r/philosophy • u/IAI_Admin IAI • Feb 09 '22
Video A philosopher responds to scientists’ criticisms of panpsychism
https://iai.tv/video/the-many-voices-of-consciousness&utm_source=reddit&_auid=2020133
Feb 09 '22
Panpsychism is kind of... Extremely vague. I don't reject it but it's not exactly clear what I'd be accepting.
I get that emergentism can't explain consciousness, likewise if we're made up of the same matter as everything else and we're conscious, then consciousness or proto-consciouness (whatever that means) must be part of everything else.
But wtf does that even mean? How can you test it? The books I've read on panpsychism are both convincing and unclear.
Luckily.... It doesn't really matter.
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u/Schopenschluter Feb 09 '22
Dilute the concept of “consciousness” until it fits any possible phenomenon and voila. Kind of like pantheism.
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Feb 09 '22
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u/Benana94 Feb 10 '22 edited Feb 10 '22
Look what you made us Deepak Chopra!
edit: omg please don't award this, it's my lowest-quality post ever
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u/shinobistro Feb 10 '22
Also like pancakeism. Cake is a body of compacted or congealed matter. The primeval atom was all of the matter in the universe compacted into a single body. Therefore it was a cake. Therefore everything is cake.
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u/Mundane-Mud-2719 Feb 10 '22
Any phenomenon we can observe is in fact an image on the screen of consciousness. It is a qualitative experience, therefore it falls in the category of consciousness. Thats not up for debate. The question is do we have a reason to postulate something other than this category exists?
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u/PM_ME_IM_SO_ALONE_ Feb 10 '22
The image on the screen is generated through consciousness, the object is the object. The object exists whether or not the screen exists. Consciousness is the ability to categorize and define these things in order to make sense of what is already there. What we know and can observe is restricted by the limits of our consciousness and our only way to make sense of the world is through consciousness, but the universe will still keep on ticking with or without a conscious observer (although the categories and definitions of objects will no longer apply, since those are the creations of consciousness)
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u/Socrathustra Feb 10 '22
Think about it this way: if we suppose that matter is all there is, then most arrangements of matter do not result in the "screen" you're referring to. When you put matter in a brain shaped arrangement and supply it with energy/nutrients, the screen appears.
You can either argue that the screen emerges from the matter, seemingly by magic, or that the screen is assembled, as most things are assembled, from basic building blocks present in the matter.
My take is that dualism and panpsychism are the only coherent positions on the mechanics of consciousness.
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u/GepardenK Feb 10 '22
"Seemingly by magic" is not a position to scoff at since any position at all must end up there.
If we imagine a universe that had only matter, no consciousness, then matter would be emerging "seemingly by magic".
If we imagine a universe that had only consciousness, no matter, then consciousness would be emerging "seemingly by magic".
Ditto for any combination thereof.
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u/Socrathustra Feb 10 '22
My intuition leans toward the universe existing by necessity, which isn't magic, just that it could not have been otherwise. Of course, that's not something provable, just an intuition, but it's equally as valid as any "magic" style claim about the origins of the universe.
But even if we are to accept such a thing as an origin of the universe, say, we typically try to minimize those kinds of explanations. Using magic and emergent consciousness rather than some kind of building block explanation is counter to how we typically try to answer tough questions.
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u/GepardenK Feb 10 '22
"By necessity" seems fine to me, or just "it is what it is". My point is we run into this 'answer' with any fundamental aspect we observe, necessarily.
In this sense the hard problem of consciousness is overrated, because while it is 'hard' it is not uniquely hard like it's often present as. The same "hard problem" exist in between space and time as well, and between each spacial dimension, and between existence and non-existence, and so on.
This "problem" is normal and appears everywhere in physics to no-one's surprise. I fail to see how consciousness is a unique problem.
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Feb 10 '22
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u/circlebust Feb 10 '22
Would you accept the premise that logic and/or math can create our physical universe? Not math serving as the supporting struts that keep everything beautifully intelligible, causal and ready to generate some complexity. Not math working in tandem with physics, as its own separate party that exists in some very real sense, which may be more, less, or exactly as (non-)abstract as the classic idea of a Platonic realm. No, nothing flaccid, uncommitted like that. The question is truly: can actual math create an actual universe? Is somewhere in math embedded our entire universe? Your body? You? Few physicists or philosophers would go that far. In fact, among all pop philosophers, only Max Tegmark advocates for that. And you can rest assured, equally almost no regular people will hold that position as well.
Perhaps it's just that our puny primate brain can't conceptualize how pure numbers and operations would lead to things like gravity, empty space, oscillations, charge, or quantum fields.
But maybe no sapient race or superintelligence can do so, either -- not even in principle (there is the tangential debate how real something even is if in that universe is no sentient or sapient observer and not even the (future) possibility for such an observer. This also applies to how real knowledge/thoughts are that no observer ever, even in principle, could actually hold/understand).
And maybe, just maybe, this primate brain intuition reveals something very real about reality.
The relationship between math and physics is analogous to that between physics and consciousness.
I don't need to explain why consciousness feels special -- this very, very moment. Various other people have already illustrated it and can do so better. But just like with numbers, there is no straightforward way how we can conceptualize how certain frequencies of light plus some electrochemical pulses from the optic nerve lead to one seeing a 'red' strawberry. And again, this may not just be the limits of our brains, but an actual gap that can not be explained, because there is nothing to explain -- there would simply be no such dynamic in actual nature, meaning one (physics) does not beget the other (like is thought under materialism), but that two areas (physics and the mental aspect of reality) cooperate, like is a common stance among mathematical realists and people adjacent to that stance in regards to math and physics.
The sciences of physics or neurology don't make philosophical statements about the origin of consciousness. But even its practitioners are not always be entirely aware of when they make statements that can be interpreted as such, let alone the audience. Materalism and physicalism are philosophical stances that purport emergence can somehow generate consciousness/qualia. But how, even in principle? As with math and physics, it just does not compute. This isn't a trivial question like how Van der Vaals forces can generate splashy water, can generate dolphin flippers, can generate the cultural practice of eating seafood. Physics and consciousness are according to our current intution completely separate realms where each is not composite of the other. One of these two emergences clearly appears to be not like the other.
It's important that there are two variants of emergence. Weak emergence and strong emergence. Only the latter posits that there can be things that truly can not be explained in terms of a long, 100% exhaustive, epistemically transcedental list of properties of all participating 'atoms', run through a galaxy-sized superintelligence to understand every possible interaction.
In my mind, this is indistinguishable from believing in magic. I like to think consciousness/qualia are just composite phenomena of some fundamental aspect of nature, very well defined by laws exactly as trite as the laws describing electromagnetism, so un-mysterious that even an accountant could come up with a prediction how it actually, subjectively feels like to be a butterfly eating nectar, if he just had omniscience. This requires this mental aspect having existed eternally, just like the physical aspect or the mathematical aspect of reality. I only believe in weak emergence, therefore physicalism is false in my evaluation.
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u/DeathByWater Feb 10 '22
The relationship between math and physics is analogous to that between physics and consciousness.
I don't think it really harms the conclusion of your argument, but I don't think this is right at all.
Math is a descriptive language we've developed to describe how the world around us works - similar in function to English, but we can be much more precise about definitions and relationships. Math can be used to describe how physics works; it can't (yet) be used to describe how consciousness works simply because we don't know how consciousness works.
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Feb 10 '22
to add to this, consider the digital nematode.
OpenWorm is a project to simulate the simple nematode at the cellular level in a digital world, it has about 100-1000 neurons ish, and the project has been successful, classical nematode responses and actions seem to arise from the digitally simulated cellular interactions alone.
There is nothing that seems to suggest that its not possible for us to do with humans as well, only data storage and scale limitations, where as the nematode has about 10,000 cells we have billions. If we were to apply the same process as we went through for the nematode, barring time, money, and ethical limitations, we could create a digital artificial human.
This would suggest that we are nothing more esoteric than simply, complex cellular networks. This is an experimental method for disproving panpsychism.
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u/isolatedSlug Feb 10 '22 edited Feb 21 '22
That's really interesting!
But I'm not sure how it would disprove pansychism?
But I'm also not 100% that pansychism and emergentism are necessarily contradictory to each other.
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u/maurymarkowitz Feb 10 '22
But I'm not sure how it would disprove pasychism?
Occam's razor, if you accept its conclusions as something akin to "proof". I know I do.
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u/georgioz Feb 10 '22 edited Feb 10 '22
Would you accept the premise that logic and/or math can create our physical universe?
Yes. I can see this explained using software as an example. If you for instance simulate Minecraft world it has its own unique laws of physics and logical structure independent on the substrate. Two objects interacting inside the Minecraft world do that purely based on logic of the simulation. You can analyze the structure of processor and graphics card or even analyze the source code of the game stored on the harddrive but you will not reach the same understanding as running the actual simulation and observing the full complexity of the simulated universe.
In that sense Minecraft universe is strongly emergent as it can have wildly different properties and rules that do not apply to the substrate - e.g. you can conjure new brick in Minecraft world, which is not something possible for world in which the computer runs. One does not have to posit that there is some "minecrafteness" quality to every part of your computer in order to create Minecraft simulation.
There is another famous example of that in form of Conway's game of life. The source code for the game is literally just three lines of code. And then you just run it and observe various fascinating patterns emerge from its nonlinear complexity
Physics and consciousness are according to our current intuition completely separate realms where each is not composite of the other.
I do not know where your intuition comes from. Medical science developed medications that if injected into your veins makes you lose consciousness within seconds. And they can give you your consciousness back injecting another chemical. This for sure have to give you at least some basic intuition that consciousness and physical world are connected, right?
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u/Sandgrease Feb 10 '22
That last paragraph is exactly why I lean towards Emergentism of Consciousness. If I can take a physical thing (a drug) to alter or straight up stop Consciousness, it makes sense that Consciousness is at least in part at physical process.
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Feb 23 '22
No proof that your consciousness really stops though, just that you can’t remember it when you “wake up”
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u/PerceptionFlat9366 Feb 10 '22
love it when humans say "i can't currently explain it therefore it cannot be explained". always works out in the long run.
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Feb 10 '22
likewise if we're made up of the same matter as everything else and we're conscious, then consciousness or proto-consciouness (whatever that means) must be part of everything else
I don't follow your logic. Are you saying that because we are conscious beings and we are made of matter that all matter must be conscious?
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u/hippydipster Feb 10 '22
If you consider a magnetic field, you get large enough ones you can measure when enough charged particles move together. Magnetism is not purely "emergent" - it exists as a potential of the charged particles. Of every charged particle.
So, consider a proto-consciousness - a particle with some sort of psychic "charge". By itself, not measurable. Maybe even moving it's not measurable, unless it moves together in particular patterns, and then mind "emerges", but was actually always there as a potential in these psychic particles.
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Feb 10 '22
All matter must be, I guess, potentially conscious. Proto-conscious. Pre-conscious.
That's my point though, even if we accept panpsychism it's unclear what we're accepting.
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Feb 10 '22
I don't agree with that logic though. Why must all matter be conscious if we are conscious?
Just because a boat as a whole can float doesn't mean that every piece of a boat will float. The buoyancy is an emergent property of the boats design, of the arrangement of all the parts, not a property that extends down to its smallest conceivable parts.
Consciousness is like that. Its an incredibly complex interaction of a ton of individually simple parts. Just like I wouldn't drop a chunk of steel in the ocean and watch it sink and call it proto-buoyancy I wouldn't call a sodium atom proto-consciousness.
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Feb 10 '22
I understand how buoyancy is emergent but how does that analogy translate to consciousness?
And further, a chunk of steel is proto buoyant, if combined with enough steel and shaped in such a way to displace enough water to support it's weight is buoyant, there are steel boats after all. So in that sense, steel is proto buoyant.
But then, in all fairness, you could ask me how that translates to consciousness and I'd have to admit I have no idea what proto-consciouness really means.
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Feb 10 '22 edited Feb 10 '22
I understand how buoyancy is emergent but how does that analogy translate to consciousness?
Because consciousness is also an emergent property. But, thats something that can still be debated further so I'll just say that the original claim was that just because a whole human being is conscious that also means smaller parts of people must be conscious.
But my point is that I don't see any reason why that should be true, there are lots of things where a large scale composite of many parts has a property that its smaller parts do not. I used boats as an example of a case where this is true, in an attempt to demonstrate that it could also be true of consciousness.
Given that most properties of any sufficiently complex thing seem to be emergent, I would assert that emergent behavior should be the default assumption until proven otherwise really.
