Why so much dislike for this? It's a theory that pushes on some of the foundational assumptions we make. Maybe it resonates and maybe not. But just being open to a new set of ideas means we can maybe learn something new and interesting. Or not and that's fine too. People seem angry that someone else would talk about an idea they don't currently agree with.
Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism
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Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Panpsychism seems like a bandaid to solve the hard problem of consciousness It doesn't even do that, it just pushes it down the stack. If I ask, why is the sky blue, I don't want to hear "Because it's made of blue stuff." Not only is it wrong, it doesn't have any explanatory power at all. Ultimately if you want to understand why something has a certain property, you want to know how it arises from the emergent beha…
>If I ask, why is the sky blue, I don't want to hear "Because it's made of blue stuff." Well, you are not going far if you hear only what you want to hear. PS sky is blue because you perceive it as blue.
You missed the meaning of that idiom entirely. They don’t want to hear “because it’s made of blue stuff” because it’s wrong and useless, not because it is distasteful.
Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism
#23Even the theory's advocate acknowledges in this interview that it's untestable. There is no way to observe that the world would behave differently whether or not the theory is true. If that's so, I can't think what point there is discussing it, except as a mental exercise. If you can't test a theory, that means it can't affect anything. I.e. it has no practical use, except as a form of entertainment. I would almost a…
Consider the following: your consciousness, that experience you have of being, the one that --in the minds of many-- separates you from a computer programmed to behave like you, cannot exist under your model because it cannot be tested for. Consider also that this statement is ridiculous, because you clearly do have an experience of being. What does this tell us?
Empiricism and the scientific method are a philosophy for modelling reality, and they've undoubtedly done a bang up job of progressing human understanding, but that model is also incomplete. Think of it like Newtonian gravitation, another undoubtedly very useful model that, it turns out, is also incomplete.
Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism
#24Why so much dislike for this? It's a theory that pushes on some of the foundational assumptions we make. Maybe it resonates and maybe not. But just being open to a new set of ideas means we can maybe learn something new and interesting. Or not and that's fine too. People seem angry that someone else would talk about an idea they don't currently agree with.
It uses handwavy definitions, it's untestable and makes a lot of assumptions without providing any new predictions.
Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because the observable world is testable doesn't mean that subjectivity doesn't hold any value.
Yeah, and I never claimed that. There's plenty of value in the subjective. For example, I liked this movie more than that one. My tastes are subjective, and yet I find value in them. But this philosopher's claim isn't subjective. It's not "hey I think it would be cool if all matter were conscious." It's a pseudo-factual claim about consciousness. It's not subjective at all. It's just neither wrong nor right. It would…
>There's plenty of value in the subjective
But in turn I can say everything you know and experience about the world is subjective. It came through your senses and you have no way to know if it was the same with other people.
Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism
#26Read Bernardo Kastrup's, a Dutch computer scientist and philosopher, criticism on panpsychism: " https://www.bernardokastrup.com/p/papers.html https://iai.tv/articles/will-we-ever-understand-consciousnes... https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/emtud2/bernardo... He proposes an alternative answer for the mind-body problem; idealism instead of materialism https://www.bernardokastrup.com/p/papers.html
+1 for Kastrup. I have read two of his books and his reconciling modern physics with spiritualism is in accord with my beliefs.
Personally, I believe that our universe and possibly many universes in the multi-verse is teaming with life in many planets. Also, just my personal belief, but I think their is some universal creative force/consciousness.
Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism
#27An interesting thought experiment is to imagine an incredibly-detailed computer simulation of a brain, down to the level of individual cells and neurotransmitters. (While this is beyond our current capabilities, it is in principle possible.) Hook the brain up to some decent IO devices, and you’d have an extremely human-like “AI”. (I’m glossing over some tricky details like, do you start with a fetus/baby brain and let it grow up, or somehow clone an existing brain...tricky no doubt, but again, in principle solvable.)
So the question is, this simulated brain, which is behaving very similarly indeed to a biological brain: does it have consciousness? Does it feel?
On the one hand, you might argue of course not, it’s just a computer; computers “obviously” don’t have feelings. It’s just bunch of bits. A precise collection of patterns of electrical charges evolving in time according to rigid rules.
On the other hand, is our own biological brain any different? We don’t think of a few cells as having consciousness, but somehow the broader collection does. Can the biological substrate of the complex arrangements really matter?
Maybe consciousness is like a “soul”, it’s a completely untestable, untouchable “ghost” that can inhabit anything. So maybe everything really does feel, in its own way? Maybe my computer already has some form of consciousness...
Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism
#28Mu. The definition provided ("consciousness is experience") explains nothing, you cannot experimentally decide if atoms experience anything, the fact that they do or don't doesn't change any prediction for how they behave over time. It's meaningless, like wondering if magic exists but is actively hiding from us. Paranoia is that way. > Despite great progress in our scientific understanding of the brain, we still don’…
I think you are simplifying the concept of consciousness a bit too much and are too hard in the paint for a very un-nuanced interpretation of behavioralism.
Your position would be better described as consciousness is an illusion or consciousness does not exist. It has compelling elements but I find it a hard sell.
Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism
#29This is the exact wrong direction we should take if we want to have any hope of understanding consciousness. Rather than pass a bong around and declare the whole universe is conscious, we should question the consciousness even of entities whose consciousness we currently take for granted. We should ask: is it really true that all humans are conscious[1], or is there something specific that triggers consciousness? For example, maybe consciousness is caused by a certain benevolent bacteria living in our guts, and anyone without that bacteria isn't conscious. If we refuse to even question these things, then of course we'll never come up with any answer.
[1] Of course, it goes without saying that for ethical purposes we should act under the assumption that all humans are conscious.
Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism
#30Read Bernardo Kastrup's, a Dutch computer scientist and philosopher, criticism on panpsychism: " https://www.bernardokastrup.com/p/papers.html https://iai.tv/articles/will-we-ever-understand-consciousnes... https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/emtud2/bernardo... He proposes an alternative answer for the mind-body problem; idealism instead of materialism https://www.bernardokastrup.com/p/papers.html
+1 for Kastrup. I have read two of his books and his reconciling modern physics with spiritualism is in accord with my beliefs. Personally, I believe that our universe and possibly many universes in the multi-verse is teaming with life in many planets. Also, just my personal belief, but I think their is some universal creative force/consciousness.
Why do we vote for things that align with our beliefs? Shouldn't we instead vote for the things that challenge us to better understand the truth regardless of what our personal beliefs happen to be? Not saying your beliefs are wrong, just potentially your actions.