
Is Matter Conscious? (2017) - bryanrasmussen
http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-matter-conscious
======
cybervegan
The neural network of nematode worms has been modelled in software, and a
robotic avatar has been built for this "mind". It behaves very much like a
real nematode worm.

Real nematode worms appear to be conscious to an extent, in so far as they
forage for food and mates, and retreat from danger or threats. I don't think
we would argue that nematodes have the same level of consciousness as we do.
If the mechanical model also does this, it it conscious too?

We also know that different animals display different levels of consciousness,
in many ways reflected by the amount of brain mass they posess; animals with
far simpler brains appear, by and large, to be less conscious than animals
with larger, more complex brains. We also know that damage to brains alters
the properties of consciousness, as do interference with brain chemistry or
electrical activity. It seems more likely that consciousness is an emergent
property of the _interactions_ between the physical structure of the
brain/nervous system and electrical/chemical messaging.

I think that assuming matter has a special, magical property of
"consciousness" is just re-hashing the unfalsifiable concept of a "soul".

~~~
dhruval
With infinite time and infinite space, you could do all the computations
required for the nematode worm neural network with a pencil and paper rather
than an electronic computer. Would you say that this pencil and paper is now
conscious?

Does the speed of computation cause emergence? How?

Does building a computer out of organic particles cause consciousness? How?

"Emergence" is mostly lazy thinking and lack of understanding the hard problem
of consciousness.

Roger Penrose has some plausible ideas on this, not sure if they are correct,
however to me it seems that they must happen at a sub-neural network level.

~~~
acqq
> you could do all the computations required for the nematode worm neural
> network with a pencil and paper rather than an electronic computer.

Yes.

> Would you say that this pencil and paper is now conscious?

No. But your experiment involves "you with a pencil and a paper" where "you"
is conscious.

> Does building a computer out of organic particles cause consciousness?

It's not necessary to use organic particles. We will probably soon build the
electronic computer which will, from the perspective of the humans
communicating with him, indeed behave "as a conscious person": soon we won't
need you to write the answer you wrote, the computer will be able to make even
better one.

[https://www.amazon.com/Makoroni-REPLACE-SCRIPT-License-
Holde...](https://www.amazon.com/Makoroni-REPLACE-SCRIPT-License-
Holder/dp/B07JVWN5C7)

> "Emergence" is mostly lazy thinking

Calling "emergence" lazy thinking is lazy thinking.

> and lack of understanding

... and lack of understanding of what emergence even means.

Emerging properties are everywhere and they don't have to have anything with
humans or their behavior to be recognized:

[http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/10/18/is-
time-...](http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/10/18/is-time-real/)

"Temperature and pressure didn’t stop being real once we understood them as
emergent properties of an underlying atomic description."

Yes, temperature is an emergent property.

~~~
root_axis
> _We will probably soon build the electronic computer which will, from the
> perspective of the humans communicating with him, indeed behave "as a
> conscious person": soon we won't need you to write the answer you wrote, the
> computer will be able to make even better one._

This is wrong. We are absolutely nowhere near anything even remotely
resembling this.

~~~
acqq
No. We already have a complete nematode implemented as a computer program. We
already have a realistic simulation of the living creature.

Twenty years ago the current output of Google Translate was a pure science
fiction, compared to what it was possible then. Today it already often
translates better than a lot of humans knowing both languages. Had anyone seen
the output of Google Translate of today some 20 years ago, nobody would have
believed it was produced by the machine. Note I don't say that it's always
good. It's not. But it can produce amazing outputs already, which can't be
recognized to be produced by a computer.

Also read about AlphaZero:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero#Training](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero#Training)

"AlphaZero was trained solely via self-play, using 5,000 first-generation TPUs
to generate the games and 64 second-generation TPUs to train the neural
networks. In parallel, the in-training AlphaZero was periodically matched
against its benchmark (Stockfish, elmo, or AlphaGo Zero) in brief one-second-
per-move games to determine how well the training was progressing. DeepMind
judged that AlphaZero's performance exceeded the benchmark after around four
hours of training for Stockfish, two hours for elmo, and eight hours for
AlphaGo Zero."

Apparently, the computer learned chess better than the long developed programs
by only playing the game with itself for four hours! And the programs are
already better than humans there.

~~~
kamaal
>>Apparently, the computer learned chess better than the long developed
programs by only playing the game with itself for four hours!

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-
man...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-
would-teach-machines-to-think/309529/)

Basically the machine isn't exactly thinking. It _simulates_ a model of
thinking.

There lies the biggest difference.

~~~
lisper
Congratulations, you have re-discovered Searle's Chinese Room argument.

------
dalbasal
Enough credible people have publicly considered the idea credible for me to
open my mind.

But... I have to keep my mind open with a brace. otherwise, it'll call occam's
razor & snap shut.