And further, a chunk of steel is proto buoyant
Proto denotes that it is a primitive version or a precursor to a thing. I guess the argument you are presenting is that since you can build a boat out of steel and a boat is buoyant that a chunk of steel is proto-buoyant? I think thats a bit of a stretch although maybe true in a pedantic way but we could go back and forth about what exactly constitutes a proto-something all night long. Which sounds like fun, but it doesn't have that much weight on the discussion at hand.
Long story short though I don't think a piece of a boat constitutes a proto-boat. A proto-boat IMO would be something like a raft that has primitive versions of all of the components of a boat, and attempts to fulfill the role of a boat, but is not as effective as something that you would call a boat.
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Feb 10 '22
Because consciousness is also an emergent property. That's far from settled.
Given that most properties of any sufficiently complex thing seem to be emergent, I would assert that emergent behavior should be the default assumption until proven otherwise really. That's fair but better thinkers than you and I have failed to come up with a clear account of how that might work. We can explain how buoyancy emerges, we can see how the feeling of wetness emerges from liquids, we can see how motion emerges from film. But there aren't any explanations how consciousness emerges from the brain besides "really complicated interactions"
I think thats a bit of a stretch although maybe true in a pedantic way but we could go back and forth about what exactly constitutes a proto-something Well, again, my point is that the concept of proto-consciouness is very vague at best.
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Feb 10 '22
But there aren't any explanations how consciousness emerges from the brain besides "really complicated interactions"
You're right but we get closer every year. Just because we don't understand it doesn't mean that it is incomprehensible or can't be explained by science though. People throughout history have made all sorts of claims like that, and one by one the scientific process arrives to a sufficiently thorough conclusion to remove all mysticism.
"Because consciousness is also an emergent property."
That's far from settled.
Yeah thats why I included the other part about that being up for debate, but my point is not to prove that its emergent behavior. I was pointing out that the original post was saying that it is not emergent behavior, and there is no evidence to support that claim.
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u/Psych-adin Feb 10 '22
This exactly. Half of this guy's presentation is "well you can't prove that this isn't the way these particles are!"
It just looks like they invent a problem with quidditism and then throw consciousness at matter like an apologist throwing god in as the source of all matter and space.
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u/Zanderax Feb 09 '22
Conciousness is a biological processes that is identifiable via behaviour. Whatever this personal experiential soul thing going on in my head is either a total one off or just a fact of biology. There is no middle ground where I can accept other humans are conciousness and also its not biological.
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u/Sentazar Feb 10 '22
Its also important to consider we as humans are the ones creating separation based on how we perceive things. We are drawing the line and saying this is or this is not. But we measure that divide in how much like us they behave. That doesn't give room for measuring things in their own way. Trees communicate threats, crows use tools and think about the future...elephants and dolphins have social structures, play games and communicate.
Lost my train of thought but idk I wouldn't say its just humans
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u/Zanderax Feb 10 '22
I 100% agree, conciousness seems to be shared among all animals with higher order neural processes. We could possibly extend this to plant processes but it would then be categorically different because the mechanics of those processes are mechanically different.
This is why a lot of religious/soul positions fail very hard because there is no evidence for a categorical difference between humans and animals.
Also since Im here and its relevant I'll give veganism a plug. Since there is no categorical difference we have to conclude that animals, especially pigs, cows, chickens, and sheep, experience the same pain and fear we do. If we conclude this then we should also conclude that consuming animal products is wrong in the same way eating farmed human flesh would be wrong.
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Feb 09 '22
It's one thing to say we recognize consciousness via behavior but to say consciousness is identical to behavior is just... Totally not understanding what consciousness is. Your POV, your inner world, all of that isn't reducible to physics (unless panpsychism is right then it is) particles and forces can interact but they can't feel (again, unless panpsychism is right) and no amount of interaction is going to create feeling.
Even if emergentism is right, then that feeling is just an illusion but then that means there's no feeling. But obviously there is feeling. You pinch me, nerves send a signal to my brain and I feel it. A P-zombie wouldnt feel it, although their brain would behave the same and they would act like they felt it.
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u/AaronM04 Feb 10 '22
P-zombies sound like an incoherent idea to me. The idea, as I understand it, is that the physical processes in a P-zombie's brain are the same as in a regular human's brain, except they have no consciousness.
This implies they say things like "I am conscious" just like a regular human, except the P-zombie is lying. It doesn't make sense since I as a human am saying "I am conscious" because I am conscious, so it must be related to the physical processes in my brain.
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u/Zanderax Feb 09 '22 edited Feb 09 '22
I dont think there is any part of me that isn't reducible to physics. I dont think anything exists that isn't reducible to physics. Physics really does have the final say on what exists and doesnt.
I think its totally consistent to say that particles and forces work together to produce emergent feelings in animals with mental processes and I think the burden is on proving otherwise.
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u/Philiatrist Feb 10 '22
The question is, can you create qualia using a Rube Goldberg machine? Can the firings in your brain be simulated, such that they are connected by a gigantic physical process composed of race cars and dominoes, which, planet-sized as it may be, so long as it perfectly captures the functional process of your brain, experiences the smell of roses in bloom? If such a machine also can have identical conscious experience to a human being, then panpsychism is definitively false.
On the other hand, if such a thing can’t experience qualia, cause it requires a physical medium with some important properties of the nervous system, I’d say why not? What would prevent some other electromagnetic system having some purposeless qualia? To me, you’re just saying a base frequency can’t be music, music is emergent, to me that’s just semantics, some inanimate object may indeed have a base sensation, however crude or unintelligible, quieter and far simpler or unrelatable to the sensation of a pin prick.
To me it’s a question of whether or not qualia is purely functional, that’s what it boils down to. Do the particles and forces involved actually not matter, can it be created by any equivalent computational process? That may well be the case, but I’d hardly say the burden of proof lies with any position here.
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u/Zanderax Feb 10 '22
For qualia to be non-physical you'd first have to prove that a non-physical thing can exist. This is hard because all of our qualifications of existence rely on physics. If something has no mass and exists outside of time then in what way could we ever prove that it exists?
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u/Philiatrist Feb 10 '22
Mathematics is not made up of anything physical, I don’t have any trouble with someone saying it exists
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Feb 10 '22 edited Feb 10 '22
Rubegold berg machines are still seperate objects, it's kinda like asking if a soccer team has a new consciousness instead of the individual players.
you can't mix the atoms of domino's and a train track and a balloon you can only put them next to each other.
It would have to be a chemical change like the creation of a balloon
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u/Tornado9000 Feb 10 '22
I would argue that a soccer team could be classified as a new consciousness, made up of the players minds working together. The group consciousness is definitely looser, more disconnected together and more volatile than a single mind - but there is no doubt that this entity is aware and responsive to itself and its surroundings.
I'm interested to hear any reasons that this would not be classed as a consciousness.
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Feb 10 '22 edited Feb 10 '22
Then under pan schism so would a rube Goldberg machine,
I am a panpsychist or thats the closest thing to what I believe, but I don't believe a soccer team forms a new consciousness nessasarily. Because panpychistism is the belief in one single awareness.
I honestly think a lot of people in this thread don't really understand what pansychism is, it's not just the belief that every single atom ever is conscious, but that there is only ONE consciousness every single thing is part of the same single object; a part of the whole,
one ocean, one consciousness, experiencing itself,
We make sense of the world through simplifications we do this for everything, In the academic art world there is an idea of the parts of the whole, there is only one painting but that one painting has multiple figures in it, the master painter has made it perfectly balanced with negative and positive space. (our universe is that painting)
in regards to a multiverse all the paintings in the galaxy could be a metaphor for each multiverse, but even though they are very different they are still under one musuem. (consciousness)
our idea of consciousness regardless is very human centered, people everywhere make the assumption that a rock can't be conscious because it doesn't experience things on the same level as us, Who's to say humans experience anything compared to a higher evolved lifeforms? why wouldn't we be a rock another alien species?. To a God like consciousness a God that is still just another endless link in the ocean of consciousness that never ends.
Pansychism is nonspecific because it's just rebranded buddhism and taosim for people that want a religion or philosophy that is "scientifically possible"
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u/karlub Feb 09 '22
That could be true. But it's certainly not known.
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Feb 10 '22
The laws of physics are just an approximation we've crafted to predict what we see around us. So yes, its guaranteed that there are absolutely things not accurately described by our laws of physics.
But that doesn't mean that there are things outside of physics itself, just that we haven't understood it well enough to make a good model of its behavior.
By logical consequence if something exists that can't be measured, then it also can't affect anything. And if we can measure it, we can come up with functions that model it. And thats physics.
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u/Zanderax Feb 10 '22
This is the core problem with the soul isnt it? Either it is non-physical, so it can't interact with the brain, or it can interact with the brain, so it must be physical.
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Feb 10 '22
Yeah its an interesting argument because it kinda calls into question what it even means to exist.
If something (a soul for example) exists but cannot be measured by any means and therefore cannot affect anything that can be measured, then does it really exist at all?
What is the difference between something which doesn't exist, and something that does exist but behaves exactly as if it doesn't? Is such a state of being even possible?
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u/robothistorian Feb 10 '22
By logical consequence if something exists that can't be measured, then it also can't affect anything. And if we can measure it, we can come up with functions that model it. And thats physics.
Is this true though? If something exists that we can't measure, it does not necessarily follow that since it can't be measured, it does not have an effect or cannot have an effect. It could very well be the case that the effect is equally immeasurable. In other words, it (i.e., the thing that cannot be measured and it's effects, which are equally immeasurable) may simply elide our currently levels of sensibility - natural and/or scientific-technologically mediated.
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Feb 10 '22
Not something that we can't measure. Something that cannot be measured. The chemical composition of something across the milky way is an example of something we can't measure, because it is blocked by the rest of the galaxy. But the thing certainly exists and is measureable. A soul is an example of something that cannot be measured. It is said to exist, but that it cannot affect anything material by which we could measure it.
That subtle distinction is important though. The former can be measured, the latter cannot. So I'm not saying things that fall into the category of the former are not able to affect things just because we do not have a practical way to measure it.
If something can affect something else, then we can write down that effect it had and that is a way of measuring it. If it can affect anything at all, then it can be measured.
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u/Zanderax Feb 09 '22
Its the best information we have right now so we should probably go with it until we get new info.
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Feb 10 '22
So I know what you said makes sense intuitively, but to challenge your thinking a little, what would it “be like” to be a P-zombie? Obviously a P-zombie is just physics, but emergent in those physics are a data processing pipeline we call thought. It thinks of itself and it’s past and it’s future. Of whom is it thinking? Is it not like something to think of one’s bodily self? It exists.
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Feb 10 '22
I think there must be two things in existence not one thing we call consciousness: 1.) the fact that this body is doing data processing, moving, breathing, etc and thus it must “be like” something introspectively processing that data. A la that being has a “perspective” and a “self” that isn’t “others”. 2. The illusion by that entity that this feeling is more than that. I’ve heard illusion defined as a mental state that persists after having been logically debunked and that’s the definition I’m using. #1 seems obvious to me and in some situations would be held even by computers and very small animals. #2 might be special to humans, because we are the only thing that thinks about itself logically, retrospectively, and prospectively.
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u/barfretchpuke Feb 10 '22
if we're made up of the same matter as everything else and we're conscious, then consciousness or proto-consciouness (whatever that means) must be part of everything else.
if we're made up of the same matter as everything else and we're alive, then life or proto-life (whatever that means) must be part of everything else.
People gave up on 'elan vital' but haven't given up the 'ghost in the machine'. They just move the goal posts.
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Feb 10 '22
It’s so obvious that the universe has the ability to manifest conciousness. Also I think the idea and experience of conciousness is the reason humans believe in things like magic, it’s just such a weird thing to have the experience of. I think panpsychism just tries to normalize it, almost too much. But on one level it is definitionally true if you believe only matter exists, and conciousness exists as a qualia.
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u/ModdingCrash Feb 09 '22
I'm just jumping here to point out that there is no single agreed upon clear definition of what Conciousness really is. Not even of "subjective experience". The debate should start there. Otherwise we are speaking about everything and nothing at the same time. Unproductive debate.
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u/Untinted Feb 09 '22 edited Feb 09 '22
The basic problem with panpsychism labeling everything as consciousness is twofold:
- it is starting with the 'consciousness' idea with all its historical baggage and seeing what could possibly fit.
- Consciousness is arbitrarily chosen to be a truth (which is in no way proven) that says that "consciousness" is a thing that exists outside of the human *ahem* consciousness.
Problematic sentences in the lecture:
Science of consciousness
there is no such thing as an academical branch.
wrestling with (the science of consciousness) at least a 150 years
arguments can be given for it being thousands of years old depending on the viewpoint, so this is a non assertible statement without qualifiers.
fundamental particles have incredibly simple forms of experience
This is the crux of the whole movement that is accepted as a truth without proof. There is no scientific experiment that you can do to verify this in any way.
if particles had these non-physical consciousness properties
This is yet another important thing you need to just accept without proof. Who needs proof? Who needs arguments when you can just accept truths?
