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Is Consciousness Everywhere?

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Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#101

Post by dukeofdoom »

skohan wrote: post #31
dukeofdoom wrote: post #20

This channel has lots of content on this topic. Including interviews with all the top people. https://www.youtube.com/c/CloserToTruthTV/videos To me it seems like consciousness can only be passed from one being to another. And since we are all just a collection of cells, and everything that we are is coded inside a cell. It seems to me that consciousness must exist at the cellular level.

Is there a reason you think consciousness can't simply be explained as brain activity?

My thoughts on this:

1) Your brain cells are just a special type of cell. How these brain cells send and receive signals, interact and make connection, is coded at the cellular level. Software without hardware to run on, is just text.

2) You are born with certain conscious behaviours that you don't need to learn. This behaviour must be passed between generations using DNA/RNA. Therefore the coding for that later behaviour must already be present when you were just two cells.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#102

Post by [deleted] »

morpheos137 wrote: post #69
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good place to start, if you are a firm skeptic and not willing to even attempt faith or your own empirical experiences, is a book called Entangled Minds. There is not a single claim made in this book which does not have a reference to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached to it, iirc several hundred papers in all. It firmly supports consciousness being in at minimum earthworms, and probably even ,,lower,, creatures…

I am a non-materialist and I think consciousness is not a thing. So there's that position too. What do humans, mammals and earthworms have in common that AI or robots do not (as yet?) I would not say it is consciousness (because my position is there is really no such thing) but rather they have in common the fact that they are alive and subject to the Darwinian replication program and guided by common mental processe…

[deleted]

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#103

Post by nynx »

morpheos137 wrote: post #69
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good place to start, if you are a firm skeptic and not willing to even attempt faith or your own empirical experiences, is a book called Entangled Minds. There is not a single claim made in this book which does not have a reference to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached to it, iirc several hundred papers in all. It firmly supports consciousness being in at minimum earthworms, and probably even ,,lower,, creatures…

I am a non-materialist and I think consciousness is not a thing. So there's that position too. What do humans, mammals and earthworms have in common that AI or robots do not (as yet?) I would not say it is consciousness (because my position is there is really no such thing) but rather they have in common the fact that they are alive and subject to the Darwinian replication program and guided by common mental processe…

How does believing that all things are information differ from believing all things are matter? Those sound just like two sides of the same coin to me.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#104

Post by slibhb »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #51
geophile wrote: post #12

I have been hearing about Koch, and Tononi, and panpsychism, and phi for years now, in these articles summarizing consciousness for laymen, (a group that includes me). And these very long articles bloviate but never go any further than giving a facile description of phi, claiming that this IIT "theory" is testable, and then not saying how it could be tested. The articles from five years ago and this one seem intercha…

A good place to start, if you are a firm skeptic and not willing to even attempt faith or your own empirical experiences, is a book called Entangled Minds. There is not a single claim made in this book which does not have a reference to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached to it, iirc several hundred papers in all. It firmly supports consciousness being in at minimum earthworms, and probably even ,,lower,, creatures…

> Of course, you can also choose to remain in the safe comfort of materialism.

To me it seems that materialism (or physicalism or any monism) inevitably leads to panpsychism. If there's only one kind of substance, it's either conscious or it's not, so everything has consciousness or nothing does. Panpsychists go with the former, probably because they think they are conscious, material beings.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#105

Post by forgotmypw17 »

andi999 wrote: post #92
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good place to start, if you are a firm skeptic and not willing to even attempt faith or your own empirical experiences, is a book called Entangled Minds. There is not a single claim made in this book which does not have a reference to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached to it, iirc several hundred papers in all. It firmly supports consciousness being in at minimum earthworms, and probably even ,,lower,, creatures…

The Amazon description says: "Radin shows how we know that psychic phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis are real, based on scientific evidence from thousands of controlled lab test". Actually as far as I understand we know that telepathy does not work, and even more so with psychokinesis. Did you read the book, can you point me to the scientific evidence of psychokinesis?

yes, i have read the book, and it is full of detailed descriptions of experiments with references.

as a hacker, you should have little difficulty finding these and reviewing them.

unfortunately, i have not the time or motivation to be your personal research assistant.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#106

Post by visarga »

frongpik wrote: post #81

This sounds like the bottom up approach, i.e. that "consciousness" is more like a medium that's everywhere, even an atom has a bit of this consciousness, and when such small bits assemble together, a bigger consciousness emerges. In this approach, I'm tempted to equate consciousness with the electromagnetic field - it's this field that allows us to experience the world. However human mind is something entirely differ…

> I'm tempted to equate consciousness with the electromagnetic field

There would be no point. Consciousness has a purpose related to replication, it's not just a background field.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#107

Post by forgotmypw17 »

kharak wrote: post #60
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good place to start, if you are a firm skeptic and not willing to even attempt faith or your own empirical experiences, is a book called Entangled Minds. There is not a single claim made in this book which does not have a reference to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached to it, iirc several hundred papers in all. It firmly supports consciousness being in at minimum earthworms, and probably even ,,lower,, creatures…

Is there a good podcast or Youtube video for starters? Highly sceptic of the idea and therefore intrigued.

not that i am aware of, sorry.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#108

Post by visarga »

Animats wrote: post #33

For small values of "consciousness". The author writes "Consciousness is any experience, from the most mundane to the most exalted." One could call that "input". Still, the author is a serious neuroscientist, not a philosopher. He did, however, start with a Jesuit education, which biases one towards thinking that humans are special. I personally think that trying to understand "consciousness" should be deferred in fa…

I agree about common sense and keeping safe. Without consciousness I would not wake up to eat something in the morning, and I would die in a few days. Consciousness keeps me alive.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#109

Post by tosser0001 »

justinpombrio wrote: post #37
geophile wrote: post #12

I have been hearing about Koch, and Tononi, and panpsychism, and phi for years now, in these articles summarizing consciousness for laymen, (a group that includes me). And these very long articles bloviate but never go any further than giving a facile description of phi, claiming that this IIT "theory" is testable, and then not saying how it could be tested. The articles from five years ago and this one seem intercha…

I don't think you're missing anything. Tononi made a formula related to how complicated a system is, and claimed that its measures consciousness. And what are you supposed to say to that, when no one can agree on what the word "consciousness" means, but people are still so attached to the word? For Scott Aaronson's take on "Integrated Information Theory": https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799

Being able to model consciousness mathematically opens up some grotesque possibilities.

Human suffering presumably has some sort of limit based purely on our physical makeup. Suppose though the very concept of subjective suffering could be modeled in some way. Is there any law in the universe that says there is a limit to suffering, pain (or pleasure)?

Could an investigator of the future test out an algorithm on a conscious entity modeled in software, just to see what the mathematical limit of pain is? Maybe that's what Hell is...

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#110

Post by mehphp »

morpheos137 wrote: post #69
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good place to start, if you are a firm skeptic and not willing to even attempt faith or your own empirical experiences, is a book called Entangled Minds. There is not a single claim made in this book which does not have a reference to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached to it, iirc several hundred papers in all. It firmly supports consciousness being in at minimum earthworms, and probably even ,,lower,, creatures…

I am a non-materialist and I think consciousness is not a thing. So there's that position too. What do humans, mammals and earthworms have in common that AI or robots do not (as yet?) I would not say it is consciousness (because my position is there is really no such thing) but rather they have in common the fact that they are alive and subject to the Darwinian replication program and guided by common mental processe…

Can you expand on consciousness not being a thing? You mean it doesn't exist at all or it isn't a physical thing?
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