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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

#311

Post by iak8god »

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…

> So the question is, this simulated brain, which is behaving very similarly indeed to a biological brain: does it have consciousness? Does it feel?

I worry we'll never know the answer to this, even if we manage to pull off such a simulation.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#312

Post by uoaei »

alexpetralia wrote: post #289
uoaei wrote: post #250

Another point to make on panpsychism: how do people who reject the theory explain hierarchical life? To what level is a human conscious if its component cells aren't? Are ant colonies "conscious" due to the complexity of the behavior of the ants? Does that make ants less conscious? To an alien visitor, ant colonies can be considered single organisms, because they act with intent toward a specific goal and react to sp…

The best case against panpsychism I believe was advanced by complexity theorist Joe Norman: it's not unreasonable to believe that "consciousness" emerges at some levels of a complex system and not at others. No, we can't explain _why_ this is - since we hardly understand complex systems - but we do understand that phenomena exists (emergence) at some scales and not at others. Consciousness could be one of them.

A binary distinction requires a binary definition, and thus a threshold. Without a threshold, the spectrum is continuous. The assertion of panpsychism is that it is impossible and therefore improper to set a threshold at all.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#313

Post by ajuc »

uoaei wrote: post #312
alexpetralia wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best case against panpsychism I believe was advanced by complexity theorist Joe Norman: it's not unreasonable to believe that "consciousness" emerges at some levels of a complex system and not at others. No, we can't explain _why_ this is - since we hardly understand complex systems - but we do understand that phenomena exists (emergence) at some scales and not at others. Consciousness could be one of them.

A binary distinction requires a binary definition, and thus a threshold. Without a threshold, the spectrum is continuous. The assertion of panpsychism is that it is impossible and therefore improper to set a threshold at all.

> A binary distinction requires a binary definition

No it doesn't. See absolute value of x on real numbers - it is usually defined as:

   abs(x) = x if x >= 0, else -x
but it can also be defined as sqrt(x * x).

You can use this trick to define arbitrarily complex "binary" f(x) as a combination of these. And there are many other tricks of course.

But math is one thing, we see spectrums everywhere in reality and yet quantum mechanics is discrete (quantized :) ).

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#314

Post by DesiLurker »

Psyladine wrote: post #305
DesiLurker wrote: post #299

My only concern with the consciousness debate is purely from a self-preservation PoV. Here is a scenario to elaborate: 1) In fifty years compute horsepower is enough to be able to fully simulate a brain. 2) population of earth is 10B and climate change is really making the planet unlivable. 3) we believe that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon 4) we decide we'll invest in computronium and just continue our (& ot…

What was genocide if the idiots went to live in computer 'heaven' with catgirl maids and whatever other narcissistic fantasies they cooked up? You're saying like we build a plane to go to mars and then once in space the computer discovers it needs air to move and now we're fucked... why does your first posit on magic petaflops not translate into effective reading of the brain and how it works?

>> You're saying like we build a plane to go to mars and then once in space the computer discovers it needs air to move and now we're fucked...

thats inaccurate description of what I said, its more like .. well for a topic like this there really are no good analogies. but to elaborate further (as i hinted) it could be something related to a quantum mechanical state which when you measure you effectively destroy the system and now all you are left with a hollow shell that acts and responds just like the original (so from others pov its the same person, mostly) but in itself its like a psychological zombie. now whether or not it is 'you' (assuming you are the person transported) is again a matter of it being emergent property or innate one. which was the whole point to begin with.

simply put, at what resolution a simulation of you becomes 'you'? is it a question of resolution or is there something else to it? given the fact that there are many biological processes that utilize quantum mechanics why is it so far fetched to imagine that consciousness itself could be rooted in QM?

>> What was genocide if the idiots went to live in computer 'heaven' with catgirl maids and whatever other narcissistic fantasies they cooked up?

If I were to put you in a coma like sleep and then by some pending technological breakthrough cookup whatever fantasies you desire to play eternally in you 'sleep', does that makes it okay? is it same as being alive? I dont think so, even if you are okay with it.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#315

Post by Stierlitz »

mooseburger wrote: post #159
Stierlitz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> .. What, materially, is that property .. Synapses firing .. > .. what physical laws explain it .. Physics .. > .. and by what mechanism does it emerge from mere electrical impulses? Through the senses and acting on the environment through muscles triggered by synapses firing.

Heard of the China brain thought experiment? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain Would such a brain be conscious? Why or why not?

