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Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

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Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#111

Post by friend_and_foe »

itishappy wrote: post #98
CuriouslyC wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You chose to type a reply to me right? I guess you could assume that you are compelled and your free will is an illusion, but honestly that view is shit.

I'm a lot more confident in my own consciousness than I am of the universe's, but to be honest I'm not entirely convinced of either. I think the bit that's throwing me is the jump from "we know that consciousness exists" to "therefore the universe as a whole must be is conscious" but I bet I'm misinterpreting this somewhat.

Not who you're replying to, but I'll take a crack at this and share my ponderings on this topic.

Let's take for granted first that you're convinced of your own consciousness. You're more confident in it you say, though not thoroughly convinced, so let's start there. So in light of the fact that you are not simply a being inside the universe, but an integral, inseparable part of it, is you observing the universe not the universe observing itself? This might not be "the entire universe in totality is a big, pondering mind" but it at least means, again given that you are conscious, that the universe is at least as conscious and aware as you are.

If you're not conscious then there's no starting point from which to even begin this line of inquiry.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#112

Post by metabagel »

dgoodell wrote: post #95
a13o wrote: post #54

We never bothered to define consciousness with any scientific rigor, so why not? It's common for things that are everywhere, to also be nowhere at all. Could the cosmos, in fact, be smurpity-badoingo?

Why is it so hard for people to understand that you can’t have productive discussions about things that you haven’t solidly defined?

We know what consciousness is. It's our self-awareness.

We don't know where it comes from our how to test it, because each individual can only observe their own consciousness.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#114

Post by DFHippie »

michaelmrose wrote: post #79
fooker wrote: post #14

[flagged]

The simplest explanation of consciousness is that its a tool to build an abstract world model including fellow humans turned back on self. You cant drive the entire network because that is an interactable problem so you model it like a fellow human and either feed broad input to it or sanctify decisions already made as part of the theory of "I" I dont think gpt4 individual cells nor the algorithm can be said to have…

If all your attention is temporarily focused on something external to yourself, an onrushing train, say, are you temporarily not conscious?

People typically distinguish self-awareness from consciousness. It is not clear that they should, or shouldn't, but they typically do. They say consciousness is not facts but qualia, the sensation of the facts. A spreadsheet full of information can contain facts that differentiate blue from red. We hypothesize that a spreadsheet has no sensations, hence no qualia, hence no consciousness. We cannot actually operationalize this. We say a paramecium and a stone have no qualia, but this is more a hypothesis than a fact.

I think panpsychism in its essence is accepting that qualia are something and that the imagined boundary between things that have qualia and things which don't is established only by hypothesis and tradition. In the interest of not multiplying entities beyond necessity, we dispose of the boundary.

I am not a philsopher, so I don't really know what philosophers say.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#115

Post by interstice »

peddamat wrote: post #108
RaftPeople wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Panpsychism requires that the universe updates its state by conscious choice, which we already know happens Can you clarify what we "already know happens"? Even for humans, it's not clear that "conscious choice" exists and causes changes in state, because we don't know what the mechanism is that can cause a state change other than state at time T-1.

Isn't it assumed that everything is deterministic apart from what is done by the somewhat magical, "free will"?

If by assumed you mean hotly debated, yes

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#116

Post by friend_and_foe »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #64
everdrive wrote: post #53

There seems to be a very mystical branch of consciousness theory. In my opinion, it is completely misguided. Consciousness, as far as I can tell, is a specific evolved mechanism, and like the eye, has probably convergently evolved to serve different purposes. (mammals & birds --> primarily for child care, and then later for social dynamics. Squids --> no idea!) In some sense, the search for consciousness where it doe…

Is there a useful definition of "consciousness" that is empirically testable with some sort of instrument such that you can point it at a squid and say "yep, that one has consciousness!" ? I ask because I've never heard such a definition nor has anyone actually ever told me what the instrument is that detects this. Until then, I figure there's no such thing as consciousness... it's just what superstitious monkeys say…

My view on this is that the mind is the instrument that acknowledges it's own existence. "I think therefore I am" and all that. I findnit funny, we all walk around absolutely certain of our own existence, very much aware of it, and then question that this is even occurring. I'm satisfied that I've identified consciousness with 100% certainty by simply noticing it in myself, even being able to notice it is proof that it's there. And heuristically I presume others with form similar to mine have done the same thing, I think that's a safe bet to make.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#117

Post by metabagel »

everdrive wrote: post #74
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a useful definition of "consciousness" that is empirically testable with some sort of instrument such that you can point it at a squid and say "yep, that one has consciousness!" ? I ask because I've never heard such a definition nor has anyone actually ever told me what the instrument is that detects this. Until then, I figure there's no such thing as consciousness... it's just what superstitious monkeys say…

In my mind, this is part of the mysticism of the movement. If you define a word widely enough, then anything can fit. I hate to invoke this, but this often feels like a Motte & Bailey argument. If you want to call "God" the energy which started the big bang, you're sort of smuggling personification into something which really bears zero resemblance to traditional religious ideas. And so it is with consciousness. If w…

Perhaps, trees have a very muted consciousness. Perhaps every living thing is conscious at some level ranging from nearly zero to far in excess of human consciousness.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#118

Post by yongjik »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #65

The most fundamental argument for panpsychism is that it obeys Occam's razor FAR better than the "emergent animate matter" hypothesis. Panpsychism requires that the universe updates its state by conscious choice, which we already know happens, so from the perspective of Occam's razor we would actually need to explain why it DIDN'T happen for non-animal matter. Additionally, if we go with the emergence hypothesis, we…

> we have to explain the mechanism by which permutations of the states of matter can create a new dimension of "feeling" and "awareness" where one did not already exist.

You mean, like a newborn baby? That's not a "tall order," that's an everyday affair.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#120

Post by friend_and_foe »

delichon wrote: post #27
seba_dos1 wrote: post #3

Parts of the cosmos for sure are and there's no need to look very far for it - for example the part that forms me writing this right now is, in fact, conscious.

If the cosmos is conscious in the way that we are and the speed of light proves to be a limit, then its thoughts would take thousands or millions of years to process. It may be compelled to leverage entities with cogitation components within light seconds of each other for fast thinking. The Thinking, Fast and Slow paradigm could be built into the shape of the universe. If the slow thinkers seek to constrain the fast…

I'm trying to understand what you're saying here.

If the speed of light is a hard limit, leveraging localized cognition would not be useful at all. The localized cognition would only be able to ponder things it observes or experiences, that is, it can't ponder whatever the conscious universe wants it to, so the universe has to create it where it needs it, and then it can't use this cognition anywhere else because again, the speed of light. It really gets us nowhere.

I think though probably this "consciousness" of the universe, if it exists, is apparent and localized, but not bound and distinct locally, if that makes sense.

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