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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

#341

Post by WhompingWindows »

n4r9 wrote: post #190
WhompingWindows wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is time and experience, two things you cannot give to a software mind. Humans are inherently social and our brains are developed over socializing time. Our brains are shaped by fetal, post-natal, and childhood socialization and experience. The craziest edge cases of human childhood show: if you grow up without socialization, in isolation/solitude, your brain will be vastly underdeveloped and you will have…

I'm get your point but I also think you've answered it yourself. You can give time and experience to a software mind by programming in that new layer...

How do you program a software mind to have had infancy, childhood, and a lifetime of social human interaction? I'm saying that's MUCH harder than simply making neural nets to perform specific duties.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#342

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

kypro wrote: post #184
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but this barely scratches the surface. The key problem of consciousness is not what we have an experience of (eg. "you're a real thing that thinks and feels"). It's the fact that it is possible to have any experience at all. Yes, it seems quite likely that a great deal of what we are conscious of is an "illusion" created in our brains, albeit some rather handy illusions. But that doesn't get even one step clos…

You don't have an experience. You might think you do, but I see no scientific reason to believe you. What you might have is an algorithm in your brain telling you that there is a self experiencing the world. But in reality you're just a collection of sub atomic particles. Edit: Why should I take your claim of conscious experience any more seriously than my computer's who's screen is currently reading: "I AM CONSCIOUS…

I'm not asking you to take my claims about my own conscious experience seriously at all. There's no need to cross the boundaries of self at all.

The central problem of consciousness is about how you have an experience (even if it is an illusion). Unless you don't have any experience of anything, in which case I'm confident that we'd deem you non-conscious and therefore your existence to be of not much relevance to the question at hand.

Whether or not your experience is an illusion or not, it is an experience. And it is experience ("qualia" in the philosophy of consciousness) that is the core question here.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#343

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

cr0sh wrote: post #324
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The circle of human empathy will stretch to encompass machine people, and they will be given some rights. No it won't. Look at it this way: There are still millions of people on this planet today that believe if you aren't "like them" that you're no better than an animal, and should be treated as such (such people tend to treat animals better than these "others" that aren't like them). This extends all over the pla…

We kill and enslave people who are far away. Even this only if you play fast and loose with the words "kill" and "enslave" (we're doing less of both now than we did in the past). But if and when we create person-like artificial intelligences, we will create them to be close to us. They will not be far away, and therefore I don't expect the same outcome you're describing.

We'll all be long dead by the time it happens, but that's what I think.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#344

Post by imoldtoo »

Veedrac wrote: post #293
imoldtoo wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This scaling argument only works if the consituent molecules, atoms and particles also scale proportionally. If you scale the system but keep one end tied down it isn't the same system.

No, it holds much more strongly than that. The idea that consciousness can only arise in neurons shaped exactly like human neurons—and not, say, slightly larger neurons like exist in many other animals, or neurons with slightly different energy-carrying chemicals, or whatever—is implausible, because evolution isn't goal-directed. Evolution didn't find the one true physical layout that leads to conscious experience, b…

I'm with you on this.

My reason for comment related purely to the looseness of the conversation, w.r.t. the word "scale", which, it seems I had misunderstood to mean an affine transform.

In light of this comment, I now see you were talking about some growth function or change in topology/structure.

Thanks for the clarification.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#345

Post by imoldtoo »

FisDugthop wrote: post #272
imoldtoo wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This scaling argument only works if the consituent molecules, atoms and particles also scale proportionally. If you scale the system but keep one end tied down it isn't the same system.

Presumably the grandparent is thinking of organisms like Pando [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)

Yes, that makes more sense. ta

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#346

Post by state_less »

TuringTest wrote: post #338
state_less wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How could I tell if there's consciousness in that simulated universe, when I can't tell whether other beings in this original universe are conscious?

If you replicate the universe, then the properties would hold from the reference and simulation. It shouldn't matter if we use information vs. whatever the reference implementation is using. We do this sort of thing when we simulate known systems, like a computer running in software.

So if there is conscious beings in the universe, it'll be in the simulation. You hold that you're conscious, so then I'd hope you'd agree the simulation has at least one conscious being in it.

I don't know why some folks consciousness test only seems to work for themselves. I've been convinced by the simple argument by induction: I am an example of an animal. I have consciousness, so others likely do too.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#347

Post by uoaei »

ajuc wrote: post #333
uoaei wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> on real numbers

Only your pedantry cornered us here.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#348

Post by yummypaint »

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…

I think the superorganism perspective is more reasonable than it seems on its face. We manage to digest our food and regulate our endocrine sysyems with almost no conscious intention, and likewise its unlikely our autonomic processes have much knowledge of what we believe ourselves to be thinking about. Most of our cells arent even human. An individual ant doesnt need to grasp what the colony is doing any more than a particular neuron needs to grasp what a person is doing. It seems that the components do have their own awereness, its just much more limited in scope than that of the whole system.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#349

Post by yummypaint »

This hits at a long standing question ive had about how consciousness arises. Its clear that it results mechanistically (obeying physics) from complex systems of simple components. The big question in my mind is whether it arises with a sudden jump (like a phase transition) or if its truly a continuum. I think mathematics may prove much more useful at disentangling this than the article implies.

"Erdős and Rényi (1960) showed that for many monotone-increasing properties of random graphs, graphs of a size slightly less than a certain threshold are very unlikely to have the property, whereas graphs with a few more graph edges are almost certain to have it. This is known as a phase transition (Janson et al. 2000, p. 103)."

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#350

Post by DesiLurker »

cr0sh wrote: post #326
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…

> IMO its worth a serious look from biochemistry point of view. I'm not a scientist, and certainly not a quantum physicist. But from what I understand, the main argument against this idea (that is, quantum effects within neurons - or some other biological quantum effect system) is the fact that as far as we know, such quantum effects cannot occur at any temperature near "average human body temperature". If such could…

>> as far as we know, such quantum effects cannot occur at any temperature

thats the too warm wet & noisy argument generally made. AFAIK it has been demonstrated that energy transfer in leaves for photosynthesis depends on quantum effects, so does sense of smell & direction in certain birds IIRC. there is a section on the wikipedia page for this that addresses this with ref links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reducti...

my point is rather simple, IF there is any evolutionary advantage to quantum processes in brain AND these quantum effects are available to ANY exploitable degree then evolution will favor selection of those mechanisms until they become pervasive and lose advantage. so its not really surprising that once the consciousness is aware enough to self reflect, the pace of technological development accelerated exponentially.

I do agree that it sounds like new-age BS but that will always be the case, religion with always try to hijack the scientific development but that should not be a deterrent to a lot more research conducted on this really fascinating field.

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