What motivates panpsychism?
That the substance that the universe is composed of is essentially consciousness? — Watchmaker
That's what I think, yes. — bert1
I wonder what the motivation is? I mean, I look around at the world, and I see that some things are conscious, you and me, my dog, and I see that the mechanisms for consciousness are in our brains, we can switch them off and on. I see that some things are not conscious, rocks, dead people or dogs. I think bacteria for example aren't conscious (because we can explain their behaviour through non-conscious processes), but they do have something which is a prerequisite for consciousness, they are individuals, separated from their environment.
This stuff is surely super-important?! Whether we ourselves and other items are conscious or not really matters to us.
So I'm wondering what is gained by losing the distinction between conscious and not conscious. — Daemon
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
I wonder what the motivation is? — Daemon
There are a number of different motivations depending on the panpsychist, I think. Some panpsychists take a very conceptual approach think that it impossible to make sense of the idea of the emergence of consciousness because the concept does not seem to admit of degree. Goff and Antony develop this line of reasoning.
Panpsychism can be motivated by an examination of the various binding problems, when we look for candidates in nature that can fulfil the binding function, we can see that space relates its contents, and fields are also present at every point in space, so perhaps consciousness is a property of space. This has some intuitive appeal for me as it fits with the phenomonology quite well.
Some panpsychists do think that consciousness emerges, and is reducible to a kind of function, it's just that this function occurs in everything, so consciousness is also in everything. The IIT is an example of this. The IIT is a very different kind of panpsychism, and very differently theoretically motivated.
Some panpsychists are motivated by idealism. Timothy Sprigge is one of these. If you think of Berkeley, but take out the role God plays in maintaining the existence of the external world of ideas, and substitute panpsychism - everything exists in a vast web of mutually perceiving and mutually defining subjects, then I think that is close to Sprigge's view.
Some panpsychists are no doubt motivated by spiritual views, they have already come to the conclusion that consciousness is present at the start of everything, and think that everything after that point will therefore also be conscious, as all subsequent existing things are modifications of the original conscious substance.
One can also come to panpsychism by an examination of psychological causation and the problem of overdetermination - the only causation we actually know happens is psychological - we cause out arm to go up, for example. But this seems to compete with other, physical, causal accounts involving neurons firing. One way out of this puzzle is to reduce physical causation to psychological, and assert that what we normally refer to as forces in the world are actually wills, and the behaviour of matter is determined by how it feels. The slogans might be 'matter does what it does because of how it feels' and 'how matter feels is determined by what it does'.
Panpsychism is attractively monistic. If the basic starting properties in a typical physical explanation of the world (e.g. mass, charge, spin, extension, whatever the latest list is) are not enough to explain everything, one way to fix this is to add a starting property, namely consciousness, especially if the alternatives are more theoretically problematic.
Another way to come at panpsychism is by process of elimination. Consciousness either (a) doesn't exist, or at least isn't what it appears to be (eliminativism) (b) emerged (was around at the start and arrived on the scene later - this is the majority view I suspect), or (c) was here from the start and exists in everything. Pick the least problematic option. This is the Churchill approach - "Panpsychism is the worst theory of conciousness apart from all the others."
And there's more motivations, and many sub-variants...
I mean, I look around at the world, and I see that some things are conscious, you and me, my dog, and I see that the mechanisms for consciousness are in our brains, we can switch them off and on.
Well, maybe. When we switch consciousness on and off, are we switching consciousness? Or are we switching identity on and off? How could we tell the difference between non-consciousness and non-existence, phenomenologically?
I see that some things are not conscious, rocks, dead people or dogs.
I understand your intuitive starting point. But can these distinctions be maintained? Philosophers will want answers to the following questions: What are you seeing exactly? And what follows from that about consciousness? Why aren't people and dogs conscious? How do you know? What constitutes evidence for consicousness?
I think bacteria for example aren't conscious (because we can explain their behaviour through non-conscious processes), but they do have something which is a prerequisite for consciousness, they are individuals, separated from their environment.
Well, that's very interesting. You have the start of a theory, or at least line of enquiry. I would question whether we can explain their behaviour through non-conscious processes - when we get to the level of forces, we end up saying 'that's just what happens'. But if those forces are wills, we can go, perhaps, one step further into something we can understand - 'because that's what they will'. Conversely, lets take humans. If we can explain bacterial behaviour in terms of non-conscious processes, why can't we do the same with humans? Maybe Apo has an answer - that human behaviour cannot be explained in the kind of bottom-up way that perhaps bacterial behaviour can. And I suspect Apo will say the same about bacteria - there is top down stuff going on there too which is necessary to understand bacterial behaviour. But even if he is right, I don't see how that entails consciousness.
This stuff is surely super-important?! Whether we ourselves and other items are conscious or not really matters to us.
Indeed.
So I'm wondering what is gained by losing the distinction between conscious and not conscious.
I don't think panpsychists does lose the distinction. I can conceive of a rock that isn't conscious. the concept of non-consciousness still has meaning, even if I think that nothing is in fact non-conscious.
That's what I think, yes. — bert1
I wonder what the motivation is? I mean, I look around at the world, and I see that some things are conscious, you and me, my dog, and I see that the mechanisms for consciousness are in our brains, we can switch them off and on. I see that some things are not conscious, rocks, dead people or dogs. I think bacteria for example aren't conscious (because we can explain their behaviour through non-conscious processes), but they do have something which is a prerequisite for consciousness, they are individuals, separated from their environment.
This stuff is surely super-important?! Whether we ourselves and other items are conscious or not really matters to us.
So I'm wondering what is gained by losing the distinction between conscious and not conscious. — Daemon
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
I wonder what the motivation is? — Daemon
There are a number of different motivations depending on the panpsychist, I think. Some panpsychists take a very conceptual approach think that it impossible to make sense of the idea of the emergence of consciousness because the concept does not seem to admit of degree. Goff and Antony develop this line of reasoning.
Panpsychism can be motivated by an examination of the various binding problems, when we look for candidates in nature that can fulfil the binding function, we can see that space relates its contents, and fields are also present at every point in space, so perhaps consciousness is a property of space. This has some intuitive appeal for me as it fits with the phenomonology quite well.
Some panpsychists do think that consciousness emerges, and is reducible to a kind of function, it's just that this function occurs in everything, so consciousness is also in everything. The IIT is an example of this. The IIT is a very different kind of panpsychism, and very differently theoretically motivated.
Some panpsychists are motivated by idealism. Timothy Sprigge is one of these. If you think of Berkeley, but take out the role God plays in maintaining the existence of the external world of ideas, and substitute panpsychism - everything exists in a vast web of mutually perceiving and mutually defining subjects, then I think that is close to Sprigge's view.
Some panpsychists are no doubt motivated by spiritual views, they have already come to the conclusion that consciousness is present at the start of everything, and think that everything after that point will therefore also be conscious, as all subsequent existing things are modifications of the original conscious substance.
One can also come to panpsychism by an examination of psychological causation and the problem of overdetermination - the only causation we actually know happens is psychological - we cause out arm to go up, for example. But this seems to compete with other, physical, causal accounts involving neurons firing. One way out of this puzzle is to reduce physical causation to psychological, and assert that what we normally refer to as forces in the world are actually wills, and the behaviour of matter is determined by how it feels. The slogans might be 'matter does what it does because of how it feels' and 'how matter feels is determined by what it does'.
Panpsychism is attractively monistic. If the basic starting properties in a typical physical explanation of the world (e.g. mass, charge, spin, extension, whatever the latest list is) are not enough to explain everything, one way to fix this is to add a starting property, namely consciousness, especially if the alternatives are more theoretically problematic.
Another way to come at panpsychism is by process of elimination. Consciousness either (a) doesn't exist, or at least isn't what it appears to be (eliminativism) (b) emerged (was around at the start and arrived on the scene later - this is the majority view I suspect), or (c) was here from the start and exists in everything. Pick the least problematic option. This is the Churchill approach - "Panpsychism is the worst theory of conciousness apart from all the others."
And there's more motivations, and many sub-variants...
I mean, I look around at the world, and I see that some things are conscious, you and me, my dog, and I see that the mechanisms for consciousness are in our brains, we can switch them off and on.
Well, maybe. When we switch consciousness on and off, are we switching consciousness? Or are we switching identity on and off? How could we tell the difference between non-consciousness and non-existence, phenomenologically?
I see that some things are not conscious, rocks, dead people or dogs.
I understand your intuitive starting point. But can these distinctions be maintained? Philosophers will want answers to the following questions: What are you seeing exactly? And what follows from that about consciousness? Why aren't people and dogs conscious? How do you know? What constitutes evidence for consicousness?
I think bacteria for example aren't conscious (because we can explain their behaviour through non-conscious processes), but they do have something which is a prerequisite for consciousness, they are individuals, separated from their environment.
Well, that's very interesting. You have the start of a theory, or at least line of enquiry. I would question whether we can explain their behaviour through non-conscious processes - when we get to the level of forces, we end up saying 'that's just what happens'. But if those forces are wills, we can go, perhaps, one step further into something we can understand - 'because that's what they will'. Conversely, lets take humans. If we can explain bacterial behaviour in terms of non-conscious processes, why can't we do the same with humans? Maybe Apo has an answer - that human behaviour cannot be explained in the kind of bottom-up way that perhaps bacterial behaviour can. And I suspect Apo will say the same about bacteria - there is top down stuff going on there too which is necessary to understand bacterial behaviour. But even if he is right, I don't see how that entails consciousness.
This stuff is surely super-important?! Whether we ourselves and other items are conscious or not really matters to us.
Indeed.
So I'm wondering what is gained by losing the distinction between conscious and not conscious.
I don't think panpsychists does lose the distinction. I can conceive of a rock that isn't conscious. the concept of non-consciousness still has meaning, even if I think that nothing is in fact non-conscious.
Comments (236)
What motivates panpsychism?
An old paper by Russell, which came up in a recent thread on causation, offers an explanation. An excessive reliance not the notion of cause might lead folk to suppose that cause and effect must resemble one another, or that cause is analogous to volition.
The paper is "On the notion of cause".
It seems odd that folk suppose consciousness to somehow be central to the nature of the universe when it is so easily dissipated in one's lounge chair on a slow Sunday afternoon. Sleep should cure one of panpsychism.
