From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!bronze!chalmers Tue Feb 11 15:26:00 EST 1992
Article 3609 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!bronze!chalmers
>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Functionalist Theory of Qualia
Message-ID: <1992Feb10.040122.1378@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 10 Feb 92 04:01:22 GMT
References: <1992Feb5.220638.9673@cs.yale.edu> <1992Feb6.055620.23808@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <jbaxter.697533284@adelphi>
Organization: Indiana University
Lines: 65

In article <jbaxter.697533284@adelphi> jbaxter@physics.adelaide.edu.au (Jon Baxter) 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.

>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.

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
course, though I find it much more satisfactory to think of it as the
"One Big World" interpretation.  There's something along these lines in
the recent literature -- the "Many Minds" interpretation, by Albert and
Loewer, though they don't have a decent theory of consciousness to back
them up.  Incidentally, I think that accepting Parfit's conclusions
about personal identity -- that there are no deep facts linking a
consciousness at one time to a consciousness at another -- also helps
make this picture more intuitively acceptable, by taking away worries
about which one of a number of future consciousnesses will "really be
me", though that's a complex matter.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


