
Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism - plastic_teeth
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-consciousness-pervade-the-universe/
======
dilap
An interesting thought experiment is to imagine an incredibly-detailed
computer simulation of a brain, down to the level of individual cells and
neurotransmitters. (While this is beyond our current capabilities, it is in
principle possible.) Hook the brain up to some decent IO devices, and you’d
have an extremely human-like “AI”. (I’m glossing over some tricky details
like, do you start with a fetus/baby brain and let it grow up, or somehow
clone an existing brain...tricky no doubt, but again, in principle solvable.)

So the question is, this simulated brain, which is behaving very similarly
indeed to a biological brain: does it have consciousness? Does it feel?

On the one hand, you might argue of course not, it’s just a computer;
computers “obviously” don’t have feelings. It’s just bunch of bits. A precise
collection of patterns of electrical charges evolving in time according to
rigid rules.

On the other hand, is our own biological brain any different? We don’t think
of a few cells as having consciousness, but somehow the broader collection
does. Can the biological substrate of the complex arrangements really matter?

Maybe consciousness is like a “soul”, it’s a completely untestable,
untouchable “ghost” that can inhabit anything. So maybe everything really does
feel, in its own way? Maybe my computer _already_ has some form of
consciousness...

~~~
adwn
To build on your thought experiment:

> _So the question is, this simulated brain, which is behaving very similarly
> indeed to a biological brain: does it have consciousness? Does it feel?_

If you answer "yes" to this question, what happens if you split the
computations of that simulated brain over a million people equipped with pen
and paper? Where is its consciousness happening now?

I have yet to hear a satisfying answer from anyone who believes that an AGI
will automatically be conscious. But then again, I have yet to hear a
satisfying explanation of consciousness from _anyone_...

~~~
mannykannot
Ah, Searle's Chinese Room, for which the widely accepted response is the
system reply: the system as a whole, and not one element of it, is conscious.

Consider performing the algorithm of Alpha Go Zero through a million people
equipped with pen and paper. One can hardly argue against this being possible
in principle, but what is playing the game?

This is not proof that AGI will automatically be conscious, or even just that
some sort of conscious machine intelligence is possible, it is merely intended
to suggest that Searle's line of argument does not show its impossibility.

~~~
DonaldFisk
There are two distinct meanings of consciousness being used here: my own
experience of consciousness in me (it's always first person), and the
conclusions people make about consciousness in other people or animals - that
they're conscious because they're like them in important ways. The Chinese
Room argument is confusing because it conflates intelligence (understanding
Chinese) with consciousness (knowing what it's like to understand Chinese).

So I simplified the problem, by replacing the ability to understand Chinese
with the ability to see in colour:
[http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/blog/ChineseRoom.html](http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/blog/ChineseRoom.html)

While the simplified system is able to distinguish colours, how does it have
the first person experience of seeing in colour?

~~~
Faark
I'm not sure I understand what your link has to do with consciousness. Yes,
people experience the world differently. Someone with Tetrachromacy will see
the world different than us, but that hardly invalidates our much less capable
experience. Perception organs differ somewhat between individuals. I'd see
little reason to make a distinction between those organic we are born with and
those humans managed to invent.

So yes, the guy in your room can experience colors by using the sheets (though
in a different and much less capable way than most of us, thus him not wanting
to equate this with our common understanding of experiencing color), and is
color blind without. And I kind of get deaf when plugging my ears, though that
experience is vastly different from someone who never had hearing to begin
with.

That doesn't answer what it is like "seeing red" and "feeling blue". I don't
know what it's like for you. I can only look at your behavior, see it being
similar to mine under the same circumstances and thus assume your internal
state to be similar. Until your behavior tells me it being different... like
someone blind running into a wall or someone approaching a chasm with no signs
of fear.

ps: had to google "feel blue", as it meaning "depressed" isn't really a thing
in my native language. Translating (color based) idioms is actually kind of
telling... it seems only possible directly if both cultures had shared aspects
/ experiences.

So yeah, while conflating consciousness with intelligence doesn't make a lot
of sense to me. But I'm not sure equating it with perception is getting us
anywhere better (hope idiom didn't get lost in translation).

~~~
DonaldFisk
With the exception of our thoughts, pretty much all of our consciousness
experience, i.e. involving qualia, is due to perception.

The person in my room (an achromat) can't experience colours at all, and
they're able to tell you that. Their eyes have no functioning cones. They see
everything in monochrome, so to them, watching a colour movie is how watching
a black and white one is to us. Under low light conditions our cones are
inactive and we see only in monochrome using our rods, just like achromats do.
So people with normal colour vision can experience what it's like to be
achromatic, but achromats can't even imagine what colours are like.

In the room, the person can only tell what colours the papers are by observing
how dark they look when overlaid with the coloured filters (whose colours they
know).

The metaphorical use of colours in the language isn't really important, and as
you point out is dependent on culture.

------
keiferski
Heh, that's a funny coincidence. I was just reading about panpsychism (and
some variations of it) earlier today, specifically this article on forgotten
philosopher James Ward: [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james-
ward/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james-ward/)

It seems really alien to our current mental metaphysical model, but if you
study the subject and analyze the arguments, it's not as absurd as it seems.
It's important to realize that when philosophers use the word "conscious" they
don't generally mean "awake" or "aware" in a human-sense; virtually no one is
positing that a rock is conscious in the same way a human being is.

Perhaps the main reason why panpsychism fell out of favor among philosophers
and philosophers of science in the last century is due to the increased
popularity of positivism and the linguistic turn. I'm not sure if panpsychism
is necessarily a path forward in terms of _describing the universe_ , but I
think it seems promising in terms of a _prescriptive_ use of creating, or
attempting to create, new consciousness with machines.

Further reading:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism)

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/)

~~~
excalibur
> I'm not sure if panpsychism is necessarily a path forward in terms of
> _describing the universe_ , but I think it seems promising in terms of a
> _prescriptive_ use of creating, or attempting to create, new consciousness
> with machines.

If panpsychism is correct, then all of our machines would _already_ be
conscious. Creating new consciousness wouldn't be possible except maybe in the
sense that matter itself can be created under certain conditions. What I think
you're trying to say is that it might be possible to assemble machines in such
a way that a combined "machine consciousness" emerges from the separate low-
level consciousnesses of its components. Which may or may not happen with
every machine anyway, I'm not sure how you would devise an experiment to test
for this.

~~~
keiferski
> If panpsychism is correct, then all of our machines would already be
> conscious. Creating new consciousness wouldn't be possible except maybe in
> the sense that matter itself can be created under certain conditions.

Right. In this case, the goal would be to "increase" the consciousness, rather
than create it.

> What I think you're trying to say is that it might be possible to assemble
> machines in such a way that a combined "machine consciousness" emerges from
> the separate low-level consciousnesses of its components. Which may or may
> not happen with every machine anyway, I'm not sure how you would devise an
> experiment to test for this.

Essentially, yes. I meant that the model of panpsychism might serve as a
useful as a blueprint to create artificial minds from the accumulation of low-
level components, even if it isn't necessarily useful as a scientific model of
the universe.

------
uoaei
Another point to make on panpsychism: how do people who reject the theory
explain hierarchical life? To what level is a human conscious if its component
cells aren't? Are ant colonies "conscious" due to the complexity of the
behavior of the ants? Does that make ants less conscious? To an alien visitor,
ant colonies can be considered single organisms, because they act with intent
toward a specific goal and react to specific stimuli in semi-predictable ways.
Extend this to human nation-states: is the USA "conscious"? It certainly has
motivations, and a drive for self-preservation, and exerts directed will. Even
if the component humans are not explicitly "aware" of the "thoughts" of the
USA, can you disqualify consciousness?

Honestly, to me, this perspective demotes consciousness to obscurity. There's
nothing special about it because it's everywhere. What is interesting is an
explicit awareness and accurate internal model of reality. But this is a
completely separate problem to that of consciousness.

