Interesting but I struggle to see how this hypothesis could ever be proven or disproven. If it can’t actually be tested then I don’t see how it presents more scientific value any other religious or superstitious belief.
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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I've long been fond of panpsychism, but I think it's less a hypothesis to be "proven" and more just a different way of framing the questions behind what consciousness is and how it can be defined. Under panpsychism consciousness isn't a binary property that some things have and other things don't, it's a continuum from zero to one (and if you count humans as "1" on the consciousness scale it also makes sense to consider values above that - there's no reason to assume that humans are the "most conscious possible" state of being).
So when you're reading about panpsychism and it says something like "individual electrons are conscious", bear in mind that they're proposing considering electrons to be, like, 10^-10 "consciousness units" worth of conscious. It's not like they're actually aware of themselves in some meaningful way like humans are. That's a common "giggle factor" problem for panpsychism. And it's also not saying that any arbitrary larger-scale structure us "more conscious" than humans, the way that the components of a large-scale structure interact is super important. A rock is not equivalently as "conscious" as a human brain even if they have the same number of particles interacting within them.
I think the real issue is with the fact that consciousness is not particularly well defined. Something can be more or less conscious than something else but what precisely does that mean? Has there ever been a means of measuring or detecting consciousness in anything?
That's my biggest frustration with this debate. At this point I'm convinced that consciousness is only a construct. Not a tangible entity, process, or concept, just a useful way to describe behavior. If someone describes the universe as conscious that's neat and all, but it doesn't really mean anything yet. And another person could say it isn't and neither would be right or wrong, because what the hell is consciousness? Like you said, how are we supposed to measure this when we don't know what it is? Many people think we haven't discovered what consciousness is; I believe we haven't decided what it is.
Depends on who you ask I think. Emergentism makes more sense to me because if you take consciousness as humans experience it, make it derivative of material structure (neurological activity), and assume the appearance of some kind of uniformity as synthesis of different parts of that neurological system, the only way consciousness may exist in that framing is in organisms that posses a nervous system.
This does inevitably leads to the problem of where to draw the line on the complexity necessary to qualify as consciousness, and im.not gonna pretend like I have the answer to that, but at least it becomes more of a scientific question rather than purely philosophical I think.
You could define it that way. I think it could be more abstract than that, personally, because
a. Is the nervous system in animals the only neural network in nature? I've heard discussion on the whether a some types of fungus are conscious from how they send chemical signals to other parts of the fungus. This is slow but does it count? And then there's the collective consciousness of ant colonies and beehives. That's a level above where each bug's nervous system is itself a node in a larger neural network.
b. I think that consciousness is more than just the nervous system. In another comment under this post I argued that a neural network (in an abstract sense) can only "think" in terms of the sensors it has access too. What does the lab-grown brain think about? It's never seen things, it's never heard sounds or words, can it feel touch? (I'm not an anatomy guy). My hunch is it's just static, essentially an "untrained" neural network". Does that count as conscious?Maybe those senses are considered a part of the nervous system, again I'm not an anatomy guy.
But then how do the "chemical computations" like hormones and gut bacteria come into play? Are they just indirectly sensed by the nervous system?
I'm really not exactly sure what qualifies, but the existence of an emergent system so has to be there. Does fungus communication give rise to a system that can build some kind of memory and refer to it to develop more complex behavior? If not, then it's lacking the level of complexity to be considered consciousness. (But that's just where I personally draw the line)
Eusociality has its own context. It's possible for a hive to show complex organized behavior, but so would an infinite paperclip machine if it was to consist of a swarm of collector drones. A myriad of units with a set of pre-determined instructions can have complex organizations, which still wouldn't qualify as consciousness.
Now, the brain scenario would definitely count since it consists of the necessary "hardware" to start generating its own abstract contextual model of its experiences.
A myriad of units with a set of pre-determined instructions
Like neurons? My argument was that in abstract sense, a single ant could be considered a neuron. It senses the environment and other ants for inputs, and it interacts with the environment and other ants for output. A network of ants is capable of complex behavior. By this logic of course, just about any entity could be considered a neuron, and any collection of entities a neural network, which I think is what the original article is getting at. Now is the ant colony conscious? I don't know. Am I conscious? I think so, it seems like it. Are you conscious? You seem a lot like me, and I think I probably am, so I think you probably are too. Basically what I'm saying is I haven't heard of a definition of consciousness that doesn't wind up encapsulating everything or nothing, or that isn't human-centric.
Now, the brain scenario would definitely count since it consists of the necessary "hardware" to start generating its own abstract contextual model of its experiences.
So, you're saying that you don't need experience to be conscious, just the the potential to experience? I'm not sure if I agree with that. Yeah there's diminishing returns, I don't think that an old person is significantly more self-aware than a kid in the grand scheme of things, but pretty much every thought I've ever had, that I realized I had anyway, was in terms of a sense I had, or at least derived from the senses. Even a newborn has been feeling and hearing since embryo. Now there is instinct to consider, that was evolved and while it can influence and direct consciousness, I don't think acting on instinct is a conscious act itself. I'm saying, can a brain in a jar with no contact with the world, that's never had contact with the world at any point, be aware of itself? What is self without environment?