Thanks for the descriptions of the various panpsychisms. I think I have the same problem with all the versions, and additional problems with some of them.
When I ask what is gained by losing the distinction between conscious and non-conscious, I mean that a panpsychist loses that distinction in their description of the world. But it seems to me that the more distinctions there are in your description, the better.
We want to explain why some things are conscious and some things aren't. Saying that everything is conscious doesn't make any contribution to that.
It's not clear to me why emergence would require "degree". I'd suggest that consciousness initially emerged as a (chance) development of non-conscious biological processes. As well as being able to unconsciously sense, some organism was able to feel heat or to see light.
[quote="Bert1]perhaps consciousness is a property of space. This has some intuitive appeal for me as it fits with the phenomenology quite well.[/quote]
How do you mean?
I've looked into that, in my opinion it's a total failure.
Sounds pretty wacky. These mutually perceiving subjects, do they include, like, rocks? And does "perceive" mean what it means when we perceive something?
Both. Well, there are two types of identity (in my way of thinking), there's the felt identity you get through consciousness, but also an unconscious organism like a bacterium has an identity: it is an entity, separated from its environment.
Descriptions at two different levels. That's good. The more distinctions, the more we understand. What's the problem?
A bacterium can swim towards a desirable chemical, say a food source. To do this it needs to able to tell whether the concentration of the chemical is rising or falling over time, which seems to require a memory, which is an aspect of consciousness.
However, we know in astounding detail how the bacterium does this, we can describe the process fully in terms of chemical reactions, without having to talk about the bacterium feeling, experiencing, being conscious. There's an explanation here: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/comments/S0960-9822(02)01424-0
Here's a snippet:
Increased concentrations of attractants act via their MCP receptors to cause an immediate inhibition of CheA kinase activity. The same changes in MCP conformation that inhibit CheA lead to relatively slow increases in MCP methylation by CheR, so that despite the continued presence of attractant, CheA activity is eventually restored to the same value it had in the absence of attractant. Conversely, CheB acts to demethylate the MCPs under conditions that cause elevated CheA activity. Methylation and demethylation occur much more slowly than phosphorylation of CheA and CheY. The methylation state of the MCPs can thereby provide a memory mechanism that allows a cell to compare its present situation to its recent past.
There's not, I submit, any "will" in this scenario either. It looks like will, but the real driver is chance, natural selection. Only organisms equipped with the biochemical machinery that gets them swimming in the right direction will survive.
Distinctions like these, between living and non-living and conscious and non-conscious items are necessary elements of our description of the world.
To say that the universe is a medium for consciousness is no different than saying conscious being exist in the universe … which they do. That is not panpsychism it is just agreeing that conscious beings exist.
A major concern I have for both deism and panpsychism is talk of ‘other forms of consciousness’ existing outside if human conscious comprehension. I don’t see why we would call this ‘consciousness’ at all.
Disingenuous...I said understanding takes place by (i.e. through) either intuition or science, I did not personify science.
Quoting I like sushi
I don't agree. Saying that water is a medium for a wave isn't the same thing as saying that the wave alone exists. The wave and the water are mutually necessary for there to be a wave. In the case of consciousness, however I think the wave and the water are mutually necessary for there to be either. Form and substance.
As a concept if there is no mind there is no ‘universe’ to speak of … as there is nothing to speak. I will grant you that. What I cannot see is an intelligible way to talk about ‘consciousness’ existing a few seconds after the big bang when there were no ‘conscious beings’ around. If there was a ‘being’ of sorts around it was most certainly not ‘conscious’ in any way we could begin to understand.
We only have one point of reference for ‘consciousness’. Anything else in some other time/space is not ‘conscious’ in any reasonably comparable manner unless such a being possesses a host of common features to humans.
I'm really wondering more about the motivation for putting consciousness everywhere, rather than where we actually have evidence for it.
My own theory is that consciousness is a biological phenomenon, so it's found only where and when there are biological organisms. Consciousness to my way of thinking needs a locus. Some entity is conscious, has experiences.
Entities arise through biology. Before single-celled organisms there was nothing with an inside and an outside, so to speak. That "individuation" is a precondition for consciousness, which arrives later, as an evolutionary development of non-conscious "sensing" processes in the organism.
Organisms, entities which can have conscious experiences, aren't everywhere in space and time, so why does panpsychism want to put consciousness everywhere?
Panpsychism is following this train of thought because ‘consciousness,’ like ‘life,’ is not exactly easy to pinpoint in a discrete way. Life just happens to be more easily outlined than consciousness on a more tangible level.
In any case my idea is that life can be pinpointed, it starts when an organism is distinguished from its environment, initially by the cell wall.
And because consciousness only happens in biological organisms, we can pinpoint it to that extent too.
To praise dualism while pretending to bury it.
Why does emergentism want to put consciousness in self-organising systems?
My point was simply to compare a single cell to multi-cellar organisms (both being ‘life’). To view these drastically different items of ‘life’ is kind of like viewing ‘consciousness’ as being made up of smaller parts that are conscious just like living organisms are made up of singular living cells.
This is not a view I find convincing I am just answering why panpsychism is a fairly reasonable point to suggest - it doesn’t necessarily have to mean every atom in the universe possesses an ‘element’ of consciousness; but some like to believe that.
Consciousness, as far as I can reasonably tell, is something that happens in brains. How? Not really sure, and no one else is sure either so there is no harm in thinking outside the box and proposing something like panpsychism really … it is just not something that anyone can offer up a testable hypothesis for right now so it is mostly a speculative idea.
An atom on its own may be infinitely aware, but when influenced by another atom it perceives more of what it means to be itself, through the force of having to perceive what it's not like to be the other. In other words, identity is formed in contrast with what we are not.
And I believe this holds true down to the atom itself. Self-awareness is information in the discongruency between the self and the "alien."
So, no motivation!
You may as well ask what motivates anyone to want to understand anything.
I'll forfeit discussing particles and waves since no living human can address that question with any wisdom.
But I think I bring up an interesting notion, that atoms self-identify when presented with the alien other. That this action creates a modicum of comprehension each time.
There is a difference between pure fantasy and highly speculative ideas. Sadly it seems some think the line is somewhere I don’t.
And by the way, the idea that reality isn't a fantasy is also just speculation.
Understand?
What gets panpsychism out of the realm of pure fantasy?
It actually is elementally fantastical. I think we need to overcome the hardwiring that tells us the Earth is flat, you know? It seems very...permanent, I guess, from an ignorant perspective. We would do ourselves a favor to view it more as a phantasm, more imaginary, purely from the surface of things.
Knowing as we do entropy and the fact that we're spinning through space. There is nothing to be gained from the archaic perspective of flat earth.
No machine consciousness?
Quoting Daemon
I don't see why robotic entities can't be created through non-biological processes.
Quoting Daemon
This is unclear.
Quoting Daemon
When did consciousness first arise?
Well, my idea is that there is something special about biological entities, in that they are separated from their environment. That's what I mean when I say they have an inside and an outside. And a robot isn't separated from its environment in the necessary way.
Quoting RogueAI
After bacteria, before baboons. Maybe around 500 million years ago? Why do you ask?
It is not a huge leap from there to suggest something similar for consciousness given that we know so very little about consciousness and that it may just be that the rudiments of consciousness exist in a singular neuron just like a single cell it rudimentary to a living organism.
Maybe a combination of emergence and panpsychism makes more sense than either alone? I would put the idea that ‘atoms’ possess consciousness as reaching the realms of fantasy simply because to say such is to equate animal consciousness not merely with a neuron but with fantasies.
Inexplicably consciousness arises. We know that much. It seems pretty clear than not all life possesses ‘consciousness’ like we do, so to call anything different ‘consciousness’ to me seems misleading.
As another comparison we could look at how human language functions compared to simple organisms that have a means of communication. In fact many other animals possess elements of what we call ‘language’ yet humans appear to be fairly unique in that they possess these elements in a combination that allows for complex communication.
Panpsychism is an interesting idea that I believe some people take way too far, or misuse the term ‘consciousness’ when talking about atoms being conscious. It is not even a theory in its current state just an idea that could potentially open up other ideas that are more applicable.
If someone puts forward a model of panpsychism I’d be interested to look at it. As is it is just philosophical speculation with some people taking it into the realms of fantasy.
We can't even explore ideas, because everything interesting is beyond the skeptics meager imagination.
I can only suggest trying to talk more and explain more. Refinement will come in fits and starts at first but that shouldn’t discourage you I hope.
I won’t bother anymore because I seem to have bothered you.
Good luck. Genuinely.
How do you know bacteria aren't conscious? Are insects conscious?
A bacterium is a single-celled organism which I regard as being alive.
Quoting I like sushi
We know an astounding amount about consciousness. We know enough about the biological mechanisms of memory, an aspect of consciousness, to allow us to implant false memories in the minds of mice.
I'm not clear what point you're making with the talk of "rudiments", or your remarks about language.
Me too.
A bacterium can swim towards a desirable chemical, say a food source. To do this it needs to able to tell whether the concentration of the chemical is rising or falling over time, which seems to require a memory, which is an aspect of consciousness.
However, we know in astounding detail how the bacterium does this, we can describe the process fully in terms of chemical reactions, without having to talk about the bacterium feeling, experiencing, being conscious. There's an explanation here: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/comments/S0960-9822(02)01424-0
But you think of a single-celled bacteria as being alive.
In the cognitive neurosciences studies have been done that show markedly similar functions in communication in some species that can be seen in humans. Birds have one ‘component’ (we will call it) whilst other species have others (components such as melodies, learning, and grammatical structures) and we have them all.
There's the rub. We can only infer consciousness in anything other than ourselves. There can be no direct evidence of any consciousness other than our own. That makes me think science is useful in discovering conscious correlates, but has utterly failed (and will continue to fail) wrt to causal explanations.
Also, if insects are conscious, then we're getting pretty close to panpsychism.
That doesn't answer the question. We might not have to talk about bacteria feeling things, but that doesn't mean bacteria don't feel things. How do you know they don't?
Panpsychism is more or less like this but it far more difficult to discern what is or is not in possession of consciousness.
