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The idea that everything is conscious is gaining academic credibility (2018)

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Re: The idea that everything is conscious is gaining academic credibility (2018)

#41

Post by Vampiero »

fighterpilot wrote: post #38
perl4ever wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can compute things by moving rocks around and placing them just so. (or using an abacus, etc) Therefore (if you accept that intelligence is computable) there could be an intelligent mind denoted by a sufficient number of rocks over a sufficient period of time, even if it took billions of years to have a thought. Whether "naturally" placed or by some agent. I think this is not original of me, but I forget the sour…

This is a key question. If we can replicate the information processing in 1 minute of brain activity by rearranging and moving rocks in a specific way over a 10 year period, would that arrangement of rocks have subject conscious states, or not? If yes, it's a good argument in support of panpsychism, because those conscious states would seem to be substrate-independent. And if not, why does the brain have subjective s…

Feedback. Our brains are circuits, rocks are not. No matter how hard you try, rocks are never going to rearrange themselves if left to sit. Self-organization is very common in nature, and I find it easy to believe that consciousness is an emergent process that necessarily encompasses some level of self-organization.

Re: The idea that everything is conscious is gaining academic credibility (2018)

#42

Post by fighterpilot »

Vampiero wrote: post #41
fighterpilot wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a key question. If we can replicate the information processing in 1 minute of brain activity by rearranging and moving rocks in a specific way over a 10 year period, would that arrangement of rocks have subject conscious states, or not? If yes, it's a good argument in support of panpsychism, because those conscious states would seem to be substrate-independent. And if not, why does the brain have subjective s…

Feedback. Our brains are circuits, rocks are not. No matter how hard you try, rocks are never going to rearrange themselves if left to sit. Self-organization is very common in nature, and I find it easy to believe that consciousness is an emergent process that necessarily encompasses some level of self-organization.

> without an external agent performing these tasks.

What about an AGI running autonomously on a computer, then. Would that have subjective states like we do?

Re: The idea that everything is conscious is gaining academic credibility (2018)

#43

Post by zikzak »

itisit wrote: post #31
zikzak wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can't stand the idea that they are just part of a casual chain with no more free agency than a pebble buffeted by waves on a beach so they cling to the idea that they are special.

Can you blame them?

Not at all.

Re: The idea that everything is conscious is gaining academic credibility (2018)

#44

Post by nick_kline »

ojosilva wrote: post #20
nick_kline wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So consciousness is some kind of messy combination of matter, responding to inputs, to connections between particles. This feels wholly inadequate. My human consciousness is reduced when I get shot in the head but the particles are still there, so think about when my brain deteriorates, when I die. If you put my matter into a container all that matter is still there but I'm no longer able to have human consciousness…

It's not useless, it's a valid approach to study the subject. Consciousness here is downgraded to a very "simple form", to more fundamental components that all matter possess in a way or another. So it does not mean that a rock is sentient like your mind is. It's more like saying, ie, that quantum entanglement could be a component of consciousness. A rock could interact with quantum entanglement, therefore it would b…

Ok, maybe not useless. It feels so far away what I imagine human or a dog's "consciousness" that it is hard to see how to rate the jump up from an ant to mouse, dog, great apes, etc.

Re: The idea that everything is conscious is gaining academic credibility (2018)

#45

Post by fruity123 »

skhm wrote: post #39
fruity123 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the most difficult question of consciousness is why am I inside my brain and not someone else’s. Out of the billions of people somehow I control only my brain.

I was ruminating on this on a long walk recently and it occurred to me that I'm probably not "only inside my brain", as you put it. "You" aren't only inside your brain at all. Imagine that at every timestep, there's a single consciousness that experiences qualia all at once, across all matter - and the feeling of being "inside your brain" is just that the qualia happening there have a large number of causal relations…

I actually wrote a longer comment but deleted it because i didn’t think it was fully formed:

> Maybe it’s like an operating system context switch. I feel like I am in one mind because I have memories of what came before even microseconds ago. But how do I know that my memories were not just loaded right now for processing...I guess simulation theory stuff. We don’t really have any proof that we were actually in control of the moment that just happened a microsecond ago - that could all be an illusion.

