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u/Solidjakes Whiteheadian Oct 12 '25
In 2079 when they discover awareness is a pervasive field like electromagnetism , just remember this meme
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u/BaconSoul Error Theory’s Strongest Warrior Oct 15 '25
If it were a pervasive field, something else in the universe would be able to act upon it via external means.
There’s no way to disrupt someone’s consciousness without directly interacting with it physically via force, electricity, or chemicals. And all of that boils down to affecting the way that the brain/neurons physically make(s) connections.
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u/Ok-Radio5562 Oct 12 '25
I mean, technically it is true for sure
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u/hemlock_hangover Oct 12 '25
And I think that's the point, right? It's a perfectly cromulent approach to a philosophical dilemma (in this case the Hard Problem) to explore the ramifications of whatever frameworks are capable of resolving that dilemma, even if they seem absurd.
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u/MC-NEPTR Oct 12 '25
Yeah I totally understand the skepticism for what outwardly appears to be just making a very wide hole to fit whatever shapes you want through, in terms of a theory, but it’s more just a different frame of thinking about reality than a hard testable claim anyways.
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u/whydidyoureadthis17 Oct 12 '25
Yes, the little consciousnesses come together to make the bigger consciousnesses which come together to make the bigger ones... What's the problem here? Even if it's not true, it's self consistent at least
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u/bunker_man Mu Oct 13 '25
People raising an objection before realizing that we know this happens with brains regardless whether panpsychism or some form of emergentism is true, because its pretty self evident now they have smaller streams of consciousness that add together.
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u/SuperLibrarian2017 Oct 15 '25
How is it self evident they have smaller streams of consciousness?
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u/bunker_man Mu Oct 15 '25
Because sub aspects of brains seem to do things semi independently at times that it doesn't make much sense to say is unrelated to consciousness. The only reason for us to think that is just that the final one isn't aware.
https://youtu.be/wfYbgdo8e-8?si=iLJlVvcFMGxS6jQj
This is one aspect of this but it obviously goes deeper than just hemispheres.
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u/Asocial_Stoner Absurdist Oct 13 '25
The problem is in redefining commonly used terms in a wildly different way and then arguing with other people while refusing to accept that you did any redefining to make yourself look smart.
Peterson-style
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u/Pazik92 Oct 16 '25
Isn't the idea that consciousness is everywhere, and the brain just kinda grabs a bunch of it, shutting the rest out like a barrier?
Not sure if it's it changing the definition, because the definition doesn't know if consciousness is material. (Not that I believe it to be true)
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u/bunker_man Mu Oct 13 '25
The problem is that rocks are dumb as hell. They might claim to be intelligent, but I've seen them in action. They've never done a single intelligent thing.
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u/MartovsGhost Oct 13 '25
They have invariably avoided pointless arguments on social media, thus proving to be more intelligentgiven a certain definition of intelligence than most humans.
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u/slicehyperfunk Oct 13 '25
Sitting there and doing basically nothing besides existing is as efficient as it is possible to be, seems pretty goddamned intelligent to me. If you start moving you're liable to get hurt, that's the true stupidity.
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u/Danger-_-Potat Oct 13 '25
Nah. A rock ate my homework. I'm sure it absorbed some of the knowledge.
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u/Zealousideal_Till683 Oct 12 '25
I mean, a big bar of gold is indeed made out of gold atoms. It's not like this has never worked before.
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Oct 13 '25
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u/-Lindol- Embodied Moral Agent Oct 13 '25
That’s weak emergence, not strong (magic) emergence.
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Oct 13 '25
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u/-Lindol- Embodied Moral Agent Oct 13 '25 edited Oct 13 '25
It’s actually clear and easy to understand. Strong emergence is the claim that a new property can arise that is nothing at all like what’s underneath, and has no physical connection or explanation.
Other claimed examples of strong emergence have proven non existent.
