Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism • Hacker News Board

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#161

Post by mannykannot » Tue, Jan 14, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

arnoooooo wrote: post #146

etrautmann wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a neuroscientist, I have the opposite intuition. If we swap out one Neuron with a digital version you’ll be the same person. Do that 84B times and at the end of the day I see absolutely no reason why you would lose consciousness or sense of self.

That only works if neurons do generate consciousness. The only thing we know is that their activity seems to correlate with consciousness. My guess is that you can't build a digital Neuron, at least not one that has consciousness properties. That's because I take neurons to be what consciousness looks like when viewed through our senses.

A transistor junction does not have computational properties; it is only in aggregate that they can make a computer.

Supposing that the mind is the result of neurons' inherent consciousness properties is like attributing morphine's effect as arising from its "dormitive virtue" - it does not advance our understanding.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#162

Post by ncmncm » Tue, Jan 14, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

rmah wrote: post #71

And to think that I used to have great respect for Scientific American magazine. This article is the worst sort of pseudo-intellectual tripe. It uses fancy-schmancy academic language to dress up silly ideas and wordplay. Masking itself in the facade of reasonableness to make hand-wavy conjecture and baseless assertions. Moreover, many of the supporting points made by Goff are simply wrong, betraying his ignorance of…

I am too.

Even just publishing it in their forum is destructive for science.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#163

Post by brazzy » Tue, Jan 14, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

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 take: consciousness is an emergent property of the system as a whole as it becomes sufficiently complex. Yes, that million people (you'd probably need more) working with pen and paper create, in combination, an additional new consciousness, albeit an absurdly slow-thinking one.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#164

Post by monktastic1 » Tue, Jan 14, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

fsiefken wrote: post #10

Read 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

For some reason I enjoy trying to share intuitions for idealism. Let me try to do so here.

First, notice that it's impossible to prove which metaphysics (materialism, idealism, solipsism, Last Thursdayism, simulationism...) is correct. Next, notice that the situation is even worse: you can't even assign probabilities to those possibilities without making assumptions about whatever is "outside" reality -- which are by definition untestable.

Now, notice the strong urge to throw your hands up and say "since I can't know, I should just default to the most obvious choice" (which usually ends up being materialism). Avoid this devious trap! It's keeping something hidden.

Next, notice the one thing you can be sure about: the present sheer fact of experiencing something. Notice the mind's attempts to explain it. If you introspect carefully enough, you'll discover that thought isn't the most fundamental capacity you have: "pure consciousness" is. Consciousness takes the form of thoughts -- as well as all sensory perceptions -- and shapes itself into the experience you call "me and my life." You discover that thoughts can no more point at consciousness than a mouse pointer can point at the vibrant pixels it's made of (but boy, do they keep trying). And yet, somehow, consciousness can know itself non-dually and im-mediately.

At some point, the intellectual knowledge that you cannot assign probabilities to metaphysics finally penetrates your core, and there's a mind-shattering "aha" moment that turns your reality inside-out. Various traditions call this "awakening." You do not awaken. "Reality" or "consciousness" awakens to itself, rediscovering its primordial freedom.

Then maybe you go about preaching a philosophy of consciousness-only. Or maybe you just live the best and most loving life you can, knowing that in an impossible-to-communicate sense, we are all the one Love appearing as many.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#165

Post by ajuc » Tue, Jan 14, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

marcAKAmarc wrote: post #138

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’…

>"There's no qualities in the universe, just quantities and we arbitrarily assign labels (qualities) to them." I understand your standpoint. I feel pretty frustrated with these questions too - especially when people throw large assumptions around like panpsychism. However, I gotta disagree with the idea notion that no qualities exist in the universe. Afterall, isn't every single thing a part of the universe, includin…

> Afterall, isn't every single thing a part of the universe, including thoughts, feelings, and experience?

They are, but they aren't fundamental. They are just our interpretation of the state of the universe (which is quantitative).

> without watching a scan of your brain, and without collecting any sort of scientific data about your nervous system, you were most likely able to discern the difference between those two feelings just now. You didn't do this by any type of measurement of quantity, just by quality of experience (qualia).

I did it by measuring quantities in my brain - voltage was over a threshold on neurons whose firing I interpret as pleasant or unpleasant. My brain is constructed in a way that automatically does this because it's useful for evolutionary purposes.

Is "NullPointerException" a thing that exists just because java programs can throw it? Or is it just an interpretation of particular voltages on particular transistors that is shared between many computer systems because it's useful.

> apparently there has been advances in theoretical physics to include consciousness into the same theory as quantum and classical physics

A paper cited 0 times, read 2 times, citing 5 other papers by the same author. I would wait with calling it advancement in physics just yet :)

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#166

Post by excalibur » Tue, Jan 14, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #73

Heh, that's a funny coincidence. I was just reading about panpsychism (and some variations of it) earlier today, specifically this article on forgotten philosopher James Ward: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james-ward/ It seems really alien to our current mental metaphysical model, but if you study the subject and analyze the arguments, it's not as absurd as it seems. It's important to realize that when philosoph…

> I'm not sure if panpsychism is necessarily a path forward in terms of describing the universe, but I think it seems promising in terms of a prescriptive use of creating, or attempting to create, new consciousness with machines.

If panpsychism is correct, then all of our machines would already be conscious. Creating new consciousness wouldn't be possible except maybe in the sense that matter itself can be created under certain conditions. What I think you're trying to say is that it might be possible to assemble machines in such a way that a combined "machine consciousness" emerges from the separate low-level consciousnesses of its components. Which may or may not happen with every machine anyway, I'm not sure how you would devise an experiment to test for this.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#167

Post by rapnie » Tue, Jan 14, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

dbqpdb wrote: post #116

adwn wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you haven't already, I highly suggest you read Permutation City by Greg Egan, these kinds of questions are explored in great depth.

Yes, that is indeed a great read!

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#168

Post by dcre » Tue, Jan 14, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

kypro wrote: post #84

Am I the only one who thinks the consciousness question is really quite easy to understand and answer? The illusion of consciousness is obviously beneficial. For example, I could tell a computer, through the use of sensors, to report that it's in pain when it's hit. But you wouldn't take it seriously, or care for its suffering, because it hasn't also declared that it is under the illusion that its suffering has a kin…

How can an illusory consciousness be conscious of the illusion of consciousness?

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#169

Post by state_less » Tue, Jan 14, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

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…

To take it a step further, let's assume we simulate the whole universe. We figured out all the rules for interaction so that there is nothing left over or left out of the simulation. All the rules and state are encoded.

Do you think beings in this second run of the universe are conscious? Or do you think that somehow something has been left out of the simulation?

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#170

Post by SubiculumCode » Tue, Jan 14, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

mannykannot wrote: post #161

arnoooooo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only works if neurons do generate consciousness. The only thing we know is that their activity seems to correlate with consciousness. My guess is that you can't build a digital Neuron, at least not one that has consciousness properties. That's because I take neurons to be what consciousness looks like when viewed through our senses.

A transistor junction does not have computational properties; it is only in aggregate that they can make a computer. Supposing that the mind is the result of neurons' inherent consciousness properties is like attributing morphine's effect as arising from its "dormitive virtue" - it does not advance our understanding.

Neurons are much more complicated that that, and indeed may do computations on their own.