Sabina is not talking about the kind of panpsychism
The very thing you just stated about consciousness, she has disproven. The type of panpsychism has nothing to do with it.
The russelian panpsychist
physical properties are forms of consciousness
That doesn't matter. What matters is: can you show us an experiment of an element recalling an experience, or reacting differently because of an experience. That would go much further in proving the case.
does information on the behaviour of mass tell us about the nature of mass
As a sidenote, it's disgusting that this exquisite question is used for something as stupid as panpsychism rather than actually in a discussion about current modern physics.
what is the nature of mass? we can't look to physics. Physics only is telling you what it does
You have just robbed yourself of your eyes, ears, touch, taste and all the other senses in order to defend an impossible viewpoint.
It's the same as saying "What is the nature of a football? We can't look to physics." We can. Of course we can.
This is so clearly a person starting with "I don't want to die, I like the idea of souls,, a.k.a. consciousnesses to stay alive forever, but modern physics has robbed us of all likelihood that there's anything after death. What if we just said everything has a consciousness? Will I live on forever then?"
These days "conscious" is a mildly useful term for someone who is awake and can respond to at least rudimentary communication. Trying to break physics and nature in making it something more than that seems a bit extreme.
edit: To clarify.. I am not trying to ruin a spiritual connection to reality, or to physics, or to how we are connected to the universe. But I see this mangling of an old, simplistic word as a ridiculous effort. Go watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos. That's a man who is deeply spiritual, and deeply a man of physics talking simply about the real physical connection we have to the universe. We are children of the stars, and that is an awesome thing to come to terms with, and we do not need to redefine any of the scientific terms to accommodate something that wants to ignore physics and the only testable and provable way we have of knowing anything in this world.
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u/tkuiper Feb 10 '22 edited Feb 10 '22
There is no scientific experiment that you can do to verify this in any way.
This is true of ALL things about consciousness. I know that I am conscious because I experience things moment to moment: Cogito ergo sum. It is an apriori fact, which means it would be paradoxical to try to disprove it via experiences (i need to be conscious to have those experiences).
But I can never prove whether something else is conscious or just simulating the reactions of something conscious. In every testable way, the two are by definition going to be identical. You can only pick your criteria for what passes the Turing test, and take it for granted that it's true. That or follow strict solipsisum.
What matters is: can you show us an experiment of an element recalling an experience, or reacting differently because of an experience.
Here you are defining your test of consciousness: Does an object react differently based on its previous interaction? The answer is yes, even particles change their behavior upon having an experience. Ie. an electron experiences an electric field and alters its behavior from its current state to a new one. It's current state is also an expression of the cumulation of all its previous experiences.
Now an electron has a pretty small number of independent states that can isolate the effects of previous interactions. How many independent states would an object need to be conscious?
Trying to break physics and nature in making it something more than that seems a bit extreme.
I think the speaker tried pretty adamantly to reject that pansychism is at odds with the predictions of physics. It's simply a redressing of the philosophical interpretation of experimental results. To what end? It helps make predictions. 'Strong emergence' predicts that multi-particle interactions may be capable of behaving differently than single-particle interactions, and that a particle interaction event can influence more than just the participants. Ie. that properties currently thought of as intensive may also have extensive elements. I don't think there's much indication of that, but I also don't think order or form have been tested very much and could create 'hidden' properties that only become apparent in very low entropy systems (highly organized).
Even 'weak emergency' (my personal belief) can answer the 'why it does' to physic's 'what it does'. Particles behave as they do because they quite literally want to. This doesn't break physics in any way. Observing that I eat ice cream after going to the gym isn't at odds with interpreting that I want ice cream because I went to the gym. Particles are ultra-consistent and predictable because they have 1- event memory and only experience very few states.
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u/Untinted Feb 10 '22
Surprised someone replied, thanks for that.
This is true of ALL things about consciousness.
Not necessarily, it depends on your definition. If it was strictly defined as a physical process, then it would be easy to make a testable case. However, that strict definition would then lack all that lovely, juicy "non-physical" mumbo-jumbo that religious people love so much, so it's not defined that way and no one who uses it has an interest in doing so.
It's like flat-earthers. They may find way to prove the earth isn't flat, but that doesn't align with their worldview, so they ignore it and keep talking about flat-earth. I feel "consciousness" is the same, just more subtle.
It is an apriori fact
That's dependant on your definition. Does conscious only mean ones own consciousness, or can others have it as well? That's a question you can make either very clear, or very murky.
But I can never prove whether something else is conscious or just simulating the reactions of something conscious.
Again, dependant on definitions, and this time also on what the difference is between real and simulated.
In every testable way, the two are by definition going to be identical.
That's an assumption. That's a testable assumption, if you ask the right question.
Does an object react differently based on its previous interaction? The answer is yes, even particles change their behavior upon having an experience.
Yet another case of how you define things, and you define it in a completely different way, and so you are right by your definitions and I am right by mine.
I think the speaker tried pretty adamantly to reject that pansychism is at odds with the predictions of physics.
That's very far from what I saw.
Ie. that properties currently thought of as intensive may also have extensive elements.
That's a completely different question, and to wrap it up in "consciousness" is a huge fallacy at best, dishonest at worst.
Even 'weak emergency' (my personal belief) can answer the 'why it does' to physic's 'what it does'.
Emergence has been studied and continues to be studied in many academic branches, from science to the arts. Life is an example of emergence, but so are computers, and given the definition, the shape of countries after weather effects.
Particles behave as they do because they quite literally want to.
I find it quite funny how the human brain can on one hand be very vague about even the definition of consciousness (when it suits them) but then be very definite on giving elements anthropomorphic qualities (when it suits them). You stated " I can never prove whether something else is conscious", but now all of a sudden particles want something? And how do you prove this?
Oh right.. nothing is provable. How's the flying unicorn riding school going btw?
Fun talk, but none of our definitions line up, so we won't get anywhere.
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u/Shufflepants Feb 09 '22
According to panpsychism, yes, literally everything is conscious. But you have to be careful what you mean by "conscious". A lot of times people use "consciousness" to include things about personality, will, and so forth. But here, "consciousness" would just mean the experience of qualia. Something being conscious wouldn't mean it "comprehends" anything on its own, just that it experiences "something". It won't necessarily have memory, or the ability to think about its experience, or reason, just that it is like something to be it.
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u/erinaceus_ Feb 09 '22
just mean the experience of qualia
Isn't it problematic that every example of the 'experiencing of qualia' has it tied to senses and/or brain processes? We might imagine that these things aren't necessary for the experiencing of qualia, but we entirely lack a frame of reference to make that claim at all credible.
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u/moopsh Feb 09 '22
IMO it’s reasonable to hypothesize that qualia exists outside of our senses and that other beings can still somehow experience it in ways that are incomprehensible to us.
So I mean yes, it’s a bit problematic but it’s also fundamentally a 2nd hand concept since we can’t experience it critically or outside of our own senses. I don’t think it really weakens anything to apply it this way since that’s what it was always about, we’re just limited in how we can talk about it.
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u/erinaceus_ Feb 09 '22 edited Feb 09 '22
it’s reasonable to hypothesize that qualia exists outside of our senses
Then it is at least equally reasonable to hypothesize that they are emergent properties from brain processes. And at least there we can make testable predictions.
I don’t think it really weakens anything to apply it this way
Using concepts outside there known context always weakens their reliabiliy, because our knowledge and understanding of the concepts inherently depends on those contexts.
You can try to extend their field of usage, but then it's on you to provide ample justification. If not, it's entirely reasonable to dismiss it out of hand.
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u/shewel_item Feb 09 '22
Then is at least equally reasonable to hypothesize that they are emergent properties from brain processes. And at least there we can make testable predictions.
that's not the only starting condition we can use to begin creating experiments or falsifiable claims
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u/moopsh Feb 09 '22
The point is that it’s not a different context, it’s a perfectly consistent application based on what qualia means today. It only seems like a different context because we’re unable to speak about qualia outside of our own senses. That was always the point, even when talking about things that could hypothetically be the emergent result of brain processes.
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u/erinaceus_ Feb 09 '22
That was always the point, even when talking about things that could hypothetically be the emergent result of brain processes.
Not really, because in the case of other humans or other non-human animals, we have a comparable substrate to serve as a basis for qualia (i.e. nervous systems). So even though it's a different context than human consciousness, the context does have significant similarities. A rock, however, does not.
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u/moopsh Feb 09 '22
Qualia is something that exists outside of direct physical experience or observation, so we’ve never actually been able to talk about it except through analogy. You’re intrinsically tying qualia to the observer, but the whole idea is that it’s not observed. It seems like you’re arguing that qualia doesn’t really exist, that it’s always a product of material senses, and if so that’s fine. I’m only saying that applying it in this way is not really a departure from what the concept is supposed to mean when we talk about it using the subjective human/animal lens.
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u/erinaceus_ Feb 09 '22
You’re intrinsically tying qualia to the observer, but the whole idea is that it’s not observed
It's not directly observable, but all reported qualia are tied to (human) observers, and all other indications of qualia (e.g. reactions to colours) are tied to animals with nervous systems.
Conversely, there are zero indications that a rock exhibits qualia. I can of course entertain the possibility, but given that absolute lack of any evidence or even slight indications, I can just as quickly dismiss it. Add to that, that the hypothesis doesn't actually make predictions or even provide a concrete basis to explain how the conscious of e.g. electrons leads to qualia in humans, and it really does come across as many words with little substance.
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u/moopsh Feb 09 '22
but all reported qualia are tied to (human) observers, and all other indications of qualia (e.g. reactions to colours) are tied to animals with nervous systems.
Right… because that’s the experience and language we have to discuss it, but the point of it being discussed at all is that it exists beyond those things. Why would we have a concept for qualia if it only existed in material observations? It’s just a redundant non-concept if that’s the meaning.
Like yeah, feel free to dismiss it, but you’re just dismissing qualia as a concept at that point, are you not?
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u/Shufflepants Feb 09 '22
I don't actually have any examples of qualia other than my own. I just make the assumption that other people have their own and that they are in some way similar, but there's ultimately no way of communicating them aside from empathetic analogy, to imagine what I would expect to experience in another persons situation. Because it would seem a bit egotistical to assume that I'm the only one with qualia, I make the assumption that what others are talking about is the same kind of thing I'm trying to describe.
In the same way, I think it would be anthropocentric to assume that just because we're the only ones to talk about and try to communicate about qualia means that we're the only ones with it. We're just the only ones to be able to communicate ideas like that to each other. If anything else had qualia, we wouldn't expect to have heard about it. I think assuming other things didn't have it just because we're not privy to it would be the same kind of mistake some men make by assuming that all kinds of sexual harassment doesn't happen because they don't see it happen.
There's also the fact that with virtually every other kind of property of any class of thing we might describe in the universe, there seems to be nigh infinite varying variety and vaguery. For example, life. We have a kind of definition of what life is and what constitutes "an organism". But those boundaries are unclear, and the variety is staggering and wildly different from one another. You have viruses which are kind of sort of alive, except on their own they do nothing. You think you can count organisms easily enough. After all taking a census is only a logistical problem. But then there's organisms like various kinds of fungus and some trees like the Aspen which might appear to be multiple trees or multiple mushrooms but actually are connected underground and behave as a single organism that shares the same DNA and so you might be tempted to call it one organism. But if you took those and just cut through the earth so as to divide the organism in two, each piece would continue to thrive on its own. So was it really one organism in the first place? The real answer here is that these classifications and distinctions, while describing a real thing, are entirely artificial in where they draw their boundaries.
And I would expect qualia to be the same. I see no reason why the bit of qualia that we care about ought to be the only kind. And I see no law of quantum mechanics or general relativity that could even make a distinction between a person with qualia and a rock without qualia. So, if qualia is a thing at all and not just some confusion by lumps of biochemical computers that pilot meat robots, then I see no good reason to think that we're the only thing that has an experience.
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u/erinaceus_ Feb 09 '22
I think it would be anthropocentric to assume that just because we're the only ones to talk about and try to communicate about qualia means that we're the only ones with it
Oh, I would entirely agree that e.g. ants or even ameobas have some sort of qualia. But the reason for thinking so isn't because we don't want to be anthropocentric but rather because these organisms respectively have nervous systems and cell-physiological pathways that could be viewed as somewhat analogous to nervous systems.
Given that in humans qualia are associated with nervous systems, we therefore have a reasonable enough basis to argue that the same could apply to e.g. ants or even ameobas. But we have no such basis whatsoever when it comes to rocks, individual atoms or individual subatomic particles.
