Yet on a molecular level the two are the same -- the total number of molecules after the addition is the sum of the two sets prior.
Indeed - and we can say the same at the atomic level, perhaps even lower - assuming there isn't too much mass or energy shed or accrued over time. Of course, when we get down to that level, it's not five.
Yes, exactly. Note that you say "a law of addition," -- it is the same law. It isn't different each time it is applied.
To put this in context, what if "my consciousness" was the phenomenon of adding two things to three things? Would "my consciousness" not be present every time this law was applied, regardless of whether the subject of application was apples or oranges?
I might agree if you said 'consciousness' - but the moment you add the qualifier 'my' (whether we're speaking from an ownership point of view, or an associative one), you change it from a general phenomenon to a specific instance of a phenomenon. Now, if you're going to argue that specific instances are irrelevant, you'll likely have to re-write entire sections of our social contract - and I doubt it'll be a very popular re-write.
I don't disagree.
My point is that, for instance, if a class of things can be discretized, then applying the law of addition to them will always follow the same set of rules -- the law of addition of natural numbers. Regardless of what those things are, if they are in that class, the law is always the same -- no exceptions.
Agreed. But the law, again, is a general application - a singular instance of the law, however, even though it may have the same properties as another instance, is not the same instance.
There aren't multiple instances of the law of addition of natural numbers. There is one instance that is simply applied everywhere.
I disagree. Multiple applications make it multiple instances of a general law.
If consciousness is information, then a consciousness can be formulated as a set of rules. Then every case of those rules being obeyed is an application of the same consciousness. It is irrelevant if the cases are in different places, times, universes, whatever.
I disagree. If we are reducing consciousness as information, then a specific instance of consciousness also has to include specific aspects of information that associate it to a particular place, time, universe, whatever. Further, some classes of information can be dynamic in terms of time and, to a limited degree, space, but still remain particular instances, distinguishable from other instances by at least one observer.
However, as I've pointed out before, I'm not actually sure you can reduce consciousness purely to information, since it seems to me that consciousness is the process AND the substrate - and, apparently, the substrate undergoes no fundamental primary structural change throughout life.
Another thing that's starting to slowly percolate through the dense grey matter of my mind is the bit I quoted earlier.
Nick said,
All information transfer relies on direct, continuous interactions between something physical. At a fundamental level there is no such thing as discontinuity.
Direct, continuous interactions. I'm wondering how you have direct, continuous interactions when you are having to disrupt an existing process to get the 'information' out of it. In the case of something as complex as brain activity, the very act of extracting the information might well be the whole reason 'vaporization' occurs. Even as such, is it truly a transfer of direct, continuous interaction - or merely an image-copy? Are we physically transferring thought process, or are we photographing it, in some 4-D sense, and remodelling it elsewhere? And if that's the case - is that truly direct, continuous interaction? In a photograph, there are obvious intermediaries - light, light-reactive substances, etc. And the result is, clearly, a deeply imperfect copy.
In any other form of representation that we currently have, we have intermediary processes - and we have imperfect duplications. It is possible that this 'information transfer-teleportation' may not even be theoretically possible - that you'd have to actually transport the matter itself, or find a way to rapidly, fluidly, and with no disruption of process, replace the matter with simulation - and, even then, given that, in the course of our natural history, our same brain cells remain with us since birth, I'm not sure rapid replacing actually wouldn't result in brain-death for us.
I'm attempting, at the moment, to envision any way to move a direct, continuous process interaction from one substrate to another without introducing a discontinuity at some point. Aside from mobility of the entire system, which is exactly what we're trying to bypass, I'm not sure there's really a way.
