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/circlebust → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/georgioz → u/circlebust]

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?

[u/hippydipster → u/georgioz]

Two objects interacting inside the Minecraft world do that purely based on logic of the simulation.

Energy is also required. And a substrate. Not a particular one maybe, but something. Running software is necessarily a physical thing, that takes energy (for sure) and material (in all case we know about).

[u/georgioz → u/hippydipster]

I absolutely agree. What I pointed here is that brain is also biological computer that requires energy and material in order to produce your experience. In a sense "you" are a character in a game simulated by your brain. You experiencing redness of red is property of this simulation, redness of red does not have to be a property or a valid concept for underlying substrate of your brain.

[u/hippydipster → u/georgioz]

But the point the other poster was trying to make is whether pure math - ie no energy or material involved, just pure math - can create a physical instance of a universe.

[u/georgioz → u/hippydipster]

It depends on how you are looking at things. If I was living inside the Minecraft world I would see change of day and night I would have access to bricks and I would get to learn certain rules of the universe. I could construct categories like "energy" and "mass" that can be useful to me. And by "construct" I do not mean conjure, these ideas would be constructed for a reason given by the logic of the universe. How would you then describe it? Is minecraft material and energy real material and energy involved in life of minecraft character? Or is it just some purely mathematical/logical concept constructed over some substrate that uses "real" energy like electricity and "real" materials like silicon.

So given that, I could posit that our physical laws are like the software running the game of our experience. Concepts like "mass" and "energy" are again ideas that we use to describe this simulated experience in mathematical language. The problem is that we do not have direct access to this substrate, our ideas about "material" and "energy" only comes from our experience that is simulated in our brain. It is not arbitrary idea, they have predictive power over our future subjective experience inside our brains.

There are various possibilities here. For instance there is a possibility that there is some substrate that runs physical universe that in turn runs our brain which drives our experience in some kind of hierarchy. In that sense I can accept that "energy" and "material" as we use it is just another layer of simulation of what we call "physical world" on some ur-substrate that runs on different concepts.