Why do you think they do?
I generally view a body as a requirement for consciousness too, but that is a whole other area.
I don't know if they do or not, but if they do, panpsychism is much more probable.
Yes, that is why I think it is a reasonable idea. We are limited in what we can and cannot say. When it gets stretched out to atoms though I just see that as a stretch too far (to say the least!).
Of course the whackiest ideas in the world may produce fruit. If evidence in the future gives more and more people a reason to explore it so be it.
But they are all living. And non-biological items aren't.
As an idealist, I disagree, but I realize my position is horribly unpopular, so maybe there's something to this "matter" idea. Everyone seems to think it exists.
So what is consciousness then? The only true and reliable answer is "I am".
We know that atoms are mostly ‘empty space’ and what we call ‘solid’ is actually not exactly ‘there’. Either way the experience on the macro level is convincing enough for me to run away from people trying to hack me with axes.
No we bloody aren't! Insects are individual organisms, if they are conscious then it's them as individuals that are conscious, not the whole universe.
In terms of brain states consciousness takes on many forms including wakefulness and dream states.
To me it is a bit like the problem of defining god. We can only talk about things in the terms we have. At the moment I don’t think we have the kind of concepts needed to get to it properly just like talk of quantum to Aristotle would be beyond his comprehension - due to a lack of modern concepts we take for granted.
To talk about ants possibly possessing some rudimentary form of consciousness is in line with panpsychism ideas.
Not all proponents of panpsychism go the whole hog.
Panpsychism is the belief that every thing has an internal mental aspect. If you say consciousness is analogous to life in this respect, then you would be saying that every thing is alive.
Ubiquitous:present, appearing, or found everywhere.
Not for all proponents of panpsychism! If you don’t get it you don’t get it. The fault may be mine entirely but enough is enough. Sorry.
We've gone over this before. I don't think you are trolling, so I'll just make the same point. There are different senses of 'consciousness' which you prefer to amalgamate, and lexicographers distinguish. There is a sense in which someone asleep is unconscious by definition, that's just what it means. Moving on to the phenomenal definition, which is the one I take to be operative in philosophical discussions of consciousness, there are a couple of panpsychist responses to the challenge of sleep (or being KO'd, drugged etc).
1) The subject remains conscious, but just not of very much, or perhaps even conscious of nothing at all, and they don't remember when they come to, so they have nothing to report.
2) They cease to exist as a functional unit. The total consciousness remains, but the subjective units are different, perhaps. Like the total mass of a car engine remains after it is dismantled, but it no longer runs. If consciousness is like the mass (rather than the function) then it too can remain, but is a property of smaller functional units, perhaps. With this idea, it is the function that determines the content of consciousness (i.e. what is experienced), not whether or not consciousness is present at all.
It doesn't necessarily require it, but it is very hard to think of a non-gradual, instant change in a system that could plausibly be associated with the emergence of consciousness. All relevant changes in the development of a brain in an embryo, for example, or the evolution of the brain, or even the transition from being anaesthetised to be a wakeful state, are gradual changes. At exactly what point does consciousness pop up? And why that point? You need a concept of consciousness that admits of degree, ideally, for this kind of account. But phenomenal consciousness does not seem to admit of degree.
Consciousness feels container like, it feels still and relatively unmoving (or sometimes does) while things happen in it, yet still connected to those things, consciousness feels stretchy, one can focus in and out, one's awareness can be sharp or diffuse, it unifies and relates its contents in the way space does. This doesn't prove anything of course, but I do like it when discussions of consciousness take seriously such phenomenological intuitions and reflections. In most areas, the truth about the world has nothing to do with subjective feelings about the way it is. However when the subject matter is subjectivity itself, these feelings become far more relevant to the discussion.
I mostly agree with you. I think it's a failure as a theory of consciousness, but it might be a very good theory of identity. I think identity admits of degree in a way that consciousness doesn't. The IIT might tell us which bits of the universe are strongly individuated in terms of the complexity of the content of their consciousness. It give us a way to both privilege brains (brains generate an immense variety and complexity of content) and still be panpsychists.
Why do you think it fails?
(I'll get to your other questions in due course - thank you for asking them).
But natural selection (I'll call it Chance) had billions of years to think of it (and billions of stars and planets).
And Chance had already thought of living organisms to work with. In my view it is only with the emergence of life that "systems" emerge. And points of view. Potential points of view. And locations in time and space. Because it is an entity distinct from its environment, a single-celled organism has a lifespan and a locus, things that don't feature in a lifeless universe.
It also has aims, non-conscious aims. Things are good or bad for it.
Life has a drive to evolve systems of increasing complexity, and at some point Chance thought of a mechanism for feeling. It seems likely that would be a development of an existing non-conscious mechanism.
I don't.
Quoting bert1
I could say "consciousness sometimes feels heavy so maybe it's a property of gravity". Just nonsense, sorry.
Information is a measure, not a cause.
Quoting Daemon
One problem here is maybe a lack of separation of (1) a postulated direct experience of conscious, and (2) criteria for determining with others whether a not-me-or-you deserves the honor.
Maybe a century from now there'll be a robot insisting that it can see redness and feel pain and fall in love. Moreover it acts 'accordingly' (in alignment with criteria we'd apply to humans, with various adjustments for the robot's differing body.) Would the presence of consciousness in this robot be decidable? But then how we 'know' that a random stranger is 'really' conscious and not just faking it? IMO, there are some issues with this concept of consciousness. To 'operationalize' such a concept, we'd probably need to articulate public criteria for its application, and it seems that only 'meat chauvinism' could rule out a sufficiently sophisticated robot. (We ourselves are 'moist robots' in some sense, unless we insist that an undetermined special sauce has been poured on our skullmeat.)
I think I probably agree with you about that example linking feelings of heavyness to gravity. But still, that feeling of heavyness is one of the things that a fully developed theory of consciousness will have something to say about. While I am a panpsychist, I'm not sure how to get a handle on why particular experiences tend to attach to characteristic physical functions consistently. Just like any other take on consciousness, there remain a lot of unanswered questions. I think the variety of functionalisms, while failing to explain consciousness itself, may nevertheless make headway in explaining what functions go with what experiences.
OK, this is a start. The next question is: at what point in the evolutionary process did feeling first emerge? This is a hypothesis at the moment. How are we going to narrow down the possibilities? If we want to take a scientific approach, how do we test a system for the presence of consciousness?
Is it when the cell wall developed?
EDIT: I know this is a thread about panpsychism, not your view. However part of understanding the theoretical appeal of panpsychism is to come up against the difficulties with emergentism.
The difficulty with the idea of two levels of description is that it creates a dualism, and imports many of the difficulties of that. What accounts for these two points of view? Why do some things have a point of view of their own, but others don't? Why are there two methods of explaining actions in humans, but only one method with cars?
Your intuition that what is necessary for consciousness that there be an inside and an outside is very interesting, as that is suggestive of the creation of two points of view, that of the subject (from the inside) and that of the external observer (from the outside). Is that where you are coming from?
Sure, at the mid-level description you quote there isn't. But when we ask for finer and finer details, we get to forces, and 'no further explanation is possible, we are just describing what happens'. That's where I suggest a further step is possible, and perhaps even necessary, and that is to say that the observed behaviour is the result of will. The idea is that physical explanations of the bacterium's behaviour is, at least, reducible to psychological explanations. And that opens the door to the possibility that the whole bacterium is conscious, and it is doing what it is doing because of how it is feeling as a whole, and the mechanical explanations are, at bottom, just descriptions of behaviour which has psycholgical causes. (Not that that is unproblematic of course, there is still the combination problem for panpsychism. The combination problem is the most common and famous objection to many forms of panpsychism.)
We could make an analogy. We might observe that every Friday, after receiving their pension, old humans go to the shop to buy their groceries. We could conclude from this that there is a physical law that describes this behaviour, no? It successfully predicts observation, with no reference to feeling or consciousness in the pensioners. However we know, because we are similar to pensioners, indeed some of us are pensioners, that feelings absolutely play a totally essential role in this story don't they? The physical law we just invented is horseshit isn't it? We know perfectly well that the pensioners want to eat because they are hungry and they want to stock up on food for the next week and get themselves a nice treat in the process, and maybe chat to each other a bit in the process. We don't do that with atoms and molecules because they are not like us. We don't immediately have an insight into their feelings. I'm suggesting that the physical laws we use to describe behaviour are very useful and accurate when making predictive models and whatnot. But that they are no more than that, and are ultimately made-up.
Have you read Searle's "Mind, a Brief Introduction"? Have a look at the introduction here: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5G_iBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT11&lpg=PT11&dq=%22Mental+qua+mental+is+not+physical%22&source=bl&ots=3hWB2ubOkb&sig=ACfU3U34m0SpjL4espBNr3Hk2C87rhoT7g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwib3L2HpJDwAhX5gf0HHYp6BBEQ6AEwAXoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q=%22Mental%20qua%20mental%20is%20not%20physical%22&f=false
I think you are falling into the trap he describes.
No. The cell wall (or something about the cell) creates the distinction between organism and environment, it creates a potential locus for consciousness, there has to be a discrete entity for consciousness to happen to, but I'd say consciousness itself came later. Maybe in fish. Maybe in worms.
No! The individuation of the organism creates one point of view. There is no external observer! And no reason to posit one!
But why should that be necessary? What does it add to our understanding? We can already explain how a bacterium swims up a chemical gradient in exhaustive detail, and they do this automatically, without will. What looks like "will" is the result of natural selection, automatic, non-psychological, because no psyche is involved. What's the motivation for your introduction of the psyche, when the process can be explained without it?
Indeed, what does motivate panpsychism?
Let's see how things stand.
The soul remains, as of yet, a hypothetical. We haven't, as of yet, proven that we h. sapiens, the most eligible candidate, have souls.
Then, out of the blue, someone comes along and claims, everything has a soul!
WTF? Is this a joke? This must a fallacy of some kind, oui? More alarmingly, it has sophistry written all over it. :grin:
Because the alternatives are impossible, or wildly implausible, namely, that consciousness emerges from the interfunction of severally non-conscious elements.
Quoting Daemon
It can't be explained, just described.
