Re:A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explan...
by hackinthebochs on Sunday July 07, 2024 @12:16PM
(#40898599)
>Interpretations of quantum mechanics are testable, they have to produce quantum mechanics, which puts a very narrow constraint on possible theories.
No, this is not what anyone means by a theory being testable. An interpretation of QM by assumption reproduces all the same results of QM. That's why its an interpretation. In the same way, the p-zombie thought experiment by assumption reproduces all of physics without any deviation. QM interpretations and the p-zombie argument are on the same footing here.
>These type of theories do not have to obey any constraint, and you can trivially produce an infinite amount of them.
This just shows a lack of understanding of what the p-zombie argument is claiming. Perhaps revisit your initial misconceptions rather than piling on the mistakes?
Re:A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explan...
by chr1 on Sunday July 07, 2024 @03:05PM
(#40899688)
Interpretation of QM does not "reproduce results by assumption", it provides a computational scheme for obtaining equations of QM. P-zombie argument on the other hand does not produce anything.
The equivalent of p-zombie hypothesis with quantum mechanics would be if one said that particles in addition to coordinates have to be described by one more variable, which does not affect any of other equations of motion. These type of theories do not have to obey any constraint, and you can trivially produce an infinite amount of them.
You can say that this kind of variable has different value for particles in human brain, therefore study of this additional variable is more important than the study of the rest of physics. But this won't improve your understanding of either the brain or physics, just like p-zombie hypothesis does not.