Just a funny coincidence that on such a topic as a global consciousness we had such a similar idea ;)

Re: The idea that everything is conscious is gaining academic credibility (2018)

#46

Post by mrkramer »

fruity123 wrote: post #21
colanderman wrote: post #14

I don't think there's any need to invoke as "magical" an idea as consciousness being a "fundamental property of matter" to reach the conclusion that many more things than we think are conscious. A 10,000 ft view of the human brain includes: memory, emotional state, sensory input, ability to monitor and control internal processes including memory and emotion, motor control, and a logical system to tie these together a…

I find the most difficult question of consciousness is why am I inside my brain and not someone else’s. Out of the billions of people somehow I control only my brain.

Because your brain is physically inside your body just like water is physically inside a bottle.

Speaking of sci-fi maybe in the future you will get a brain implant and someone could remotely control you or manipulate, transfer or observe your consciousness.

Btw notion of mind uploading is very feasible imo.

Re: The idea that everything is conscious is gaining academic credibility (2018)

#47

Post by mrkramer »

My assumptions are:

Consciousness is a property of living begins.

Consciousness is a feature of neurological construct such as brain or a feature of any other construct that we yet don't know of.

Level of intelligence is directly proportional to reaching consciousness.

Further on to elaborate I think consciousness depends on intelligence; the more intelligent a living organism is there is higher probability it will reach a point of consciousness which nobody knows where and when exactly is.

If primitive living organisms show patterns of conscious like behavior it does not mean they have consciousness because they live by the rules that are encoded and heritable. Such individuals have no control or awareness over their behavior and are not aware of itself and its surroundings. They reproduce or replicate and are subject to the biological forces of natural selection, with the payoffs of the game(life) representing reproductive success (biological fitness). See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy

People should note that there is a difference between mimicking intelligence(consciousness) and actually having it.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

Re: The idea that everything is conscious is gaining academic credibility (2018)

#48

Post by skhm »

fruity123 wrote: post #45
skhm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was ruminating on this on a long walk recently and it occurred to me that I'm probably not "only inside my brain", as you put it. "You" aren't only inside your brain at all. Imagine that at every timestep, there's a single consciousness that experiences qualia all at once, across all matter - and the feeling of being "inside your brain" is just that the qualia happening there have a large number of causal relations…

I actually wrote a longer comment but deleted it because i didn’t think it was fully formed: > Maybe it’s like an operating system context switch. I feel like I am in one mind because I have memories of what came before even microseconds ago. But how do I know that my memories were not just loaded right now for processing...I guess simulation theory stuff. We don’t really have any proof that we were actually in contr…

Ha, that's a lovely coincidence, thanks for sharing.

FWIW I went down this train of thought while listening to an audiobook of Hofstadter's "I am a Strange Loop", which doesn't quite go down the same road but triggered the idea well enough in my own brain.

Re: The idea that everything is conscious is gaining academic credibility (2018)

#49

Post by perl4ever »

Vampiero wrote: post #41
fighterpilot wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a key question. If we can replicate the information processing in 1 minute of brain activity by rearranging and moving rocks in a specific way over a 10 year period, would that arrangement of rocks have subject conscious states, or not? If yes, it's a good argument in support of panpsychism, because those conscious states would seem to be substrate-independent. And if not, why does the brain have subjective s…

Feedback. Our brains are circuits, rocks are not. No matter how hard you try, rocks are never going to rearrange themselves if left to sit. Self-organization is very common in nature, and I find it easy to believe that consciousness is an emergent process that necessarily encompasses some level of self-organization.

>rocks are never going to rearrange themselves if left to sit

I don't understand this statement. What are mountains? What is sand? What is a planet? What is an asteroid? Where do you think rocks came from in the first place? Over substantial periods of time, rocks are always being rearranged whether or not humans interfere.

Perhaps you are drawing a distinction between being rearranged and rearranging themselves, but I don't understand that distinction. If you think that humans rearrange their own brains, I think that is an impossible thing to even define. How can anything act on itself without an intermediary? What kind of evidence is there for it? Without energy input surely you'd agree that no brain can make itself function? So how is a brain different from a waterfall or rocks moved by a river?

Re: The idea that everything is conscious is gaining academic credibility (2018)

#50

Post by fruity123 »

mrkramer wrote: post #46
fruity123 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the most difficult question of consciousness is why am I inside my brain and not someone else’s. Out of the billions of people somehow I control only my brain.

Because your brain is physically inside your body just like water is physically inside a bottle. Speaking of sci-fi maybe in the future you will get a brain implant and someone could remotely control you or manipulate, transfer or observe your consciousness. Btw notion of mind uploading is very feasible imo.

Strange Days film explores some interesting stuff like this.

> brain inside body

But why is your experience tied to one brain and not another.

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