Quoting I like sushi
Chemotaxis can be explained. Here's the explanation:
The central mechanism of signal transduction involves two families of proteins found in microorganisms and plants which work in pair-wise fashion to mediate chemotaxis, as well as other regulatory processes ranging from cell differentiation and development to antibiotic resistance and fruiting. E. coli alone has over 30 different examples of these so-called ‘two-component’ regulatory systems.
One of the families of proteins that mediate two-component signaling consists of histidine protein kinases, which catalyse the transfer of ?-phosphoryl groups from ATP to one of their own histidine residues.The other family consists of ‘response regulator’ proteins, which are activated by the transfer of phosphoryl groups from the kinase phosphohistidines to one of their own aspartic acid residues.
Most histidine protein kinases are transmembrane receptors with a variable external sensing domain connected via hydrophobic membrane spanning sequences to a highly conserved autophosphorylating kinase domain in the cytoplasm. Stimulatory ligands interact with the receptor's external sensing domain to control the rate of kinase autophosphorylation and hence the rate of response regulator phosphorylation in the cell's interior.
The response regulators are generally free to diffuse around the cytoplasm, and aspartate phosphorylation generally enhances the ability of a regulator to bind to DNA, or in the case of the chemotaxis response regulator, to bind to motor proteins and regulate the probability of a tumble.
The histidine protein kinase that mediates chemotaxis responses is called CheA and the chemotaxis response regulator is CheY. CheA differs from most histidine kinases in that it is not an integral membrane protein. Instead, CheA is tightly associated with, and regulated by, several different transmembrane chemotaxis receptors, each of which functions to detect a different class of attractant and repellent chemicals. These receptors transmit a signal that increases CheA autophosphorylation when attractants are absent or repellents are present. Increased CheA phosphorylation leads to an increase in the level of phosphorylated CheY.
Phospho-CheY diffuses from CheA freely through the cell, and when it encounters a flagellar motor it binds to a flagellar protein called FliM. Phospho-CheY bound to FliM induces tumbling by causing a change in the sense of flagellar rotation from counterclockwise to clockwise, as viewed from behind. The six to eight flagella scattered over the cell surface rotate coordinately to form a bundle during smooth swimming. This bundle is suddenly thrown into disarray when one or several of the motors reverse direction, causing the characteristic tumble that randomizes the direction of the next period of coordinated smooth swimming. Whereas the receptor–CheA complex controls the rate of CheY phosphorylation, a phosphatase termed CheZ is responsible for phospho-CheY dephosphorylation.
If that isn't an explanation, what is missing?
My hunch is there is no solid reason for the panpsychism hypothesis. It's pure speculation and to that extent is less likely to attract subscribers but that doesn't mean it's not interesting. I suppose these two aspects of the hypothesis will face each other off with a clear winner - it does get our juices flowing.
What would qualify as a 'solid reason'?
Why any of that happens, at all. It's a description of what happens, and as such is useful, if it can be relied upon to repeat in a lawlike way, as presumably it can.
I probably wasn't clear. I'm not disputing chance-driven evolution. I'm not an intelligent design advocate, not do I advocate for teleology on a macro scale in evolution, although I'm not completely ruling it out either. I'm asking why molecules behave they way they do in the same way we might ask why a person behaves the way they do. And normally, with people, we are looking for a psychological explanation. If we give an explanation in terms of neurons firing and muscle movements, we haven't really got the answer we were looking for with human beings. We've just got a fine-grained description of lawlike behaviour. I'm suggesting the same is the case for molecules. We don't need that information in order to predict behaviour and exploit the chemical world, but that doesn't mean that there is no psychological explanation to be had.
I'm sincerely struggling to interpret your last post in a rational way, or to find any argument for the existence of mind in molecules.
Sometimes, with people, we are looking for a psychological explanation of their behaviour. But often we aren't. Why is that person lying on the ground? Well it's because they tripped over a paving stone. We could state that in terms of physics, talking about momentum and the centre of gravity. Or perhaps there is a different explanation in terms of neurons etc. The person had a stroke and their neurons aren't working properly. Or perhaps there is a psychological reason: the person is seeking to avoid detection.
But when we see them trip over the paving stone, we don't say "it was because the centre of gravity was too far forward, but there must also be a psychological explanation". Yet that, as far as I can see, is the structure of your argument.
I wonder, do you put your ideas into practice in real life? Do you attempt to explain the behaviour of inanimate objects in psychological terms? "Why is that stone rolling down the hill?" "Because it wants to".
I can offer you an argument more explicitly than I have done so far.
Consciousness does not admit of degree
All process or functions admit of degree
Therefore consciousness cannot be a process or function.
Every emergentist theory of consciousness I have come across associates consciousness with some kind of gradually emergent process or function. I can't improve on that, I can't think of a plausible emergentist theory that finds some binary event in nature and says 'That's where consciousness emerges'. Even if it did, there would still be the question "OK, but why can't that happen without consciousness? What is it about that that necessitates an experience?"
So, if we reject emergentist theories, we're left with either eliminativism (consciousness doesn't exist, at least in the sense given in this argument) or panpsychism (consciousness was around at the start and is likely in everything in some way, if we can make sense of it). Eliminativism is clearly false, therefore we are left with panpsychism.
Quoting Daemon
I'm happy with mechanical explanations with regard to medium sized objects, where those explanations are useful and give us the information we want, as in your example. We don't need to question the exact nature of gravity for the explanation (or description) to be useful. But if we want to know what gravity is, or the nuclear forces, or magnetism, then we don't have mechanistic explanations for these field-like influences, because they do not have internal parts that mesh with each other, we can't break them down further, as far as I know anyway. We just say, well, these forces describe how matter behaves when in their influence. Some physicists might be realist about these forces, and say that they are more than just descriptions of how stuff behaves, I don't know. Anyway, the panpsychist has a problem. What role does consciousness play in the behaviour of matter at this foundational level, if any? Are we going to be epiphenomenalist about the consciousness of an atom or molecule, but not when it comes to humans and other brainy animals? Where exactly does consciousness start being causal? And when is it just a added extra that doesn't do anything (epiphenomenalism)? My talk of the consciousness of non-brainy things is an attempt to make sense of this. I'm trying to be a responsible panpsychist and actually try to tackle these questions. So the panpsychist has to attach consciousness somewhere, and the best fit seems to be at the fundamental level of field forces, it seems to me. (Tononi and Koch attach it to systems that integrate information, which makes them panpsychist, but that doesn't commit them to will in the same way that I am committed to will.) I'm suggesting, for maximum consistency, that consciousness is causal from humans all the way down to atoms and field forces. That's the simpler theoretical approach to take, and that's what I am exploring. The reason I have to do this is because panpsychism must be true in some way or another, because we know (I suggest) that eliminativism and emergentism is false, and these are the only alternatives. Am I entirely comfortable talking about the will of atoms? No, not really. It's a bit weird, I grant you, but necessary. I have to follow the logic. And it's not actually incoherent, at least to my mind.
So back to the paving slab (good example by the way), I agree with you that we are not looking for a psychological explanation in this case. What I'm trying to do is resolve arguments about the causal closure of the physical. The way I do it here, and the way I inject psychological causes in is not at the macro level, but at the level of fields, perhaps. The mechanistic explanation is still correct enough at the macro level, but it is reducible, I suggest, to psychological explanations at the micro level. We have a reduction of the mechanical to the psychological. By analogy, we could look at the behaviour of whole populations. Individuals do what they do because of how they feel. But on aggregate, we can describe their behaviour in quantitative terms perfectly accurately, without ever mentioning their psychological motivations, and forget that psychology was ever a part of the explanation. Nevertheless, the psychology is there in the background driving the macro-level behaviour on aggregate. With the paving slab example, I'm suggesting that psychology makes a difference at the fundamental level. Without consciousness causing things to happen at the micro-level, nothing would happen at the macro level, I suggest. Indeed the macro-level would not exist at all, if we consider that particles are persistent behaviours of fields.
But the ultimate motivation for panpsychism, as @I like sushi has correctly explained, is that it is the result of a struggle with the question of the place of consciousness in nature, and the conclusion is (rightly or wrongly) that it is everywhere, in some sense. For me, this is by process of elimination - it's the only theory of consciousness that doesn't have fatal objections.
Not at the macro level, no. There's no need, mechanical explanations (even if they are ultimately incomplete) are often what we want.
However, essential questions are not answered. What does panpsychism say about the consciousness of plants? What about subsets of consciousness, e.g. do the two hemispheres of the brain each have their own consciousness? Then there would already be three of me, my two brain hemispheres and both together.
We are pattern seeking creatures and we project agency in nature. We get mad with a hammer when it banged our finger, we curse an agent called " luck" in unfortunate situations, we give names and suffer with our bike and car issues, we share feelings for inanimate objects etc.
So the answer is quite simple. What motivates panpsychism is a heuristic called Superstition.
It played a huge role in the survival of our 'young" species and our modern populations carry this trait.
Panpsychism can not provide any answers. Its a superstitious worldview not a Philosophical conclusion based on credible epistemology. Its more like an opinion of "how things appear to me", then "this is what knowledge and reason suggests".
About your question about having two hemispheres and each having their own consciousness, Vilayanur Ramachandran has some amazing studies on split brain patients who had the connections(corpus callosum) between their two hemispheres terminated (as a treatment for epileptic seizures). Long story short it is possible the same individual with disconnected hemispheres to hold two conflicting positions (atheist and theist).
-"What would qualify as a 'solid reason'? "
-An objective verification of mind properties existing independent of biological brains.
Like any other claim or worldview, panpsychism has a burden of proof. Its burden is quite high since it is in direct conflict with the current establish paradigm of Science!
That conflict alone qualifies as solid reason to reject panpsychism until objective evidence can falsify our initial rejection of course(Null Hypothesis).
-"Consciousness does not admit of degree
All process or functions admit of degree
Therefore consciousness cannot be a process or function."
-First of all can you pls explain to me what do you mean by the phrase "Consciousness doesn't admit of degree"?
Then can you tell me how do you know that?
Thanks Bert1. Lots to think about there. I'm going to read up a bit about Emergentism, and I'll come back to you about your ideas.