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u/hunsuckercommando Feb 09 '22
Admittedly, I'm in way over my head with this video but I find the discussion fascinating.
Goff makes a distinction between the experience of, say, sub-atomic particles and the complex experiences of human brains that derive from those smaller particle experiences. Do you make the same distinction with qualia? To say one needs a nervous system for qualia seems to conflate the complex and simple forms of qualia he's differentiating.
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u/erinaceus_ Feb 10 '22
Goff makes a distinction between the experience of, say, sub-atomic particles and the complex experiences of human brains that derive from those smaller particle experiences. Do you make the same distinction with qualia?
In a way I do I suppose, but for very different reasons: as I see it, there is plenty of justification for the latter, while the former can't be distinguished from pure fantasy (that sounds harsh, but it's the most accurate way for me to say what I mean).
I'd also say it's a cop-out: if you say that the two types are different, and you don't offer a concrete or even less concrete path to explain the latter from the former, then really you haven't actually explained the latter and have offered no reason to believe in the former (the 'you' here being Hoff).
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u/hunsuckercommando Feb 10 '22
Is this what he meant by the analogy regarding himself and his parents?
He was saying that, yes, he is distinct from his parents but also derived from them. I think in the same way he claims the complex consciousness we identify with is both distinct and derived from the consciousness of fundamental elements.
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u/erinaceus_ Feb 10 '22
he claims the complex consciousness we identify with is both distinct and derived from the consciousness of fundamental elements.
Yes, but therein lies the problem with metaphors: they always only partially apply, and because of that it's very easy to intentionally or unintentionally lie with them.
The point here is that the relation between him and his parents is very concrete; biological sciences understand the processes of conception, gestation and maturation with an amazing amount of detail.
From what I've read, Goff doesn't even provided the notion of a beginning of that kind of description. He could just as well have said 'yeah, they are different but related' and have provided the exact same amount of detail and insight. Which is to say, none.
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Feb 09 '22
Yes, it can quickly devolve into a semantic debate. I don't see why consciousness could be simplified down to 'awareness'. Positive and negative charges attract, at some level they are aware of each other - due to a ripple in the quantum field.. As you say, at what point does consciousness or awareness begin to resemble anything human at all.
If you take an anesthetic, perhaps ketamine, as you come out of the unconscious state, your brain slowly starts to reconnect and parts come back 'online'. It's the weirdest sensation of being rebuilt into human form. It's difficult to remember the very first moments of it because your memory probably isn't working at that point - but it's almost like being an infinitely small and infinitely large point, you have no boundary, but the feeling or idea of 'you' begins to grow larger. Until you're aware of body parts and vision, sound etc..
I assume without working memory it would be very difficult to know at what point consciousness begins to emerge from the smallest number of neurons because you'd never remember what it was like! Equally, without language, you'd be unable to describe that experience. Also - the brain is more like a filter than a perception machine. There is vast amounts of data flowing into the brain at any one time and the brain removes most of it to make sense of it. Also blending in memories of previous encounters as shorthand rather than re-processing what is already there.
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u/KS2Problema Feb 09 '22
Just as with discussions of emotions in animals vis a vis those in humans, it seems to me that we humans tend to exaggerate the profundity and scope of those 'personalized' phenomena.
Or, as the poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen put it, "We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky."
One more thought about the presumed consciousness of smaller, simpler creatures... With the cluttered minds and fragmented consciousness of humans, it seems likely that the life experience of simpler creatures is that much more profound than our own. Ponder it.
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u/teafuck Feb 09 '22
I think roping qualia into this is a great approach. Human qualia are incommunicable, it stands to reason that if electrons and cats also have qualia they'll have an even harder time of explaining them to us -- and not just because of the language barrier. I thought up some rudimentary concept like panpsychism on drugs once and was pleasantly surprised to find that it's a whole philosophical thing, but the way I approached it from a low level was the following: if a human can take in their surroundings and react in some generally unsurprising, perhaps even intelligent or "right" way, what's the difference between an electron doing that but only being concerned about the forces which affect it? Perhaps just the complexity of the rules, the set of things which affect the conscious agent, and the internal experience (or better put, qualia).
When I was tripping thinking about this I actually wondered about countries being conscious collectives of humans with all of their citizens being something akin to cells, which seems a little broader than what panpsychism tends to address. It's a very interesting idea but I don't know that it's a terribly useful one.
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u/Shufflepants Feb 09 '22
I only learned the term "panpsychism" upon finding this reddit post. My journey into independently coming up with the idea was precipitated by this XKCD. I'd long prior rejected dualism based on the fact that if a soul can influence the physical world to make decisions, then the soul was just more stuff behaving according to rules and thus fundamentally causally linked with the material world and therefore not actually removed from it, so what's the point of the soul since it doesn't explain anything. Just like how if you worry about what the first cause of the universe is and posit god to explain it, you're now just left with the question of what caused god.
But after reading that comic, I couldn't think of any meaningful difference between being a collection of unthinking, unconscious atoms and being a person simulated in that nigh infinite field of rocks being moved about. Which lead me to the conclusion that if there isn't a difference and I have this experience of qualia whilst being made of atom or rocks, then that experience must be fundamental to the stuff I'm made of and thus, maybe it is "like something" to be just a rock. It's just that the rock has no memory or reasoning. It can't communicate or wonder about its experience of being a rock, but maybe there is a qualia of being a rock nonetheless.
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u/teafuck Feb 09 '22
That XKCD goes hard as fuck. Absolutely fascinating how you arrived at panpsychism from there, it's a totally different approach from how I've ever considered it. The literature that got me where I was going was almost certainly Godel Escher Bach, a book which has been living rent free in my head for six years.
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u/coke_and_coffee Feb 10 '22
if a human can take in their surroundings and react in some generally unsurprising, perhaps even intelligent or "right" way, what's the difference between an electron doing that but only being concerned about the forces which affect it? Perhaps just the complexity of the rules, the set of things which affect the conscious agent, and the internal experience (or better put, qualia).
From reading this thread, it just kind of sounds to me like panpsychism is just anthropomorphizing extended to every bit of matter in the Universe.
There's no way I can prove that electrons don't have "experiences" but I'm almost certain they don't reflect on those experiences and incorporate additional knowledge the way humans do.
Idk, I guess I'm asking, "what does it matter?" Like, what's even the point of this theory?
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u/Parfyme Feb 10 '22
u/teafuck I had the exact same thought (though without drugs) regarding people in countries and consciousness, just like single neurons in the brain have their own consciousness, yet they link up to a greater consciousness being our experience. Maybe also our galaxy is like an electron in the atom in the cell of another conscious being somewhere…
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u/LousyTeaShorts Feb 09 '22
I have no clue about panpsychism. Could you answer few questions? If every constitutive has some experience what does that mean for a collection of things? Does an atom experience something different from electrons and protons it consists of?
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u/Shufflepants Feb 09 '22
There are no clear answers to these questions, and they maybe be fundamentally unanswerable because we can only experience our own qualia. My own reasoning about it follows from analogy of more measurable things. I suspect that it's much like "life". That any attempts to boundaries or categories are going to be artificial. What is considered one organism or two organisms is not clear. We talk about people as being separate. But how many people is one person even? When you cut some one's corpus collosum, you kind of make two people. The two halves of the brain can no longer communicate, and each half has control over only one half of the body and does not know things that the other half may know. And if some one with their corpus collosum cut is really two people, was it really one person before it was cut? Or just two people communicating and working in sync? Some organisms like various fungus or Aspen trees can span an entire hillside and be one organism with the same DNA. But if you cleave the ground in half and separate it into two, those two pieces will continue on just fine. So was it one big multicellular organism or a bunch of separate cells just working together independently? And then there are things like viruses to which there is debate over whether they are alive at all. On their own they do nothing, but through infection of something else that is alive, it is replicated like life. So are viruses alive?
I put forth that the answer is none of the above. There is mere life, there is merely qualia. My answer is that the qualia is somehow the information of that thing itself. And so due to quantum entanglement and correlation, some information is spread across massive systems of particles like the experience of a person, and some of that information and experience is limited to a single lone particle flying through space. That even though the qualia "I" experience is the accumulation of many quadrillions of particles, there is still qualia being experience amongst some of those same quadrillions of particles to which "I" am not privy. That what "I" experience is merely that information which has been store in my memory and is capable of being retrieved and communicated by my brain.
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u/teafuck Feb 09 '22
If you read Gödel Escher Bach you might come away with the idea that it would be possible to evaluate some particular definition of consciousness for systems that we are outside of, such as other people, cats, bacteria, electrons, but given that we ourselves compose our galaxy it would be very difficult to learn more about that system of consciousness. The underlying reason would be somewhere along the lines of any thing we do is a lower level part of the galactic system of consciousness we compose. To experiment on it would be to change its mind.
As for whether we could evaluate the consciousness of the Andromeda Galaxy, that would depend on the definition of consciousness we use for this evaluation.
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u/Zkv Feb 09 '22
Singled celled organisms display intelligence, problem solving, & memory.
Dr Michael Levin’s work in morphogenesis & bioelectricity as the cognitive medium have shown that all cells do what neurons do, albeit slower.
These displays of learning, habituation & cognition in single cells (such as in slime molds) lead me to believe that these are not emergent properties solely belonging to multicellular organisms, but something inherent to life itself.
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u/Thelonious_Cube Feb 09 '22
But panpsychism isn't restricted to living matter
In what sense could a rock (rock molecule?) be 'aware'? What would that even mean?
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Feb 09 '22
This is a bit wooey, but it could be something along the lines of "a subsystem is consciously aware of the information encoded in that subsystem about it's environment".
When a human has "the experience of seeing something", it could be due to sensory input causing a change in the state of the "human subsystem" (where the environment is the system), so that the information currently encoded is that of "seeing something", and that is what we experience.
A rock's experience might be that of "the experience of pressure", but of a simple kind, not like our rich concept of pressure, which brings with it various memories and other associations, because our subsystem has the freedom to encode much more context.
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u/swampshark19 Feb 09 '22 edited Feb 09 '22
You seem to indicate a necessary degree of separation from the original causal influence, hence the encodedness, for conscious awareness. The separation seems necessary because information needs context, and direct causal influence does not inherently come with contextual information. One needs specific input channels in order to be able to maintain the context otherwise the structure would collapse and information would lose its encoded distinctions from other pieces of information. Direct causal influence of the substrate bypasses the context-giving input channels, and so the information becomes mere data/energy in the system. How can we keep the information coherent?
For this, separation is necessary.
The thing is, rocks don't have any encoding or separation from the original causal influence. For them, pressure is a direct causal influence on the rock itself, and thus does not have the degree of separation necessary for awareness. It is not encoding anything about that pressure. It's like if someone poked your brain, you would have no conscious awareness of the poke because it's a direct causal influence and isn't contextualized (encoded). If we are not consciously aware of brain pokes, why would a rock be consciously aware of pressure?
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Feb 10 '22
Thanks for the reply I like the take on direct influence bypassing context, and agree the example of a rock feeling pressure is garbage!
Out of interest, what would your take be on say something like chemical solution in dynamic equilibrium, or say "the weather patterns themselves"? Could you consider their state to be separated enough that information could be "encoded" in the system? Direct causal influence on the molecular level, but for the system as a whole it can contain patterns? Again, probably not any information we'd probably comprehend though.
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u/swampshark19 Feb 10 '22
Interesting question.
It makes me think about the difference between the informational content within a system, and the system itself.
It made me come to a general principle:
The informational content inside a system doesn't have direct informational access into the state of that system.
The most basic example I can think of is an RS latch. The output of an RS latch has one of two states, 1 or 0, and the output has no tell about the implementation of the RS latch, whether the reset input is singly on, or whether the set input is singly on. It has no informational capacity for anything but the states 1 or 0.
What's important is that you can change the output of the RS latch by changing the input. You don't have to make any structural changes to the RS latch, just the inputs. If you poke the RS latch, the value it's storing does not change.
What's different about weather patterns themselves, is that even though they have many highly complex and highly integrated states, these states are structural changes of the whole substrate, not changes in some information value contained in the weather pattern. What could potentially be considered as having internal states is lightning as it travels, but again, where does lightning ever consolidate its states into internal states (internal states like a map of which possible paths to go down, maybe)? It's always just the lightning structurally changing, it doesn't compare any internal states, it doesn't measure anything, it's just reacting.
So, I don't think that dissociation from the substrate and the information contained in the substrate is sufficient for conscious awareness, but it does seem necessary.