~~~
zackmorris
That's a good point. One things aliens have that we don't is the ability to
merge and divide consciousnesses (like Vulcans do). This has been explored in
science fiction but not so much in the real world. Although some siamese twins
share a consciousness:

[https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/features/the-hogan-twins-
share...](https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/features/the-hogan-twins-share-a-
brain-and-see-out-of-each-others-eyes)

Within the next 10 or 20 years, we'll have the technology to connect brains to
computers, and eventually join brains together and separate them. That will at
least give us a theory of how the basic building blocks of consciousness work,
perhaps along the lines of how people can lose an entire hemisphere of their
brain and still be conscious. Maybe we'll find that only a tiny golfball-sized
portion of the brain is required for consciousness. Maybe something smaller.

For example, the twins obviously have their own personalities, but how much of
that overlaps into a single definition of self? It could be that there are
always two entities. But my gut feeling is that we'll find that consciousness
can merge and divide fairly effortlessly, working like a fractal to retain
full memories from both halves. It will be a strange experience (a bit like
psychedelics) but within a century will be commonplace.

~~~
abjKT26nO8
_> One things aliens have that we don't is the ability to merge and divide
consciousnesses (like Vulcans do)._

We should ask them to teach us. Or maybe they could license their technology
to us for a small price.

------
fsiefken
Read Bernardo Kastrup's, a Dutch computer scientist and philosopher, criticism
on panpsychism:
"[https://www.bernardokastrup.com/p/papers.html](https://www.bernardokastrup.com/p/papers.html)

[https://iai.tv/articles/will-we-ever-understand-
consciousnes...](https://iai.tv/articles/will-we-ever-understand-
consciousness-auid-1288)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/emtud2/bernardo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/emtud2/bernardo_kastrup_on_consciousness_panpsychisms/)

He proposes an alternative answer for the mind-body problem; idealism instead
of materialism
[https://www.bernardokastrup.com/p/papers.html](https://www.bernardokastrup.com/p/papers.html)

~~~
monktastic1
For some reason I enjoy trying to share intuitions for idealism. Let me try to
do so here.

First, notice that it's impossible to prove which metaphysics (materialism,
idealism, solipsism, Last Thursdayism, simulationism...) is correct. Next,
notice that the situation is even worse: you can't even assign _probabilities_
to those possibilities without making assumptions about whatever is "outside"
reality -- which are by definition untestable.

Now, notice the strong urge to throw your hands up and say "since I can't
know, I should just default to the most obvious choice" (which usually ends up
being materialism). Avoid this devious trap! It's keeping something hidden.

Next, notice the one thing you _can_ be sure about: the present sheer fact of
experiencing _something_. Notice the mind's attempts to explain it. If you
introspect carefully enough, you'll discover that _thought_ isn't the most
fundamental capacity you have: "pure consciousness" is. Consciousness takes
the _form_ of thoughts -- as well as all sensory perceptions -- and shapes
itself into the experience you call "me and my life." You discover that
thoughts can no more point at consciousness than a mouse pointer can point at
the vibrant pixels it's made of (but boy, do they keep trying). And yet,
somehow, consciousness can know itself non-dually and im-mediately.

At some point, the intellectual knowledge that you cannot assign probabilities
to metaphysics finally penetrates your core, and there's a mind-shattering
"aha" moment that turns your reality inside-out. Various traditions call this
"awakening." _You_ do not awaken. "Reality" or "consciousness" awakens to
itself, rediscovering its primordial freedom.

Then maybe you go about preaching a philosophy of consciousness-only. Or maybe
you just live the best and most loving life you can, knowing that in an
impossible-to-communicate sense, we are all the one Love appearing as many.

~~~
rjldev
Very nice, your mouse pointer analogy is really good!

~~~
monktastic1
Thank you!

------
jjmorrison
Why so much dislike for this? It's a theory that pushes on some of the
foundational assumptions we make. Maybe it resonates and maybe not. But just
being open to a new set of ideas means we can maybe learn something new and
interesting. Or not and that's fine too. People seem angry that someone else
would talk about an idea they don't currently agree with.

~~~
bitL
Because there are a lot of scientific wackos that are trying to push it to
mainstream without any proof, see e.g. PhDs in congnitive neuroscience with
focus on art and whole conferences organized around such ideas. It looks like
some New Age cult inside science. Whether it's true or not, there is no
methodology how to measure it, putting it outside scientific domain. It's on
the level of simulation hypothesis. The rationale is that consciousness as a
quality exists and is present in universe, so there must be some mechanisms
for consciousness to emerge - if it is another layer or whatever on top of
universe we have no clue. But most proponents of the theory sound like
cultists.

~~~
hosh
There's an assumption that consciousness _must_ be a result of emergent
properties. I am not sure something like that has been definitively proven.

I think there will never be a proof of consciousness that will satisfy the
standards set by scientific experimentation.

~~~
bitL
OK, my use of "emergent" is not appropriate either, it's just difficult to say
anything as I have no clue what is behind it, if it is emergent, if it is an
inherent property of universe, if it is outside universe in some "machine" or
superbeing or whatever. Those are great sci-fi and philosophical topics, not
sure about science itself as we know it right now though.

~~~
hosh
Just saying, what if it is the scientific method itself is what limits what we
can explore with consciousness? There is also an underlying assumption that
the scientific method can explain _everything_ ...

... it is a far cry from the early scientists who considered Nature as an
intelligence one has to trick or seduce into giving up its secrets through the
scientific method. That to hold an objective or skeptical stance was to
_pretend_ that there is such a thing as absolute objectivity.

These days, the modern stance is the default, not the radical stance.

------
karmakaze
I'm trying to be open-minded and make sense of the position.

The first big leap is considering experience to be a continuum from humans
down to inorganic matter. This is stretching the meaning of 'experience'. If I
walk on snow, does it experience deformation, or does it just deform?

The second leap is saying science only tells us what matter does and not "the
intrinsic nature of matter: what matter is, in and of itself." I can't see how
this gets you anywhere, you can say it's anything and it's self-satisfying.