As you said, this is a discussion about Panpsychism, but I've introduced my own ideas about "life" as a precondition for consciousness, as an alternative to Panpsych. So I'm wondering:
Does "life" admit of degree?
-Are you aware of the Ascending Reticular Activating System (ARAS) and the role of the Central Lateral Thalamus in the introduction of "context" in our conscious states?
Are you aware of the quantification methods of our conscious states described by Anil Seth?
Conscious states, are not the product of an on -off process. They are different degrees of conscious states throughout our day.
In Neuroscience there isn't a debate on the nature of consciousness or the main mechanisms responsible for this brain state. In addition to that Science can not verify mind properties emerging independent of brain. This is something that needs to be demonstrated not assumed.
-"As I mentioned, nature has had billions of years on billions of stars to hit on something like that. It happens by chance. Because it can. There isn't a "why". I mean, you're asking "why is there life?".
-Correct, Assuming teleology in natural processes is a fallacy. Purpose need to be demonstrated, not assumed, plus the properties we find in nature are Necessary and Sufficient to explain the emergence of complex functions and properties.
The mechanisms responsible developed in your foetus until at some moment you were able to feel something. We can see that the process of development of the mechanisms is gradual, but it's in the nature of consciousness that to the user it can only appear to be instantaneous.
Researchers trained mice to push a bar to get a reward when they saw a grey line moving across a screen. They identified neurons firing in synchrony with the appearance of the grey line. Then they made the line more faint, until the mouse couldn't see it and didn't press the bar. But the researchers could still see neuronal activity synchronised with the line the mouse no longer saw.
There is degree in the process.
I've very much enjoyed thinking about this.
These are very good questions, and difficult for the panpsychist. There is no single answer to any of these questions - panpsychists differ radically. Some might say plants have no unified consciousness as plants, but their constituent particles do. Others (like me) think that any object or entity or whatever, however arbitrarily defined (and so includes plants) is likely a centre of consciousness. However what that object experiences depends on its structure, functions and processes. So the vast majority of conscious things in the universe do not experience anything of any real interest or complexity (by human standards). Perhaps this might be a good place to wheel in the Intergrated Information Theory. While the IIT is not a good theory of consciousness IMO, it fits rather nicely as a possible way to quantify the richness of experience that any given object has. The more information it integrates, the richer its experience. The vast majority of systems integrate very little information. Another way to delineate individuals is to invoke some other functionalist theory. @apokrisis suggests that the ability to model one's environment to make predictions and adapt behaviour accordingly is a hallmark of the conscious. Perhaps that is another way to measure individual identity, and pick out those systems that are conscious in an interesting, perhaps living, way, as opposed to those that are dead but still with the light on, if you see what I mean. Being a mineral sounds depressing to me. Don't really like to think about it. Maybe it's OK if you actually are one.
A consequence of this is that there may be a myriad of selves associated with a single brain, as you point out. It's weird, Jim. But is it false? I don't know.
So in short, I don't know what the relationship between consciousness and identity is. As Searle asked of me when criticising panpsychism, "What are the units supposed to be?" And you raise the same issue. I'm sorry I don't have a very well developed answer for you. It's a central question, perhaps the central question of panpsychism. It's linked to the combination problem - how do experiences sum? Or do they sum at all? The solution to these questions depend perhaps on whether one is a microsphyschist (bottom-up) or macropsychist (top-down). Personally, I lean towards the latter.
That's not true of modern educated panpsychist philosophers, physicists and neuroscientists.
Asking for objective verification of subjectivity may be asking for a square circle, an ore of nonexistium, a bucket of pure being.
It does have a burden of proof. But so does every other theory of consciousness. We look at them all and pick the least problematic. I reckon it's panpsychism.
I don't see that it is in direct conflict with any established scientific knowledge. Can you give an example?
I'll try. I mean there are no intermediate states between x not being conscious at all, and x being conscious. As soon as x has the faintest vaguest shimmer of experience, then x is having an experience, and that meets the definition of consciousness. It doesn't matter how far we turn the volume down on this experience, it's still experience. It has to click off completely to be non-conscious.
Contrast this with other properties, such as being bald, or being a heap (classic often discussed examples). With these we can think of intermediate states which are neither bald or not-bald. Even when we try to arbitrarily sharpen up these concepts, we find that the sharpenings can always be sharpened yet further, until we get down to single jerky quantum changes in an atom.
I know this about the concept of consciousness is by examination of the concept, how we use it in language, and by having conversation like this about it, and reflecting on the concept of vagueness.
-Educations plays no role in superstitious beliefs. We know from neuroscience that decision in our brain are taken and they we reason them to our selves.
We can make a patients hand to jerk by using electrodes in his brain and he will provide a reason why "He did" what he did.
This is how Heuristics work.
Very good question. If you take modern biological definitions, then it would very much appear so, yes. But if you mean by 'life' (as some do) a centre of experience, then I think the answer is 'no'.
Sure, but I don't think that proves anything about panpsychism. Could you spell it out?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Sure, brains cause behaviour. What does that imply about panpsychism?
-Quoting bert1
-No no no.....I didn't ask anything about that abstract concept/ quality of subjectivity . I was clear. The claim is that mental properties can emerge non contingent to a biological brain. I didn't demand to demonstrate the subjective content of them. I only want you to point to a phenomenon where Reasoning, Intention,purpose, conscious realization, symbolic thinking, intelligence, pattern recognition, problem solving etc are properties that can be displayed by a brainless agent.
Can you point to a headless organism that can practice the above mental qualities?
Thank you for the clarification. We were talking at cross-purposes. Indeed, most of these I suppose only occur in brainy animals, perhaps some of them exist in some computer systems, maybe some of them exist in a rudimentary form in unicellular organisms, I don't know for certain. But I take your point. I do not assert that all of these mental capacities, functions, abilities, occur in everything. I only assert that subjectivity does, and that is all I mean by 'consciousness'.
Regarding the other functions you mention, I am interested if you think these could happen without any subjectivity. Could a complex entity, a cybernetic brain or something, could do all these things, but without actually experiencing anything?
I agree! When people disagree with me they usually say that consciousness does admit of degree. It's interesting and gratifying that you share my intuition that it doesn't. We're not the only ones by the way. Goff, Antony, and even one or two emergentists agree with us I think, last time I looked.
-:It does have a burden of proof. But so does every other theory of consciousness. We look at them all and pick the least problematic. I reckon it's panpsychism.
I don't see that it is in direct conflict with any established scientific knowledge. Can you give an example?
-No no, all theories of consciousness need to be a narrative of FACTS and a description of observable mechanisms. Panpsychism only makes unflasifiable declarations. It doesn't describe how conscious states arise and how they gain their mental content.It just states consciousness exists....everywhere.
That is not a theory of consciousness...that is a theory of anything.
Consciousness is used like Phlogiston or Miasma or Orgone energy to explain phenomena by making up magical substances.
-"I don't see that it is in direct conflict with any established scientific knowledge. Can you give an example? "
-Its in direct conflict with the establish Scientific Paradigm. Advanced properties are the product of structures with complex structures. This is what we observe in Nature. Claiming something different just makes it supernatural.
IT's also in conflict with the null hypothesis. The rejection of correlations between A(existence) and b(ghost of consciousness) until significant observations falsify that rejection should be your default position.
Karl Popper's Demarcation principle. The problem is not that it is wrong, its not Even wrong! It can not be falsified, verified or tested. IT can not be used to produce accurate predictions or to use its principles in technical applications.
This is what All scientific theories provide to us....so panpsychism is not a theory.not even close.
I wish it was in conflict with objective observations.....that would render it falsifiable.
Now ..its just theology in a really vague suit.
-wait......is this a serious argument? like there isn't an intermediate state being dead and not dead?being eating and not eating. Those are true dichotomies sir!!! What would an intermeditate state would be like for you? Conscious, semiconscious, non conscious?
Are you denying degrees of consciousness?
So you have never being asleep? light sleep, heavy sleep, sleep with dreams,sleep with environmental stimuli intruding in your dream,nightmare, sleepwalking, drunk, intoxicated,under anesthesia, brain injury(I hope not) concision, head ache, tooth ache, memory issues,Defuse thinking, focus thinking,preoccupied, terribly tired etc et.all those states that affect and even limit the quality of our ability to be conscious of our thoughts,mental abilities and environment.
I see my examples take care the rest of your arguments about baldness etc.
btw baldness is not a label we use to describe a condition not a biological property of matter.
Subjectivity is not a mental property. It is a quality we observe in thinking agents because their conscious thoughts are the product of emotions(experiences) reasoned in to feelings and what they mean to them.
Subjectivity is an evaluation term on how people reason and experiences things differently.
It can not exist without biological thinking agents comparing their differences in their experiences
Consciousness doesn't mean subjectivity.
Consciousness is our ability to be conscious of environmental and organic stimuli and produce thoughts with content. Subjective is an abstract concept that described the differences between experiences of different agents.....This is an equivocation fallacy.
Abstract concepts do not exist...they are descriptive labels we use on processes.
This is bad language mode and it is common with claims about consciousness being a "thing" not a process or a property of a process.
that is not a meaningful argument. in fact its a fallacy (from ignorance.)
We don't accept a claim and wait from others to falsify it
That is not reasonable and most importantly that type of claims are not part of Philosophy.
Philosophy starts with our epistemology and projects it in the metaphysical realm by using facts and reason. The result must be something that is epistemically robust, inductive and able to expand our understanding.
Assuming something that you have the burden to prove offers nothing of the above.
Again I have to repeat my self. The Philosophical Method is an exercise in frustration, not the pursuit of happiness.
We don't pick answers that ease our epistemic and existential anxieties and brag for the inability of science and logic to falsify it.
Unfalsifiability is a problem for that claim...not for logic science or philosophy.
The difference between human brain and other "brains" (computers) is that computers work with algorithms. Inputs inform the algorithm and the algorithm provides "decisions".
In the case of human brain it processes emotion and meaning. A stimuli produces an emotion or affection and our brain(based on previous inputs(experiences),biological setup i.e. homeostasis or our biological hardware i.e. taste buds brain receptors , production of hormones etc) reasons them in to feeling and what they mean for the organism. So you need to understand that "subjectivity" is inevitable because no second human being shares the same experiences or biological setup or biological hardware .
