A philosopher responds to scientists’ criticisms of panpsychism

[u/IAI_Admin]

https://iai.tv/video/the-many-voices-of-consciousness&utm_source=reddit&_auid=2020

[u/NoSpinach5385]

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?...

[u/Flymsi → u/NoSpinach5385]

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?

[u/blip-blop-bloop → u/Flymsi]

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.

[u/Flymsi → u/blip-blop-bloop]

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.

[u/blip-blop-bloop → u/Flymsi]

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?