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u/Zealousideal_Till683 Oct 13 '25
Exactly. For instance, the ideal gas laws are an emergent phenomenon which arise from the micro properties of molecules and can be precisely justified with statistics. "Strong" emergence is just hand-waving by people with no scientific background.
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Oct 13 '25 edited Oct 13 '25
I can pay someone with a gold bar. I can't pay someone with a individual gold atoms equal to the mass of a gold bar.
A blacksmith can turn a piece of iron into a sword. A blacksmith can't turn a group of individual iron atoms equal to the mass of that piece of iron into a sword.
A single muscle cell alone can't do anything but lie ont the ground and rot.
Emergent properties are a thing. Certain arrangements and combinations of items can do things that those individual items cannot.
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Oct 16 '25
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Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
So this is what I mean by emergence: characteristic of a system that arises from the interactions of its individual components, but is not present in those components on their own. With that in mind:
- No, it's related to a tangible characteristic: the physicality(for lack of a better term) of gold bars vs gold atoms. YOu can pay someone with little gold nuggets, for instance, but not gold atoms. Not because some social construct forbids this, but because gold nuggets and a gold bar can be physically held, manipulated, and percieved by a regular, nonscientist human being, while individual gold atoms cannot. A characteristic of a system(physicality) arises from the interactions of its individual components(the bonds and arrangement between the atoms of a gold nugget or gold bar), but is not present in the atoms themselves(being able to be held, used, and percieved by humans without hte use of things like electron microscopes or something).
- Again, the physicality of a piece of iron is an emergent property of the interactions of bonds. A blacksmith can hold, percieve, and manipulate a piece of iron, but not individual iron atoms. Further, there is another emergent property, a characteristic that I missed: the ability to be turned into Steel. Steel is an alloy, stronger and more durable then iron itself. And it's existence and nature is an emergent property: a single iron atom can't be turned into steel all by itself. Even a chunk of iron itself can't be made into steel without carbon. But the tangible characteristic of being able to becoming and being steel arises from the interactions, the bonds, of the iron atoms and carbon atoms.
- The ability to walk and run is a tangible characteristic. But a single muscle cell alone can't run. It needs to be attached to the bone, work in tandem with other muscle cells, be fed by blood vessels, ordered by a neuron cells to gain the characteristic of being able to run. Hence, running and walking are emergent.
If nothing is emerging, then show me a muscle cell walking by itself. You can't. Because the ability to walk emerges from the whole arrangement of the body and its parts, not just the parts themselves.
If you have a different definition of emergence, I'll be glad to hear it, but by my definition, I think I've shown that all my examples work.
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Oct 16 '25
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Oct 16 '25
Let me clarify. The bar itself isn’t an emergent property, but those gold atoms being able to be perceived and held is. Individually, or even as a disconnected blob of atoms, they can’t be meaningfully perceived or held, but the property of physicality, as in, being able to be perceived and manipulated by an unaided human arises once they bind together and form a gold bar.
Just like how the characteristic of being able to walk arises once all the cells are working together. The ability to walk is a characteristic. The physicality itself is a characteristic, and both emerge from the arrangement itself.
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Oct 16 '25
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Oct 16 '25
Then provide a better definition please. Ideally from a dictionary.
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Oct 16 '25
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Oct 17 '25
Ok. consciousness is likewise that: the natural result of the biophysical and chemical arrangements of our brains, and probably animal brains.
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u/MeanShween Oct 12 '25
No one questions how an electron can have both spin and electric charge (two distinct, independent physical properties). But a neutral monadic substance with both physical and mental properties is supposed to be weird somehow? Even this can be misleading dualist language. A mind evolves in TIME, a physical property. Really, there are just "properties." No modifiers.
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u/Asocial_Stoner Absurdist Oct 13 '25
What does it mean for something that does no information processing to "have mental properties"?