At the heart of consciousness particles ideas (I think) is the idea that
conciousness _can 't_ emerge from nonconscious stuff. This is counterintuitive
to me. We now know of all sorts of emergent phenomenon.

Species emerge (from other, sometimes simpler species) and that emergence
dynamic turned slime into ND Tyson. Substances like coffee and coffee tables
emerge from basic particle characteristics like charge (to borrow their
example). Chemistry emerges from particle physics. Biology emerges from
chemistry.

Can someone point me to the starting point? I must be missing something. Why
can't non-conscious matter, arranged precisely, think?

~~~
CuriouslyC
How does Occam's Razor apply here?

You have evidence that some matter (yourself) experiences its existence. The
simplest hypothesis that explains this is that all matter experiences its
existence. Any hypothesis that posits that SOME matter experiences its
existence and other matter does not requires two different kinds of matter
(conscious and not) and a mechanism to switch between the two. Seems that
hypothesis requires a lot more assumptions.

~~~
0-_-0
> You have evidence that some matter (your PC) can run Windows. The simplest
> hypothesis that explains this is that all matter can run Windows. Any
> hypothesis that posits that SOME matter can run Windows and other matter
> does not requires two different kinds of matter and a mechanism to switch
> between the two. Seems that hypothesis requires a lot more assumptions.

~~~
CuriouslyC
So, you'd rather posit some mystical juju that makes matter gain
consciousness, that somehow magically only happens to humans, and happens to
matter when humans eat it, but yet is totally undetectable?

~~~
kamaal
No I guess the parent's point is consciousness is inherent to all things. But
it's just that it needs some minimal amount of biological configuration for it
to manifest in a way that is meaningfully observable.

Which explain things like eating food(above minimal configuration) and
death(Some cells die, failing the minimal configuration criteria).

------
Razengan
Most questions of this sort remind me of "Can submarines swim?"

If we build an AI that can interact via natural human language, and ask it
about its internal state, and it replies "I am happy.", is it happy?

And whatever criteria we use to decide that machines cannot really be happy
the way we can be, could a hypothetical species that thinks at a "higher
level" than us, use similar criteria to determine that humans can't really
think?

~~~
visarga
An AI would have a goal, even if it is simple curiosity, and its happiness is
related to the distance from its goal. It would evaluate each situation and
action with regard to the goal and decide on actions that lead to it, learning
from past mistakes.

'I am happy' is possible for us because we have an innate goal - to live, to
reproduce, to maximise our rewards, rewards which have been programmed into us
by evolution. AIs can have rewards and can learn to act towards them, thus
they can have emotion which is just a map from the present situation to the
goal.

~~~
natosaichek
I disagree with basically everything you just said. An AI might not have a
goal. If it did, its happiness may or may not be related to the distance from
the goal. It might not evaluate every situation and action with regard to it's
(presumed) goal.

I don't think we do have a (single) innate goal. Everyone has different goals,
and they are not innate.

Emotions are not a map from a present situation to a goal. AI might not have
emotions.

~~~
visarga
> I don't think we do have a (single) innate goal.

Survival. And that includes many subgoals such as feeding, safety, autonomy,
being part of a group, curiosity, and making offspring, all preprogrammed into
the brain by evolution.

Artificial agents would have goals preprogrammed by humans instead, such as
'winning at Go'.

~~~
natosaichek
what about suicidal people? Are you saying they are not consious? Artifical
agents _might_ have goals preprogrammed by humans, but I don't see that as a
prerequesite for intelligence or self awareness.

------
blueadept111
This is one of the very few articles I've read about the nature of
consciousness where the ideas presented are cogent, consistent, and novel (to
me). She does a terrific job of explaining the current state of affairs in
philosophy of mind, about as clearly as anyone could, and then describing a
new paradigm.

~~~
yesenadam
Yes, I read it after reading the comments on this page, expecting a silly
mess. But no, it was well-written, for that kind of piece - it's popular
internet journalism, not a professional philosophy journal, people! For what
it's worth, the 'matter is made from consciousness' view does seem unlikely in
the extreme to me.

I thought it was strange the term '(philosophical) idealism' wasn't used once,
as it seems that's what most of the article was describing. Maybe she didn't
want to confuse people with the more common meaning of 'idealism' today (to do
with ideals, not ideas). Russell was a Hegelian idealist for a few years in
the mid-1890s, like a lot of British (and American) philosophers, and
published a book on Leibniz in 1900. (It's probably not a great introduction
to the subject, but David Stove's _Idealism: A Victorian Horror-Story_ is a
very funny long essay by the Australia philosopher, mostly ridiculing the
arguments used in support of idealism, in detail. Stove's _Gem_ \- winner of
his Worst Argument in the World competition[0] - is worth being able to
recognize in the wild.)

[0]
[https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/worst.html](https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/worst.html)

~~~
knowThySelfx
"Maybe matter is made from waves/vibration could be more plausible?" Thinking
about Quantum Double Slit Experiment and such.