> Would such a brain be conscious? Why or why not?

If the brain was stimulated by inputs from the surrounding environment then YES!

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#316

Post by UnFleshedOne »

mirekrusin wrote: post #171
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…

It's interesting we don't have much idea about it yet. It probably helps to think about some edge cases to get some insight. What happens when you sleep and you loose sense of conciousness? What happens in cases of brain injury where concousiness goes into weird failure modes - thinking it wakes up on the same state every day, thinking it's -1month or so, collapsing etc. What happens in cases of distorted/malfunction…

No idea about connecting brains, but dividing one actually works and you arguably get 2 independent consciousness with different set of modules available to them (one has language processing that the other one lacks for example).

Look up split brain experiments.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#317

Post by Lambdanaut »

karmakaze wrote: post #307
Lambdanaut wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you have are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and a few other pieces of earth, water, and air that are dancing around each other in a very complex way in order to dance up a very complex experience that has interesting properties that the snow does not exhibit in its experience of simple deformation. Your very special organs are nothing but melted snow(water) deforming against broken up rock(carbon), repeatedly, in bea…

So redefine experience = process? That's all I can parse out of it.

Cool, that's a start. Another implication is that you're a lot older and you've experienced a lot more than you identify with at the moment in the span of time identifying as this human system.

I won't give you more than you can chew. Accepting that process=experience is already a huge paradigm shift.

If you're interested in deeper implications, it's better if you come to them without anyone handing them over.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#318

Post by guerrilla »

ajuc wrote: post #256
hasbroslasher wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This has so much potential to become a semantic death trap - but let me ask if you think even human experience could be experimentally tested? If you put me in…

> What does "non-experience" even mean? Indeed, that's why putting meaningless arbitrarily defined touchy-feely words in physics is a bad idea. But I'll try. Experience = event that changes the model of the world you have in your brain. We can verify it experimentally by for example: - testing if you associate a loud buzz with food before the experiment (either by looking at neurons that activate when you think of fo…

> We can deduce from that change that your internal model of the world changed to associate "buzz" with "food" so you experienced our experiment.

This is a giant leap to claim that they have a model and experience. You demonstrated that what they have is internal state, i.e. memory, which many machines have. That's what you proved, not that they experience anything.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#319

Post by uoaei »

ajuc wrote: post #313
uoaei wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A binary distinction requires a binary definition, and thus a threshold. Without a threshold, the spectrum is continuous. The assertion of panpsychism is that it is impossible and therefore improper to set a threshold at all.

> A binary distinction requires a binary definition No it doesn't. See absolute value of x on real numbers - it is usually defined as: abs(x) = x if x >= 0, else -x but it can also be defined as sqrt(x * x). You can use this trick to define arbitrarily complex "binary" f(x) as a combination of these. And there are many other tricks of course. But math is one thing, we see spectrums everywhere in reality and yet quant…

x * x has two 2nd roots, namely, x and -x, and the result of this "function" (in quotes because it doesn't obey the definition thereof) requires you to choose arbitrarily between them, thus creating a dichotomy.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#320

Post by DonaldFisk »

Faark wrote: post #283
DonaldFisk wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two distinct meanings of consciousness being used here: my own experience of consciousness in me (it's always first person), and the conclusions people make about consciousness in other people or animals - that they're conscious because they're like them in important ways. The Chinese Room argument is confusing because it conflates intelligence (understanding Chinese) with consciousness (knowing what it's l…

I'm not sure I understand what your link has to do with consciousness. Yes, people experience the world differently. Someone with Tetrachromacy will see the world different than us, but that hardly invalidates our much less capable experience. Perception organs differ somewhat between individuals. I'd see little reason to make a distinction between those organic we are born with and those humans managed to invent. So…

With the exception of our thoughts, pretty much all of our consciousness experience, i.e. involving qualia, is due to perception.

The person in my room (an achromat) can't experience colours at all, and they're able to tell you that. Their eyes have no functioning cones. They see everything in monochrome, so to them, watching a colour movie is how watching a black and white one is to us. Under low light conditions our cones are inactive and we see only in monochrome using our rods, just like achromats do. So people with normal colour vision can experience what it's like to be achromatic, but achromats can't even imagine what colours are like.

In the room, the person can only tell what colours the papers are by observing how dark they look when overlaid with the coloured filters (whose colours they know).

The metaphorical use of colours in the language isn't really important, and as you point out is dependent on culture.

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