Is Matter Conscious? (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#91

Post by jacobsimon » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 4:08 AM UTC

trixie_ wrote: post #88

paraschopra wrote: post #84

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 fundamenta…

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 res…

I don’t disagree with the problems you describe, but I don’t think panpsychism explains any of these problems either. It’s a non-answer, and functionally equivalent to saying nothing about consciousness. The “evolutionary illusion” you describe is precisely what we’re trying to understand: the brain is doing an extraordinary magic trick and no one knows how.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#92

Post by lisper » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 4:09 AM UTC

jacobsimon wrote: post #87

wwarner wrote: post #85

Nice interview with Phillip Goff on CBC Ideas: 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…

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

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.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#93

Post by hyperpallium » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 4:14 AM UTC

trixie_ wrote: post #88

paraschopra wrote: post #84

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 fundamenta…

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 res…

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.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#94

Post by empath75 » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 4:23 AM UTC

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?

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#95

Post by trixie_ » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 4:26 AM UTC

jacobsimon wrote: post #91

trixie_ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 res…

I don’t disagree with the problems you describe, but I don’t think panpsychism explains any of these problems either. It’s a non-answer, and functionally equivalent to saying nothing about consciousness. The “evolutionary illusion” you describe is precisely what we’re trying to understand: the brain is doing an extraordinary magic trick and no one knows how.

Given what artificial neural networks are already capable of, it shouldn't seem like a magic trick what our own brains are capable of (from the outside).

The hang up is on the inside right? You have an essence to your consciousness experience that you believe a fly, bacteria, rock, computer, artificial neural network may or may not have.

Panpsychism does answer that question by saying yes, they all have some sliver of consciousness. Two atoms bumping together at some level experience the interaction.

I agree the theory doesn't have answers as to how or what the essence of consciousness is. But I definitely seeing it as a stepping stone towards that goal.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#96

Post by blueadept111 » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 4:31 AM UTC

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.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#97

Post by taneq » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 4:33 AM UTC

naasking wrote: post #46

_Microft wrote: post #14

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

I think he's confusion consciousness for self awareness. That's not the hard problem that needs solving, it's actually one of the easy problems.

I think stating that there's a "hard problem of consciousness," which is not explained by self-awareness, is begging the question. We just kind of assume that there's something inherently special about qualia, raise them on a pedestal, and claim that they are unique to humans. Why assume that 'what it's like to experience the colour red' isn't just the experience of being aware that you're experiencing a red visual input?

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#98

Post by hackinthebochs » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 4:34 AM UTC

hyperpallium wrote: post #93

trixie_ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 res…

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…

But at this point, what are you actually saying? What does turtles-all-the-way-down consciousness actually pick out? I have a hard time seeing it as informative. That is, the statement "everything is conscious" is doing no work for you in describing the thing in question.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#99

Post by steve76 » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 4:40 AM UTC

hyperpallium wrote: post #93

trixie_ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 res…

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…

How about the opposite? Everything is a consequence of human consciousness.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#100

Post by paraschopra » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 4:42 AM UTC

trixie_ wrote: post #88

paraschopra wrote: post #84

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 fundamenta…

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 res…

Like most philosophies, pansychism has multiple flavours. To me, the combination problem is concrete. The physical location of my awareness seems to be inside the head and not my hand, even though both are made of atoms. ‘Everything is conscious’ fails to account for that.