------
_Microft
Jürgen Schmidthuber (an AI researcher for those not familiar with the name)
gave an interesting explanation what conciousness is in an AMA that he
conducted in 2015 on Reddit.

I just submitted that in an extra thread [0] because it seems worth
discussing.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19241278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19241278)

~~~
eanzenberg
This is interesting, very interesting take, but it still doesn't explain where
_other_ people's consciousness comes from. Through reductive reasoning, it
doesn't explain why calculators and any matter shouldn't have consciousness.

~~~
posterboy
A calculator processes maybe 64bits, in a machinery that is rather limited,
certainly not enough to emulate it's environment, unless a more complex
machine operates it.

~~~
goatlover
However, bits, information and software have the same problem as math that was
mentioned in the article. And that is that they are abstract and relational,
unlike the concrete qualities of experiencing color, pain, a dream, etc.

So I doubt that any amount of bits will do any good, just like no math
equation is going to become conscious. What would it even mean for an equation
or bits of information to have conscious experiences?

~~~
posterboy
That's nonsense. A large part of maths is having the right feel for it,
numbers are--paradoxically--qualitative.

An equation is the application of a join operator, a formula is an operation,
thought is operating and you are just thinking of lines scribled on paper
instead.

~~~
goatlover
You're confusing the feel of doing math in your head with it being applied to
describe something, which is abstract. A mathematical model isn't the thing
itself.

------
daoxid
Does consciousness produce any measurable effect? For a time I thought
consciousness is some kind of by-product of some kinds of computation which
doesn't influence the computation itself. But how can I then _know_ that I am
conscious? And if I know that I am conscious, then consciousness must have a
measurable effect, right? Because the knowledge that you are conscious should
be reflected somewhere in your brain.

However, whenever I think about consciousness, I have the feeling that I am
missing something obvious but important. It's just so confusing.

~~~
visarga
> Does consciousness produce any measurable effect?

In the morning when you wake up do you make a sandwich? If you didn't have
consciousness, you wouldn't. So your body would cease to exist in a short
time. Consciousness has measurable effects - every time it saves us from
hunger, danger, and other bad situations, or when it leads us to good
situations.

~~~
vanviegen
Following that logic, a robot vacuum that can have itself charged is
conscious?

~~~
visarga
It's at least conscious of its energy.

------
wwarner
Nice interview with Phillip Goff on CBC Ideas:
[https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4822151](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4822151) . He
reiterates B Russell's point: The _least_ extraordinary thing we know is that
we're aware of nature, and we're made of the same natural substances that make
up the external world. Therefore the extraordinary claim is that there can be
no consciousness outside of the body. In other words, it requires
extraordinary evidence. He makes the conventional dismissive attitude sound
pretty chauvanistic. It's a good interview.

~~~
jacobsimon
I think opinions like these ignore the immense complexity of the animal brain
compared to other natural materials. We are not made of the same stuff as the
rest of the external world—living things have a very precise configuration of
cells and connections, and the slightest deficiencies or disturbances lead to
complete loss of consciousness

~~~
lisper
Exactly. The sand on the beach and a CPU are made of the same stuff too, but
arguing that therefore beach sand can compute is obviously absurd. The
consciousness of all matter is just as obviously absurd.

~~~
vokep
But beach sand DOES compute, once treated and arranged in a certain way.

The ability to compute is present in all matter. The ability for consciousness
is present in all matter in the same way.

Perhaps these abilities are one and the same.

~~~
lisper
I can cut down a tree, mill it into lumber, and build a house out of it. It
does not follow from this that a tree is a house. Once a tree is "treated and
arranged" in the particular way that turns it into a house it is no longer a
tree. Likewise, once beach sand is "treated and arranged" in the particular
way required to make it compute, it isn't beach sand any more.

> The ability to compute is present in all matter.

No, it isn't. If you think it is, tell me how to build a computer out of a
single hydrogen atom.

------
yokljo
What if your consciousness exists outside your physical brain, and within your
brain is basically an aerial that is "tuned to your frequency", so no matter
where you are your brain will always communicate with the same consciousness.
I suppose with that theory comes the ability for two brains to tune into the
same consciousness, and various other fun implications. Is there already a
name for this?

~~~
robotresearcher
Dualism.

Or ‘Mind-body dualism’ to disambiguate with other uses.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind–body_dualism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind–body_dualism)

------
cobbzilla
> And a radical change it truly is. Philosophers and neuroscientists often
> assume that consciousness is like software, whereas the brain is like
> hardware. This suggestion turns this completely around. When we look at what
> physics tells us about the brain, we actually just find software—purely a
> set of relations—all the way down. And consciousness is in fact more like
> hardware, because of its distinctly qualitative, non-structural properties.
> For this reason, conscious experiences are just the kind of things that
> physical structure could be the structure of.

I'm not sure I buy the thesis, that conscious experience is the "hardware" and
the brain is the "software".

It's hard for me to understand how a rock is ultimately comprised of conscious
experiences, at its most fundamental level.

The attempt to tie together the "hard problem of consciousness" with the "hard
problem of matter" comes across a bit square-peg/round-hole to me.

If I had to take a wild guess at these-

Hard problem of matter: it really is just vibrating strings at the bottom, and
this is indeed where physical reality and math become indistinguishable. Blows
the mind, and still so much more we can learn.

Hard problem of consciousness: I wish I knew more about the evolution of
nervous systems, how can we tell when chemistry/biology becomes conscious
thought? It's clearly some kind of feedback loop. In the future we could
safely & non-invasively study the "bootstrap sequence" for various species
brains as they make their first neural signals, from the earliest stages.

I really think we can solve this, or get a lot closer, but it will require
some far-future technologies.