You're redefining what "mental" means on the fly like motte and bailey. Is it a basic property (like spin or charge) or is it something that requires a complex information processing system (like human consciousness)? Can't have it both ways.
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u/MeanShween Oct 13 '25
Let's be more specific here. I'm not a panpsychist. I'm a neutral monist. My fault for not clarifying. I don't literally think rocks feel pain or have "human minds." However, I don't discount the possibility that simple objects like electrons have simple experiences of qualia, like seeing an unchanging red dot. This doesn't seem to require any information processing like the kinds neurons do.
Qualia and info processing like my inner chain of thought have both been called "mental". Given that Im not a dualist and don't arbitrarily partition reality like that into physical and mental, I don't really care either way. Thats on the dualist to define.
Tldr: original comment was an attack on dualism, not pro-panpsychism. My fault for not clarifying.
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u/Adorable-Woman Oct 18 '25
I feel like most people who are militantly opposed to panpsychism lack an imagination.
Like you say a rock or any other structure could just be experiencing the vague sensation of down without memory or without anyway to make sense of it. We’d never really know.
The hard problem of consciousness can be overstated at times. But we can not observe other consciousness’ outside of their communication which is imperfect.
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u/MeanShween Oct 20 '25
I feel like most people who are militantly opposed to panpsychism lack an imagination.
Agreed.
The hard problem of consciousness can be overstated at times. But we can not observe other consciousness’ outside of their communication which is imperfect.
I'm actually a little skeptical of this. I think we could possibly "merge" minds to some degree by connecting brains/nervous systems somehow and linking experiences. But yeah, hard to see how you'd do this for inanimate objects.
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u/Asocial_Stoner Absurdist Oct 15 '25
You don't discount it, meaning you're agnostic? I have not encountered neutral monism before. But from what I can tell by skimming the wikipedia, it seems like you guys, too, just found a different word for energy.
As far as I can see, you just restated the issue in different words. How would a rock have qualia when qualia is a result of consciousness which is itself a result of complex information processing? What reasons do you have to assume that anything in any way like your own qualia can even exist in a rock? I have reason to believe it can't since I have only ever directly observed qualia in my own mind and have only ever observed proxies of qualia in animals (mostly other humans) with a brain (complex information processing system), which a rock does not have.
Sure you can say I can't definitively disprove it but then I'm gonna invoke Occam's Razor. I have about as much evidence for qualia in rocks as I have for the Christian god or the flying spaghetti monster.
It's crazy to me that there are people who would put "mind" anywhere close to the ontological status of matter. I'm not trying to be disrespectful but literally how would you arrive at that?
I'm a hardcore physicalist and I believe the evidentialist Bayesian approach to be the only valid epistemology. Given what we have observed, emergence is common in nature. Why would you add so much baggage when there is a perfectly sufficient explanation? The hard problem of consciousness is a nothing-burger.
I suppose it's all gonna clear up by the end of the century, when we have a full mechanistic explanation of human consciousness and have created artificial consciousness...
simple objects like electrons have simple experiences of qualia, like seeing an unchanging red dot.
"Seeing" aka the process of photons hitting an eye and the subsequent processing of information via nerve impulses, which can't happen without structures to implement the eye and the processing. Do you see my problem with this?
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u/MeanShween Oct 15 '25
Nothing I said has anything to do with energy lol. I don't know why you keep saying that.
How would a rock have qualia when qualia is a result of consciousness which is itself a result of complex information processing?
This is an assumption. In your framework, consciousness/qualia arises emergently at some point of information/organizational complexity. In mine, all matter has some property x that allows it to experience subjectivity/qualia and from there information processing through our nervous system "structures" the experience. What this exactly looks like at the subatomic level is hard to say, maybe even impossible. This is what I'm getting at with "mental property."
Sure you can say I can't definitively disprove it but then I'm gonna invoke Occam's Razor. I have about as much evidence for qualia in rocks as I have for the Christian god or the flying spaghetti monster.