You might like spicy food but my numerous taste buds don't share the same opinion with you.
Subjectivity is NOT something magical.
Now can cybernetic brains display a quality of subjectivity. Sure, even if the algorithm is the same, small differences in the "training" session of inputs or differences in its hardware can produce different "presences" in the "decision process".
Have you discussed this with John Searle??
We must possess data that at the very least suggest the possibility of objects (animate/inanimate) having souls.
We can't let our imagination get the better of us; plus, we haven't yet proved the existence of souls in humans, our best bet at doing so. If you couldn't prove charcoal is carbon, what hope is there for you with diamonds.
What's the rationale for that distinction then?
Quoting bert1
I've been giving this some thought, and realised that there are such states, they are exemplified by the research I referred to. The mouse senses the faint moving line, without seeing it. The mechanisms responsible for conscious experience are operating, but below the threshold where consciousness begins. We can see this from the outside. It's in the nature of consciousness that a gradual onset would be difficult for the "user" to detect.
You might also consider your own present experience. If your attention is drawn to it, you will become aware for example of the pressure of your chair against your body, or the position of your tongue in your mouth. But what about all those things while you're not attending to them? There's a shading in and out of consciousness there.
Again when certain types of anaesthetic are administered we can see a gradual diminution in neuronal activity, corresponding to a greying out of conscious experience.
Again, consider the gradual development of the nervous system in a foetus.
______________________________________
A bacterium swimming up a chemical gradient is an entity, with what we might call unconscious purpose, unconscious intentionality (its swimming motion is related to the chemical), unconscious sensing.
Before x can be conscious, there has to be an unconscious x.
Either the awareness is there or it is not. Consciousness is also present in a dampened state. It is like numbers, a number is either zero or not zero. There is nothing in between.
Zero is not a number; it’s a limit.
There’s a distinction between unconscious and non-conscious that is all about potential. Unconscious retains the potential for consciousness, even when empirical evidence is insufficient; Non-conscious doesn’t have that potential.
If I have nothing in my wallet, then there are zero dollars. That's not a limit, that's a fact.
If one has no consciousness, then the objective time runs infinitely fast opposite the subjective time (like divide by zero), one is "beamed" directly to the awakening, i.e. one has felt no subjective time in between. If one feels something, then one also feels subjective time.
I like to compare consciousness with superconductivity. At a certain constellation the electric resistance suddenly jumps to zero, the conductivity accordingly to infinite.
There is no contradiction between potential and jump point. The potential for superconductivity results from the material, below a certain temperature superconductivity suddenly occurs.
And the fact is you do NOT have a number of dollars. You have reached the limit of your wallet’s potential for dollars, its lowest value. The potential exists - you have the wallet: an empty set defined by its limits.
There are two ways to describe a lack of consciousness: with the wallet, or without it. With the wallet, a capacity or potential for dollars exists (unconscious). Without it, there is no indication of potential (non-conscious).
But what you’re looking for here is evidence of consciousness, not what consciousness is. Consciousness is the value/potential, the number. The evidence is the dollars or the wallet, without which the number is just a number.
Two sets of questions arise. Firstly, what does a wallet look like, and how is it constructed? Secondly, once we have a wallet, how do we get dollars to fill it?
Quoting SolarWind
Sounds like potential to me.
The assumption that something is conscious or not is based solely on the idea of being an entity. You can probably imagine yourself to be another human being, maybe a dog, but not a stone.
There is no conception of being half an X.
This is an interesting problem. I’ll call it The Problem of Perspective. It’s akin to the idea of a View from Nowhere. In an odd way, perhaps even Platonic notions of progressive understanding (noesis) was trying to solve it. That is to say, a worm, a termite, a pig, and a human all have a perspective. No perspective would seem privileged as to evaluating truth. Yet a worm can’t discern electromagnetism, nor scientific insights, mechanical theory etc., but humans can. But there is not supposed to be a Great Chain of Being. Yet humans at least act as though we have a privileged perspective to being close to what is “really going on”, more than other animals at least. Now take away humans, take away animals. We get a view from nowhere. Here is true metaphysics. What then exists in the view from nowhere? If you’re imagining a world as perceived and inferenced and synthesized by humans you would be mistaken. What is a non-perspective world? In what way can we talk of it intelligibly? Planets planeting? Particles particling? What does that even mean when there’s no perspective?
As per Laozi, simplifying Taoism, we're supposed to emulate the nonliving: go with the flow ( :heart: ); only dead fish go with the flow, one remarked.
The point then is to die or act dead, let the chips fall where they may (wu wei, actionless action). Momma nature knows best! Trust in her experience (4.5 billion years), have faith in her wisdom (she is the Tao, mother of the myriad things).
I follow (human) laws when I understand them perfectly. Understanding requires consciousness!
Just to clarify, wu wei is to act as if dead - to deliberately and consciously align our ideas and logic with that of the universe, striving to understand and be aware of the energy that flows through it all, ourselves included. Laozi is not advocating a blind faith here, but a fully conscious one.
:up:
But that's to prejudice the debate. That everything must be a mechanism is itself a theory.
Unfalsifiable by an empirical experiment, perhaps, but there are other ways to falsify claims. It's true that it's not a typical scientific hypothesis.
It would be odd to expect it to. The idea that conscious states arise is emergentism. Panpsychism is typically a denial of emergentism.
How and why mental content is what it is, and what entities have what content and why, these are still open and difficult questions, and I agree panpsychists have not really got many good answers to these yet. I think various functionalist theories could be re-purposed to this end, perhaps.
Panpsychists generally do not think consciousness is an advanced property, it's a primitive, simple property, of the kind that could be fundamental.
What should be the default position is an interesting question. Arguments could be made either way it seems to me. Panpsychism is ontologically simpler than emergentism, for example. Emergentism says there are two kinds of system in nature: conscious systems and unconscious ones. Panpsychists usually say there is just one, conscious.
Some versions of panpsychism do make predictions, but not empirically testable ones. The difficulty is that there is no objective test for the presence of consciousness in systems other than our own self. I know I'm conscious. But I can't empirically verify that you are, or that my friend is. I think you probably are, but that is based on philosophical reasoning, not on empirical investigation. If you are saying that philosophy is not science, I agree with you.
It's not theology
Yes.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
These are gradations in what we are conscious of. They are not gradations between being conscious of nothing at all, and being conscious of something.
OK, I probably shouldn't have used the word 'subjectivity' as it has confused the issue.
Here you have used the word 'conscious' in your definition of 'consciousness'. You could means several different things, and I'm not sure which one.
Panpsychism is a conclusion, not an assumption. Consider:
Either panpsychism, emergentism or eliminativism
Not emergentism
Not eliminativism
Therefore, panpsychism.
That's a valid argument. It might be unsound (one or more promises might be false), but that's another conversation. Panpsychism is the conclusion, not an assumption.
OK, thanks. Why can't all that happen without there being an emotion, meaning or feeling?
I don't know, you'd have to ask a biologist I guess. Prescientific concepts of life might well have included an element of consciousness. But at some point, like got redefined in terms of reproductive ability, taking things from the environment and exploiting them, adapting, responding to stimuli (I'm talking out of my arse here, I don't actually know what the latest biological definition of life is) and that sort of thing. Things you can objectively look for anyway. Presumably this was satisfactory to demarcate the bits of the world they were interested in.
That's interesting. You are still using the concept pf a threshold though, which suggests a sharp dividing line to me. If the user is not conscious of the gradual onset of consciousness, then it's not a gradual onset is it? It's when they do become conscious of it, that they are conscious of it. Does that moment of realisation happen suddenly?
Sure, I agree there is a greying out. It's the transition from they faintest of greys to nothing at all I'm interested in. The faintest of greys is still a state of consciousness, no? There's an experience going on.
That's the emergentist view. My view could perhaps be: before x can be conscious, there has to be a conscious p, q and r.
Yes, that's how it seems to me. Dampened consciousness is still consciousness.
I've been reading about this the last couple of days, and watching videos. There are many definitions, depending on the focus of the person providing the definition. But I was really asking why you make the distinction. I see living organisms as being potential centres of consciousness. They are "bounded entities", a phrase used Nobel Prize winner and President of the Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse, in this lecture on "What is Life?". https://youtu.be/8-cTlKVsvvM
Quoting bert1
And before p, q and r can be conscious?
Quoting bert1
-No that is what provides credibility and to each competing position in a debate. Objective evidence that are accessible to everyone.
-"That everything must be a mechanism is itself a theory."
-No, everything must be a description of a observable and testable mechanism not a hypothesis on unfalsifiable assumptions.
Quoting bert1
-Not really. Unfortunately for us only empirical experimentation can provide Objective facts for verifying or falsifying a statement. We can logical prove or disprove a claim to but that is not possible for unfalsifiable through methodological means claims.
Quoting bert1
-Then not only Panpsychism denies an observable fact of the world, that's emergence (i.e. two explosive molecules when combined produce a substance with the emergent fire extinguishing property) it also makes a medieval claim for a substance being responsible for a phenomenon (like Phlogiston, Miasma, Orgone energy etc).
This is a text book example of How pseudo Philosophy sounds like.
Disconnected from reality and reproducing the same errors.
Quoting bert1
-The difference is that if you search a Neuroscience database or take an academic course you won't just find that many of the questions have been answered, we also use those answers to produce testable predictions (diagnostics) and technical applications (surgery/medical protocols).
This is what philosophy not founded on science can not produce. (Descriptions Predictions and applications).
Quoting bert1
_yes this is something that you need to demonstrated not assume. Demonstrated contingency to brain functions and metabolic molecules and external stimuli and a period of learning (new born) don't really leave any room for a competing hypothesis .
Quoting bert1
No it can't The default position is always founded on objectively demonstrated facts. We can demonstrate the necessary and sufficient role of a functioning brain for thinking agents to interact and be aware of their environment. We can not establish such criteria for supernatural ideology.
-"Panpsychism is ontologically simpler than emergentism, for example. Emergentism says there are two kinds of system in nature: conscious systems and unconscious ones. Panpsychists usually say there is just one, conscious."
-Not really because it introduces an unnecessary agent in addition to a verified and necessary mechanism for a thinking agent to function.
