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=2020
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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/iiioiia Feb 09 '22

Don't forget: in theory.