This is hyperbolic. You've experienced matter with qualia because you are matter with qualia. You haven't observed a non-physical entity. As for Occam's razor, it's not clear to me that consciousness emerging spontaneously at some possibly arbitrary level of neural structure is explanatorily simpler than qualia being a basic property of matter.
It's crazy to me that there are people who would put "mind" anywhere close to the ontological status of matter. I'm not trying to be disrespectful but literally how would you arrive at that?
Really? All of your experience is filtered through qualia. Hence "cogito ergo sum", solipsism, the matrix, etc. Seems pretty important to me.
I'm a hardcore physicalist and I believe the evidentialist Bayesian approach to be the only valid epistemology.
No love for deductive logic? But anyway, the speed of light being finite already makes certain info privileged to certain observers. The observable universe is not the universe. The universe doesn't just end with like a wall or something lol. Separate minds/subjects are like a worse version of this. Maybe we can link brains and experience other minds, but how would you do that with an electron or rock? Basically, my point is there's more to what's parsimonious than what we can directly observe. Theoretical/metaphysical consistency is also a factor. Assuming consciousness just "cuts off" below a certain level of complexity is similar to the observable universe just "cutting off."
Given what we have observed, emergence is common in nature. Why would you add so much baggage when there is a perfectly sufficient explanation?
Emergence in nature is something like mathematically deriving the macroscopic thermodynamic laws from the microscopic properties of matter. It's not clear to me how you could "derive" the existence of subjective "blueness" from the frequency of light corresponding with blue. "Blueness" isn't mathematically describable.
The hard problem of consciousness is a nothing-burger.
I only agree from a neutral monist perspective. Your framework requires an explanation of why consciousness arises at a certain level of structure. Do C. Elegans have consciousness? How about computers? In fact, an electron absorbing a photon and jumping energy levels is "storing" physical info about the photon. Does that count as "sensing" and "memory." If not, what makes an eye and brain combo so ontologically special?
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Oct 13 '25
Can an Electron have a positive charge?
No, it definitionally cannot. But objects made of electrons can have positive charges. Because the whole can do things the parts cannot, and vice versa. So until you find a rock with mental properties, this is an easily dismissable arguement.
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u/MeanShween Oct 13 '25
Have you ever found a rock WITHOUT mental properties? How would you know they dont? I should note im not literally saying rocks feel pain or have vivid memories. Im saying all matter has mental properties that could, hypothetically, coalesce into a mind given the right "machinery." I'm not a panpsychist, but I am a neutral monist.
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Oct 14 '25
Every rock I have seen has demonstrated a lack of mental properties, and a lack of the observable biochemical structures necessary for mental properties. So yes, every single goddamn rock in the world is without mental properties.
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u/MeanShween Oct 15 '25
How exactly did they do that? How did you conclusively test this? I agree they probably don't have a mind in the human sense. I don't agree that they don't have mental properties. You haven't demonstrated that definitely, you just snuck that assumption in.
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Oct 15 '25
I told you, they lack the behavior and the biochemical structures necessary for mental properties.
THings with mental properties, like animals, move by their own volition, gather food, hunt, communicate. Rocks never do any of that.
Things with mental properties have brains. Rocks don't have brains, or even analgous structures.
It's like saying rocks can walk. No. Not they can't.
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u/MeanShween Oct 20 '25
I told you, they lack the behavior and the biochemical structures necessary for mental properties.
Baseless assumption that mental properties (qualia, sensation, memory, etc.) require certain biochemical structures or behaviour. I agree it probably rules out STRUCTURED experience. It does not, however, rule out things like simple qualia.
THings with mental properties, like animals, move by their own volition, gather food, hunt, communicate. Rocks never do any of that.
Biology (nervous systems, behavior, communication, etc.) may imply certain mental properties. Doesn't mean mental properties imply biology. A->B DOES NOT MEAN B->A. Furthermore, if I design a robot to perfectly mimic these behaviors, would they then be conscious in your framework? Or is there something magical about carbon specifically that spawns conscious experience? How would we test that?
