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Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#51

Post by sambull »

xamuel wrote: post #38
darkhorse13 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like the stereotypical materialist.

Was Jesus Christ a materialist? "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead." (Matthew 8:22)

No, but some use what people say are his teachings as reasons to prop up their extraction of resources,materials/creating materialist things from the earth; as according to interpretations of their versions of that teachings their god has given them dominion to use all the resources. Dominion of all things:

"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."" King James, Genesis 1:28

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#52

Post by _Microft »

xamuel wrote: post #29

This 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…

Here is an interesting opinion of an AI researcher on consciousness. He basically claims that it is inevitable for an agent that can not store all information that it encounters and therefore needs to compress it. One of the most important things that needs to be represented is the agent itself, leading to self-symbols as he calls them. Correct me please if I summarized the comment incorrectly.

https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/i_a...

You might be interested in philosophical zombies by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#53

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

ajuc wrote: post #9

Mu. 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’…

> So it is conscious but we know where it comes from - it comes from the computational power and interactions with the world it can do.

How little computational ability is required to define something as conscious? Even a brick reacts to stimuli, albeit in the same completely predictable (to our high-powered brains) way that a simple robot does.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#54

Post by ohyes »

jjmorrison wrote: post #21

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.

Yes, I think anything that “sounds like” science but is pretty clearly not measurable or verifiable gets treated with harsh ridicule.

This is really a very different philosophical take on our own self importance in the universe. In western philosophy consciousness has been the pervasive thing that “makes us better” than everything else on the planet. (This is true even biblically if you think about it). The idea that this doesn’t make us special is actually very subversive to a lot of human self identification.

If you look into other traditions than the European one, I think the idea exists already to some extent. But in the circles we run in (and extra so societally) those views are still the minority.

Being told for thousands of years that your special and then having someone come in and say “maybe you’re not.” Is going to elicit a response from those invested in it.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#55

Post by platz »

dilap wrote: post #27

An 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 le…

If you create zombies people are going to be upset with you.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#56

Post by ajuc »

platz wrote: post #28
ajuc wrote: post #9

Mu. 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.

Thanks I've learned a new idiom.

Yes I am pretty confident that there isn't "conscious force" and "consciousness equations". Because we would have encountered them already if they were there. So we're not arguing new physics, just adding stuff to our model of universe that changes nothing.

> Your position would be better described as consciousness is an illusion or consciousness does not exist.

I don't think turbulent water doesn't exist. I just think it's not some fundamental concept, just an emergent phenomenon that we can explain basing on currently known laws of physics if we're smart enough.

> It has compelling elements but I find it a hard sell.

Why?

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#57

Post by krilly »

xamuel wrote: post #29

This 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…

Or we could pass the bong around and say that Dust is responsible.

I think this is a situation where Newton's Flaming Laser Sword comes into play. The whole point of a p-zombie as a thought experiment is that they are outwardly indistinguishable from normal conscious humans.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#58

Post by wayneftw »

xamuel wrote: post #29

This 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…

> This is the exact wrong direction we should take if we want to have any hope of understanding consciousness.

Can you expand on what direction that is and why exactly it's wrong? I didn't see bongs mentioned in the article.

> We should ask: is it really true that all humans are conscious, or is there something specific that triggers consciousness?

How can that question possibly be answered without knowing what consciousness is?

> If we refuse to even question these things, then of course we'll never come up with any answer.

I didn't see this article as refusing to question those things. Very much the opposite. It's questioning the consciousness of everything, not just assuming that nothing is conscious because, well, you don't know...

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#59

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #41

> There is a profound difficulty at the heart of the science of consciousness: consciousness is unobservable. You can’t look inside an electron to see whether or not it is conscious. But nor can you look inside someone’s head and see their feelings and experiences. We know that consciousness exists not from observation and experiment but by being conscious. But can't we measure brain waves with CAT scans? Isn't there…

> But can't we measure brain waves with CAT scans? Isn't there research going on now into observing brain patterns and actually figuring out what the subject is thinking about in real time?

But what does that have to do with consciousness (the experience of being)? All it shows is that our brains work the same way machines do, which isn't really a surprise. We can use a logic probe on machines and figure out how they work too. There is no way to determine if something experiences the world around it or "merely" is a product of a complex mechanism of reactions and interactions. That's what is meant by consciousness being unobservable.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#60

Post by hosh »

ajuc wrote: post #9

Mu. 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’…

Consciousness may be that thing that shows the limits of scientific experimentation.
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