From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Sun Mar 28 2004 - 21:51:46 MST
> A purely mechanistic third person account of conscious experience has
> all the observable attributes and characteristics of a first person
> account. But the third-person account is simpler and more
> consistent,
> therefore preferable as an explanation. There is no reason to
> hypothesize some mysterious state to explain our first-person
> experience
> of consciousness. Of course it *feels* the way it does.
>
> - Jef
Jef: assessment of simplicity depends on the background knowledge base
one assumes...
The first-person account of conscious experience is simpler, against the
knowledge base of commonsense human culture and individual psychology
The third-person account of conscious experience is simpler, against the
knowledge base of contemporary science
Against the knowledge base of mid-21'st centure science,
post-Singularity trans-science, etc. -- who knows!
-- Ben G
P.s.
Formally, as you probably know, but some on the list may not, if one
models simplicity in terms of algorithmic information,
I(f) = complexity of f = the length of the shortest self-delimiting
program that computes f
Then relative simplicity may be defined as
I(f|g) = the length of the shortest self-delimiting program that
computes f given g as prior knowledge
The prior knowledge g is what I'm referring to as a "background
knowledge base"
I have developed a model of simplicity in terms of "pattern theory",
which is related but not identical to algorithmic information theory.
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