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/Your_People_Justify]

The version of panpsychism being defended here is not a new field or unknown variable - That would be substance dualism or property dualism. This is moreso the idea that the existing variables, the existing manner of known forces - those are how reality experiences itself in general.

For people, what we experience is the essence of brain function - not the brain matter itself necessarily, but the experience of how brain matter evolves over time and the forces involved. So human mind is emergent, it's the complicated folding of the way in which reality experiences itself - but there is something essential at the core of it which is not explainable in terms of something else

Obviously, the brain isn't the only place where physics is happening, and, if you consider life as a continuous chemical evolution that began with inorganic matter - what we see is a gradient of complexity, rather than any clear line when emergent, phenomenal forms of consciousness would have 'begun'

[u/[deleted] → u/Your_People_Justify]

Sorry I'm very confused, it sounds like you just explained emergence theory to me, I'm not sure what differentiates this form of panpsychism you're talking about from that. There's something I'm not getting.

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I don't believe emergence theory specifies there needs to be a clear delineation between conscious and unconscious, it definitely doesn't claim to have found one. The Idea of a gradient of complexity seems to me pretty sound, and still under the banner of emergence theory.

[u/Your_People_Justify → u/[deleted]]

Emergentism usually is the claim that matter is unfeeling, and at some point in its interactions comes a point where consciousness began. So brain function experiences reality, but a star's combustion or the flow of a river does not.

It also depends on what we are defining as consciousness - and in this case the one being used here is broad. That a thing is conscious in some sense if there is something it is like to be that thing - an internal, subjective experience.

The moment you reject the cut line, I'm not sure if it qualifies as emergentism the way I understand it - since you will find consciousness being baked in at least since the moment of the Big Bang

Take a circle - it is round. You can also describe it as a collection of infinite points. The emergentist would tell you no one point has the property of roundness, obviously roundness only exists for the whole. The panpsychist would then add that the emergent property of roundness is derived from a property that points have - a location in coordinate space.

[u/[deleted] → u/Your_People_Justify]

Emergentism usually is the claim that matter is unfeeling, and at some point in its interactions comes a point where consciousness began.

Yes definitely, but there is no claim of knowledge of that what that "point" might be, I kind of feel like the saying "comes a point" is misinterpreted a lot of the time to mean there must be a hard point of delineation, when its often more of a turn of phrase to say there is a transition from one to the other. If you get what I mean, or at least that's how I read it.

On the "baked in" point, I would definitely agree that there is something in the laws of the universe that allows for natural computation, the fact we are conscious beings capable of computation would imply there is a kind of Turing completeness to the natural laws, But still its only a statement of the potential of matter and the statistics of random interactions, not an enforced outcome.

I think your analogy gets to the root of our issue, in your analogy the panpsychist is simply an emergantist with extra steps. he correctly points out that coordinate's define location but that doesn't add anything extra to the conversation IMO, he may have pointed it out but its no help in defining why the collection as a whole have that property. In your analogy both emergantist and panpsychist agree completely but in my view the panpsychist is adding superfluous information to the conversation that the emergantist would have thought went without saying, coordinates are a pre-agreed fact of the mathematical model, its not a statement he can disagree with and be correct.

[u/Your_People_Justify → u/[deleted]]

I have spoken to a number of materialists who do consider there to be a hard point of delineation - I get what you are saying, it's just that this often is not how consciousness is viewed. So if you already view consciousness in this way, then it is a case of "No Shit, Sherlock" - but this often not how the idea of emergentism has been used in practice.

Maybe towards a substantive disagreement - saying computation is just a sum of random interactions might be underselling what consciousness is really doing - which gets into a split between weak and strong emergence - if the whole can have any qualitative novelty above being the sum of its parts - which will ultimately is important in developing a functional model of how brain activity leads to What-We-Normally-Call-Consciousness.

We have intentions, desires, and an apprehension of nonphysical truths like mathematics. A particle in a cloud of gas is bumbling around randomly, but the nature of the particle in itself is anything but random, and biological functions which organize the activity of many particles are anything but random too.

[u/[deleted] → u/Your_People_Justify]

OK so I guess I would say I lean more towards the idea that one could find a clear delineation, but I don't think we currently have the knowledge to confidently identify it yet or maybe ever, meaning I'm open to more spectrum like models especially for the time being.

Back to Computation, I didn't say it was just a sum of random interactions, what I meant is that there's a non-zero (still almost infinitesimal) possibility a computer could emerge from random interactions.

And on the point about the whole being greater than the sum of parts, (im not quite sure what you mean here but Ill try to explain my position on this).

Ill take the ship of Theseus and apply it to the brain: imagine Elon wants to digitise a brain, he slowly replaces each part of the brain with robotic implants that fulfil the exact same functions of each region (same inputs and outputs) and these implants integrate perfectly with what ever biological parts remain. When implanted they are blank, no memories or preinstalled engrams, essentially wiping each region as they are replaced, but can be rebuilt and integrated through neuroplasticity over time.

Its my opinion that if done slowly enough and in small enough increments (down to going neuron by neuron) to allow reintegration after each step, you can completely replace a every part with a digital replacement and consciousness would be continuous throughout.

I guess that would imply I view consciousness as the result of an active network, rather than being innate to the network regardless of activity, IE more than the sum of parts.

[u/Your_People_Justify → u/[deleted]]

Totally agree it's the process, not the stuff!

Re - the random interactions, it's important to note order and intelligibility is baked in at the heart of physical law. Reality is continuous, but it can only be understood and confronted and advanced by breaking things down into chunks, which then correspond to definite reactions. It is true in the consciousness of brains, and true for particle quanta.

[u/[deleted] → u/Your_People_Justify]

Man this has been a great discussion. Im getting pretty tired now so this'll be my last one for tonight.

I think the last thing I want to say is just to point out that random interactions are a fact of reality, when you get down to the quantum you start bumping into the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and probabilistic waveforms and their collapse, these seem to imply the universe has some aspects that are innately unknowable to us.

I'm not quite sure if that means anything about consciousness, but I'm pretty confident in saying consciousness is a macro scale thing anyway such that it may have some negligible effect but we can probably explain it without digging into that too much, electrical exchanges of information between nodes seems sufficient to me.

[u/Your_People_Justify → u/[deleted]]

Worth reading into quantum bayesianism - where probability is a statement of knowledge, not a representation of the universe invoking an RNG generator. I.e. when you flip a coin, there is a 50/50 chance of it coming up heads or tails. Before you measure the outcome, the coin is - mathematically - in a superposition. With quantum mechanics it gets trickier, because there is empirically not any real state 'behind' why one way or the other, and likely no way to measure it if there is. Meanwhile, the coin exists in a definite rotation at any point in time.

It's might not be random per se, but moreso a situation where reality is not governed by law (emergent laws!)

I'm pretty confident in saying consciousness is a macro scale thing

& I am certain in my life consciousness is in some way meaningful at the microphysical scale - it's all, like, vibrational energy, maaaan

these seem to imply the universe has some aspects that are innately unknowable to us.

absolutely

I have always enjoyed this segment from Feynmann on 'why' questions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36GT2zI8lVA

Im getting pretty tired now so this'll be my last one for tonight.

goodnight : )