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Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

nautil.us

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Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#111

Post by kirre245 »

trixie_ wrote: post #88
paraschopra wrote: post #84

Panpsychism is exciting. But there are two problems in it. One is the combination problem: what sort of collection of atoms are conscious and what are not. If you propose then that only agents or complex systems are conscious, you are faced with the second problem: the boundary condition. What do you call an agent, and why? I’m ultimately hopeful that subjective experience will come to be seen as something fundamenta…

I think panpsychism argues that everything is conscious, at all levels, simultaneously. There are no boundaries. What you experience as a boundary is just the limit of your awareness. Just as you don't consciously beat your heart or heal your wounds. And if you think about it a lot it's tough to really tell where your own boundary brain/body ends and the environment begins. I like the panpsychism stuff because it res…

Maybe I misunderstand the concept, but when we are newly born we are somewhat not conscious in the usual sense of self. In that theory does it mean we, or our atoms are already conscious but we dont have the awareness yet? Because our brain is first producing a trick of the perception of self once it is fully developed?

In the spiritual world many advanced people have had these experiences of oneness with the world once they learn to fully strip the mind from all conditioning and cocneption of self. So it seems to me like the concept of embodied swlf and consciousnes are two things that can be seperated. Does that make any sense?

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#112

Post by dEnigma »

trixie_ wrote: post #95
jacobsimon wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t disagree with the problems you describe, but I don’t think panpsychism explains any of these problems either. It’s a non-answer, and functionally equivalent to saying nothing about consciousness. The “evolutionary illusion” you describe is precisely what we’re trying to understand: the brain is doing an extraordinary magic trick and no one knows how.

Given what artificial neural networks are already capable of, it shouldn't seem like a magic trick what our own brains are capable of (from the outside). The hang up is on the inside right? You have an essence to your consciousness experience that you believe a fly, bacteria, rock, computer, artificial neural network may or may not have. Panpsychism does answer that question by saying yes, they all have some sliver o…

Simply answering a question with "Yes" without providing evidence or a deeper explanation seems pretty useless and like no additional knowledge was gained.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#113

Post by yokljo »

What if your consciousness exists outside your physical brain, and within your brain is basically an aerial that is "tuned to your frequency", so no matter where you are your brain will always communicate with the same consciousness. I suppose with that theory comes the ability for two brains to tune into the same consciousness, and various other fun implications. Is there already a name for this?

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#114

Post by state_less »

posterboy wrote: post #72
state_less wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over time, our picture of the universe become more clear with more understanding. If you think about the direction we are heading, you might imagine the picture becomes so clear, that the act itself enters into the picture of the universe and you find yourself staring into a mirror.

Mirrors only show pictures of the past, even if that means only pico to nanosecond differences here on earth

We experience the present when looking into mirrors in our telescopes, in our bathroom or our current science literature. The present changes as fast as our brain changes. Our mirror appears to be getting clearer over time as we refine the science.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#115

Post by e3b0c »

Has anyone read Schopenhauer's books like The world as will and representation?

His idea doesn't seem to be talked about much. However, I would admit that I don't fully comprehend the ideas of that book either.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#116

Post by lisper »

paraschopra wrote: post #104
lisper wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We humans draw this boundary all the time. We do it based on an entity's I/O behavior, and in particular, the complexity of interactions that it is possible to have with it. Agency is not a binary quantity. A normal adult human is an agent, and a blastocyst is not, but there is no bright line where agency is bestowed. It happens gradually. None of this is a deep mystery. The only thing that is mysterious is how the t…

Curious: why do you say pansychism is absurd? Red colour is something which has sort of become a canonical example of subjective experience. Nothing special about it - could have been blue :)

Because it's just obvious that consciousness and subjective experience are not properties of matter, they are properties of very particular arrangements of matter. A CPU is made of the same stuff as beach sand, but a CPU can compute and beach sand can't. Or take your laptop (or your brain) and hit is with a sledge hammer. All of the atoms that were there before this procedure are still there after. Do you really want to argue that nothing essential is lost in this process?

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#117

Post by adrianN »

warent wrote: post #109
paraschopra wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like most philosophies, pansychism has multiple flavours. To me, the combination problem is concrete. The physical location of my awareness seems to be inside the head and not my hand, even though both are made of atoms. ‘Everything is conscious’ fails to account for that.

The only reason your awareness seems to be inside of your head is because your head and face is your primary interface with the world, where the core of your senses reside and is, therefore, your default state. You can test this hypothesis by practicing a meditation technique called "body scanning" where you allow your awareness to focus into various parts of the body, leaving your head and indeed entering your hand…

I doubt that meditation techniques would allow you to stay conscious after something destroys your brain.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#118

Post by hyperpallium »

paraschopra wrote: post #102
hyperpallium wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Fourier analysis, every component sine wave is conscious, and every possible superposition of sine waves is also conscious. It's turtles all the way down. What does it mean for an atom, an electron, a sine wave to be conscious? What can it perceive, consider, how can it act? But those are awarenesss, reason, agency... distinct from "consciousness". Just because an entity cannot assert itself, does not mean it is…

> Just because an entity cannot assert itself, does not mean it is not conscious. This does not give any more purchase on the world than we currently have. It’s similar to saying that just because we have never seen laws of physics change, it doesn’t mean they can’t change. Of course, that may or may not be true. But would you bet on sun not rising tomorrow? New scientific theories / entities must have give us additi…

For sure. The one thing it does is "solve" the problem of consciousness in a surprising, entertaining, and absurd way.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#119

Post by hyperpallium »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #98
hyperpallium wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Fourier analysis, every component sine wave is conscious, and every possible superposition of sine waves is also conscious. It's turtles all the way down. What does it mean for an atom, an electron, a sine wave to be conscious? What can it perceive, consider, how can it act? But those are awarenesss, reason, agency... distinct from "consciousness". Just because an entity cannot assert itself, does not mean it is…

But at this point, what are you actually saying? What does turtles-all-the-way-down consciousness actually pick out? I have a hard time seeing it as informative. That is, the statement "everything is conscious" is doing no work for you in describing the thing in question.

I'm merely elaborating/expanding to show the extremity of "everything is conscious".

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#120

Post by henriquemaia »

taneq wrote: post #97
naasking wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's confusion consciousness for self awareness. That's not the hard problem that needs solving, it's actually one of the easy problems.

I think stating that there's a "hard problem of consciousness," which is not explained by self-awareness, is begging the question. We just kind of assume that there's something inherently special about qualia, raise them on a pedestal, and claim that they are unique to humans. Why assume that 'what it's like to experience the colour red' isn't just the experience of being aware that you're experiencing a red visual i…

Qualia are not just a human thing. Think of Nagel's seminal paper What is it like to be a bat?
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