The Hollywood ending really lost me. Let's just sweep this consciousness
problem into a tiny tiny place and call it intrinsic: "So it turns out that
there is a huge hole in our scientific story. The proposal of the panpsychist
is to put consciousness in that hole. Consciousness, for the panpsychist, is
the intrinsic nature of matter."

~~~
Lambdanaut
> The first big leap is considering experience to be a continuum from humans
> down to inorganic matter. This is stretching the meaning of 'experience'. If
> I walk on snow, does it experience deformation, or does it just deform?

This is the part where materialism has the burden of proof to explain a
mechanism for how, suddenly, snow doesn't experience de-formation.

You get it. You've made the logical link of connections from human down to
snow, and you see no mechanism for a sudden loss of the ability to experience.

The rational answer is to say that provided what we know about the universe
right now, it seems that there is nothing that does not have the property of
experience.

The only other rational answer is solipsism because there's no real evidence
that anything other than your self has any experience, but that's no fun and
doesn't have any interesting conclusions.

~~~
jhedwards
I don't get this. I have an experience because I have specialized organs for
delivering _information_ to a central information processing unit which can
evaluate the experience in a way that is _temporally decoupled_ from the event
itself. There is no such mechanism in snow, it doesn't convert "deformation"
into data separately from the physical fact of its deformation.

~~~
Lambdanaut
What you have are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and a few other pieces of earth,
water, and air that are dancing around each other in a very complex way in
order to dance up a very complex experience that has interesting properties
that the snow does not exhibit in its experience of simple deformation.

Your very special organs are nothing but melted snow(water) deforming against
broken up rock(carbon), repeatedly, in beautiful fractal patterns that have
emerged through evolutionary processes over billions of years.

These evolutionary processes that turned Snow into You.

The _information_ is higher order deformation.

~~~
karmakaze
So redefine experience = process? That's all I can parse out of it.

~~~
Lambdanaut
Cool, that's a start. Another implication is that you're a lot older and
you've experienced a lot more than you identify with at the moment in the span
of time identifying as this human system.

I won't give you more than you can chew. Accepting that process=experience is
already a huge paradigm shift.

If you're interested in deeper implications, it's better if you come to them
without anyone handing them over.

------
ajuc
Mu. The definition provided ("consciousness is experience") explains nothing,
you cannot experimentally decide if atoms experience anything, the fact that
they do or don't doesn't change any prediction for how they behave over time.
It's meaningless, like wondering if magic exists but is actively hiding from
us. Paranoia is that way.

> Despite great progress in our scientific understanding of the brain, we
> still don’t have even the beginnings of an explanation of how complex
> electrochemical signaling is somehow able to give rise to the inner
> subjective world of colors, sounds, smells and tastes that each of us knows
> in our own case. There is a deep mystery in understanding how what we know
> about ourselves from the inside fits together with what science tells us
> about matter from the outside.

We can make a very simple robot that reacts to the environment - for example
follows light and learns where the walls are so as not to collide with them in
the future.

It checks all the boxes that simple life does - if you say that a bacteria
experience world then so does that robot. So it is conscious but we know where
it comes from - it comes from the computational power and interactions with
the world it can do. There's no magical spiritualism around it, it's just
nested if-then-elses + memory + feedback. Which btw is as good a definition
for consciousness as any other. When you become unconscious the feedback loop
is interrupted.

> “Of course, you can’t do that. I designed physical science to deal with
> quantities, not qualities.”

"Quantity has a quality of its own". There's no qualities in the universe,
just quantities and we arbitrarily assign labels (qualities) to them.

In the end I think "is X conscious" is as productive a question as "is Pluto a
planet" or "can submarines swim".

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> So it is conscious but we know where it comes from - it comes from the
> computational power and interactions with the world it can do.

How little computational ability is required to define something as conscious?
Even a brick reacts to stimuli, albeit in the same completely predictable (to
our high-powered brains) way that a simple robot does.

~~~
ajuc
My point exactly. Why is Mercury a planet and Pluto isn't? Because we
arbitrarily decided on the threshold. Universe doesn't care, there's nothing
in the laws of physics about Pluto or planets it's just a special case we
focus on.

Let me try another definition:

Consciousness is a feedback loop we can empathize with.

~~~
ajna91
"We" and "empathy" are doing a lot of work in that definition.

~~~
ajuc
At least the arbitrariness is obvious :)

------
kypro
Am I the only one who thinks the consciousness question is really quite easy
to understand and answer?

The illusion of consciousness is obviously beneficial. For example, I could
tell a computer, through the use of sensors, to report that it's in pain when
it's hit. But you wouldn't take it seriously, or care for its suffering,
because it hasn't also declared that it is under the illusion that its
suffering has a kind of physical manifestation in its mind.

The reason we care more about animals today than in the past is because we
finally began to question whether or not they had a similar sense of self as
us - perhaps when we are cruel to animals they don't just know they're in pain
and understand like a computer might that pain is bad, but their brains
actually tell them they are physically feeling a sensation of pain. Similarly,
I presume if an AI ever said it had a similar physical experience of pain to
us then we would considering treating that AI with similar regard to that of a
human.

If I'm correct, then an illusion of consciousness makes complete evolutionary
sense. It's not really consciousness, but a sense of self, and more
importantly, a sense that there are others with a similar sense of self to our
own.

Our consciousness is just our brains saying you're a real thing that thinks
and feels. It's a lie our brain tells us that our pain and the pain of others
is important and worth caring about.

~~~
danharaj
How do you define an illusion without first positing a being that can
experience (hence conscious) an illusion?

What does it mean that consciousness is a 'lie our brain tells us', who are
we? Are you assuming some form of cartesian dualism, or perhaps you are making
a sort of homunculus argument?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument)

~~~
kypro
By illusion I just mean there isn't really a physical pain (sub atomic
elements don't feel pain) but our brains still act as if we experience pain
from the perspective of a self. From this perspective the self is a real
thing, you are a conscious human, not a collection of atoms - you matter more
than your matter.

Let me try this another way... Imagine an identical universe with one
difference - no one is conscious. If I decide to kill in this hypothetical
universe is it wrong? And even if you say yes, is it equally as wrong as in a
universe with conscious beings? This is the explanation for consciousness and
why the illusion is important.

We think we're aware of our senses and in control of our actions, but we know
we're not. We know what we consciously obverse is different from the input we
get from our sensory organs - which is the reason things like optical
illusions exist. We also know that we subconsciously make our decisions a
fraction of second before we're consciously aware of them. In my opinion this
all points towards consciousness being an illusion, rather than an actual
awareness of self.

~~~
SamBam
> but our brains still act as if we experience pain

That's fine for someone else's brain -- I can see it act as if a person is
experiencing pain -- but I know that _I_ experience pain. I'm not just going
through the motions, I experience it.

Again, your argument is a homunculus argument -- that your brain is
lying/whatever for the benefit of something else inside that is experiencing
the "illusion" of consciousness. Again, you can't have an illusion of
consciousness, because an "illusion" requires consciousness.

~~~
kypro
> I know that I experience pain

I accept you perceive pain in the context of a self.

> you can't have an illusion of consciousness, because an "illusion" requires
> consciousness.

I think this might be the core of our disagreement. I don't know why you think
that?

