I’m not sure if it counts as “purely logical”, but another problem with Dust theory is that it assumes that conscious states
supervene on brain states instantaneously. There is no evidence for that. We seem to be conscious moment-by-moment,
but the “moments” in question are rather coarse-grained, corresponding to the specious present of 0.025-0.25 second or so. It’s quite
compatible with the phenomenology that it requires thousands or millions of neural events or processing steps to achieve a subjective instant of consciousness. Which would mean you can’t salami-slice soneone’s stream-of-consciousness too much without it vanishing, and also mean that spontaneously occuring Boltzman-consciousnesses are incredibly unlikely.
I am confused by the model of spontaneously occurring Boltzman-consciousnesses underlying this comment.
If I am a spontaneously occuring Boltzman-consciousness, the fact that I manifested with a memory of having read a Wikipedia article that reports studies which indicate that I exhibit a specious present of 0.025-0.25 seconds just means that I have a memory which implies something false. Presumably, if I am a spontaneously occurring Boltzman-consciousness, all of my memories imply falsehoods. I don’t see how the specious present is a distinct problem with Dust Theory, over and above the basic WTF? factor of Dust Theory.
Put more simply: just because I’ve hallucinated something that, if true, would be incompatible with my hallucinating, doesn’t mean I’m not hallucinating.
FWIW, I agree with Egan and not Huffman here. The space of beliefs-about-the-world that Dust Theory allows for me to have includes so many that are less coherent than the ones I currently have that I shouldn’t expect so much believed-in coherence, which is suggestive but not overwhelming evidence against Dust Theory. The anthropic principle doesn’t apply, because nothing precludes my spontaneously occurring with more incoherent beliefs.
It’s not that having an eperience of the specious present implies Dust Theory is false. It is rather that the computational
theory of mind doens’t strongly imply Dust Theory. Under the reasonable assumption that substantive stretches of computation are necessary for consciousness.
I’m not sure if it counts as “purely logical”, but another problem with Dust theory is that it assumes that conscious states supervene on brain states instantaneously. There is no evidence for that. We seem to be conscious moment-by-moment, but the “moments” in question are rather coarse-grained, corresponding to the specious present of 0.025-0.25 second or so. It’s quite compatible with the phenomenology that it requires thousands or millions of neural events or processing steps to achieve a subjective instant of consciousness. Which would mean you can’t salami-slice soneone’s stream-of-consciousness too much without it vanishing, and also mean that spontaneously occuring Boltzman-consciousnesses are incredibly unlikely.
I am confused by the model of spontaneously occurring Boltzman-consciousnesses underlying this comment.
If I am a spontaneously occuring Boltzman-consciousness, the fact that I manifested with a memory of having read a Wikipedia article that reports studies which indicate that I exhibit a specious present of 0.025-0.25 seconds just means that I have a memory which implies something false. Presumably, if I am a spontaneously occurring Boltzman-consciousness, all of my memories imply falsehoods. I don’t see how the specious present is a distinct problem with Dust Theory, over and above the basic WTF? factor of Dust Theory.
Put more simply: just because I’ve hallucinated something that, if true, would be incompatible with my hallucinating, doesn’t mean I’m not hallucinating.
FWIW, I agree with Egan and not Huffman here. The space of beliefs-about-the-world that Dust Theory allows for me to have includes so many that are less coherent than the ones I currently have that I shouldn’t expect so much believed-in coherence, which is suggestive but not overwhelming evidence against Dust Theory. The anthropic principle doesn’t apply, because nothing precludes my spontaneously occurring with more incoherent beliefs.
It’s not that having an eperience of the specious present implies Dust Theory is false. It is rather that the computational theory of mind doens’t strongly imply Dust Theory. Under the reasonable assumption that substantive stretches of computation are necessary for consciousness.
Ah. Well, I certainly agree with that.