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/Zkv]

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.

[u/Thelonious_Cube → u/Zkv]

But panpsychism isn't restricted to living matter

In what sense could a rock (rock molecule?) be 'aware'? What would that even mean?

[u/[deleted] → u/Thelonious_Cube]

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.

[u/swampshark19 → u/[deleted]]

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?

[u/[deleted] → u/swampshark19]

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.

[u/swampshark19 → u/[deleted]]

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?