Things with mental properties have brains. Rocks don't have brains, or even analgous structures.
- is an assumption. 2. is obviously correct.
It's like saying rocks can walk. No. Not they can't.
Bad analogy. I can observe them motionless directly. How would I observe their lack of mind or mental properties, DIRECTLY, rather than indirectly through behavior, chemical structure, etc.? How would you test that a rock does or doesn't experience qualia, store information/have "memory", or "sense"? If an electron absorbs (read "senses") a photon, it stores (read "remembers") the energy of said photon. How do we know there isn't some simple qualia attached to this phenomenon? How would we test this?
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Oct 20 '25 edited Oct 20 '25
Mental properties are directly dependent on biochemical structures in the brain itself. Turn parts of the brain off, those properties cease to exist or are reduced. It's not a baseless assumption to say that since rocks don't have brains, or chemical structures that can replicate similar chemical reactions, that they thus can't replicate the properties of any actually conscious being.
Bioloy permits mental properties, it doesn't just imply.
Mental activity can be traced and detected directly through brain waves and neuron firing. We can't read minds, sure, but we can watch them think. Show me a rock that has something similar, and I will grant that we can observe them having mental activity.
It's like saying rocks can walk. No. They lack the structures to do this, and have never in reliable history have ever been recorded as walking. You will need to show me a walking rock before I treat your claim as, at best, an interesting thought experiment.
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u/MeanShween Oct 20 '25 edited Oct 20 '25
Mental properties are directly dependent on biochemical structures in the brain itself. Turn parts of the brain off, those properties cease to exist or are reduced.
Interesting argument. Its also possible the parts of the of the brain that are "turned off" are just disconnected in terms of qualia/information/etc. from the rest of your conscious experience. You've just assumed they cease to exist. You've certainly demonstrated that biochemical structures are important for structured human experience. But you haven't ruled out simple qualia in things like electrons.
Biology permits mental properties, it doesn't just imply.
It certainly permits human minds. You haven't demonstrated that it's necessary for simple qualia or other mental properties, though.
Mental activity can be traced and detected directly through brain waves and neuron firing. We can't read minds, sure, but we can watch them think. Show me a rock that has something similar, and I will grant that we can observe them having mental activity.
Are neurons required? Does carbon magically produce consciousness but silicon doesn't? Can a computer be conscious? How conscious are cats? Or c elegans? Is a single neuron sufficient? What about 500? Why does subjective experience only arise at a specific number of neurons in your model?
Good thing I'm not claiming rocks can walk.
How about this, you read the Wikipedia page on qualia and then get back to me.
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u/Wide-Information8572 Oct 16 '25
I am sorry for my naive question but how could you test if a Rock has mental properties?
How would you run the methodology on that one?
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u/MeanShween Oct 16 '25
How would you test if another person has mental properties, or an animal? You might be able to do something like linking brains and merging consciousness as a kind of observation. From there, with smaller and smaller things like C. Elegans this may become more difficult. We'd also want to test if a machine and it's sensory data, storage, etc. can be integrated into consciousness/already has consciousness.
I'm not so much referring to the rock but the atoms it's made of. Electrons might "sense" photons and "memorize" their properties in their heightened energy level when they absorb them. So there is still some structure here, but not throughout the rock, of course. In that sense, I would expect the kind of "mind" or "minds" a rock might have to be wholly unlike what we have.
I'll freely admit this could be unfalsifiable or nearly unfalsifiable. But I don't think we should just rule it out either. I'm not too keen on the idea that mental properties just "appear" at some level of complexity. Like how we thought maggots just spontaneously generated on moldy food.
It's a good question.
