From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!torn.onet.on.ca!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!jvnc.net!darwin.sura.net!cs.ucf.edu!news Mon Jun 15 16:04:29 EDT 1992
Article 6188 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!torn.onet.on.ca!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!jvnc.net!darwin.sura.net!cs.ucf.edu!news
>From: clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Quantum consciousness
Message-ID: <1992Jun10.125059.23742@cs.ucf.edu>
Date: 10 Jun 92 12:50:59 GMT
References: <1992Jun9.213723.15570@cs.yale.edu>
Sender: news@cs.ucf.edu (News system)
Organization: University of Central Florida
Lines: 61

In article <1992Jun9.213723.15570@cs.yale.edu> mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew  
McDermott) writes:
> 
> 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

Observer O1 sees events {e(t<T)}U{e1(t>=T)}
Observer O2 sees events {e(t<T)}U{e2(t>=T)}
where e1(T) is different from e2(T) (subsequenct events may differ
also).
A physical argment from continuity would say that since 
O1=O2 for t<T then O1=O2 at t=T.  So as Einstein might have
said "God rolls the dice and lets O1 see e1 and O2 see e2."

I fail to see how this differs in essentials from a single
observer watching "God roll the dice" to determine
the outcome of an observation (that is a 
"wavefucntion collapse").

A static view from outside the universe in space and time 
would of course reveal a complicated interweaved web of observers 
according to many worlds.  The discovery of Bell-type inequalities
shows that according to the conventional interpretation, the web
of observers is replaced by a web of correlations between 
observational choices.  I suspect the two webs are isomorophic and
equally unobservable. 

--
Thomas Clarke
Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central FL
12424 Research Parkway, Suite 300, Orlando, FL 32826
(407)658-5030, FAX: (407)658-5059, clarke@acme.ucf.edu