An illusion is just a false perception of reality so it doesn't technically
require consciousness - but I think I know what you're getting at.

Imagine a computer which can "see" its surroundings through a camera.

Why couldn't I program this computer to think it's conscious and to experience
its visual data in the context of a self? That's what I honestly think we're
doing and what you're describing when you talk about consciousness.

I don't know why the experience you're calling consciousness can't just be
explained more easily by your brain processing sensory inputs in the context
of a self. I understand to you this feels like a special thing, but from a
physical perspective I honestly don't know what you're describing that
couldn't be explained as sensory inputs in the context of a self.

Would I be right in thinking you don't believe my example computer is
conscious? And would it help you understand my position if I said I think my
computer might be conscious in a very primitive way?

~~~
someguyorother
That's why you can't be sure that someone else is conscious. If you program
the computer to say it's conscious, that doesn't tell you whether it's
conscious or not, only whether it claims to be conscious.

However, you do know that you, yourself, are conscious. Consciousness proves
its existence every moment by presenting itself to you, by your own pain being
something you can notice.

If you were a computer who was simply programmed to act as if you were
conscious, there would be no subject to the experience. The rest of the world
would think you were conscious, but you would be "dead inside". There would be
nothing it would be like to be you.

So the reason why the experience called consciousness can't just be explained
by the brain processing inputs like a computer is that that gives no theory
for why consciousness feels so immediate to the person who experiences it. It
explains why someone would act as if he were conscious, but not why
consciousness itself would exist the way it shows itself to exist to you every
moment.

------
xtacy
There's an interesting podcast where Philip Goff and Sean Carroll discuss
about various aspects of panpsychism. Sean plays a very good devil's advocate,
so if you enjoy a nice friendly critic of the above ideas, I highly recommend
this episode!

[https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/11/04/71-p...](https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/11/04/71-philip-
goff-on-consciousness-everywhere/)

~~~
russdill
The list of guests on that podcast is just astonishing. From Thorne to Grimes,
MacFarlane to Greene, from wine to robot abuse. Never fails to impress.

------
odyssey7
Is the progression toward the heat death of the universe a result of
innumerable suffering particles steering themselves in ways that minimize
their pain? Should we as humans accelerate the heat death of the universe to
end subatomic suffering?

Or is gravity their preferred route? Being together. Maybe the answer is
funneling all of the universe into black holes.

Diamonds are very stable. Does this mean their particles are very happy? Is
converting your loved one's remains into diamonds the greatest thing you can
do for them, or is this reasoning flawed and is the eternal stasis a bad
thing?

------
crazygringo
Consciousness is obviously a property of the universe _somehow_ , or else
humans couldn't have it in the first place, since we're part of the universe.

I've long assumed it has to be something that appears qualitatively like
magnetism -- no large-scale effects in most materials, but when small-scale
elements of certain types are configured/aligned in certain ways, _presto_ it
appears. And that brains evolved such a configuration because consciousness
must have conferred certain evolutionary benefits.

But it's not clear to me whether that is considered panpsychism, though.
Because it doesn't imply that e.g. rocks have any meaningful level of
"consciousness" any more than most rocks would be considered magnetic.

------
arnoooooo
I think non-duality / advaita makes much more sense than panpsychism, as it
requires less assumptions while remaining compatible with our experience.

Panpsychism seems like a bandaid to solve the hard problem of consciousness,
which non-duality does not suffer from.

~~~
empath75
> Panpsychism seems like a bandaid to solve the hard problem of consciousness

It doesn't even do that, it just pushes it down the stack.

If I ask, why is the sky blue, I don't want to hear "Because it's made of blue
stuff."

Not only is it wrong, it doesn't have any explanatory power at all. Ultimately
if you want to understand why something has a certain property, you want to
know how it arises from the emergent behavior of something more fundamental. A
hurricane isn't made of hurricane bits, and brains aren't made of
consciousness particles.

~~~
mapcars
>If I ask, why is the sky blue, I don't want to hear "Because it's made of
blue stuff."

Well, you are not going far if you hear only what you want to hear. PS sky is
blue because you perceive it as blue.

~~~
skywhopper
You missed the meaning of that idiom entirely. They don’t want to hear
“because it’s made of blue stuff” because it’s wrong and useless, not because
it is distasteful.

~~~
mapcars
I don't think I missed anything, if you already decided what is wrong - this
is not a honest search - you just want to find something which satisfies your
views.

~~~
robbrown451
I think he/she wants something that isn't circular and therefore meaningless.