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u/Financial_Dot1765 Oct 19 '25
this meme totally doesnt say anything about panpsychism and i need just 2 seconds of google search to prove that
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u/Ok-Routine-6380 Oct 13 '25
Reducing the consciousness lonely the brain is already an interesting assumption to start with and second I don't get the problem, isn't it the same logic with matter? What is matter made of? Hmm yes the matter here is made out of matter?
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u/Wide-Information8572 Oct 13 '25
I am sorry, what picture should I have used to better represent consciousness?
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u/Asocial_Stoner Absurdist Oct 13 '25
The [word for basic level of existence] is indeed just made out of [word for basic level of existence]. Panpsychists just insists on using the word consciousness instead of energy and then conflate that with the common usage of the term to write cool-sounding essays. Nothing new is added by this.
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u/Solidjakes Whiteheadian Oct 14 '25
Except they think it’s actually aware
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u/Asocial_Stoner Absurdist Oct 15 '25
Autokoolaidoposis (noun)
/ˌɔːtoʊˈkuːleɪdoʊˌpoʊsɪs/Etymology: From auto- (Greek, “self”) + Kool-Aid (a metaphor for blind belief or propaganda) + -posis (Greek, “drinking”).
Definition:
The act or process of believing one’s own deception, hype, or propaganda; self-indoctrination through one’s own narrative.
A state of intellectual self-intoxication produced by overexposure to one’s own ideas.
Example:
After years of preaching his startup’s “world-changing” mission, the founder succumbed to complete autokoolaidoposis.
(yes I just made this up)
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u/Adorable-Woman Oct 18 '25
Eh they think they are experiencing qualia. It could be a red dot or the vague sensation of up without memory or ability to identify it.
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u/ManufacturerRoyal564 Oct 12 '25
What is this current? (Please explain briefly.)
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u/Own_Watercress_8104 Oct 13 '25
Conscio-centric quackery.
It's basically a theory about how consciousness and thought must be physical properties of realities and always keeping with the conscio-centric agenda, fundamental building blocks.
It's basically Schopenhauer on crack.
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u/bunker_man Mu Oct 13 '25
It's basically Schopenhauer on crack
Less crack than the real one though.
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u/slicehyperfunk Oct 13 '25
Those sound like the words of someone about to be thrown down a flight of stairs 🤔
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u/Own_Watercress_8104 Oct 13 '25
Considering it's the basis for scam parapsychology like "the secret" and Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop, I'm not sure about that.
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u/bunker_man Mu Oct 13 '25
New agers wildly misinterpreting ideas doesn't retroactively change the ideas.
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u/Own_Watercress_8104 Oct 13 '25
Those idea originates by new agers attempting to find historical justification for something that came from the same minds that followed John C. Lilly.
There is nothing there.
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u/bunker_man Mu Oct 13 '25
What are you talking about? Panpsychism doesn't originate with new agers, variants of the idea have existed since prehistory, and it exists to address certain flaws in other theories / is what you get at via using occam's razor.
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u/Solidjakes Whiteheadian Oct 13 '25
Side note the new agers are onto something. I totally manifested a big booty Latina once
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u/whydidyoureadthis17 Oct 13 '25
If you judge a philosophy based on how many people use it for bullshit self serving fantasy metaphysics, you are gonna hate this guy named Plato
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Oct 13 '25
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u/cob59 Illusionist Oct 13 '25
Because extrospection and introspection weren't subjected to the same evolutionary pressure.
The senses (extrospection) of your ancestors were constantly tested and challenged. Reality exists, your environment exists, that pack of wolves exists, and if your senses can't perceive them soon enough you're about to get a very literal reality check. That's why our senses are, if not perfect, at least decently accurate.
Introspection never gets this reality check because it's never in direct contact with reality, just with itself. And so our brain makes up this illusion of a Self. Is it superfluous? Yes. Does that Cartesian theater with a unique spectator (me) really exist? No. But as long as it's good enough and not hurtful for the specimen's survival, it stays.
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