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Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

nautil.us

181–190 of 280 posts

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#182

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.

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…

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

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#183

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,…

They way that I've always thought about it is this:

We are the physics that drives us, everything else is an abstraction.

Chemistry as a thing didnt emerge from particle physics, it is an abstraction of particle physics, a higher-level view on how certain particles interact, and biology is an abstraction of chemistry, "when we combine certain chemicals this stuff happens". But if we take a moment, we zoom in and zoom in and we will find that the common denominator is that things exist in these ways because physics is doing what it does.

The insane rube-goldberg machine of the human body is still a rube-goldberg machine that is being driven by physics, theres millions of layers of complexity, but it's still physics all the way down.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#184

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,…

Although I generally agree with you, I think there is a difference between the emergent property of a coffee table and that of consciousness: the particles the coffee table is made of are "just" matter, and so is the coffee table itself. But consciousness seems to be something different than matter (or maybe this is just a false assumption of mine). So while I find it intuitive that a table emerges from a number of particles, I think there is a qualitative difference between particles and consciousness.

You can zoom into a coffee table until you see individual particles, but what would it mean to "zoom into" a consciousness?

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#185

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,…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#186

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,…

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

The hard problem of consciousness has a long history, but two of the most influential contemporary philosophers in that area are David Chalmers and John Searle.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#187

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

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.

> Through reductive reasoning, it doesn't explain why calculators and any matter shouldn't have consciousness.

Why shouldn't it?

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#188
post #137

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…

For anyone else reading this comment and curious about Buddhism and Panpsychism, here are some links. Buddhism suggests that the perception of the boundary of the self (I am a distinct, separate being) is a delusion/wrong view. Perhaps we experience a shared universal consciousness (with discreet elements?) passing through ourselves like a river with drops of water flowing through it, evaporating, and then falling so…

>Perhaps we experience a shared universal consciousness

Yes, with just different perspectives - I figure it's all just a projection of it's vibrations.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 someo…

This is effectively Max Tegemark’s TOE, the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypoth... 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 structur…

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.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.
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