~~~
_jahh
Being a rock would be a much heavier experience, weighted with the gravity of
expectations for it to support the structures of shorted lived beings.

------
baruchthescribe
For an entertaining examination of the question of consciousness and its
implication for philosophers, I recommend Rupert Sheldrake's lecture here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFhsObpja8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFhsObpja8A)

------
dustfinger
I recall as a child once that I literally thought the following:

> I can accept that the universe can give rise to agents with RI or AI. I can
> even accept that as a consequence of this, some of these agents may have
> self awareness. I am such an agent. Yet, I struggle comming to terms with
> the fact that "I" am aware of myself.

I wish I could live long enough to find out how.

~~~
IdiocyInAction
Yeah. I think a lot of people have that issue.

I have read about and understood a lot of physicalist theories of
consciousness, but I have yet to see one that explains my subjective bubble of
experience. I could see how this is all an illusion, but I can't see why I can
perceive it then, why I have these vivid subjective experiences.

Conciousness is really quite odd, especially because I realized that most of
the important functions in the brain are unconcious.

I don't find dualism satisfying either; it is not a testable theory.

~~~
md224
> I don't find dualism satisfying either; it is not a testable theory.

I understand the sentiment here, but I also think we should be careful when it
comes to the assumption that the truth -- whatever it happens to be -- will be
a testable theory. Whether or not something is true is a fact independent of
larger epistemological concerns.

Then again, perhaps you're just saying that if the truth turns out to be non-
testable, then the truth won't be satisfying, which is a reasonable position
(and I might agree).

------
paraschopra
Panpsychism is exciting. But there are two problems in it. One is the
combination problem: what sort of collection of atoms are conscious and what
are not. If you propose then that only agents or complex systems are
conscious, you are faced with the second problem: the boundary condition. What
do you call an agent, and why?

I’m ultimately hopeful that subjective experience will come to be seen as
something fundamental. But the difficulty is that we can’t just make up new
entities / concepts in the world that don’t agree with current scientific
facts. So such a science of consciousness has to be compatible with modern
findings of neuroscience and psychophysics.

It’s exciting times! Let’s hope that we’re able to get a grip on this question
of why we have this subjective experience of red colour.

~~~
trixie_
I think panpsychism argues that everything is conscious, at all levels,
simultaneously. There are no boundaries. What you experience as a boundary is
just the limit of your awareness. Just as you don't consciously beat your
heart or heal your wounds. And if you think about it a lot it's tough to
really tell where your own boundary brain/body ends and the environment
begins.

I like the panpsychism stuff because it resolves some other problems as well
'the transporter problem' \- are you the same person after transporting star
trek style? Under panpsychism it doesn't matter because you are unawarely
everything anyways.

Also the 'the split problem' \- say I separated you atom by atom to create two
new people with half your parts - which one would you be? or both
simultanously? or none? Panpsychism makes answering these questions easy as it
argues that you are unawarely both.

A lot of people are trying to explain how we are discreet entities that arise
from non-discreet pieces. Trying to figure out where boundaries end/begin.
When do you become conscious. What is conscious and what is not. The
paysychism theory explains all these things in the other direction by saying
nothing is discreet. The sense of discreetness may as well be an evolutionary
illusion for the survival of my bag of atoms.

Who knows what is true though, it'd be a breakthrough if there were a way to
experimentally validate any of these theories..

~~~
hyperpallium
Like Fourier analysis, every component sine wave is conscious, and every
possible superposition of sine waves is also conscious. It's turtles all the
way down.

What does it mean for an atom, an electron, a sine wave to be conscious? What
can it perceive, consider, how can it act? But those are awarenesss, reason,
agency... distinct from "consciousness".

Just because an entity cannot assert itself, does not mean it is not
conscious.

~~~
paraschopra
> Just because an entity cannot assert itself, does not mean it is not
> conscious.

This does not give any more purchase on the world than we currently have. It’s
similar to saying that just because we have never seen laws of physics change,
it doesn’t mean they can’t change. Of course, that may or may not be true. But
would you bet on sun not rising tomorrow? New scientific theories / entities
must have give us additional predictive power (grip) than what’s currently
possible. Otherwise why invent new assumptions?