No emergentism doesn't say anything about competing systems. It only describes the conditions needed for ANY property to emerge and be observable. It isnt limited to the property of consciousness. Combustion, mitosis, digestion,liquidity, rigidity etc etc all emerge under a specific condition.
Its a principle found in Complexity Science, a set of methodologies where reductionistic methodologies aren't helpful at all.
Quoting bert1
-So they actually don't make predictions since they can not be tested.
-"The difficulty is that there is no objective test for the presence of consciousness in systems other than our own self."
-Of course there are objective metrics that allow us to identify conscious states in other agents, from our interactions to necessary brain functions to our ability to decode complex conscious thoughts by watching the fMRI scan of a patient.(2017 Carnegie Mellon).
-" I know I'm conscious. But I can't empirically verify that you are, or that my friend is. I think you probably are, but that is based on philosophical reasoning, not on empirical investigation. If you are saying that philosophy is not science, I agree with you.
-Of course you can. You are responding to my conscious states....by consciously processing what they have produced. Lets not hide behind our fingers, shall we.
We can examine the facts, and be sure that an agent who is aware of you and your input is conscious of....you and your input. This is why he is able to react according to what he is aware of....
What..................? That is a binary position mate...you can use it as an argument for nothing. You are either right or not right, you are either guilty or not guilty.
That is a tautology based on the Logical Absolutes.
There is gradation on what we can be conscious of many reasons and that proves that our physiology and conditions affect the quality of our conscious states.
Again there is no value saying that one can be conscious or not. It offers zero meaningful information to the discussion or your position.
replace it with "aware"...but it is the same. Its one of this cases where using the actual word saves you from unnecessary descriptions.
To be aware of what exist to be aware of stimuli environmental or organic. To direct your attention to a stimuli and process its meaning, choose an action,etc etc.
Not really we don't have evidence that renders panphycism necessary or sufficient in explaining anything. Its a declaration.
It can not explain why when someone crashes he skull he is no longer able to perform mentally.
Its doesn't explain why damaging the Ascending Reticular Activating system a thinking agent stops being able to be aware of the environment his mental stimuli(thoughts) or his bodily functions.
it can not explain why other objects don't display agency.
Its a made up answer, mostly because it carries a death denying ideology in it.
We can not test your idea ...while we can verify the essential role of a brain for all the above conditions.
All the anecdote story about Laplace and Napoleon "we have no need of that hypothesis".
Well "why" is not the right question. Neuroscience describes how we as agents produce meaning and identify intention and purpose in other agents. We are driven by stimuli that arouse our emotions that we reason in to feelings, concepts thoughts.
A child that has no previous experiences and its extreme reactions to stimuli (hot food, falling down, cold weather etc) show that his brain reacts without previous quid-lines. As we grow up we construct a theoretical model based on our emotions and experiences of the world. We know what to expect and our reactions are informed.
You are doing an ancient mistake where our philosophy presumed magical substances conveniently having the same properties with the phenomenon we are trying to explain.
In real Philosophy and Science we don't presume complex substances being the source of a phenomenon.
We know that processes are responsible for phenomena.
Is lightning a thought? Are storm chasers aware of something we're not? I dunno!
An electric current travels from one system to another, and is contingent upon both. You can’t isolate an electric current from the relational structure and call it ‘thought’.
Likewise, you can’t isolate an ongoing relation of change from both the organism and its environment, and call it ‘consciousness’. This is what panpsychism is proposing.
Consciousness refers to a particular relational structure of change (awareness) that occurs between an integrated event system and a differentiated event structure. Alternative relational structures of change occur between event structures, molecular and chemical structures, atomic systems, etc, but these are not referred to as ‘consciousness’ because it doesn’t occur between an integrated event system and a differentiated event structure.
What they do have in common is some kind of relational structure of change. I call it awareness. Some might be tempted to call it information, but that term describes the structure of change between our own integrated event system and our observation/measurement of the awareness; it is not the awareness itself, which is often a much simpler relational structure, and considered in terms of information as incomplete.
Of course not - I can only speak from my limited experience and knowledge, and all statements are open to dispute if you have an experience that contradicts. This is what discussions are for, aren’t they? To draw attention to possible errors?
:sweat:
But I have evidence of my consciousness that no one else can have, because no one else is me.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
When I say panpsychism is a denial of emergentism, that's only with regard to the emergence of consciousness specifically. I'm only talking about the philosophy of mind. Of course, the vast majority of properties in the world are emergent. But consciousness isn't one of them. Consciousness is very unusual like that.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I think you might be confusing panpsychism with substance dualism. Panpsychism is typically a monistic view. Quoting Nickolasgaspar
It isn't assumed. Panpsychism must be true if the alternatives are false.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
The evidence you are referring to doesn't show what you think it shows. Of course a functioning human brain in a human body is necessary and sufficient for a functioning human being, that's pretty much true by definition. You haven't told me anything interesting about consciousness. This says nothing about the consciousness of, say, a snail, thermostat, or lawnmower. It doesn't tell me why a functioning human brain is conscious, and why, say, an internal combustion engine isn't. Why can't a brain do all the things it does in the dark, without consciousness? We know it doesn't, but why not?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
OK, that's good. OK, so we look at an fRMI scan and what? See consciousness there? Or do we infer consciousness? Or what? If we infer it, what is the inference? Can you spell it out?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I agree with you, I think I am. But the evidence I have for your consciousness is not the same evidence I have for my own consciousness.
To be clear, you have evidence of something. You can't possibly have private evidence of consciousness, how would you know what the word meant if your only evidence of it was private? How would your language community have taught you how to use the word, what it referred to?
Yes, I can use it as an argument for something. Consciousness is an unusual concept. The vast majority of concepts do admit of degree. That's why I mentioned the example of baldness. It's a perfectly good concept, but it is not binary. There is no sharp cut-off point between being bald and non-bald. That's the point you're making isn't it? You're saying it's bogus to insist on a binary dichotomy, right? Well, for the vast majority of properties in the world, I completely agree with you. But consciousness is different. The concept does not seem to allow of degree. There is of course, plenty of degree about what we experience once we have got consciousness 'booted up' as it were, to use an emergentist metaphor, but if there is a 'booting up', there has to be a binary transition from non-conscious to conscious. But nature generally lacks such binary transitions, especially when you get the microscope out and look closely. So that presents a problem for the emergentist.
-evidence for what?
I also have evidence of your conscious states mate. You interact with me, you share your conscious and questionable ideas, you appear to be alive so you must be conscious of your surroundings thus able to acquire what you need to survive. At worst, I can hook you on an fMRI scanner check that you are not a robot and even tell you what you think.
Quoting bert1
-Cherry picking? Special Pleading...are you ok with the use of fallacies in your arguments? I am not, I tend to dismiss such arguments without second thought.
Quoting bert1
Pansychism has nothing to do with Philosophy. Its an unfalsifiable metaphysical worldview and it is direct conflict with the available scientific facts of reality.
Quoting bert1
-Again Special pleading. What do you mean "consciousness" is very unusual, what is unusual about a biological sensory system arousing specific areas of the brain allowing the organism to be conscious about things in his environment????? You don't get to declare something unusual, you need to demonstrate it. You must point to the science that proves external stimuli can not be collected by our biological sensors (eyes,ears) and they can not be converted to electric pulses, can't arouse a specific area of the brain responsible for visual consciousness and the image can't be compared with a previous input providing info on what we look at etc etc etc etc
Quoting bert1
No I only point out that making up magical answers was a common practice in our medieval philosophy. The example was random.
Quoting bert1
Again....you need to demonstrate that the alternatives are false......The evidence we have don't favor your ideology.
-"The evidence you are referring to doesn't show what you think it shows. "
-Allow me to accept the position presented by Neuroscience and dismiss yours.
Quoting bert1
-You converted the induced conclusion of neuroscience....to a tautology. Great!
Quoting bert1
-Obviously you were not paying any attention. Neuroscience has located the areas responsible for our conscious states, for the introduction of the content of our thoughts and how by manipulating those areas we can affect our states.
Quoting bert1
And there is a reason for that......its because the brain mechanisms responsible for our conscious states....are irrelevant to those things you mentioned.
Its like holding your tuna sandwich responsible for the low air pressure of your rear tire.
This is philosophy of Absurdism.
Quoting bert1
- Well what it matter is what it tells to experts, not to us. Our brain has the hardware that allows it to be conscious, it is hooked on a sensory system that provides information about the world and the organism, it has centers that process meaning,memory, symbolic language, pattern recognition.A combustion engine....burns fuel and its censors provide information for that process.
Quoting bert1
-I am not sure you understand what it means for a brain to conscious....It helps to be aware of where you can find resources, avoid predators and obstacles, make choices of your behavior and actions in your society, adjust it according to other people's behavior.
Consciousness is a state where our brain receives and processes important stimuli that help it inform and choose the best action.
Quoting bert1
Sorry but those are "funny" questions....Do we look at xrays and see digestion, or mitosis, do we scan leaves and see photosynthesis? In ALL natural phenomena we observe processes that enable specific properties and qualities.We don't see these properties, we see what they produce.
here is some material to understand the mechanism involved.
https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/news/news-stories/2017/june/brain-decoding-complex-thoughts.html
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02091/full
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/tiny-brain-area-could-enable-consciousness
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/neurobiology-of-consciousness-study-explained
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3722571/
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/what-is-a-mind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRel1JKOEbI&t=
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-1etGWVvb8
Quoting bert1
-Actually the correct quote should be "I feel , I am ". The evidence are not the same but the are more than sufficient to meet any objective standard.
Sir...you are fooling yourself with these bad arguments and bad language mode.
You can be unconscious, conscious and display many degrees of consciousness from highly alerted to lethargic
You can be bold, have hair and all the stages between those two extremes.
You just choose to the two extreme points and ignore all the in between.
Quoting bert1
of course there is. You just choose not to admit it. Here are the extremes for both cases(Again)
A. a head without hair b. a head with hair.
A a unconscious state b. a conscious state.
Both extremes in both cases display many stages in between.
Quoting bert1
You should also agree with me on this one.
-"The concept does not seem to allow of degree.'
Of course it does...but you literally dismissed it when I pointed that out...just because it makes your argument look bad.
