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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

#151

Post by mooseburger »

mapcars wrote: post #118
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…

>core philosophical problem of how we (or anything else) is able to experience anything at all By `how` you mean the mechanics of it or something else?

Both the brain and a chair are made of the same fundamental particles, following the same physics. Yet, no one believes the chair experiences anything. The core problem of the materialist frame is why the atoms that make up the brain are able to experience anything.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#152

Post by hackinthebochs »

adwn wrote: post #90
dilap wrote: post #27

An interesting thought experiment is to imagine an incredibly-detailed computer simulation of a brain, down to the level of individual cells and neurotransmitters. (While this is beyond our current capabilities, it is in principle possible.) Hook the brain up to some decent IO devices, and you’d have an extremely human-like “AI”. (I’m glossing over some tricky details like, do you start with a fetus/baby brain and le…

To build on your thought experiment: > So the question is, this simulated brain, which is behaving very similarly indeed to a biological brain: does it have consciousness? Does it feel? If you answer "yes" to this question, what happens if you split the computations of that simulated brain over a million people equipped with pen and paper? Where is its consciousness happening now? I have yet to hear a satisfying answ…

>Where is its consciousness happening now?

Our brain organization can be described by its various information cascades. But if conscious is implementing the right kind of information cascade, then a brain simulated by a million people would be conscious. The "where" of conscious is the same question as the "where" of informational relationships. But this isn't a well-formed question. There is no one location where some sequence of bits and its proper interpretation is stored. It's distributed among the components involved in the information cascade. The "where" of consciousness is the same.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#153

Post by arnoooooo »

fjfaase wrote: post #115
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How functional must a brain be? We know that we can remove at least half of a human brain and still have a somewhat functional person. Where is the line drawn?

There are several conditions where a brain loses consciousness, the most common is sleeping. Joscha Bach has some interesting thoughts on what is needed to be conscious. Stanislas Dehaene and Thomas Metzinger have done interesting scientific research with respect to the brain and (various states of) consciousness.

Have you ever had the experience of losing consciousness ? How long did it last, in your own experience ?

I have been through deep sleep, knockouts and anesthesia, yet have never experienced the disappearance of my consciousness. Does deep sleep not feel instantaneous to you ?

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#154

Post by Stierlitz »

ryeights wrote: post #83
Stierlitz wrote: post #75

> Does Consciousness Pervade the Universe? NO! > Where does consciousness come from? Emergent properties of a functional brain.

Why such a quick dismissal? We have virtually zero evidence one way or the other. Calling consciousness an “emergent property” is a cop-out answer. What, materially, is that property, what physical laws explain it, and by what mechanism does it emerge from mere electrical impulses?

> .. What, materially, is that property ..

Synapses firing ..

> .. what physical laws explain it ..

Physics ..

> .. and by what mechanism does it emerge from mere electrical impulses?

Through the senses and acting on the environment through muscles triggered by synapses firing.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#156

Post by mooseburger »

ArtWomb wrote: post #67
arnoooooo wrote: post #4

I think non-duality / advaita makes much more sense than panpsychism, as it requires less assumptions while remaining compatible with our experience. Panpsychism seems like a bandaid to solve the hard problem of consciousness, which non-duality does not suffer from.

Am really pleased you name dropped "advaita vedanta" (literally translated from Sanskrit as "non-secondness"). From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on advaita vedanta: Brahman—the ultimate, transcendent and immanent God of the latter Vedas—appears as the world because of its creative energy (māyā). The world has no separate existence apart from Brahman. The experiencing self (jīva) and the transcenden…

> But it will be interesting to see how it grapples with new discoveries in neuroscience.

Which new discoveries in neuroscience affect the idea of Brahman?

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#157

Post by hackinthebochs »

arnoooooo wrote: post #146
etrautmann wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a neuroscientist, I have the opposite intuition. If we swap out one Neuron with a digital version you’ll be the same person. Do that 84B times and at the end of the day I see absolutely no reason why you would lose consciousness or sense of self.

That only works if neurons do generate consciousness. The only thing we know is that their activity seems to correlate with consciousness. My guess is that you can't build a digital Neuron, at least not one that has consciousness properties. That's because I take neurons to be what consciousness looks like when viewed through our senses.

But what's special about neurons aside from the causal relationships it has with the rest of the system? If its utility to consciousness is nothing but its causal relationships then a digital replica will support consciousness just the same.

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#159

Post by mooseburger »

Stierlitz wrote: post #154
ryeights wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why such a quick dismissal? We have virtually zero evidence one way or the other. Calling consciousness an “emergent property” is a cop-out answer. What, materially, is that property, what physical laws explain it, and by what mechanism does it emerge from mere electrical impulses?

> .. What, materially, is that property .. Synapses firing .. > .. what physical laws explain it .. Physics .. > .. and by what mechanism does it emerge from mere electrical impulses? Through the senses and acting on the environment through muscles triggered by synapses firing.

Heard of the China brain thought experiment? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain

Would such a brain be conscious? Why or why not?

Re: Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

#160

Post by hackinthebochs »

glr wrote: post #155

Panpsychism is also supported by Integrated Information Theory. So far it is probably the most fruitful attempt to mathematically describe consciousness.

Panpsychism isn't really supported by IIT, at least not any version of panspychism that is resurging. IIT says the organization determines the level of consciousness. Panpsychism has no theory for how organization increases or combines conscious properties of the individual conscious units of matter.
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