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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

#121

Post by ajuc »

platz wrote: post #86
ajuc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 turbulen…

Because it doesn't explain my experience. You can still be a materialist and allow for consciousness via emergence, but that is not quite the argument you are making.

I'm pretty sure that's the argument I'm making?

1. consciousness isn't fundamental, it's a consequence of normal physics

2. because it's not fundamental the definitions will always be arbitrary, just like with any other emergent phenomena (when does fog stop and rain start? At which height does atmosphere end? What is a planet)? All just labels and arbitrary thresholds slapped on some consequences of laws of physics.

> it is an extremely delicate position with also a lot of handwavimg and question marks

At least i'm not making untestable assumptions. If we can make a perfect copy of a brain and it doesn't work then I'm wrong.

I prefer my theories to be delicate - that means they can be disproven. The alternative is "because magic".

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#122

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

keiferski wrote: post #100
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’…

But it will become a productive question when/if machines start becoming complex enough to be considered "intelligent." Does a machine deserve political rights? Some would say that yes, if it has consciousness. But then what do we mean by consciousness ? It's a tricky question and the answer has serious implications in ethics. Labels have consequences in social and political realms, even if they don't necessarily hav…

At the point where this question ceases to be academic, it's not going to be philosophers that turn the tide. It's going to be people falling in love with robots and simulated humans. At first, they will be labelled as freaks, just like early adopters of any new technology. Remember when online dating had a stigma attached to it? That's going to be a dark time for you if you happen to be a machine person. Assuming we don't wipe ourselves out using this technology, eventually it will touch enough lives that it loses its stigma. The circle of human empathy will stretch to encompass machine people, and they will be given some rights.

It won't matter whether some panpsychist says that all matter is conscious, or some religious person says that only those made in god's image are. What's going to matter is that machine people will give every appearance of being conscious, and humans are nothing if not slaves to appearance and pattern matching.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#123

Post by mannykannot »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #65
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…

> down to the level of individual cells and neurotransmitters My guess? No, it won’t be conscious or even meaningful. More fundamentally, our inability to answer this question drives at our ignorance of our own neurology. We don’t know the building blocks of thought. It might happen at the neurochemical or electrochemical level. It may even depend on quantum effects.

I agree that we don't know enough to have a confident answer, but I find Scott Aaronson's question quite persuasive: if you were to replace brain cells with functionally-equivalent manufactured devices one cell at a time, is there a point at which the consciousness goes away?

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#124

Post by yeellow »

adwn wrote: post #90
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…

To build on your thought experiment: > So the question is, this simulated brain, which is behaving very similarly indeed to a biological brain: does it have consciousness? Does it feel? If you answer "yes" to this question, what happens if you split the computations of that simulated brain over a million people equipped with pen and paper? Where is its consciousness happening now? I have yet to hear a satisfying answ…

My phone is black, but looking at individuals atoms where is the color?

You are right that we don't have a good (any?) definition of consciousness therefore it is difficult to properly ask if Chinese room has it. After reading and talking with people it seems that consciousness is something one can only claim to have (like a subjective feeling), but can't really manifest (I can only assume you are conscious because I believe I am, and you behave similarly enough).

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#125

Post by arnoooooo »

fjfaase wrote: post #115
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How functional must a brain be? We know that we can remove at least half of a human brain and still have a somewhat functional person. Where is the line drawn?

There are several conditions where a brain loses consciousness, the most common is sleeping. Joscha Bach has some interesting thoughts on what is needed to be conscious. Stanislas Dehaene and Thomas Metzinger have done interesting scientific research with respect to the brain and (various states of) consciousness.

Who says the brain loses consciousness when sleeping ? How do you discern between the absence of consciousness and the absence of objects in consciousness ?

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#126

Post by ajuc »

svara wrote: post #98
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’…

You should look into the "Chinese room" thought experiment [0], this line of thinking has been explored pretty thoroughly by people taking some position relative to that. [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

I'm aware of it.

My opinion is - the fact that people going through the motions don't understand what they are doing doesn't mean that the system (human + instructions + working memory) has no understanding.

Any single neuron in my brain don't understand Polish but the brain as a whole sure does.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#127

Post by ngvrnd »

platz wrote: post #55
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.

only if they can tell.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#128

Post by keiferski »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #122
keiferski wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it will become a productive question when/if machines start becoming complex enough to be considered "intelligent." Does a machine deserve political rights? Some would say that yes, if it has consciousness. But then what do we mean by consciousness ? It's a tricky question and the answer has serious implications in ethics. Labels have consequences in social and political realms, even if they don't necessarily hav…

At the point where this question ceases to be academic, it's not going to be philosophers that turn the tide. It's going to be people falling in love with robots and simulated humans. At first, they will be labelled as freaks, just like early adopters of any new technology. Remember when online dating had a stigma attached to it? That's going to be a dark time for you if you happen to be a machine person. Assuming we…

I meant more in a legalistic sense. The justice system is designed for human beings; if a person does something wrong, we imprison them or otherwise punish them, understanding that their consciousness and body is limited in time and space.

But what about a machine consciousness that can manifest in numerous locations? If it commits a crime, how do we punish it? Rights often imply responsibilities.

These are very complex questions and I don't think there are any easy answers. Quite an interesting time to be alive.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#129

Post by arnoooooo »

ArtWomb wrote: post #67
arnoooooo wrote: post #4

I think non-duality / advaita makes much more sense than panpsychism, as it requires less assumptions while remaining compatible with our experience. Panpsychism seems like a bandaid to solve the hard problem of consciousness, which non-duality does not suffer from.

Am really pleased you name dropped "advaita vedanta" (literally translated from Sanskrit as "non-secondness"). From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on advaita vedanta: Brahman—the ultimate, transcendent and immanent God of the latter Vedas—appears as the world because of its creative energy (māyā). The world has no separate existence apart from Brahman. The experiencing self (jīva) and the transcenden…

advaita vedanta as I understand it is the actual scientific approach to consciousness, as it focuses strictly on experience.
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