[time 146] Re: [time 114] Re: Pratt and Consciousness


Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Sun, 04 Apr 1999 12:50:03 -0400


>> Specifically, I suspect that the same "archetypal algebras" appear in both
>> psychology and physics,
>> and that this fact is not unconnected with the idea that the objective world
>> is the "sum" of every entity's subjective perceptions of it.
>
> I would go further. :) I would say that for every possible weighted sum
>of a finite set of entities's subjective perceptions (or possible
>mutually consistent measurements) there exists an "objective world." The
>basic fact that must be understood is no single unique sum of subjective
>perceptions that can bisimulate a unique "objective" universe for all.

Here is my take on it. This stuff is hard to articulate -- it's a mix of
metaphor and
mathematics -- and I wouldn't even try if this weren't a sympathetic audience.

Just as in QT a particle takes all possible paths ... as you say, all possible
combinations of subjective realities "exist" in some sense as virtual or
potential
"objective realities." This is what we might call the quantum view of
intersubjective
reality.

However, just as in the classical view a particle takes one path ... in the
classical
view there is one objective reality that emerges from the myriad possible
summations
of subjective realities. I.e., most of the potential objective realities
cancel each other
out through destructive interference, and the one that survives is the one
that was a
"local extremum" of the appropriate energy function (what is the right
energy function
for realities I'm not sure ;), and so triumphed through constructive
interfence.

> Pratt's Chu space
>formalism plugs right into our thinking of consciousness to solve the
>perennial mind-body problem or object-subject dichotomy.

Chu spaces are nice mathematics, I will have more to say about them later,
but they are very abstract and don't tell us how to deal with the specific
algebras
that underly the physical world. Ideas on how to build this bridge would be
appreciated.

ben



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