~~~
hyperpallium
For sure. The one thing it does is "solve" the problem of consciousness in a
surprising, entertaining, and absurd way.

------
cam_l
My favourite explanation of the emergence of consciousness inherent in matter
is an article by Elizabeth Grosz. It makes an argument for what i guess is a
version of panpsychism that sounds, philosophically, very practical.

[http://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia15/parrhesia15_gros...](http://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia15/parrhesia15_grosz.pdf)

~~~
Ste_Evans
"Except you were not replying to the nautilus article, you were replying to
the one i posted by Grosz"

Good point - there are so many cranks around I lose track.

I had a look at the Grosz article. I have never seen such pure excrement in
word form. Can I get a job at Duke if I publish used toilet paper?

I think the following waffle in the article is beyond the Standard Model and
therefore contradicted by the physicist's argument:

"It will be my claim here that materiality, bare matter, matter not in its
simplified form but before being animated by life, is nevertheless always
involved in and invested by incorporeal forces, forces of potential sense,
forces of virtual significance that living bodies, in elaborating their own
ends or finality, affirm and develop"

------
skissane
In summary, neutral monism.

In my opinion, here is a far better article on the same topic:
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neutral-
monism/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neutral-monism/)

~~~
goatlover
I thought the author was advocating for panspsychism, where all matter has a
least a minimal amount of consciousness (or consciousness is what matter is
non-relationally).

Neutral monism means that matter and consciousness emerge from something which
is neither (like math in the platonic sense or something we have no conception
of).

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14066341](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14066341)

------
roberttod
I can only know for sure that I am conscious, I only assume others are
conscious because they are built kind of similar to the way I am. Though if we
weren't conscious then would we talk about consciousness? What other topics
wouldn't we talk about if we weren't conscious? We could still talk about
experience because it would be functional, e.g. "I am experiencing pain" could
be something I expect to come from an unconscious thing that has evolved to
communicate pain in order to avoid death.

Could a conversation about consciousness occur from unconscious things?

~~~
avar
Yes, but more specifically you seem to be fumbling your way towards a well-
known though experiment in philosophy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie)

~~~
taneq
P-zombies bug me. For a p-zombie to be functionally identical to a human, it
would have to process all of the same inputs as the human, including its
looped-back internal inputs regarding its own state. Asserting that it's
possible to do so _without_ producing an equivalent inner life to that of a
'real' human is just asserting some kind of supernatural basis for
consciousness.

------
md224
This is an interesting essay, but as someone who agrees with Brentano that
intentionality is the mark of the mental, I have to disagree with the second
half of this passage:

> Our own consciousness is also usually consciousness _of_ something -- it
> involves awareness or contemplation of things in the world, abstract ideas,
> or the self. But someone who is dreaming an incoherent dream or
> hallucinating wildly would still be conscious in the sense of having some
> kind of subjective experience, even though they are not conscious of
> anything in particular.

I have no way to prove this, but I firmly believe that even in extreme states
of consciousness, we are still conscious _of_ something, in the sense that our
attention is directed somewhere... our mind is always attending to something
in particular. That "something" could be a bizarre fragment of a bizarre
experience, but it's still something. I don't believe it's possible to be
conscious without our attention being directed somewhere, even when the
content of our experience appears to be maximally diffuse and unfocused. (In
those cases, the content just _is_ the object of our attention, the thing we
are conscious of.)

------
Madmallard
Maybe I'm super naive and if so please educate me, but honestly why are we
even considered conscious?

Can't basically everything we do be just explained by the brain reacting to
its environment? Even the derivative thoughts and actions and stuff you
perform is just the brain reacting to itself as well. It's not like the brain
is disconnected from itself, it's connected to sensing organs and everything
everywhere inside.

Other observations: The older you get, the more robotic people seem,
especially younger people and the mentally ill. It's like you can exactly see
why they would say or do something based on what you know about their life or
situation or even just the contexts beforehand.

------
posterboy
Yes! Humans are matter and Humans are Conscious ergo at least some matter is
conscious. Rather, matter is the conscious. But it's not just the matter, it's
also the radiation and what have you between it.

------
ravenstine
I've hypothesized something very similar on my own. Perhaps we'll discover
that consciousness, or rather the _experience_ of consciousness, is either a
property of matter in specific complex arrangements. Or not matter but perhaps
spacetime in some respect. It doesn't really _explain_ how consciousness
works, but could explain _why_ it's been so hard for us to understand, just as
we don't really understand the nature of existence.

