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Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

nautil.us

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Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#121

Post by TeMPOraL »

adrianN wrote: post #117
warent wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason your awareness seems to be inside of your head is because your head and face is your primary interface with the world, where the core of your senses reside and is, therefore, your default state. You can test this hypothesis by practicing a meditation technique called "body scanning" where you allow your awareness to focus into various parts of the body, leaving your head and indeed entering your hand…

I doubt that meditation techniques would allow you to stay conscious after something destroys your brain.

Center of awareness isn't about where you have your CPU (that's always in the head) - it's about where your perceived "self" is. I remember reading from his biography that Feynman successfully learned to move it around, within and outside of his body, through those meditation techniques. This neatly accounts for OOBEs, making them nothing special too.

EDIT: to be clear, I'm arguing that the perceived location of your "self" is just that - a perceived location. An arbitrary frame of reference that defaults to one's head, but can be moved around. I.e. something worthless as evidence for panpsychism.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#122

Post by blechinger »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #121
adrianN wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that meditation techniques would allow you to stay conscious after something destroys your brain.

Center of awareness isn't about where you have your CPU (that's always in the head) - it's about where your perceived "self" is. I remember reading from his biography that Feynman successfully learned to move it around, within and outside of his body, through those meditation techniques. This neatly accounts for OOBEs, making them nothing special too. EDIT: to be clear, I'm arguing that the perceived location of your…

Just because we perceive something doesn't make it real. I think that's the issue here. By what mechanisms do we prove the perception is congruent with reality?

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#123

Post by Ste_Evans »

These kind of silly ideas refuted here: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/electrons-dont-thin... 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.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#124

Post by Procrastes »

posterboy wrote: post #68
wppick wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#125

Post by taneq »

henriquemaia wrote: post #120
taneq wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Qualia are not just a human thing. Think of Nagel's seminal paper What is it like to be a bat?

Good point. Which makes it even more bizarre that there's any question whether animals can be self-aware.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#126

Post by Ste_Evans »

yokljo wrote: post #113

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?

Is there already a name for this? Yes, "philosophy", or more colloquially "bollox".

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#128

Post by drdeca »

blechinger wrote: post #122
TeMPOraL wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Center of awareness isn't about where you have your CPU (that's always in the head) - it's about where your perceived "self" is. I remember reading from his biography that Feynman successfully learned to move it around, within and outside of his body, through those meditation techniques. This neatly accounts for OOBEs, making them nothing special too. EDIT: to be clear, I'm arguing that the perceived location of your…

Just because we perceive something doesn't make it real. I think that's the issue here. By what mechanisms do we prove the perception is congruent with reality?

I believe this was all in response to the idea that “it _feels_ like consciousness is in the head/brain” being an argument against panpsychism.

That one can do things such that it _feels like_ one’s consciousness is elsewhere, seems to go against that point?

Though, a similar point of “if a person loses their head, their consciousness seems to go away. Their hands do not move independently.” And “ If, as panpsychism claims, their hands are also conscious, what must it be like for their movement to be directed by consciousness outside of itself?”

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#129

Post by Ste_Evans »

cam_l wrote: post #127

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...

Yes, but the problem is it is contradicted by scientific observation: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/electrons-dont-thin...

What do we call academics who ignore current knowledge that contradicts their ideas? Cranks. A subset of cranks being most "philosophers".

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#130

Post by goto11 »

yokljo wrote: post #113

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?

It is called the mind-body duality.
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