~~~
mapcars
Again, you put restriction of meaningful answer. But why not beautiful answer?
Or poetic answer? Or funny one? Ultimately you still decided what you want
first and then trying to find what fits.

~~~
robbrown451
"you put restriction of meaningful answer"

I know, pretty crazy of me there. Meanwhile I annoy car dealers by going in
with an expectation of a vehicle that can actually get me from one place to
another, rather than just sit there and amuse me.

------
titzer
It all rests on what your definition of consciousness is.

Philip: > But when I use the word consciousness, I simply mean experience:
pleasure, pain, visual or auditory experience, et cetera.

But that just kicks the can again. What is "experience"? What is pain versus
pleasure?

Ultimately we have to arrive at a reductionist definition that doesn't
reference undefined terms. After many years of thinking about this problem,
here's my best shot:

 _Experience_ is equivalent to state change, e.g. the state change induced in
a thermometer or a radio receiver due to stimuli. _Consciousness_ is
ultimately a system of modeling that is complex enough to have developed a
model of itself, thus "realizing" that the system is separate from the
environment that produces stimuli.

Humans arrived at consciousness through evolving larger and larger brains
whose main goal is to model the environment and behavior of other individuals
in order to predict what will happen next, in order to make plans for
survival.

Panpsychism is then scientific, and perhaps inescapable, if we use these
definitions. But, it doesn't mean that rocks and black holes are conscious.
Only those things that undergo state change in response to stimuli and are
complex enough to have models of themselves. There is no evidence that rocks
have information-processing capabilities at all, and worms' brains are too
small to have a model of themselves, however simplified.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
Panpsychism is interesting but I'm not convinced.

If I can summarise the idea it's answering the question "how can consciousness
arise from unconscious matter (like the human brain)" with "it can't, matter
is already conscious (i.e. it has conscious experience)".

It's a very simple explanation, a very Occamist explanation. But at the same
time it is not _really_ an explanation. It just pushes the question back from
"how can complex matter like the human brain be conscious?" to "how can simple
matter like quarks be conscious?". But panpsychism does not even attempt to
answer the further question- it's simply ignored. That is, panpsychism says
that "matter is conscious" but it doesn't say _why_ matter is conscious, or
what exactly consciousness _is_ after all. It just passes the buck.

So it's not very different than answering the question with "because God
willed it". I mean, that's an answer too. It's a metaphysical answer- but so
what? Panpsychism is not metaphysical but it's not more explanatory than God.
Not until it explains _what_ consciousness is and _why_ quarks have it.

------
wruza
Honestly “consciousness” is not a good term for this phenomenon. It is much
more “observeness”, and here is why. If we suppose that not all things have
such a property, these things can still be complex enough to exhibit the
behavior similar to those who have it. E.g. someone who is me could not have
it, could simply exist and write this message, but “real me” would mot be a
thing. I can imagine other people, but I’m not them. What happens when I die?
There still are other people. Now switch me with any of them and you’ve got a
world without “me”.

The phenomenon is real, as we can detect it with an intelligence and discuss
(otherwise no one would understand me). But it is not necessary, nor provable
that _it_ drives our behavior or _it_ feels and experiences events. It
observes us, we observe it and this observer meta-identifies with a body that
is aware of the idea, like a fixed point in calculus. So (imo) it is not a
physical control, feedback or consciousness, but a symbiosis of physical and
“observing“.

Anyway, I can’t see why we should dismiss it and move on, like some people
suggest. It may be a key to something important about reality.

------
carapace
ORT (Only Read Title)

There's a riddle in the Gospel of Thomas[1]:

"Make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside."

Here's an interpretation: "inside" and "outside" refer to the inner world and
the outer world.

These share some qualities or aspects, both are known only subjectively, and
there's a similarity of form (there are e.g. red triangles in both worlds) and
susceptibility to will (we can move our bodies _and_ we can affect what we
imagine, aka the faculty of imagination. Both of these abilities present the
same problem: what is intention and how does it relate to will to cause
changes in perception?)

Otherwise they are very different. The outer world is made of matter/energy in
various configurations and, while we don't (yet) know what the inner world is
made of, it's obviously very different than matter/energy. Perhaps the main
difference is that you can more-or-less manipulate the contents of imagination
(I'm using the word here as a proxy for the whole of internal world) "at will"
but the contents of the real world obey a physics that dictates that you more-
or-less have to push things with other things to get anything in particular to
happen (please forgive my gross simplification.)

Now consider the _subjective_ experience of an omnipotent, omniscient being.
If you can know and alter the "outer" world just as easily as you can know and
alter the "inner" world, wouldn't they effectively be the same?

In the context of a Gnostic tradition, I think it means that, when one unifies
the self with the Self the "real" world and the "imaginary" world also become
one.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas)

------
_Microft
Sabine Hossenfelder's opinion on pan-psychism and why it can't be true from a
physics standpoint: [https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/electrons-dont-
thi...](https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/electrons-dont-think.html)

------
uoaei
I think there's a lot of homo-exceptionalism in the challenges to this
hypothesis.

What I mean by that is, everyone is incredulous that stones can have the same
experience as humans, but consider it the other way around: humans have
essentially the same experience as stones. Both react to the physical
processes happening at their peripheries in dynamically-consistent ways, i.e.,
computing a quasi-deterministic function. The conclusion then is that since we
are conscious, there's no reason that stones couldn't also be. It's a matter
of degree, encoded in the complexity of that quasi-deterministic function
mentioned above.

The main difference between us and stones is that, in order for our DNA to
have arisen and propagated itself this far, it had to have a strong set of
skills to survive over the history of the universe. It can literally create
lumps of proteins that achieve that goal. For the body of the animal, being
aware of its own history by constructing a self-consistent and closed
narrative arc (the 'I' that we all contend and interact with) obviously has
advantages, since it would be hard to operate in society without pre-defined
and agreed-upon roles, which we assume as our identity.

So the fact that we experience reality as such, with our emotional reactions
and persistent self-narrative, is an evolved trait which helped the human
genome become the dominant life form on Earth.

------
slumdev
This is bad philosophy masked in scientific jargon.

------
Analemma_
Here’s my problem with panpsychism: I don’t understand why it isn’t
immediately self-refuting via Ockham’s razor.

What I mean is, my understanding is that panpsychism posits that all matter
has some degree of consciousness somehow, i.e. even an atom has a little bit,
humans just have a lot more. Fine. But clearly this property isn’t simply
additive: panpsychists don’t argue that a Solar System-sized collection of
ping-pong balls has more conscious experience than a human being. However this
property agglutinates, it has to be something more than just “amount of
matter”; it has to be some function of _which_ matter and how it is arranged.

But that’s just the materialist position! “Matter can make conscious systems
if and only if it’s arranged in a particular way (possibly, but not
necessarily, meaning a way that involves simulating a Turing machine)” is
materialism. At that point, the fundamental quanta of consciousness is an
unnecessary addition to the theory that can be discarded with no difference.

I fully grant that I’m a programmer with very little philosophical background,
but I just don’t get what the panpsychist hypothesis buys us that we didn’t
already have.

~~~
nprateem
> But clearly this property isn’t simply additive: panpsychists don’t argue
> that a Solar System-sized collection of ping-pong balls has more conscious
> experience than a human being

I think the main difficulty of this argument is that consciousness can only be
experienced by the experiencer (mediation/drug-induced experiences aside).
Therefore how can you tell how conscious the Solar System, a horse, mouse,
atom, etc. is if you can't communicate with them to ask?

------
alacer
I tend to think consciousness is universally fundamental and effectively
intrinsic, since all we can know is our experience that requires it. That's
why we can never get behind consciousness, as noted by Max Plank in 1931.
([https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck))

------
cvaidya1986
"The Spirit Atma by which all this universe is pervaded, is indestructible. No
one can destroy the imperishable Spirit."

\- Chapter 2 Yoga of Knowledge Sankhya Yoga Verse 17 48

"There is nothing higher than Me, O Arjun. Everything in the universe is
strung on Me, the Supreme Being Para- Brahma Paramatma, like jewels are strung
on the thread of a necklace."

Chapter 7 Knowledge & Wisdom Verse 07 254

String theory?

searchgita.com

appstore.com/searchgita

------
yannis
Monadology (French: La Monadologie, 1714) which is one of Gottfried Leibniz's
best known works representing his later philosophy has pretty much the same
arguments.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadology)

------
asdfasgasdgasdg
Even the theory's advocate acknowledges in this interview that it's
untestable. There is no way to observe that the world would behave differently
whether or not the theory is true. If that's so, I can't think what point
there is discussing it, except as a mental exercise. If you can't test a
theory, that means it can't affect anything. I.e. it has no practical use,
except as a form of entertainment.

I would almost argue that it doesn't make sense to talk about something being
true or untrue if it cannot be tested nor used to make any predictions. The
whole concept of truth, for me, reflects the extent to which reality conforms
to belief. So if there isn't and will never be a way to test a belief, then
it's neither true nor false.

IMO, this is the type of thinking that gives philosophers a bad rap.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Consider the following: your consciousness, that experience you have of being,
the one that --in the minds of many-- separates you from a computer programmed
to behave like you, cannot exist under your model because it cannot be tested
for. Consider also that this statement is ridiculous, because you clearly do
have an experience of being. What does this tell us?

Empiricism and the scientific method are a philosophy for modelling reality,
and they've undoubtedly done a bang up job of progressing human understanding,
but that model is also incomplete. Think of it like Newtonian gravitation,
another undoubtedly very useful model that, it turns out, is also incomplete.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
I can generally agree that something like consciousness exists, because I seem
to be experiencing it. The test of that fact is ongoing, as I type these
words, and it continues to be true. I suspect, based on the fact that other
people act like me and all also claim to be conscious, that they are having
internal experiences similar to mine, although I can't know for sure.