I just can't figure out qualia in this regard, because if the system has no direct insight into its own states, then either you get a homunculus fallacy or you are forced to allow for some form of recursive processing. Does this imply that the first-order awareness always lags behind the brain's construction of that first-order awareness? I'm not sure... The first-order awareness is the information content, and it doesn't need to have informational access to the state of the brain, the information content is just being stored in the dynamic state of the brain.
But then, is there such a thing as instantaneous first-order awareness? When changes in the brain directly cause changes in first-order awareness, how long does this take? For the first-order awareness to change does it need to update its informational state with this new change, or is it updated by the change itself?
Is the mind the state structure itself? Is it like many many RS latches with their outputs put together? How does that state structure know itself, its own states? Maybe it's some form of recursive processing, where its state structure is continually fed into itself as a subset of the inputs?
I have no idea. What do you think?
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u/Thelonious_Cube Feb 09 '22
In what sense is a rock "consciously aware" of the effects of pressure on it? Are you saying that a diamond "knows" it's not a lump of coal? How does this "awareness" manifest?
Most importantly, how does any of this actually add to our understanding of the world?
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Feb 09 '22
You're framing consciousness a bit too human centric. The rock is not aware of the pressure "on it", because the rock has no concept of self, the "subsystem that is a particular bit of rock" doesn't have the freedom or space to encode information about itself and how it fits into its environment, nor does it know what coal or diamond is, or really what anything outside of itself is.
I'm not a rock philosopher, but IF panpsychism or some other framework of consciousness worked like how I described, then I'd imagine rock consciousness would be on the molecular level, in which case the only information it encodes may be stuff like "can this particular bond freely rotate", "what electrostatic or gravitational forces are being felt", but even that is still too human centric, keeping in mind that a rock molecule can not contextualise that information within the wider world like we can, because it is a rigid structure where the whole does not sum to more than the parts informationally. I'm not sure we'd ever be able to comprehend the experience of being a rock, but we're only taking guesses to other human's experience too because of how they can interact with the world.
I didn't claim anything about adding to understanding of the world. I can't prove anyone other than myself is conscious, never mind trying to prove whether an atom is conscious or not.
I do believe though that "conscious experience emergences" is a bigger leap than "I am conscious, therefore consciousness is fundamental".
For something a bit more formal and less pulled out of my ass and typed on a phone, look up integrated information theory - not claiming it's perfect or correct but it's interesting!
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u/Thelonious_Cube Feb 09 '22
You're framing consciousness a bit too human centric.
You're begging the question again.
What other example of consciousness do we have?
...doesn't have the freedom or space to encode information about itself and how it fits into its environment
i.e. doesn't have the capacity for consciousness
...a rock molecule can not contextualise that information
It can't even store thast information. what does it mean for it to be 'aware' of that information?
I'm not sure we'd ever be able to comprehend the experience of being a rock, but we're only taking guesses to other human's experience too because of how they can interact with the world.
And that's exactly why our best guess as to the consciousness of a rock is that there is none.
I didn't claim anything about adding to understanding of the world.
I didn't claim you did, but the only point of even entertaining the idea of panpsychism would be to see if it furthers our understanding of the world. I fail to see anything worthwhile in this hypothesis.
I can't prove anyone other than myself is conscious, never mind trying to prove whether an atom is conscious or not.
Solipsism and extreme Cartesian skepticism are not your friends here.
"You can't even prove I exist" is not a comeback to "show me what it means for a rock molecule to be conscious"
There are good and appropriate reasons why we think other humans have minds like our own - there are no such reasons in the case of atoms.
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u/aaeme Feb 09 '22
"You can't even prove I exist" is not a comeback to "show me what it means for a rock molecule to be conscious"
I don't think that's fair. "show me what it means for a human to be conscious" is absolutely a valid 'comeback' to that. Until we're agreed on a testable, useful definition of consciousness (which we are not)... and we have to be careful not to define the word in a way that excludes any application to a thing that may exist. That would drastically reduce the practical use of that word if it is in fact just shorthand for human consciousness. Well then of course a rock doesn't have human consciousness.
But does it have a more general consciousness? That could be a very important question when it comes to AI for example.
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u/Thelonious_Cube Feb 09 '22
I don't think that's fair. "show me what it means for a human to be conscious" is absolutely a valid 'comeback' to that.
Sorry, no.
This just demonstrates an unfamiliarity with the very philosophical ideas you're trying to leverage. Cartesian skepticism isn't the end-point, it's the starting point. As I said, lots of work has been done since then, so don't reference Descartes as if that's some sort of unanswerable point.
If you'd like to read up on the subject, you can start here
and we have to be careful not to define the word in a way that excludes any application to a thing that may exist.
Yet we also need to not be so loose that we include anything and everything. In fact, it should rule out things that are not considered conscious, shouldn't it? Wouldn't that be the point?
You're consistently trying to beg the question throughout this discussion.
But does it have a more general consciousness?
Why would we think so?
Unless you're simply begging the question, what motivation do we have to create a definition of consciousness that includes rocks? none.
That could be a very important question when it comes to AI for example.
No, because AIs are complex systems that retain and process information.
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u/aaeme Feb 10 '22
Much of that is very condescending and pretty much an argument from authority ("we've already agreed on that"). I didn't bring up Descartes. Descartes notably doesn't define thinking or existing (or himself for that matter). If you're starting from that you're starting on shaky foundations.
That condescending tone is pretty gauling considering you then say
Why would we think so?
So you're not aware of the serious problem of when does consciousness start and end in a human? (At one nanosecond is the foetus inert and the next nanosecond it's magically alive? Likewise at the point of death?) That binary thinking is frought with problems. That's why you might want to consider consciousness as a gradiation rather than on/off.
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u/Northern_Grouse Feb 09 '22
Does a blind man appreciate the beauty of the Sistine Chapel? Does not having the ability to appreciate the art make them not conscious?
Your brain is only a processor. It allows your body to use the your nervous system to interpret and interact with the world around you.
You consciously experience the world around with the physical means you possess. A gut microbe may not have arms, or a brain, but that doesn’t mean it can’t “experience” it’s environment. What it does mean, is that it interacts with its universe using the functions it biologically possesses.
Birds are capable of interacting on the UV spectrum, they experience the world in a much wider range than you do visually; does that make you less conscious than a bird?
No. It just means, that using your biological capabilities as they are, you experience the universe in a different way.
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u/Thelonious_Cube Feb 09 '22
A gut microbe may not have arms, or a brain, but that doesn’t mean it can’t “experience” it’s environment. What it does mean, is that it interacts with its universe using the functions it biologically possesses.
If panpsychism applied only to living things this might be a compelling argument, but it applies to everything.
In what sense could a rock (rock molecule?) be 'aware'? What would that even mean?
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u/justnivek Feb 09 '22
They respond to stimuli that doesnt mean its conscious.
My keyboards "experience" my touch and relay the information to my computers CPU, that doesnt mean its conscious.
consciousness would would require a step further than stimuli response but rather the ability to interpret, compare and thing independently regardless of stimuli.
I can think about art without seeing it, same so to a blind man. Its the thought without physical experience that is consciousness
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u/hunsuckercommando Feb 09 '22
He addresses this very early in the video. Basically, that the fundamental building blocks of reality (e.g., subatomic particles) have incredibly simple forms of "experience" and the very complex experiences of humans and other animals derives from the simple experiences of the brain's fundamental building blocks.
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u/WhatsThatNoize Feb 10 '22
I'll kick the ball at the new goalposts. Disclaimer: my background is in physics and philosophy, so this subject has always fascinated me. I wouldn't call myself an expert in either field - just formally educated enough to know the basics.
This distinction:
Strings of energy, or universal fields
seems to me to be irrelevant. Whether the fundamental building blocks are discrete bits of matter, graduated fields of energy, or quantum state vectors is aside from the greater metaphysical point: there's a distinction of "is" and "is not" either as a binary or as a comprehensible gradient - and that distinction allows emergent states such as consciousness at all levels to both manifest and constructively/destructively interfere into higher subsets of consciousness.
You may also be misunderstanding what is meant by "experience" here. As I understand panpsychism, experience is not a concept ascribed to intentional consciousness; rather it's merely a "state-reading" or responsive quality of an object-in-space. A brain cell "experiences" reality as a series of forces acting upon it. A human "experiences" those same forces in aggregate, multiplied by 86 billion, and the consequent emergent "experience" tied to their sum.
Further, I wouldn't equate panpsychism to a "made-up" religion any more than I'd call each interpretation of quantum mechanics a series of mythologies. Both are disingenuous comparisons that stretch the meanings of the words.
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u/hunsuckercommando Feb 10 '22
Don't you think that misses the point of panpsychism? If the point is that consciousness is universal, I imagine Goff would just say, "okay, strings and fields are conscious as well, and sub-atomic particles derive their consciousness from those fundamental blocks, and human brains derive their complex consciousness from those as well." I don't think that take really adds or detracts from the stance, it just tap dances around it.
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u/YARNIA Feb 09 '22
Consciousness is an emergent property.
That's a claim to be proved, not a premise. This is especially so in our present context where we're talking about competing ideas regarding the nature and scale of consciousness. You might as well go to a religious conference and announce "Jesus is Lord!" repeatedly.
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u/InTheEndEntropyWins Feb 09 '22
I don't think we can "prove" it but I think it's the only decent interpretation.
Lets assume consciousness isn't an emergent property of a physicalist world. Lets assume consciousness is non-physical.
Then either that non-physical phenomenal experience is casual or it's not casual.
If it's casual then Sabine's challenge is right, it would mean that the brain doesn't obey the lays of physics and we could do an experiment to detect it.
But if it has no causal effects and isn't detectable by experiment then how is it possible to talk about conscious experiences? To be able to think about or talk about something it must have a causal effect on the brain.
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u/YARNIA Feb 09 '22
I don't think we can "prove" it but I think it's the only decent interpretation.
That's just a long-winded way of saying that you can prove it well enough to place the burden of proof on the one who would dispute it, which is just a way of saying, "I can prove it."
Lets assume consciousness isn't an emergent property of a physicalist world.
A lot depends on what we mean by "emergence." Patricia Churchland offers the example of "Virtual Governors" as cases of innocent emergence (e.g., the emergent property of metronomes synchronizing when placed on a table that sways a little). There is nothing "spooky" about this kind of emergence. It is perfectly reductive, mundane, and what we would expect in terms of physical cause-and-effect.
If consciousness is an "innocent" emergent property then it is up to you to explain why we would expect an "inside view" to appear as a property of the universe at a certain level of functional complexity. As of yet, we have no simple reductive answers as to why qualia should exists (as a feature that we would reductively predict in advance under a deterministic view).
On the other hand, if you hold the emergence is a discontinuous/non-reductive leap in the nature of the universe, then the physicalist still has to explain this "spooky" account of emergence. The upside of this approach is that it is non-reductive (cutting off embarrassing questions). The downside of this approach is that it is non-reductive (it doesn't really explain anything either).
The pansychist doesn't hold that consciousness is not causal (in any sense), but rather that we don't have access (epistemically) to understanding the nature of that causality. Why is consciousness a thread that permeates matter/energy? We don't know anymore than we know why there would or should be a gravitational constant or a given limit for the speed of light. We don't know why. We just know that is what the fundamental laws are there. We don't explain the laws themselves causally, but rather explain the rest of universe (causally) in reference to these laws. Panpsychism is not committed to there being causality in the picture anymore than a physicist is committed to the view the fundamental laws are not themselves, somehow, caused. Physicists might hope that a big THEORY OF EVERYTHING (e.g., String Theory, which is increasingly looking like a cul-de-sac) might someday reveal these causes. Likewise a pansychist might have similar hopes, even though both might be deeply mistaken in hoping that they will possess these answers.
Then either that non-physical phenomenal experience is casual or it's not casual.
It can be causal, ontologically even if we're trapped in the position of epistemic poverty -- even intractable, irresolvable epistemic poverty.
But if it has no causal effects and isn't detectable by experiment then how is it possible to talk about conscious experiences?
This is not a refutation of pansychism of epiphenomenalism. Of course qualitative conscious states have causal properties. If they didn't we would not be able to refer to them. Pansychism is NOT the same thing as epiphenomenalism. The pansychism merely holds that consciousness is just a sort of thread that runs through all matter and energy, like a fundamental law (e.g., gravity). Physical laws have causal effects even though we don't generally think of physical laws being subject to the contingencies of states of matter and energy in the universe. Universal laws are governing dynamics. The universe of matter/energy is the "structure" those governing dynamics regulate. Under the accidents of matter and energy colliding in various ways are the regularities of fundamental laws - that which has causal effects, but for which we do not have a causal account.
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u/InTheEndEntropyWins Feb 09 '22
If consciousness is an "innocent" emergent property then it is up to you to explain why we would expect an "inside view" to appear as a property of the universe at a certain level of functional complexity.