I don't believe it, but it's a nifty thing to ponder over.

~~~
goatlover
That would be a form of strong emergentism, which is kind of magical in that
properties that don't exist and can't in principle be predicted from earlier
states come into being. But it's not like we get to make the rules of what's
real. Something about existence is deeply mysterious, so why not
consciousness?

------
qqqwww
If you find this topic interesting I think you'll benefit from reading "The
unfortunate dualist"

[http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-23-unfortunate-...](http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-23-unfortunate-
dualist.html?m=1)

The whole book "The Mind's I" is a fascinating collection of stories and
essays dealing with this topic.

------
empath75
I don’t get the need to push consciousness down the stack. Where is the beach
in a grain of sand? Where is the song in a molecule of air?

------
blaze33
Recently learned about what I call the curse of consciousness: the ability and
constant urge to question the world, this condition that comes with
intelligence and never goes away.

So, what is consciousness? Life? How does the world works? Why didn't life
come with an instruction manual? What is there to do? And why do I have so
many questions that no one already solved?

------
eponeponepon
Some matter is conscious. My fingernail is not, but it's a subset of the
matter that equals me, and I am conscious (you'll just have to take my word);
I am a subset of the matter that equals all matter, so it has to follow that
the set of all matter is conscious, though subsets of it are not.

It's all a matter of where you draw the boundaries.

~~~
ci5er
Ummm. It's clear that the you that you think of as you does not identify with
your fingernail, but is it not arrogant to assume that there is not a greater
or lesser entity that incorporates your fingernail in its identity that might
be conscious?

------
dandare
I for one fail to understand what is it so mysterious about consciences. Also,
the article spends way more time lamenting the mystery than explaining what
the so-called "hard problem of consciousness" is.

Yes, we can not build consciousness yet, so what. We have a very good reason
to believe it is completely based on matter and physics because everything we
have seen so far seems to be based on matter and physics.

One way or another, our brain seems to be some kind of computing meat machine
that runs some kind of program(s). In order to keep us alive, this program is
trying to predict what will happen next. A lion appears to be running in our
direction? I predict it will get closer and closer and then it will eat us.
Next step: in order to better predict the future, model in also your own
actions. I will not stand here if I know a lion is going to eat me, I will run
to that nearest tree. So the brain predicts that we will end up climbing that
tree. Then, model in your understanding of the future and better grab a rope
before you start running to that tree.

Throw in all kinds of imperfections, remnants of older systems, evolutionary
pressures, instincts and emotions and voila, you appear to be conscious.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That describes behavior, but not the sense of self-awareness?

If conscious means, reacting to the environment (opposite of unconscious) then
that could make sense.

But if it means self-aware it doesn't get any closer to explaining that.

~~~
dandare
Maybe I don't understand the question. What else is "self-awareness" than a
program calculating its own actions based on the knowledge of its own
prediction ability? Can you disprove such program will be self-aware? Can you
prove your self-awareness is something more?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's the whole conversation right there. I'm aware of my surroundings in an
immediate sense with many states of being inside my head, immersed in my
surroundings, caught up in the moment and many others across the spectrum.
Unrelated to my cognitive function, logic or fitness for calculating action.

I could create a device that says "I'm self-aware" but does it make it so? You
can get your Echo to do that.

~~~
dandare
The sense of a moment or you being in your head is only an illusion. You think
you see your surroundings outside of your fovea spot, you feel an orgasm in
your abdomen, you hear music filling the room - nothing new for the brain. Ask
your brain who is doing the thinking in your head and it tells you it is YOU,
and you believe it because it is the only answer you ever got.

Interestingly, the self-aware YOU is merely a thin layer of self-propelled
lies on the surface of the animal brain. Once you get infected with
toxoplasmosis you have a higher risk of automobile accidents or higher chance
of promiscuous behavior. You think YOU made that decision? How sweet :)

A simple device that says "I'm self-aware" is easy to fool. But if build a
device that is so good at answering the self-awareness question that you can
not distinguish it from a human, and by definition, you will no be able to
prove that it is not really self-aware.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
All that seems to be couched in terms of somebody being fooled. Who is that
somebody? Who is 'you'? I think that description is a contradiction in itself.

------
SideburnsOfDoom
If matter can't be conscious, then what can?

The choices seem to be:

1) consciousness can emerge from matter, and human beings are exhibit A for
this.

2) human being are not conscious.

