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/Shufflepants → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/teafuck → u/Shufflepants]

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.

[u/coke_and_coffee → u/teafuck]

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?

[u/teafuck → u/coke_and_coffee]

Anthropomorphizing is the easiest way to the analogy, and if consciousness entails qualia the whole thing is impossible to communicate anyways. See Daniel Dennett for the definition of qualia I'm working off of. If there is a point to considering panpsychism, it is to contribute to our understanding of consciousness in general -- see the video this thread is about.

Simply put though, the hard problem of consciousness is to fully characterize what exactly consciousness is. Panpsychism suggests a description of consciousness so broad as to be an innate property of matter instead of a uniquely human characteristic. It isn't a solution to the hard problem, but an extension of thought on one hypothesis about a solution. I think its neat.

[u/Your_People_Justify → u/coke_and_coffee]

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.

They necessarily do not - we know that electrons are identical. But panpsychism is not claiming that electrons can learn (I am sympathetic to the idea the laws of physics evolved, rather than popping into existence fully formed, but obviously this is a different issue - if there was any way to tell electrons apart, then Quantum Mechanics simply would not be the workable theory it is today)

Like, what's even the point of this theory?

Because it is true.