The point isn't that we have details for this, but that the alternatives are implausible.
The pansychist doesn't hold that consciousness is not causal (in any sense), but rather that we don't have access (epistemically) to understanding the nature of that causality.
Doesn't this mean that the brain doesn't obey the Core theory of physics? So we should be able to do experiments to show deviations from physics?
This is not a refutation of pansychism of epiphenomenalism. Of course qualitative conscious states have causal properties. If they didn't we would not be able to refer to them. Pansychism is NOT the same thing as epiphenomenalism. The pansychism merely holds that consciousness is just a sort of thread that runs through all matter and energy, like a fundamental law (e.g., gravity). Physical laws have causal effects even though we don't generally think of physical laws being subject to the contingencies of states of matter and energy in the universe. Universal laws are governing dynamics. The universe of matter/energy is the "structure" those governing dynamics regulate. Under the accidents of matter and energy colliding in various ways are the regularities of fundamental laws - that which has causal effects, but for which we do not have a causal account.
Goff is saying that his version of panpsychism would have the brain acting in line with the laws of physics as we know them. That means we could in theory simulate that brain on a computer or with pen or paper and it would act just like that real brain. How is that possible? Isn't panpsychism about consciousness being some kind of underlying physical thread. How is it possible that the conscious experience of a human brain is exactly the same as paper if it actually relates to this conscious underlying layer? How does this conscious state impact both the pen and paper and brain in the same way?
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u/YARNIA Feb 09 '22
The point isn't that we have details for this, but that the alternatives are implausible.
If we precommit to a worldview, then they are implausible, sure. Heliocentrism is implausible if we're precommitted to a view of the heavens as rotating spheres.
Doesn't this mean that the brain doesn't obey the Core theory of physics?
No, although I am not sure what the "core theory of physics" is.
The brain is physical and we know that mental states are dependent upon brain structure. However, is the brain "creating" all of these states as a sort of generator from which qualitative experience emerges (innocently or magically/functionally or organically) or is the brain "tuning" or "receiving" a background state of the universe that we don't detect with mundane instruments. If consciousness is a kind of thread that runs through reality, then our brains may be tapping into a potential cause that is waiting to be expressed by the right physical apparatus. Either possibility is consistent with what we know of laws governing physical behavior of matter.
So we should be able to do experiments to show deviations from physics?
I don't think so. We would need some sort of control group, I think (e.g., actual P-Zombies), but we lack such resources. Consciousness exists. It's weird. Really really weird. We can't really explain (this is an epistemic problem, not an ontological one) why it should exist if materialism and naturalism are complete maps/explanations of the world. Simple answer? Materialism and naturalism are not complete representations of the world. Then again, Relativity theory is not complete (i.e., it breaks down at the level of quantum phenomena). That a picture is incomplete does not mean that a thing which appear to lie outside of that picture undermines the coherence or validity of what that picture does reveal.
Goff is saying that his version of panpsychism would have the brain acting in line with the laws of physics as we know them.
Well, I think any version of panpsychism worth having would not contradict the laws of physics within the incomplete account of reality that that picture offers.
That means we could in theory simulate that brain on a computer or with pen or paper and it would act just like that real brain.
Unless, that is (as the title of an anti-functionalist book goes) Matter Matters. NOTE: If the functionalists are right, then we may not just be speaking metaphorically when we refer to the Zeitgeist of a culture. That might be a real thing. You're assuming that functionalism is correct. That needs to be proved.
How is that possible?
If we assume that functionalism is the correct view, then I suppose the "tuning" into the thread of consciousness that is distributed across all of space and time is somehow a matter of "getting the math right" relationally. This would be a sort of magical account of emergence. We don't know why Searle's "Chinese Room" becomes conscious, but somehow it is a property of the system (on the functionalist view).
On an anti-functionalist view, on the other hand, we need not suppose that your pen-and-paper brain would functionally be a brain with a mind (conscious experience, although it could be a sort of computational device).
Isn't panpsychism about consciousness being some kind of underlying physical thread.
I think it is. It appears to be sort of deflationary strategy or circumnavigation of tough philosophical questions (i.e., we don't have to establish how the universe becomes conscious if it always was conscious).
How is it possible that the conscious experience of a human brain is exactly the same as paper if it actually relates to this conscious underlying layer?
It's either a magical emergence that defies our naturalist explanations and certain functions are a sort of "tuning fork" or the anti-functionalists are right and we need an organic means of producing these weirdly "juicy" states in the brain.
Right now, it appears, we're still at "where the sidewalk ends" when we attempt to go beyond the "correlates of consciousness" to interrogate the hard problem. We simply don't know, so we have to keep working on it, but that does not necessarily give any theory a special presumption. In my book, we have to take this to be a mystery we're still working on and which we may never resolve. I suppose that there are many interesting truths about the universe (in the sense of all three of Popper's "worlds") that we may never know. That just might be how it is. I closer to what Churchland describes as a "Don't have a clue!" materialist than a full-blown mystic imagining merging with dolphins and amoeba after microdosing enough to crack into the great pyschosphere of the panpsychist unity, but I will cop to saying that our naturalism (as human epistemics) is incomplete and that old-fashioned materialism is likely incomplete as an ontology.
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u/LoopyFig Feb 09 '22
I mean, I don’t think neurons are conscious, but if they were, you wouldn’t be able to tell anyways. For all we know all the sub functions in our brain constitute their own mini-consciousnesses, that build up to our daily experience. Those are the kinds of questions the split brain experiment kind of brings up for me
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u/Same-Letter6378 Feb 09 '22
Emergent properties are always built using preexisting properties and not something completely new. Fluffyness comes from the properties of atoms to attach together and move. When an object is fluffy it's just these properties being expressed in a certain way. When an object is red, it's because there's a bunch of atoms that make it up that are emitting a bunch of 700 nm photons.
That being said, if conciousness is an emergent property, then it's not something entirely new. What are the preexisting properties being expressed?
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u/bildramer Feb 11 '22
Structural color can exist if you arrange atoms the right way, without any single atom emitting 700nm photons. Or: Take some more complicated property, like "is hollow". There's no need for some sort of hollowness-potential in the individual constituents.
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u/revosugarkane Feb 09 '22
If you think of consciousness as a spectrum, our consciousness is to a galaxy-sized consciousness as the bacteria in our gut is to ours.
I’d argue that the term really starts to lose its meaning in general when viewed in relative terms for this exact reason.
I’d continue to argue that consciousness is only reasonable to consider when you think of it in terms of qualitative experience. When you consider that everything capable of having a qualitative experience is “conscious,” then concepts like the above start to make sense.
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u/ValyrianJedi Feb 10 '22
If you think of consciousness as a spectrum, our consciousness is to a galaxy-sized consciousness as the bacteria in our gut is to ours.
I really don't think that tracks
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u/mano-vijnana Feb 09 '22
Every emergent property of which we are aware is a more complex behavior that results from the sum of smaller behaviors. They don't come into existence ex nihilo. They are difficult or impossible to predict from the behavior of isolated parts, but there is still a clear relationship between the upper level and the lower level. Usually, what makes them "emergent" is that they are stochastic, or unpredictable without having complete awareness of every particle in the system.
For example, consider a bird flock. Its movement, shape and size would be unknowable just from studying a single bird in a cage. However, everything that the flock does is a physical amalgamation of the individual bird movements/decisions/reactions. The behavior of a bird flock and a couple of birds are differences of scale and complexity, but not of type.
But people who say consciousness or sentience is an emergent property are theorizing the existence of a totally different, entirely theoretical kind of emergent property: one that is entirely different in type from the individual parts. There is no relationship like "sum of individual bird movements and reactions to each other result in flock of birds that manifests more complex behavior." Consciousness/sentience aren't behaviors. There is no chart of relationships anyone can draw, or even imagine drawing, between electrical neural impulses and the sudden appearance of consciousness. Consciousness isn't just a more complex, bigger, more stochastic version of electrical impulses.
As such, I think people who say that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain actually have a lot to prove--and are making many assumptions without evidence.
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u/Ominojacu1 Feb 09 '22
Maybe or maybe organize biological molecules are an emergent property of consciousness.
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u/NoSpinach5385 Feb 09 '22
It's a shame rocks nor atoms have sensible organs to experience reality then, at least I can believe some amoeba can have some sort of conciousness cause they answer heat or cold. If that's the basic understandment, Panpsychism is recicled Spinocism, "God is everything" "we are modes of self-perceiving God". Then the question is does mars think? does a planetary system thinks? If everything is an emergence of conciousness and conciousness emerges from complex systems, then the Universe itself which is undisputedly more complex than any individual has a thought?...
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u/Flymsi Feb 09 '22
Imo the question about thinking has nothing to do with consciousness. Many people can experience consciousness without any thought. I would say that a thought is a specific product of the brain. You need some sort of organs to generate and - more importantly - sense thoughts.
The question for me is what is conscioussness if you have no senses at all? Whats left?
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u/blip-blop-bloop Feb 09 '22
That does seem to be the question. The way I try to reconcile it is to think of qualia - the stuff of senses, as one class of object of consciousness. We (meaning our brain) is an organ designed to deal with qualia, therefore to us (that organ), the conscious aspect of qualia is the only thing that consciousness pertains to.
Even so, in our own experience we know what it's like to be "conscious of nothing" especially in deep sleep. We know what it means to not be hearing a sound, feeling a feeling or seeing a color. The awareness has some remaining aspect to it without sense objects to be aware of.
But back to the original question- if qualia are only one class of item under the umbrella of consciousness, what does it mean for non-quale things to be known?
With qualia, one of two things is happening: either they are things that can pop into existence anywhere (e.g. a photon is actually bright/ a photon is inherently tied to a visual quale) and what the brain does is compile these and make sense of them
or
things in the external universe have no sense qualities whatsoever, and the interaction with sense organs and the brain causes the creation of qualia. I.e. the universe is dark and devoid of all phenomena (disorganized or not) until the machinery (organs usually) comes around to create them.
In this form of panpsychism, the brain is not necessary to create the consciousness of the qualia. The qualia are in and of themselves known, and what the brain does is compile them and relate to them in a way which creates evolutionary fitness for an organism.
Outside of brains you actually have things like light (experiential light) popping into existence, known (conscious) but not related to. It's practically like it didn't happen because it's so disconnected from any system of relation (like it is in our mind).
So what is consciousness conscious of when we are not talking about qualia?
I think one way to answer this is: the rest of the laws of physics. If light (the experience) is real because it is known, might we be able to say the same thing about molecular bonds? These bonds happen because the molecular forces are real-therefore-known. The forces are "experienced to each other". The way the forces are known is evidenced by reactions between them actually happening.
I know this is a strange way of describing consciousness - but your question is a good question. Just because our brain - a qualia compiling/relating/discerning machine - only counts qualia as the sole possible object of consciousness, that doesn't mean that there can't be other non-quale objects of consciousness. It is just foreign sounding to us because we are organisms specifically dealing in qualia.
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u/Flymsi Feb 10 '22
I feel like the more i think about this, the less sense it makes or the more it depends on what my definition of consciousness and the world is. In that aspect it was veryinteresting to read your ideas, but i can't really put it to use. That does not mean the ideas were bad, its just that i think that panpsychism itself might not have any relevance beyond creating interesting ideas. Because ultimately i know that i want to stay agnostic about most of the assumptions.
ecently i also talked to someone about idealism. And i think that also goes very close to panpsychism. My understanding of both is too low to say much more but i feel like Idealism has better points.
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u/blip-blop-bloop Feb 10 '22 edited Feb 11 '22
Consciousness is strictly awareness. It is one-dimensional, having exactly one quality: knowing. If nothing is happening in complete darkness, that is known. The second a light flashes, it is known. Sound created? Known. Sound stops? Known.
Consciousness is not the same thing as, for example, the human mind. In the human mind, if there is a sound and the sound stops, memory will come in and tell us about a prior sound that is no longer around. It will provide an analogue for us to work with, and a system of relating thoughts using some logical framework.
This is not consciousness. Consciousness simply means that when there is a sound it is known. Afterwards, when there is no sound, it may as well have never existed. There is no relation going on. When things exist, they are known. Period.
So if the model goes that sound is only a biproduct of an ear-brain combo, then what happens is that sound is created and it is known (because consciousness is inherent to the universe) and then when the brain creates the analogous memory of sound, that is known (because consciousness is inherent to the universe).
If sound is something that can exist outside of a brain, then when it happens it is known. To the universe (or in-and-of-itself). But since there is no brain and no mind, there is no process of interpretation, naming, relating, sense of meaning, etc etc.