c) There's a "ghost in the machine", a soul, spirit or some other kind of
supernatural ghost that's not reducable to matter as we know it.

~~~
EliRivers
Arrangements and patterns, perhaps. The matter isn't conscious. Consiciousness
is in the arrangement of matter.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> Consiciousness is in the arrangement of matter.

Right, that's what "emerge" means in option A.

[https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_your_definition_of...](https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_your_definition_of_emergent_properties)

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

------
denom
For a phenomenological treatment, see The Spell of the Sensuous by David
Abram.

The idea that consciousness exists throughout the world as a gradient is not
new.

The modern industrial conception of mind (newly transformed by the
technological revolution) prescribes a more limited domain for theories of the
mind.

------
e3b0c
Has anyone read Schopenhauer's books like _The world as will and
representation_?

His idea doesn't seem to be talked about much. However, I would admit that I
don't fully comprehend the ideas of that book either.

------
edem
Do any of you know about Process Philosophy:
[https://www.iep.utm.edu/processp/](https://www.iep.utm.edu/processp/) ?

------
HillaryBriss
we have the viewpoints of a lot of living beings here, but none from any
actual, static, dead matter. sometimes our voices can be so numerous and loud
they crowd out and frighten others. i guess what i'm saying is: can we perhaps
take a breath, create some space and hopefully encourage some dead matter to
step up and offer _its_ perspective?

------
golemotron
I think you could switch around nouns randomly in this article and arrive at
an article that made as much sense.

------
DanielleMolloy
Are we all just the same universe perceiving itself?

(Which philosophies have developed this thought?)

------
pdpdpd
A draft of a paper exploring a novel, fundamental theory of consciousness,
rooted in physics:

[https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/psyphy/PsyPhy.pdf](https://s3-us-
west-2.amazonaws.com/psyphy/PsyPhy.pdf)

------
rawmodz
I think there is a mutually intertwine relationship between Time and
Consciousness.

Time => Consciousness => Time => Consciousness.

I don't think Time is inside Consciousness.

~~~
knowThySelfx
Even Time is a variable construct - affected by Gravity (Time Dilation etc)

------
yreg
The other way to look at this is that consciousness emerges from a certain
kind of structure and processes independent of the matter it is represented
on.

Consciousness would emerge in our brains from the neural structure and
activity, but it would also emerge when computed in a computer simulation or
(as a thought experiment) calculations on paper or xkcd-esque pebbles in sand.

That would make the computer, calculations on paper and pebbles in the sand as
conscious as a human.

Which, admittedly sounds just as crazy as the idea of consciousness being tied
to all matter.

------
ozy
If you have a theory of consciousness, but it doesn't include something about
learning, the theory is incomplete, most likely wrong.

------
AllegedAlec
It's a good thing that Betteridge's law of headlines continues to be true.

I never understood the appeal of this idea, to be honest. This article also
doesn't seem to think there are any strong arguments for it. Or at least, if
the writer has them, they do not present them in any cogent way, instead
piling appeal to emotions one upon the other until the entire thing collapses
under its own weight.

------
trainingaccount
No, but information is.

------
Ste_Evans
No. Next question!

------
tigerlily
I could have been born at any time, in any place in the universe - or not at
all, for that matter. Why do I get to experience the universe in a unique way?
What gives rise to this?

~~~
justinpombrio
You're wondering why you weren't also born at a different time and place? You
were.

You were also born in 1988 in CT. This other you was born to different
parents, had a different childhood, and has different memories. You think you
are different from this other you (and you are!) because you have separate
thoughts and memories. You remember your own life and not your _other_ life
because humans aren't telepathic.

In case it isn't yet clear, this other you is _me_. Hi, other me. We haven't
talked before, I don't think.

In other words, if you _were_ born in a different place at a different time in
a different community... then that you wouldn't be you. It would be a
different person. So it doesn't really make sense to ask "what if _I_ had been
born at a different time or place".

~~~
wppick
>There but for the grace of God go I

I like to entertain the idea that humans are the host of a species of sentient
alien bacteria that lives in our guts and controls us through the vagus nerve
and uses humans to build technology to advance to the point where they can
build space ships to colonize other planets. Could make a good sci-fi book if
anything...

~~~
posterboy
Bacteria don't have enough memory to represent technology, nor the necessary
organization to ... I don't know, as whole they are rather complex and can at
least share information like antigen markers to kill us effectively. There are
actual sci-books on the matter, you know.

~~~
Procrastes
Then we don't have enough memory to understand our technology either. We
accomplish that as a superorganism, and by building tools to augment our
abilities. Maybe bacteria built us as complex, extraterrestrial spore
capsules.

~~~
posterboy
We _are_ nothing but a symbiosis of single celled organisms and then some.

------
dfilppi
Of course. We are matter.

~~~
quickthrower2
So are rocks.

~~~
state_less
Rocks react in a simple way. If you strike them, they reverberate. One could
argue this is a very simple type of consciousness.

------
Ste_Evans
These kind of silly ideas refuted here:
[http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/electrons-dont-
thin...](http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/electrons-dont-think.html)
Tl;DR only the physical properties of matter observed in the Standard Model
can contribute to consciousness at the energy levels in the brain, apparently.

These kinds of problems are not going to be solved by "philosophers" who don't
know enough neuroscience or physics, as any proposed ontology will have to fit
with scientific observation.

When will cranks like the author of this article be booted out of the academy?
The article is utter drivel.

------
yters
If so, then some math equation is conscious, too. It is like asking what color
is that smell?