So I don't agree that consciousness _in general_ can't be tested for. We can
test our own consciousness, and we can use induction to guess that at least
other humans are experiencing something similar.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
But you can't measure it objectively. You can't tell me that other people have
consciousness, you just assume it is true because they seem to be like you.
You have no mechanism for determining the limits of your assumption and indeed
past societies have drawn the line in even narrower constraints than "human".

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
> you just assume it is true because they seem to be like you

A minor, but important point. I don't _assume_ it's true. I just think it is
more likely than not.

I suppose that the philosopher I'm talking about could say the same of their
theory. And I guess that's OK, if all they're claiming is that this is
something that seems likely. My only response to that would be that his
induction is _prima facie_ questionable to me.

------
yummypaint
This hits at a long standing question ive had about how consciousness arises.
Its clear that it results mechanistically (obeying physics) from complex
systems of simple components. The big question in my mind is whether it arises
with a sudden jump (like a phase transition) or if its truly a continuum. I
think mathematics may prove much more useful at disentangling this than the
article implies.

"Erdős and Rényi (1960) showed that for many monotone-increasing properties of
random graphs, graphs of a size slightly less than a certain threshold are
very unlikely to have the property, whereas graphs with a few more graph edges
are almost certain to have it. This is known as a phase transition (Janson et
al. 2000, p. 103)."

------
leroy_masochist
> There is a profound difficulty at the heart of the science of consciousness:
> consciousness is unobservable. You can’t look inside an electron to see
> whether or not it is conscious. But nor can you look inside someone’s head
> and see their feelings and experiences. We know that consciousness exists
> not from observation and experiment but by being conscious.

But can't we measure brain waves with CAT scans? Isn't there research going on
now into observing brain patterns and actually figuring out what the subject
is thinking about in real time?

Perhaps this lines up another distinction between the thinking mind and actual
consciousness.....but I'm not really convinced by the argument that
consciousness is an unobservable black box.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> But can't we measure brain waves with CAT scans? Isn't there research going
> on now into observing brain patterns and actually figuring out what the
> subject is thinking about in real time?

But what does that have to do with consciousness (the experience of being)?
All it shows is that our brains work the same way machines do, which isn't
really a surprise. We can use a logic probe on machines and figure out how
they work too. There is no way to determine if something _experiences_ the
world around it or "merely" is a product of a complex mechanism of reactions
and interactions. That's what is meant by consciousness being unobservable.

------
dvt
> Panpsychism gives us a way of resolving the mystery of consciousness, a way
> that avoids the deep difficulties that plague more conventional options.

Eh, not really. With panpsychism you end up with, e.g. human, consciousness
often becoming an emergent property of complex-enough systems. But in reality,
you might have systems that are quite complicated (say, more complicated than
a brain even) that _aren 't_ conscious. I do think that consciousness is most
likely a "foundational" property of our universe, but the argument that
"everything is conscious" (even to a tiny degree) doesn't seem very useful.

------
javajosh
Oh, it's cool the universe (both laws and initial energy/mass distribution)
provides a mechanism to blow things apart and squish them together on so many
time scales and in so many ways. The universe is so dead and cold overall, but
extraordinarily verdant in places like Earth, a tiny place in a sliver of
time.

I don't think it's consciousness (or some form of entelechy) built into space-
time. It's more like a kind of complexity-seeking at the several interlocking
scales in a gravity well that happens to sit in some ambient heat.

------
m4r35n357
I am more interested in the nature of consciousness than its location . . .
not sure where this idea could lead.

------
DesiLurker
My only concern with the consciousness debate is purely from a self-
preservation PoV. Here is a scenario to elaborate: 1) In fifty years compute
horsepower is enough to be able to fully simulate a brain. 2) population of
earth is 10B and climate change is really making the planet unlivable. 3) we
believe that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon 4) we decide we'll invest
in computronium and just continue our (& other species) lives in cyberspace 5)
civilization opts-in to shed the mortal coil and jump to cyberspace.

now at this point some super advanced quantum computer realizes that wait a
minute, we made some subtle mistake and there does seems to be something else
(perhaps quantum) aspect to consciousness that we missed. so now essentially
we have committed genocide on ourselves. I just want to be really really
really sure that there is nothing else to consciousness before I give in to
the 'emergent consciousness thesis'.

Personally, I like Roger penrose's 'Orchestrated objective reduction' theory
of consciousness where he posits that proto-consciousness is an innate
property of universe due to quantum wavefunction collapse. so essentially
everytime there is a wf collapse its like the system had a conscious moment.
human brain is just an instrument complex enough to 'catch' phenomena and turn
it into a conscious experience. The 'how' part is where it gets murky, there
have been some attempts to link it to microtubules in brain cells but nothing
concrete yet. IMO its worth a serious look from biochemistry point of view.

~~~
cr0sh
> IMO its worth a serious look from biochemistry point of view.

I'm not a scientist, and certainly not a quantum physicist. But from what I
understand, the main argument against this idea (that is, quantum effects
within neurons - or some other biological quantum effect system) is the fact
that as far as we know, such quantum effects cannot occur at any temperature
near "average human body temperature".

If such could be demonstrated, it would upend a massive amount of knowledge in
and around QM/QP.

But then again, dual-slit experiment? Maybe something is there? Again - far
outside my understanding and knowledge, and likely is completely wrong, etc.

It might make a good science-fiction plot for a novel or something, though...

~~~
DesiLurker
>> as far as we know, such quantum effects cannot occur at any temperature

thats the too warm wet & noisy argument generally made. AFAIK it has been
demonstrated that energy transfer in leaves for photosynthesis depends on
quantum effects, so does sense of smell & direction in certain birds IIRC.
there is a section on the wikipedia page for this that addresses this with ref
links:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reducti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction)

my point is rather simple, IF there is any evolutionary advantage to quantum
processes in brain AND these quantum effects are available to ANY exploitable
degree then evolution will favor selection of those mechanisms until they
become pervasive and lose advantage. so its not really surprising that once
the consciousness is aware enough to self reflect, the pace of technological
development accelerated exponentially.

I do agree that it sounds like new-age BS but that will always be the case,
religion with always try to hijack the scientific development but that should
not be a deterrent to a lot more research conducted on this really fascinating
field.

------
aldoushuxley001
It always amazes me how much people refuse the reality of consciousness. Just
goes to show you the mental gymnastics people will use to contort themselves
in order to maintain some semblance of coherency in their world view.

------
snissn
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lfAhup-
fDYs](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lfAhup-fDYs)

Same guy was on Sean Carroll's podcast. His arguments didn't resonate with me
very well.

------
EGreg
What if our ideas about consciousness were an artifact of our language?

Just like our ideas about morality? Where a lot of the time if you are
explicit all the “mystery” goes away?

So when you say an ought statement “A should do B”, what you really mean is “A
should do B if A wants C to happen” which expands to “If A does B and C
doesn’t happen, then any D can’t blame A if D wants to be rational”. It’s a
bit self referential like that.