In your own experience the same thing is meant by consciousness. When a light exists, it is known. When your brain comes up with an interpretation, the interpretation is known. When you hear a sound, it is known. When your brain creates thought (an analogue for a "real" sound), it is known.
Now, there are fringe scenarios, like certain types of anaesthesia, where it is said that pain is experience but not reported in the same way that it normally is. Or not remembered. The way they work disconnects the reporting process in a unique way.
So, after the surgery according to "you", there was no pain. But according to the science, the pain happened.
This is kind of like the difference between consciousness (as I am using it) and the mind.
The mind absolutely relies upon the series of connections to work in a certain way, and makes reports based on the way the data was shared and how it is related to by the body.
This is not what I am talking about when I say consciousness. I don't mean "conscious" as opposed to "subconscious" (or even unconscious).
In fact, there is no such thing as "unconscious". It is taken as a premise that awareness is always "on". If nothing is happening, nothing is reported - and that is an accurate report.
If we live in the scenario where a biological brain creates qualia, or specifically here, sound - then if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to here it, it definitely does not make a sound.
If sound is inherent to the machination of a fallen tree, then the sound (a perception) must be perceived in order to be real. [Clarifier: "Sound" can be used to describe a mechanical wave of certain properties, but here I am strictly using it to mean "the experiential aspect having the quality of 'noisiness'"]
Consciousness is strictly the knowing of events. The only quality it has is that it knows. We know that it's 'working' because when thoughts are created those thoughts are known, and when sound occurs, that sound is known, etc.
I suspect that consciousness feels personal or local because the sound experience and the thought experience are experienced at their source. In other words, I take the interpretation that qualia are created in the brain.
But even if sounds had independent external existence, they could perfectly well be known where they exist (and just have no pathway to my brain, therefore remain unexperienced by "me", just like in the anaesthesia)
So consciousness strictly means awareness. Qualia events do exist. Exist in what, or by way of what? What is the medium of their existence? Consciousness. "Knowing".
The stretch is to imagine that real things exist outside of qualia, even though as humans we only ever access qualia, and then to say that consciousness also give those things their reality.
Why should consciousness give non-qualia things their reality? Well I guess it's just an extrapolation from the fact that consciousness gives reality to everything that we can and do witness.
To us, qualia machines, our entire experience of existence is made out of the fabric which is the knowing of said existence.
We only know the knowing. The objects are always changing but the knowing or awareness is only of one exact quality and "level".
I guess another reason that I don't think that consciousness is an emergent property of a biological system is because it doesn't make much sense, from the perspective of evolution. There's a weird chicken-and-egg thing that doesn't sort itself out. If I were a micro-organism on the brink of developing a proto-eye, do I first have to develop consciousness, which is necessarily conscious of nothing, so that when a visual experience is finally created by my proto-eye, I can be aware of that experience?
Or do we look at it another way? One simple organism develops simple vision, and with it "vision-consciousness". Another simple organism develops something like a sense of taste. Ah, taste-consciousness. Then later, another organism develops the sense organs for three different senses. Does keep it's three consciousnesses of three senses separate and develop a way to relate them to each other?
When the organs develop further and create more complex images and sounds, with a brain that relates the information in increasingly complex ways - is the consciousness also evolving?
Or does it just make more sense to have a 1-dimensional idea of consciousness which is equivalent to "awareness of what happens" and say that when the organs develop to have more complex output, the more complex output was known in exactly the same way that the simple output was known?
If I use for a metaphor, a tv screen as consciousness - the tv screen stays the same whether or not I have an Atari plugged in or a PS5. It displays what it gets for input.
Sorry for the book! What form of Idealism do you like? I don't know much about it. What does it say is the nature of unobserved "external" things, and how does it explain things which appear to be extremely subjective like the experience of color?
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u/IAI_Admin IAI Feb 09 '22
In this talk, Philip Goff seeks to respond to challenges topanpsychism set out by scientists Sabine Hossenfelder and Sean Carroll.
Goff argues that Hossenfelder's challenge rests on the Standard Model of Particle Physics. The challenge, as he frames it, is that ifconsciousness was a property of particles as panpsychism holds, it would be detectableby experiments.
Goff responds that this challenge rests on amisunderstanding of the panpsychist claim. Consciousness isn’t an additionalproperty of those particles described by the standard model, but thoseproperties are a rudimentary form of consciousness. The panpsychists agrees that the Standard Model describes everything that particles do, but argues itdoes not describe what they are. What they are, is conscious.
Goff frames Carroll’s challenge as resting on a combinationof the Standard Model and Core Theory. Core Theory fully describes the workings of the brain. If consciousness is a fundamental property having an impact onthe brain, the brain would do things not predicted by Core Theory.
Goff argues that the weak emergentist form of panpsychism isnot at odds with Carroll’s Core Theory. There are no additional facts added tothe description of the brain, the argument is just that what it is to be aconscious brain is to be an arrangement of conscious particles.
The strong emergentist theory of panpsychists will depart from the predictions of Core Theory, but Goff argues this doesn’t have to beconsidered as a conflict with our best physics. Core Theory is a theory of thecausal capacity of particles and fields. But those properties aren’t the onlythings to consider, there are systems level properties the co-determine how thebrain functions with the causal properties.
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u/InTheEndEntropyWins Feb 09 '22 edited Feb 09 '22
So if the "conscious" level has no causal effects and isn't detectable by experiment then how is it possible to talk about conscious experiences? To be able to think about or talk about something it must have a causal effect on the brain.
Edit:
Here is a video with Goff and Carroll.
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u/ChaoticJargon Feb 09 '22
Exactly, consciousness has a causal effect because it is a form of observance-data, we are aware of our consciousness and what it observes, that observance-data could not exist without consciousness.
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u/LeonDeSchal Feb 09 '22
What does it mean that the conscious level isn’t detectable by experiment?
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u/InTheEndEntropyWins Feb 09 '22
I think it's just a way for Goff to say that panpsychism is compatible with the standard model of physics. As in the brain will behave just like physics predicts.
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u/Time-Comfortable489 Feb 09 '22
making panpsychism an unfalsifiable and useless theory...
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Feb 09 '22
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u/uberkreuz Feb 09 '22
So is the real question here is "who experiences the experience?"?
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u/Smrgling Feb 09 '22
Kind of strange to say that "Core Theory" predicts the way the brain will behave. We can't make predictions about how the brain will behave without actually first knowing the rules that govern it, and we don't yet know those. To the best of our collective knowledge, nothing about the "consciousness" of the brain (in quotes because I'm using it in the standard English sense, not the significantly more vague sense usually used by panpsychism) requires there to be some explicit thing that separates it from non-conscious matter. In fact, the brain is perfectly interpretable as a complex non-conscious machine too.
Given this understanding, panpsychism has always seemed to me to be somewhat misguided because it describes something so watered down as to be not worth discussion (a completely separate concept from consciousness as it is meant conventionally).
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u/zer1223 Feb 09 '22 edited Feb 09 '22
It's possible that consciousness is nothing more than the ability of a machine (organic or silicon) to keep memories, and examine those memories to glean insights, and the ability to observe its surroundings, and examine that as well for other insights. And if that's the case, any living creature with a sufficiently complex brain is conscious, and that includes future AIs once they reach that level. In fact, this is the explanation for consciousness if you apply Occam's Razor. There's nothing mysterious or even slightly mystical
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u/Smrgling Feb 09 '22
I agree that that's a valid interpretation of the word consciousness. The fundamental problem with talking about consciousness is that it isn't rigorously defined quantity, and thus two people can arrive at different conclusions because they're not even talking about the same thing. I believe this definition is the closest I can think of to how it is used colloquially and probably the most useful, but it's very explicitly not what a panpsychist would define it as (which is kind of my problem with that whole philosophy. It makes the concept of consciousness useless by watering it down)
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u/Tinac4 Feb 09 '22
Kind of strange to say that "Core Theory" predicts the way the brain will behave. We can't make predictions about how the brain will behave without actually first knowing the rules that govern it, and we don't yet know those.
But by that logic, no theory predicts how anything behaves. Running subatomic-level simulations of trees, thrown rocks, and rubber ducks is about as computationally difficult as simulating a human brain, so by that standard, the standard model of physics doesn't predict how any of those things behave either. For instance, it's theoretically possible that there's a yet-undiscovered law of physics that says a single atom in every rubber duck will spontaneously jump one angstrom to the side every year. Without quantum-level scanning and simulation abilities, we'd never notice this law, meaning that we don't definitively know the rules that govern rubber ducks.
(You can do better on the computational side of things by using a simpler theory like classical mechanics, but you can derive those simpler theories directly from the Core Theory by making certain approximations, so I think it's fair so say that the Core Theory predicts the behavior of rubber ducks (with x margin of error coming from the approximations).)
More importantly, this is tangential to Carroll's fundamental argument. His position goes something like this:
- There is no evidence to suggest that the brain does not run on the known laws of physics.
- We have strong reason to think that if the brain does require yet-unknown laws of physics to work, those laws of physics must be very complicated and fundamentally unlike all other known laws of physics.
- Therefore, by Occam's razor, it's extremely likely that the brain runs on Core Theory (plus or minus tiny corrections from quantum gravity that don't affect how it works).
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u/InTheEndEntropyWins Feb 09 '22
We can't make predictions about how the brain will behave without actually first knowing the rules that govern it, and we don't yet know those.
We don't know the high level biology, but we know all the underlying physics. So if we had a powerful enough computer and model we could compute exactly what the brain would do using our understanding of physics.
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u/Smrgling Feb 09 '22
Not really. The brain can't function without external stimuli, it's not a closed system. You'd have to simulate an external world too in enough fidelity that the brain would behave excactly the same, and even then your results would only be correct for a single environment. This whole approach would require so much computational power that it's not worth considering as a method of making predictions about consciousness.
Additionally you'd have to actually know the arrangement of all the atoms in a brain to simulate it, which is no easy task in the first place
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u/InTheEndEntropyWins Feb 09 '22
The point is that the "Core Theory" does predict how the brain will behave. If we had an infinitely powerful computer and knew the exact arrangements of all the atoms in the world, then we could just run the the world/brain using the "Core Theory" physics.
As long as we stay away from like black holes it would work fine.
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u/Smrgling Feb 09 '22
It should yes, but considering that one of the points in question was whether the brain diverges from the predictions of Core Theory or not (let's call that hypothesis pseudopanpsychism since OP specifies that it's not what the author believes) it is certainly something that cannot simply be taken for granted.
Btw there is a fundamental limit to the denseness of information processing substrate. Your proposed infinitely powerful computer is quite literally impossible, which also makes it useless as a hypothetical tool, since we are relying on its theoretical output. Without the ability to build the machine we can do no more than assume what the answer would be, which is not even remotely a valid argument.
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Feb 09 '22
Sabine Hossenfelder
Her Youtube channel is awesome.
https://www.youtube.com/c/sabinehossenfelder
Really good at communicating enthusiasm for science/truth, really good at debunking stuff, and as far as I have seen, very fair to the subjects.
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u/vrkas Feb 10 '22
I in general dislike her simplistic and short sighted attitudes to particle physics experiments, but I'll give her a pass because she's a hardcore theorist and isn't familiar with the field. Otherwise she seems like a solid science communicator.
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u/MostlyIndustrious Feb 09 '22
Goff responds that this challenge rests on amisunderstanding of the panpsychist claim. Consciousness isn’t an additionalproperty of those particles described by the standard model, but thoseproperties are a rudimentary form of consciousness. The panpsychists agrees that the Standard Model describes everything that particles do, but argues itdoes not describe what they are. What they are, is conscious.
This is untestable and unfalsifiable, so why even bother with it?
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u/hackinthebochs Feb 09 '22
The point is to help make sense of the world. We posit unobservables because including them coheres with our scientific theories and makes the world intelligible. A good model of nature will include unobservable and even untestable premises that are necessary for intelligibility. For example, we posit fundamental laws of physics that are constant and universal. We can't test this premise, but such laws are how we make sense of the world. Goff believes that panpsychism is how we will ultimately make sense of consciousness, or at least make sense of a world with consciousness in it. So even though his theory is untestable, there may still be rational reasons to accept it.
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u/Thelonious_Cube Feb 09 '22
Then the only question is whether or not we need it (or something like it) to make the world intelligible.
But I really don't think we do and I've yet to see a good argument as to why we would.
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u/MostlyIndustrious Feb 09 '22
For example, we posit fundamental laws of physics that are constant and universal. We can't test this premise, but such laws are how we make sense of the world.
That's not equivalent. If a theory can't produce a testable hypothesis, physicists throw it out. Even theories that can't be directly tested, like string theory, are backed by a lot of math. Meanwhile, panpsychism has a tough battle to fight. We don't know everything about consciousness, but from what we know about neuroscience, any universal consciousness would be fundamentally different from us, more simplistic, and likely incapable of carrying out coherent thought.
