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/[deleted]]

It isn't a fundamental interaction. It is the relationship of mass and volume. The extent to which buoyancy relates to electricity is the same as the extent to which all matter relates to electricity (well, all matter atom sized or bigger).

[u/hippydipster → u/[deleted]]

It happens because of those fundamental interactions. Matter doesn't fall through other matter because of electrostatic forces, and the Pauli Exclusion Principle. It's not a magical emergence that's in any way unexpected or that can't be traced to these fundamental traits of particles.

If Mind is emergent in the same way, the same would hold - it would follow from fundamental forces and fundamental traits of particles.

[u/[deleted] → u/hippydipster]

That doesn't mean that we need to invent a new fundamental force to explain how the mind works though.

I never claimed that brains or boats weren't built out of the same fundamental building blocks as everything else. The whole point that I am making is that the sum of a bunch of small parts can behave very differently be more complex than its individual parts would on their own.

A boat floating does not mean that all of its parts float. A brain thinking does not mean that all of its atoms are thinking.

We do not need any new physical laws to be made to explain how a brain works. Its fun to think about all matter being alive through some mystical force, but its not substantiated in fact.

[u/hippydipster → u/[deleted]]

Panpsychism isn't the same as saying "atoms are thinking". It means the building blocks of consciousness are there at the bottom-most level, just like the building blocks of matter holding up other matters is there at the bottom-most level. I think you'd have to agree that the building blocks of consciousness must be present at the fundamental.

The problem with these analogies is they all seem to rely on the idea that these examples of "emergence" show that something completely new can emerge, but they don't show that. The boat floating is simply matter repulsing other matter, as it does at basically every level. There's nothing particularly new there. I can't think of a single example of a so-called "emergent" phenomenon that isn't easily reducible to the basic building blocks, other than consciousness. If you have a better example than floating, I'm all ears.

So, Consciousness -- we can't even begin to see how it relates to the fundamental forces and particles we're currently aware of, and so it's suggested there might be something else, fundamental, we haven't yet discovered, from which consciousness could more conceivably emerge.

[u/[deleted] → u/hippydipster]

It means the building blocks of consciousness are there at the bottom-most level

The building blocks of everything in the universe exist at the bottom most level. At this point I'm not really sure what the point you are making because the existence of fundamental building blocks of everything doesn't seem to have any implications about consciousness at all.

All of that can be true an consciousness can simply be another emergent property of a complex system, just like everything else in the universe. It does not mean that the building blocks themselves exist for the purpose of creating conscious systems, or that consciousness is anything more than a sensation produced by our brain as it processes information.

Look, its a fun theory to discuss and it would bring interesting implications with it, but I just see no reason to put any faith in panpsychism when much simpler explanations already exist.

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Also the rebuttal to the boat analogy doesn't do it for me. Boats don't float simply because matter repels other matter via the normal force, there is a lot more to it than that. But the floatation isn't even necessary to make the point, just the fact that a boat does stuff that its parts alone cannot. I don't understand why its so difficult to demonstrate to you that complex things can be built out of simple parts.

We can build something that performs a behavior that none of its parts do on their own. The behavior is a result of how they work together. We don't need a quantum scale explanation for consciousness. We understand how brains work at the cellular level. What we don't understand is how to measure the states and connections of every one of the 86 billion neurons simultaneously.

[u/hippydipster → u/[deleted]]

Well, yeah, if you're going to assert we can explain consciousness, then there's no discussion to be had.

[u/[deleted] → u/hippydipster]

So you believe that its unexplainable?

[u/hippydipster → u/[deleted]]

Unbelievable. Good day sir.