Well, hypothetically, if someone defined the "consciousness" of every particle mathematically, and then figured out the laws that would allow us to compute (or at least approximate) the "consciousness" of a composite system (such as a brain), then we'd would have a genuine scientific theory.
I could see it being used to help develop theories about the gaps in understanding we have about our universe in theoretical quantum mechanics. That's the only field of thought that could lead to quantifiable experiments to test hypotheses.
Now I just know this article is wrong:
"But explaining things that reside “only in consciousness”—the red of a sunset, say, or the bitter taste of a lemon—has proven far more difficult"
Lemons are sour, damn it, not bitter! Lemons are part of the universe and sour, so any consciousness that perceives them as bitter is not part of the universe. /s
Why does philosophy constantly twist things into an over complicated mythical mess, and then act like it’s some novel insight? Like the things with colors: they only exist subjectively so they aren’t real in any other sense than being observed, so it’s only the observation that makes them real, and does that mean they are even real???
Yes, they are. Subatomic particles vibrate (or absorb vibrations) at specific frequencies, and therefor emit electromagnetic waves at certain frequencies when stimulated. That is real and objective. Evolution has left us with sensors and neurons that can detect and interpret some of these frequencies that appear to us as colors. That is subjective, but the science behind it is not. That’s what happens. Is the color real? Well, define the question better and there is an actual answer. The vibrations are real. Your interpretation is also real, but in a different way. Does the color exist without an observer? Well, what’s your definition of color? Does a tree falling in the woods with nothing to hear it make a sound? Well, what’s your definition of a sound?
The argument is not that they don't exist.
A color is an example that not all perceived can be described using terms of the physical world, and has variables that can only be experienced rather than described
Red is light at the 480 THz range. Blue is light at the 670 THz range. I think that's perfectly described using terms of the physical world. If you're talking about "what we experience as color" as being difficult to describe in our consciousness, then sure but that's the case for every single thing we experience. Same way I can describe the musical note A as 440 Hz. Does an A to you sound the same to me? My tongue is sensing a sugar molecule, does the experience of tasting it feel the same to you?
Not a single human perception can be described in words, but we can all compare perceptions to other perceptions and agree on the same answer. Perceptions are simply us recognizing patterns in our environment. Red is me recognizing my eyeball is looking at an object reflecting light in the 480 THz range. You look at that red ball and you also recognize it as reflecting light at 480 THz. Does it need to be described any further?
I love this, it's an emotionally regulated rant that's so eloquently written that it's more intelligent and informative than the article in question.
It does seems like philosophers do that sometimes, but how do you know there's electromagnetic radiation in the first place? You can't sense it unless if happens to vibrate in a narrow frequency range and even then only imperfectly. So, there's also really necessary philosophy. I guess it's just hard to objectively separate the quality stuff from the wankery.
I suppose what it is is that smaller questions are answered, bringing along with these answers jargon and special terms, then these special terms are used to define greater special terms, and so on until you end up with a big twisty answer to a seemingly simple question, and people who haven't read the answers with the smaller special terms look at the twisty answer in understandable bemusement.
Edit: This also happens to be one of life's big unanswered questions. I had an assignment on it for my MPhil a couple of years ago.
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“The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.”
- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
The question is if consciousness only exist on this level.
We know that ant hives have a hivemind that is not present in the individual ant. Similarly humans can also be observed to create a zeitgeist on larger than the individual scale. Even individual humans pass through different states of consciousness from birth to death. So it very much seems that consciousness is scalable. So where are we on that scale, can it be scaled down as well as up?
Most things in the universe have recursive properties. They can be scaled up and down or be understood as the sum of their parts. Saying that consciousness is an emergent property is no different, but it's sort of dodging the question just as badly as someone saying it's a magical new law of nature.
Perhaps AI can help us determine what the minimum number of required parts to create the emergent property is and why it isn't present in the same setup with just one less part, or with a different complexity. I doubt we'll find the answer, but it might lead to some better questions.
It's simply irrelevant. If you believe this theory exactly nothing changes about what you can predict about the world. That's what knowledge is all about. If you have a theory that doesn't behave differently under some different circumstances, you've essentially said nothing.
Also reminds me a bit of the chapter in "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" called "Is Electricity Fire?", if someone knows that.
Consider math, it doesn’t make any empirical predictions on its own, as it is just a set of abstract symbols and rules. Do you consider mathematical facts to be a form of knowledge?
Arguably "it's impossible to violate energy conservation given time-invariant action" is an empirical prediction, and that's a specific case of Noether's theorem.
Yeah, this isn't really a theory yet. That doesn't necessarily mean it's an invalid concept, though. For example, if game theory turned up in fundamental physics somehow, wouldn't that suggest intelligence might be more fundamental than we assumed?
There’s nothing wrong with speculation as long as everyone knows that’s what going on.
Take the work of Julian Jaynes for example; it’s fringe, it’s speculative, but he’s asking questions that nobody else asked before and that in itself is worthwhile because it can pave the way for better questions which are falsifiable.
What else would be then? Whatever happens is part of the universe development. We are the universe being conscious of itself. We think we are something else apart, or self made…
Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.
No.
If it's just the universe, what would the universe want to experience? Should everybody live comfortably and kind of predictably or would the universe want to experience the maximally possible variance in life?
Scientific American asking questions that can't possibly be answered. Not very scientific.