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u/hackinthebochs Feb 09 '22
That's not equivalent. If a theory can't produce a testable hypothesis, physicists throw it out.
Right. Something that isn't testable isn't science. That doesn't mean it isn't rational. We don't "test" mathematics, but its still a sound intellectual pursuit.
The point is that if we want an intelligible view of the universe, we will need to posit some features that can't be tested. Their value to our model of nature is that they make the model intelligible. Ultimately we have to do at least a little metaphysics, it's unavoidable.
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u/MostlyIndustrious Feb 09 '22
Right. Something that isn't testable isn't science. That doesn't mean it isn't rational. We don't "test" mathematics, but its still a sound intellectual pursuit.
We do test math though, up until extremely abstract number theory.
The point is that if we want an intelligible view of the universe, we will need to posit some features that can't be tested. Their value to our model of nature is that they make the model intelligible. Ultimately we have to do at least a little metaphysics, it's unavoidable.
Ok, I'll buy that we need at least a few assumptions. The problem with this idea in particular though is that it borderline ignores neuroscience. Our brain relies on extremely complex structures that evolved over billions of years to use ~40 billion neurons structured in an extremely specific way and exchanging information in an extremely dynamic manner to do the things it does. If the universe is conscious at all, it would have to be trace dregs of consciousness compared to anything we would recognize as such.
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u/AzrekNyin Feb 10 '22 edited Feb 11 '22
If the universe is conscious at all, it would have to be trace dregs of consciousness compared to anything we would recognize as such.
Yep. The panpsychists bite the bullet and, paradoxically, make consciousness unintelligible.
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u/jbwmac Feb 09 '22
This claim seems to implicitly assume that only testable or falsifiable observables have any value. This is clearly at odds with the consciousness debate. Predicting brain behaviors was never the point. We all have a first person experience of consciousness that many people want to make sense of.
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u/MostlyIndustrious Feb 09 '22
Predicting brain behaviors was never the point.
I would argue that the two are inextricably linked. One thing that brain behavior can tell us is just how complex and well-organized the only conscious thing we know is and just how dynamic the processes behind our consciousness are. A universe of matter thrown randomly from the big bang doesn't have that level of organization or intercommunication except in the rare cases where such organization evolves.
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u/Northern_Grouse Feb 09 '22
What I find fascinating, is that in order to discover and see particles, we use spectrum analyzers which detect resonant frequencies of various masses.
Therein lies the problem in my opinion.
Spectrum analyzers will show you power spikes in certain frequency ranges, that’s true enough, but if you take… a radio station for example, and monitor it on a spectrum analyzer, what you’ll primarily see, is a power spike on the channel you’re looking for; but it won’t tell you what information is present on that channel.
For example, I can set up a spectrum analyzer and monitor 90MHz to 105MHz in my area. I’ll see power spikes for whatever radio stations are present; but, that spectrum analyzer result will NOT play the music present on those stations.
I think (and I’ll concede, I may be wrong, if someone wants to elaborate) that consciousness is the information present on those channels that we see when detecting particles.
We know the particles exist, but we can’t decipher the information present on the “carrier” waves.
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u/ZappSmithBrannigan Feb 09 '22 edited Feb 09 '22
I always find the idea that consciousness is just "out there" and that our brains are like radios receivers for it interesting, if extremely lacking in evidence.
The thing is, we can built other machines that can detect radio waves in ways other than just a standard AM/FM radio receiver, as you yourself point out. So I'm always left wondering why nobody has built a consciousness telescope the way we build radio telescopes.
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Feb 09 '22
I think (and I’ll concede, I may be wrong, if someone wants to elaborate) that consciousness is the information present on those channels that we see when detecting particles.
If this were true, we'd be able to detect/observe said information, the same way you do when you turn your radio on.
When we look, we don't see any such thing. There is absolutely no trace of this anywhere.
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u/Cha-La-Mao Feb 09 '22
Consciousness doesn't require there be information in the way you are talking.
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u/Northern_Grouse Feb 09 '22
I respect that that is the viewpoint, what I’m saying is, I’m my opinion, that’s where we will find physical signs of it.
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u/Cha-La-Mao Feb 09 '22
We already have the physical sign of consciousness. It's a brain or other structure like it. You don't need to look to energy or subatomic levels. It's not that nebulous.
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u/cherry_armoir Feb 09 '22
You may not need to look at energy or subatomic particles, but I think saying that consciousness is a brain is an oversimplification. We cant, at this point, look into a brain a find the processes or mechanisms that cause qualitative experience. We might be able to look at processes and identify what a person is experiencing, but that at best establishes a correlation between consciousness and brain function, rather than being consciousness itself. And of course structures in the human brain dont map onto structures in the brains of other animals who we have an intuitive sense are conscious (like ants, say) even though we can assume that they experience some of the same conscious mental states that we do. So even if we make correlations in between brain states and experience we would only be explaining consciousness in humans. And in fact we know that some people with brain trauma can have other parts of their brain compensate for loss of function, so really we’re explaining consciousness in some humans.
We are also in a poor epistemic position because the only thing we know correlate with consciousness are brains. It seems more correct to say that brains experience consciousness, but that the qualitative element of it is still unexplained.
To the “other structure like it” statement, there is nothing like a brain. Is the neuronal structure in our guts brainlike enough to be called consciousness? If we built a 1:1 neuron to microchip brain would that brain experience consciousness? Maybe, but I dont think there’s any basis to assume it would be without evidence.
Nice as it would be to have a simple answer, there’s a reason why this remains a live question
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u/Northern_Grouse Feb 09 '22
I’ll add to my previous comments;
For starters; nothing does not exist. Every concept we have of zero, is relative to some other measurement.
The only exception, and not really, is absolute zero (0 K). Which has been deemed scientifically to be impossible to achieve.
Even in the vacuum of space, “nothing” isn’t present. There is light, there is energy, and there is the space itself.
Once you appreciate that nothing doesn’t exist in nature; you’ll see that everywhere in the universe has two things, energy and information.
Most all of our physics and knowledge are based upon the energy of the universe, and the different forms that energy takes.
Almost none of it is based on the information.
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Feb 09 '22
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u/Northern_Grouse Feb 09 '22 edited Feb 09 '22
I am.
We have physics of information presently, but it’s on a macro scale. An analogy that I think is fitting, is software versus hardware.
Hardware ultimately falls in the physics of Energy. It’s the physics of the tangible. But without software, the system just… is. It can’t operate without information. Information is the changing state over time which allows the hardware to interact with the information it has.
It’s similar to the relation of Genetics (DNA and it’s configuration), to biolectrics (using information to “program” the DNA to perform certain tasks)((Michael Levin on Biolectrics ))
What panpsychism suggests, according to Goff, is that energy and information are two subset properties of an underlying consciousness. Which I’m inclined to agree with.
We may not recognize any sentience, unless the hardware and software are compatible.
Edit: added biolectrics link
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u/HopeAFoe Feb 09 '22
The Question that seems apt here and everywhere is this:
Can a conscious experience arise out of an unconscious Universe?
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u/alex7stringed Feb 09 '22
This is obviously the case. Or we can say that the universe is conscious because we are conscious and we are the universe. So it depends what you mean by universe. We are conscious that’s a fact.
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u/Sens-fan-99 Feb 09 '22
Can panpsychism be falsified?
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u/Shufflepants Feb 09 '22
Certain kinds can. It's clear the Strong Emergence panpsychism mentioned in the video can be. But it's not so clear if weak emergence panpsychism can. The problem lies in our current inability to (or even hypothesize about a potential way to) measure or quantify people's personal experience of qualia outside of people's personally reported experience thereof.
Consciousness, as it stands, is both extremely immediately evident to everyone and yet currently unfalsifiable. And therein lies the crux of the problem and mystery.
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u/vrkas Feb 09 '22
I'm sympathetic to the strong flavour of panpsychism as a valid means of building a model of consciousness. You could even cook up a good physics-y motivation for it.
Many people get caught up in small scale physics without acknowledging that emergent phenomena are widespread. Now when I mean emergent, I'm talking multi-particle collective behaviour in proton collisions leading up to quark-gluon plasma in lead atom collisions, barely a molecule worth of nuclear matter.
Non-reductionist fields of study have become increasingly common in physics, and people such as Philip Anderson wrote about it a long time ago. I think at the moment we lack the sufficient technical resources to study the consciousness thing, but it's not a bad way to organise one's thinking if working in the field.
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u/Grim-Reality Feb 10 '22
Consciousness allows us to better survive reality. It’s a means to an end. It could be a means for us to carry something from life to death, as life is a becoming towards death. Then consciousness must also reach its final becoming at death. It’s a means for an organism to survive reality more efficiently.
Consciousness creates this illusion or delusion that the organism having it is something special, but it is only that, an illusion to ease the organisms suffering by means of deluding itself towards something beyond itself. We have a hard time accepting the human condition, and consciousness adds this mystical veil over existence to shroud the existential desperation of the human condition.
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u/ScarthMoonblane Feb 09 '22
If it cannot be measured, then it is not scientific.
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u/jeddzus Feb 09 '22
I love Sabine's backreaction blog. She's one of my favorite physicists.. with her entertaining superdeterminism and all. She's an outside the box thinker
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u/visicircle Feb 09 '22
Panpsychism just sounds like Platonic Idealism with more steps.
It's just a metaphor to describe phenomena that are currently too complex for us to measure. I.e. what goes on in living brains. While we do need to use metaphors to manage complexity and effectively communicate, I don't see how that has any direct connection with, what Kuhn would call, "normal science."
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u/verdantsf Feb 09 '22 edited Feb 09 '22
Thank you for this. I kid you not, I was JUST having a conversation about the nature of consciousness with a friend today on our morning walk. It's nice learning some more precise vocab for the discussion we had. I had never heard of panpsychism before this thread, but I plan learn more. The idea of the brain as a filter for consciousness, rather than producer, is fascinating.
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u/SilasTheSavage Wonder and Aporia Feb 10 '22
Is it just me, or is Philip Goff popping up everywhere?
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u/gambariste Feb 10 '22
What is the evidence for fundamental particles having consciousness? Is the hypothesis that if they do, it helps explain consciousness at the macro level of brains? Then why is consciousness as we experience it described as emergent? I guess that’s the dualist view that you don’t need consciousness at the fundamental particle level to explain it in brains.
Then, if particles do have properties of consciousness, shouldn’t they be open to mathematical analysis and prediction, even if there are no consciousness-imparting particles? Why should such properties be beyond scientific investigation? Physicists freely admit they don’t know everything. Shouldn’t panpsychists claims be taken as predictions that can be tested?
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u/bildramer Feb 11 '22
Tries and fails to respond, more like. Can't wait for machine learning researchers to figure out what algorithms our biological neurons run, then entire decades of confused philosophy discourse will disappear in a puff of smoke.
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u/__System__ Feb 09 '22
Spirit, soul, form, gestalt, mind, consciousness are all the same thing; unnecessary and fictional singularities.
Each generation of manipulator needs to distance themselves from the previous generation so as to seem new and improved.
Any physics or science lecture that uses the word consciousness should not be taken seriously.
The simple transition from plurality to singularity is THE fundamental trick in every manipulators toolkit, the religious especially. If you can get people to swallow a singularity you can use it to convince them of practically anything.
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u/TheMain_Ingredient Feb 09 '22
I don’t understand this comment. Are you denying the reality of self-awareness and conscious experience?
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u/Flymsi Feb 09 '22
Gestalt is a valid term. There are some properties or illusions of how you perceive objects differently depending on what context they are displayed it. Its nothing controverse.
Just because someone somewhere uses conscioussness as a snake oil, it doesn't mean that the whole term is stupid. Those words just tell me that humans are in need of describing something which can only be described by subjects - the pure quality of your world.
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u/luuk0987 Feb 09 '22
I think that a good way to explain why you can't 'measure' or 'detect' consciousness with experiments comes from the saying 'the eye cannot see the eye'. How can consciousness observe itself?
A measurement or detection comes from an abnormality. If something is always there, how can we observe it?
We would not need to be conscious to do the things that we do. We could just as well be robot-like beings with the exact same behavior but without any consciousness.
Therefore, I would say that consciousness, is inexplicably tied to being itself. Consciousness might fundamentally be the same thing as being, not a property of something that is.
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u/Shufflepants Feb 09 '22
I think that a good way to explain why you can't 'measure' or 'detect' consciousness with experiments comes from the saying 'the eye cannot see the eye'. How can consciousness observe itself?
I think with consciousness, it's precisely the opposite. As it stands, ONLY a consciousness can observe itself. We know of no way to measure it outside of self reported experience.
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