Is Matter Conscious? (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#61

Post by mrec » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 12:48 AM UTC

gotocake wrote: post #53

mrec wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are many other options beyond just materialism and Cartesian dualism Can you give some examples of the kind of options you're thinking of? I mean, I have a lot of time for functionalist accounts, and given Sufficiently Smart Technology (tm) I'm happy to allow for the possibility of something recognizably "me" being artificially duplicated in a different physical substrate. (After which we'd rapidly start dive…

But GGP's question was specifically about being born. I really struggle to imagine how someone born somewhere else, somewhen else, could be "me" with anything like the fidelity I think our intuition demands. And if you loosen your identity test to the point where it could, doesn't it then become useless as an individuation test, in that lots of people could be sufficiently like me all at the same time? Up front let m…

Yeah, when I said "somewhere else" I was kind of scoping it to this universe. I know, so small-minded.

Note though that an infinite universe doesn't imply that everything imaginable occurs within it. There are an infinite number of even integers, but none of them is 3.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#62

Post by skissane » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 12:51 AM UTC

gotocake wrote: post #53

mrec wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are many other options beyond just materialism and Cartesian dualism Can you give some examples of the kind of options you're thinking of? I mean, I have a lot of time for functionalist accounts, and given Sufficiently Smart Technology (tm) I'm happy to allow for the possibility of something recognizably "me" being artificially duplicated in a different physical substrate. (After which we'd rapidly start dive…

But GGP's question was specifically about being born. I really struggle to imagine how someone born somewhere else, somewhen else, could be "me" with anything like the fidelity I think our intuition demands. And if you loosen your identity test to the point where it could, doesn't it then become useless as an individuation test, in that lots of people could be sufficiently like me all at the same time? Up front let m…

> there are in fact infinite identical versions of you

But when I say (or think) "I", am I saying or thinking of any specific one of those versions? How could I be? It seems, if there are infinite number of identical copies of me, when I say "I", I must mean all of them equally.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#63

Post by denom » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 12:53 AM UTC

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.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#64

Post by _jahh » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 12:55 AM UTC

cobbzilla wrote: post #47

> 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, n…

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.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#65

Post by skissane » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 12:56 AM UTC

mrec wrote: post #61

gotocake wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But GGP's question was specifically about being born. I really struggle to imagine how someone born somewhere else, somewhen else, could be "me" with anything like the fidelity I think our intuition demands. And if you loosen your identity test to the point where it could, doesn't it then become useless as an individuation test, in that lots of people could be sufficiently like me all at the same time? Up front let m…

Yeah, when I said "somewhere else" I was kind of scoping it to this universe. I know, so small-minded. Note though that an infinite universe doesn't imply that everything imaginable occurs within it. There are an infinite number of even integers, but none of them is 3.

> Note though that an infinite universe doesn't imply that everything imaginable occurs within it

True, but in an infinite universe, everything with non-zero probability almost surely happens, an infinite number of times.

Since our own lives have non-zero probability of existing, a spatially infinite universe implies that almost surely there are an infinite number of exact copies of ourselves existing right now, and an infinite future implies that almost surely our current lives will be exactly repeated an infinite number of times in the future.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#66

Post by posterboy » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 1:00 AM UTC

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.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#67

Post by mrec » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 1:02 AM UTC

skissane wrote: post #59

mrec wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are many other options beyond just materialism and Cartesian dualism Can you give some examples of the kind of options you're thinking of? I mean, I have a lot of time for functionalist accounts, and given Sufficiently Smart Technology (tm) I'm happy to allow for the possibility of something recognizably "me" being artificially duplicated in a different physical substrate. (After which we'd rapidly start dive…

Well, idealism is another option. I'm not sure how easy it is even with idealism to make "Why am I I?" a meaningful question. But, if our choice is between viewing that question as a pointer to some profound mystery on the one hand, or viewing it as simply a case of muddle-headed confusion on the other, the allegiance of my heart is with the first choice rather than the second.

"Muddle-headed confusion" is harsh. I'd prefer something like "human intuition not being particularly reliable on questions it wasn't evolved for".

If preserving a sense of profound mystery is your goal then... honestly, that mindset is sufficiently alien to me that I can't really think of anything useful to say on the subject. I can understand and share it as an aesthetic choice - mysteries are cool! - but not as a philosophical one. Philosophy by definition is the love of knowledge, not the love of not-knowledge.

And if you want your mystery to be something you solve, rather than something you live with, I do think you should be able to explain what your mysterious question means.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#68

Post by posterboy » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 1:13 AM UTC

wppick wrote: post #44

justinpombrio wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

>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...

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.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#69

Post by skissane » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 1:14 AM UTC

mrec wrote: post #67

skissane wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, idealism is another option. I'm not sure how easy it is even with idealism to make "Why am I I?" a meaningful question. But, if our choice is between viewing that question as a pointer to some profound mystery on the one hand, or viewing it as simply a case of muddle-headed confusion on the other, the allegiance of my heart is with the first choice rather than the second.

"Muddle-headed confusion" is harsh. I'd prefer something like "human intuition not being particularly reliable on questions it wasn't evolved for". If preserving a sense of profound mystery is your goal then... honestly, that mindset is sufficiently alien to me that I can't really think of anything useful to say on the subject. I can understand and share it as an aesthetic choice - mysteries are cool! - but not as a…

Maybe "Why am I I?" is an expression of dissatisfaction at being trapped in the prison of the self. That I only get to experience my experiences, and not other people's.

Maybe the answer to the question then is not a proposition, but a liberation from that prison. If one is a religious believer, one might hope for that liberation after death. If one is a transhumanist (which is maybe just a different sort of religion), one might hope that future technologies like telepathy implants or mind uploading might make such a liberation possible.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#70

Post by ci5er » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 1:15 AM UTC

eponeponepon wrote: post #26

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.

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?