~~~
TaupeRanger
No and no. Math equations are abstract concepts within the mind. This question
is about how the mind exists _in the first place_. Nothing here even remotely
implies that math equations are conscious.

~~~
phkahler
Does the Mandelbrot set exist? We have a mathematical description of it. It's
easy to write software to create pictures "of it". Mandelbrot himself wrote
software to create an image of it based on his definition - prior to knowing
what it looked like. Indeed, he was surprised at the complexity of what he
saw. Did that set of points exist prior to a human stumbling on its
definition? Does it exist independent of someone rendering an image of it? I
would argue that it does exist - and always has - in some form.

~~~
gotocake
This is effectively Max Tegemark’s TOE, the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypoth...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis)

 _Tegmark 's MUH is: Our external physical reality is a mathematical
structure.[3] That is, the physical universe is not merely described by
mathematics, but is mathematics (specifically, a mathematical structure).
Mathematical existence equals physical existence, and all structures that
exist mathematically exist physically as well. Observers, including humans,
are "self-aware substructures (SASs)". In any mathematical structure complex
enough to contain such substructures, they "will subjectively perceive
themselves as existing in a physically 'real' world".[4]_

~~~
phkahler
Well said. In my previous comment I deleted a paragraph where I wrote
something like: If there exists a mathematical model/definition of our
universe - weather that has been discovered by humans or not - that is
sufficient to ensure that it exists. While I have read of the "existence" of
mathematical objects I was not aware of anyone writing that we live in such a
thing - I figured it must be out there somewhere. Thanks for the link and
providing a name for the concept.

------
vagab0nd
I've been wondering this for a long time: if we can understand every detail of
the inner working of the brain, what happens if I observe my brain in real
time? Is it like calling a function recursively without an exit condition?

~~~
Retra
Obviously not? Looking at your brain is not the same as executing it. You'd
just be looking at pictures.

It'd be more like calling a function that reformats it own source code.

------
kwccoin
Let us reduce this to a simpler question. Can Matter detect i.e. collapse
quantum wave? If it is conscious but cannot even detect quantum event, is it
really conscious? As this is physical event we can check, we can at least
determine that.

~~~
Retra
Best learn some actual quantum physics before you start pretending to
understand it.

------
visarga
Not quite all the matter, but self replicating agents under the right
circumstances (evolution) can be. Consciousness is fundamentally a function
that preserves the agent in its environment. It's a combination of two
optimisation processes - massive random search for its architecture, and
learning. It's only purpose is to exist, thus it has to protect the needs of
its body and make more of itself. If it doesn't take this purpose, then it is
replaced by other agents that do.

~~~
TaupeRanger
Not a good explanation. Why would a physically instantiated function feel like
anything at all, rather than just a bunch of matter moving around? The
question is about why the feelings _themselves_ exist. "Functions" do not ever
describe the feeling of the smell of chocolate or falling in love. That is the
mystery. You have not remotely touched it.

~~~
visarga
> Why would a physically instantiated function feel like anything at all

Because its life depends on it. Seeing a berry and not distinguishing its
colour could be fatal.

> rather than just a bunch of matter moving around

We're all a bunch of matter moving around. But we have perception - which is
just a neural net converting images to image representations (and other senses
in a similar way), and a value function - which rates the expected future
rewards in a situation. Perception + value (emotion) creates what philosophers
call qualia. These systems have been created by evolution because they are
useful for survival.

> The question is about why the feelings themselves exist.

Again, because we have specific apparatus that computes perception
representations and estimates future rewards related to our current situation
and action, and because these representations are essential for life to
continue.

The key differences between an agent and a non-agent are self replication and
learning. We have these qualities while rocks don't. Self replication enables
evolution and gives an intrinsic goal, a constraint if you will, to the agent.
The constraint is what learning and evolution optimise against.

More fundamentally, it's a process that maintains low entropy (order) of the
body inside the environment by actively compensating for perturbations.

~~~
TaupeRanger
> Because its life depends on it. Seeing a berry and not distinguishing its
> colour could be fatal.

Not at all. There is absolutely no reason that the behavior of distinguishing
berries should have any felt experience at all from a functional perspective.
What we'd like to explain are the feelings themselves. A robot can distinguish
berries without feeling a thing.

> Again, because we have specific apparatus that computes perception
> representations and estimates future rewards related to our current
> situation and action, and because these representations are essential for
> life to continue.

This is just sidestepping the actual question. This doesn't explain the nature
of felt experience at all. The question is why these feelings exist at all.
What about "computation" leads to the complex experience of falling in love or
tasting chocolate? And why would it lead to the particular qualities that we
actually experience, rather than some other qualities? Even if you believe
that qualia exist to causally affect our behavior (a contentious and
problematic view, given that we can't measure them), why _those_ specific
qualities and not some others that could produce the same behavior? There are
so many deep mysteries here that you are simply handwaving by feigning
understanding.

------
DATACOMMANDER
>Is matter conscious

Not gonna read that.

No. No, matter is not conscious. Go home nautil.us, you’re drunk.

~~~
satori99
Are you not made of matter? Or are you not conscious?

~~~
AllegedAlec
Toast is made of matter. You are made of matter. Therefore, you are toast.