Ok so now everything suddenly becomes clear and you find you can’t formulate a
single basic question about morality in English that doesn’t have an obvious
answer. “You should do your homework! Unless you don’t care about your
grades.” or “You should be consistent! Unless you don’t care about being
viewed as a hypocrite.”

What if things simply were, and scrupulously including unspoken clauses made
all basic questions about consciousness have obvious answers?

“What is it like to be a bat” is not a well formulated question.

However, try including the subject and object of the sentence all the time.

The bat saw the phenomenon

The bat’s body experienced a feeling

And so on.

Then the question comes down to two things:

1) Identity. That is a mental construct that organisms develop. It can have a
lot of layers, such as how you see yourself, how you choose to express
yourself, etc. But the biggest one is how you identify with the person you
were a few years ago and with who you will be in the future. If you were gonna
go on a vacation for 2 weeks but later not remember anything about it, does it
matter where you go? Do you do things just to make your 80 year old self proud
to remember them? And so on.

2) Existence. Yes actually the word existence has no well-defined meaning
without resorting to conscious observers. Consider the question of whether the
Harry Potter World exists or not. How is it different than not existing or a
made-up work like blabladeblaa? The sentence “the Harry Potter World Really
Exists” has almost no meaning without resorting to consciousness, we are just
used to saying that word. Be thorough and you’ll always invoke yourself and
your conscious awareness.

Now what if life never arose in the universe? In what sense would the universe
exist any more than a Harry Potter world?

So in a way, the concepts of existence of consciousness are duals of each
other!

People often think that the concept of existence is something fundamental. But
it is really a dual of the concept of consciousness.

------
amiune
Give me a precise definition and I'll give you a precise answer. Can you write
that question in mathematical notation? If not then don't expect a precise
answer

------
glr
Panpsychism is also supported by Integrated Information Theory. So far it is
probably the most fruitful attempt to mathematically describe consciousness.

~~~
hackinthebochs
Panpsychism isn't really supported by IIT, at least not any version of
panspychism that is resurging. IIT says the organization determines the level
of consciousness. Panpsychism has no theory for how organization increases or
combines conscious properties of the individual conscious units of matter.

------
snambi
Why does "panPshychism" sound like the idea of "Brahman" from Veda? Is it same
as Brahman? If not, what is the difference?

------
Magodo
Mildly relevant: Peter Watts' novel Blindsight

------
rmah
And to think that I used to have great respect for Scientific American
magazine. This article is the worst sort of pseudo-intellectual tripe. It uses
fancy-schmancy academic language to dress up silly ideas and wordplay. Masking
itself in the facade of reasonableness to make hand-wavy conjecture and
baseless assertions. Moreover, many of the supporting points made by Goff are
simply wrong, betraying his ignorance of our current understanding of nature.
I'm saddened that SA has published this.

~~~
ncmncm
I am too.

Even just publishing it in their forum is destructive for science.

~~~
nprateem
Yes I really wish they wouldn't challenge my conventional idea of materialism.
The last thing we need is another Einstein coming along making us think
differently.

------
tus88
> That’s what panpsychists believe.

Why is it we can't discuss ideas without labeling someone as a -ist of some
kind?

------
arethuza
Isn't this the idea behind Philip Pullman's _His Dark Materials_?

~~~
SamBam
He talks about Dust giving everything consciousness, but I don't recall that
he ever really goes into the details of what that _means_.

------
mnowicki
I believe time is intrinsically linked with our experience of consciousness,
maybe consciousness in general.

Sorry for the armchair philosophy, this is a topic I like to think about.

We know that time is the 4th dimension, all things exist in 4-dimensions and
we just experience one 'slice' of this dimension at a time. The concept of
something having 'not happened yet' really means 'we haven't experienced it
yet' \- it'd be like saying that the house 5 blocks away isn't on fire 'yet',
simply because we haven't walked 5 blocks over and seen it yet. If we were
able to move through time as freely as we move through other dimensions, then
a house that catches on fire 'tomorrow' is really on fire 'now'('now' really
isn't the right word here, but I don't think a better one exists) - we just
have to walk down the street into tomorrow and see it.

In this way, we also exist as infants and as old men and women at the same
time. We experience on infinitesimally small slice of ourselves at a time,
each slice being a moment in time. Why don't we experience this all at once?
Our body IS existing in the past and the future and the now, we are all
tasting our 60th birthday cake right now, but we don't experience it yet.

There are two possibilities: Consciousness is the one thing that exists
outside of time, such that instead of existing throughout our whole lifespan
consistently and experiencing our whole life at once and constantly, we move
through time experiencing one moment at a time, and maybe move into and out of
time via birth/death. If you start thinking about memory this gets very
interesting(as does the other possibility) in so far as memory is represented
by the physical state of your brain and memory stores 'past' events. Basically
implying that for some reason the 4D shape of your brain is such that on the
'future' side of your brain there are neurons arranged in such a way to
describe what the state of your brain is on the 'past' side.

OR, consciousness does exist within 4 dimensions as our bodies do, and we ARE
experiencing our entire lives at once. I don't know about you, but for me it
FEELS like I'm only experiencing this single moment right now. But that
doesn't mean I'm not also experiencing every other moment right now. At this
moment in time, my brain is in a certain state(in terms of neurons and
neurochemicals), that state encodes my memories and feelings that I have at
this moment, personally I think that state encodes all the qualities of my
consciousness, but I know this could be argued. So if I were experiencing all
moments at once, then this moment would feel exactly like it would feel if
this were the only moment I was experiencing. I would also be experiencing
moments in the future, and in those moments this moment would be just a
memory. So how do I know whether I'm experiencing those other moments as well
right now, this current moment clearly feels unique to me and it seems like
the only moment I'm experiencing, but maybe that's how all moments feel. Maybe
there is a different 'me' experiencing every other moment right now, and I
happen to be in this moment typing this message BECAUSE this moment IS the one
where I happen to be sitting here typing this message. The me that's eating my
60th birthday cake is also doing that right now, and not thinking about the
nature of consciousness, but maybe has a vague memory of this moment because
the physical structure of my brain encodes 'previous' brain states as memories
in 'future' brain states for whatever reason.

------
empath75
This is textbook God of the Gaps

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps)

It adds nothing to our understanding of the universe, but it gives some people
a warm and fuzzy feeling.

------
gaius__baltar
Do you remember when this philosophy was called animism?

------
philodelta
Broadening the definition of consciousness to the literal limits seems
pointless, it dilutes the already difficult to manifest definition of
consciousness to complete uselessness.

------
xamuel
This is the exact wrong direction we should take if we want to have any hope
of understanding consciousness. Rather than pass a bong around and declare the
whole universe is conscious, we should question the consciousness even of
entities whose consciousness we currently take for granted. We should ask: is
it really true that all humans are conscious[1], or is there something
specific that triggers consciousness? For example, maybe consciousness is
caused by a certain benevolent bacteria living in our guts, and anyone without
that bacteria isn't conscious. If we refuse to even question these things,
then of course we'll never come up with any answer.

