
|> > observers in them.  To be sure, to each of those observers, it will
|> > seem as if a single track has been slected, but that's just an
|> > illusion of perspective.  
|> >  ... stuff deleted ...
|> > What does need to be explained in the Everett interpretation is why,
|> > given that the world is a giant superposition, there are observers
|> > that are conscious of seemingly non-superposed states.  But that's
|> > not too much of a problem, with a decent theory of consciousness
|> > in hand: such observers are only determined by a limited part of
|> > the wavefunction, namely by information present in one of its
|> > eigenstates; they simply don't have access to information elsewhere
|> > in the wavefunction.
|> >
|> Isn't being conscious of non-superimposed states isomorphic to
|> "choosing" which state to observe?
|> 

Only if you picture minds as being outside the universe and looking in.  
If minds are just physical systems, then the problem of why a mind in a 
given branch of the universe is conscious of just that branch is exactly
the same as why a billiard ball collides only with billiard balls in its 
branch of the universe.

						-- Drew McDermott