[1] Of course, it goes without saying that for ethical purposes we should act
under the assumption that all humans are conscious.

~~~
darkhorse13
Spoken like the stereotypical materialist.

~~~
xamuel
Was Jesus Christ a materialist? "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own
dead." (Matthew 8:22)

~~~
arnoooooo
Actually, he was, and Abrahamic religions are probably the reason for
materialism in science.

It all starts with the distinction between heaven and the earth, the spirit
and the flesh… Abrahamic religions are fundamentally dualistic, by contrast
with eastern religions like hinduism or buddhism wich have had the concept of
non-duality for long.

My understanding is that the only places you find a form of non-duality in
Abrahamic religions is in their mystical variants.

~~~
xamuel
There's tons of non-duality in Christ's teachings, but it's subtler and
doesn't smash you over the head as much.

"Do not judge, or you will be judged. For with the same judgment you
pronounce, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be
measured to you." (Matthew 7:1-2)

"For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and
mother." (Matthew 12:50)

"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of
Mine, you did for Me." (Matthew 25:40)

~~~
arnoooooo
You could just as well interpret that "dually" though.

------
aabeshou
is it just me or is there something on this website that makes scrolling the
page unusable?

------
phs
I recently finished watching Prof. Patrick Grim's excellent Mind-Body
Philosophy[0] course, which helped me clarify my own position. I thought that
it fit reasonably well under the term "panpsychism", but this article is
making me think it may be something slightly different. Under the expectation
that it has already been studied, I'm now curious what it is named.

In short, I am a computationalist[1]: consciousness is a pattern that may
appear in physical processes. I expect it can be translated into different
physical processes. I think the definitional boundary separating conscious
processes from other processes is subjective, even if there are common
landmarks we generally agree are on one side or the other.

That seems all well and good. However I am not a hard materialist[2]: I do not
believe that physicalism addresses the hard problem of consciousness[3]. I
like to note this by the absence of timelessness in my experience: the present
moment seems to be distinguished from the perceived past and future only
because I am experiencing it. Contrast this to a physical description or model
of myself and my surroundings that seems sound without reference to a specific
"present" moment. To see that such a model does not contain a "now", think
about simulating it: you would need to choose a moment on the timeline to
start, to insert a "now". Physical models don't seem to capture the notion of
"present moment". Attempts to shoe-horn it in (with e.g. consciousness
particles or what have you) seem simultaneously untestable and offensive to
Occam's razor.

Subjective experience then seems to be unaccounted for. I am content saying it
is not found in any model of physical processes, only in the physical
processes themselves. Notice I am no longer talking about consciousness: the
computation and brain state is still susceptible to description. Only the
subjective experience, whose toe we can catch with the present moment,
escapes.

Odd as it might sound, I find it tempting to say that the subjective
experience is not personal. It seems incommunicable, but what I mean is that
there is no aspect of myself in it: that's all over in the computation
(incidentally I am reminded of one of the objections to "Cogito, ergo
sum"[4].)

At this point, the idea of "Atman"[5] is starting to look pretty good (thank
you those who found the Adviata link, I would not have.) However, besides
Prof. Grim's touch on the topic I know nothing about it (haw). My impression
of Atman is that it is ineffable, primitive and pervasive. It does not have a
location because it is not a thing: it is an aspect of reality.

And now we arrive at panpsychism, or at least what I thought panpsychism is.
Subjective experience, but not the computational content that gives rise to
the more visible parts of consciousness, is a fundamental aspect of reality.
Rocks have subjective experience. Rocks are not conscious, unless they include
physical processes we choose to recognize as consciousness. A rock's
subjective experience is a lot like your subjective experience of the IR
spectrum, assuming that you are like me and have no qualia affected by it.

[0]: [https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/mind-body-
philosophy...](https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/mind-body-
philosophy.html) [1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism)
[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness)
[4]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum#Use_of_%22I%2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum#Use_of_%22I%22)
[5]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta)

------
anentropic
no-one knows...

------
Altheasy
Pure nonsense theory

------
Veedrac
Panpsychism is incredibly silly. It's just obfuscated dualism. It literally
doesn't explain _anything_ , and it's obviously wrong for the simple reason
that it gives no way to explain why humans _act on_ their conscious experience
and have it modelled internally _as_ a conscious experience.

The brain's use of electrical pulses or DNA doesn't result in an innate
internal model of electricity or DNA. Similarly, if a proton has ‘experience’,
then clearly ‘experience’ is a property _completely outside_ of the
computation the mind performs, and so we should not have introspective
awareness of it. (Or rather, if we were to, the question of why would be no
easier than the original Hard Problem.)

~~~
keiferski
Panpsychism is often put forth as a solution to the dualism/physicalism
problem. That is...sort of the entire point. To call it obfuscated dualism is
to completely misunderstand the idea, so much so that I have a hard time
believing you've read any material on the topic.

This is covered in the introductory paragraph of the SEP article:

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/)

~~~
Veedrac
Panpsychism is often _claimed_ to be a solution to these things. I've never
actually seen any argument that would defend the thesis.

I say panpsychism is obfuscated dualism because it involves no causal
mechanisms anywhere, and even worse its entire construction rules out there
being any non-convoluted causal mechanism.

I'm not as unread on the topic as you imply. I'm no professional philosopher,
but I've opened a Chalmers PDF on the topic or two.

------
mfritsche
Information is dark matter. Absence of information is dark energy. A shower
thought of mine...

------
Stierlitz
> Does Consciousness Pervade the Universe?

NO!

> Where does consciousness come from?

Emergent properties of a functional brain.

~~~
ryeights
Why such a quick dismissal? We have virtually zero evidence one way or the
other. Calling consciousness an “emergent property” is a cop-out answer. What,
materially, is that property, what physical laws explain it, and by what
mechanism does it emerge from mere electrical impulses?

~~~
Stierlitz
> .. What, materially, is that property ..

Synapses firing ..

> .. what physical laws explain it ..

Physics ..

> .. and by what mechanism does it emerge from mere electrical impulses?

Through the senses and acting on the environment through muscles triggered by
synapses firing.

~~~
mooseburger
Heard of the China brain thought experiment?
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain)

Would such a brain be conscious? Why or why not?

~~~
Stierlitz
> Would such a brain be conscious? Why or why not?

If the brain was stimulated by inputs from the surrounding environment then
YES!

------
visarga
No, consciousness can only appear in self-replicating systems, unless it is
artificially supported (as in AI). Without self-replication there is no
genetic evolution, and without evolution there can be no consciousness.

~~~
plutonorm
Why? Why does evolution have something to do with consciousness?

~~~
visarga
Without evolution there would not be the necessary brain power to ask this
smart question, to begin with.

Evolution is a gradient-free, population based algorithm that optimises the
survival of genes. This is slow learning. On the other hand we have brains and
senses - that is fast adaptation. Both have the same purpose - to support life
and by necessity, self replication.

I think it's a good rule of thumb - where there is consciousness there must be
self replication. That would eliminate theories such as panpsychism and give
consciousness an intrinsic purpose.