Quoting bert1
-"Quoting bert1
-And there are many degrees to baldness when we get/or loose our first hair.
Again you just choose to ignore the part of the phenomenon that makes your argument sound bad.
The extreme in both examples are binary.
Quoting bert1
Neither consciousness or baldness is binary........
I think there's a plausible story to be told involving a series of inferences and an abstraction. First, I stub my toe and I feel pain, I might say 'ouch that hurts.' Then my friend stubs their toe and also says 'ouch that hurts.' I don't feel my friend's pain, and they don't feel mine, but I can instinctively infer that they probably feel something roughly similar to what I felt. So we have a common language describing private experiences. I don't really see the problem with that. Then, in a more philosophical mood, when we have have gathered a large number of such experiences, we might reflect on one thing they all have in common, namely that they are all experiences, there is something it is like to have them. That faculty whereby we are able to have experiences, we have a name for, consciousness. I can have a conversation with my friend, and we can discuss philosophy, and while my consciousness is not his consciousness, and while I can't be absolutely certain he isn't an Australian zombie, we can nevertheless both perform this abstraction and reasonably share the concept. I don't see any great problem with this.
You said...
Quoting bert1
Then...
Quoting bert1
Quoting bert1
Quoting bert1
Quoting bert1
...doesn't sound very much like no one else can have it.
I have been unconscious when asleep, when I hit myself on the head with a pickaxe, and when I had a general anaesthetic. I am confidently expecting to be unconscious when I'm dead.
We've got all this complex machinery in our heads, the most complex thing we know about, and it can be switched off with a pickaxe or anaesthetic.
If it isn't like anything to be you, when you're unconscious, so you understand what unconsciousness is, and you understand the effects of anaesthetics and suchlike, and their relationship to the complex mechanisms, then why would you think that consciousness would be found in the absence of those mechanisms?
How do you know?
Yes, but you don't say "ouch" because of the experience. You say "ouch" because of a completely physical and traceable series of neural molecular and electrical reactions. You would say "ouch" even if you were a robot programmed to say "ouch" every time you stub your toe.
The 'experience' you claim is private is not physically connected to saying "ouch" in any way (if it was, it would be a physical phenomenon). So the fact that your friend doesn't say "ouch" can't possibly stand as evidence either for or against the type of experience he's having - if experiences are private. He might have exactly the same experience as you do when you say "ouch" alongside watching someone say "ouch"... Or not...
I've been reading and watching lectures about "What Is Life?". Living organisms are described by the biologists as "bounded entities". Identity then is something a bacterium has, without being conscious.
This kind of non-conscious identity is a prerequisite for consciousness.
I think bounded entities developed, by chance, perhaps around deep sea vents. I think consciousness developed out of non-conscious sensory mechanisms in those bounded entities.
Can you tell me what's false about that?
I think perhaps identity is more than just boundedness. Integration seems to me the prerequisite here for consciousness. It’s hard to imagine a sea sponge, for instance, being conscious. Have you seen one reassemble after being passed through a sieve?
That’s okay - I wasn’t implying that you were. But let’s say a collection of cells bounded by a Petri dish would not have these non-conscious sensory mechanisms. I think there’s something more than simply boundedness in the development of consciousness. I’m suggesting integration, although I’m willing to consider that boundedness can motivate integration.
I just don’t think boundedness is equal to identity. What we lose when unconscious may be understood as identity (retaining the potential for consciousness), but non-conscious is something else.
Individual bacteria have non-conscious sensory mechanisms.
I wonder if your "integration" is another way of talking about the boundary, about the way the organism is separate from its environment?
What is "integration" in the sense in which you are using it?
It is, but it refers to internally organised limits in particular, not just any boundary. The organism is not really separate from its environment, it’s just set certain limits of interaction as a whole by its internal configuration.
Quoting Daemon
To integrate is to “bring (entities or groups with particular characteristics or needs) into equal participation in or membership of a group or institution.”
The sea sponge demonstrates an intermediate level of integration, similar to a hive or ant colony. There’s an internally organised (weak) upper limit, but the lower limit is a single cell looking for fellow members of... something...
‘Non-conscious sensory mechanisms’ are just members with particularly useful awareness characteristics, like the cell wall. It’s likely that earlier cells had systems with variable awareness characteristics making up their cell wall, allowing too much or too little interaction. We see only the structures that survived this long, not the potential diversity of failure.
My contention is that it is separate from its environment in a particular, crucial way. Non-living things are not separated in the same way.
Quoting Possibility
Can you say more about why?
Quoting Possibility
The non-conscious mechanism I am using as an example, chemotaxis in bacteria, is a series of chemical reactions resulting in swimming behaviour that tends to take the bacterium closer to an attractant. There is no awareness. The behaviour does look like it involves awareness (how can the bacterium swim towards the attractant if it isn't aware of its location?) but we know about the chemical process in exquisite detail, and we can see that the process is non-conscious.
a,b,c, and d,e,f, and g,h,i, that constitute p, q and r must be conscious. :)
The regress stops when we get to some foundation, like the quantum field, or space, or some such concept. I'm agnostic about exactly what this is.
The usual idea is that consciousness emerges from the non-conscious, e.g. x doing such-and-such (say, modelling its environment, or integrating information, or some other functionalist theory) constitutes x being conscious. Whereas I'm proposing that consciousness is not a function at all but a property, a bit like mass perhaps. So for x to have mass, x must be composed of other things that have mass (I don't know if that's always true with mass, but you get the idea). If you start with things that don't have mass, it doesn't matter how you arrange them or what they do, the result still won't have mass. I'm suggesting consciousness is like that. If this seems rather primitive and uncomplicated, it is.
I'd love for you to expand on this if you have time. How does a brain generate an emotion?
Thank you. To be clear, would you consider a thermostat to be aware of temperature in this sense?
But how does all of that result in consciousness? Why can't all of that happen without consciousness?
Don't you think we find ourselves in the middle? I mean, between the environment and our brain? So we are not separated from both? If we truly would be separated from the environment we would get diluted in space.
People just wanna keep their silly jobs in trying to work on something that just can't be explained. Keep up the myth that consciousness can be explained and that it's even important, and your work will be subsidized.
When I'm unconscious, say from an anaesthetic, of being knocked out, or in a very deep sleep, I guess there are few possibilities as to what is going on:
1) I have moved from being in a conscious condition to being in an unconscious condition. The structure hasn't changed, but the function has. My brain isn't doing the things that constitute consciousness, so it is no longer modelling its environment, or no longer integrating as much information, or whatever your particular functionalist theory of consciousness is. This is not consistent with panpsychism.
2) I, as a functional unity, cease to exist. This is subtly different from (1), and is consistent with panpsychism. In this case, modelling my environment, or integrating information is not what makes me conscious, it's what makes me me. Identity is a function, not a property, I suggest. Things are what they are because of what they do. Whereas consciousess is a property, not a function. So when an anaesthetic stops some of my brain function, it disrupts that functional unity that makes me me. Everything that composes my brain is still conscious (just as it still has mass) but there is no overarching identity that unifies them. This leaves the big problem for panpsychism: the combination problem.
3) Another possibility that my consciousness actually remains, but I'm not really aware of anything much except perhaps the vaguest of fuzzy experiences, and I don't remember it anyway, so it seems as if I haven't experienced anything at all.
4) Another possibility is that I'm still conscious, just not conscious of anything. And this would perhaps be indistinguishable (not conceptually but practically) from not being conscious at all, as there is no difference in terms of content of consciousness. Some on this forum think this is a logical absurdity - they say that it is necessarily part f the concept of consciousness that we are aware of something. Consciousness must have content to be consciousness. I'm not convinced of that. Consider an ocean with waves, and consider the ocean to be consciousness and the waves to be the content. It is not a contradiction to suppose that the ocean is still, with no waves on it. And it is not a contradiction to suppose that there can be consciousness, just nothing in it. Like an empty box. Boxes don't necessarily have to have anything in them. Whether this state actually ever obtains is doubtful, but that's a matter of empirical possibility, not of logical, or conceptual possibility.
The only one of these I think is definitely false is (1). The other three are consistent with panpsychism, and I'm not totally sure which I prefer. Maybe all of them have some truth. All of them allow functional theories a role to play.
(1) Consciousness is a function
(2) Identity is a function
(3) and (4) Content is determined by function
I suspect the OP was asking for theoretical motivations, not psychological ones. I say this because this is a philosophy forum, not a psychology forum.
Why not? You being unconscious doesn't mean the psyche has left the material.
OK, lets write it out:
[bald] .... [1 hair, 2 hairs.....501 hairs....100,001 hairs]... [not bald]
[seven] ... [???] ... [not-seven]
[spatial] ... [???] ... [not spatial]
[unconscious] .... [what do we write here???]... [conscious]
Please tell me what goes in between unconscious and conscious?
I have included the concepts of seven and space as these are arguably binary as well, with no middle ground, just to illustrate the point. I'm suggesting consciousness is like that.
I'm talking about functionalist theories of consciousness that say that consciousness just is brain function. If consciousness brain function, and that ceases, then psyche (consciousness) has indeed left the material. I don't think that, I'm just characterising the functionalist view.
Most starkly, I think that's impossible because the formation of an identity is always a vague matter, there is no absolutely sharp cut-off point between being non-individuated and being individuated. Indeed a cell may never be totally individuated, as it is always in a transactional relationship with its environment, exchanging material etc. And as consciousness is not a vague concept, it seems impossible to get it to plausibly fit anywhere.
Also, whatever stage you want to put the emergence of consciousness, the question remains, "OK, but why can't all that happen without consciousness?" What that question indicates is the conceptual gulf between our concept of consciousness and our other concepts based on structure and function. I think this is what Chalmers was probably getting at with his conceivability argument.
I don't see them as distinguishable, in the case of panpsychcism.
I see, but still. Why should psyche, according to functionalists, be absent if the brain is in sleep mode? How can a material process, which according to them contains no psyche in it's base (dead, psycheless particles interacting), give rise to, say, consciousness of heat or cold? Say you know the complete pattern of material processes involved, and the environment they are situated in, how would this constitute an explanation?
Just out of interest, at what point, in the attempt to explain consciousness in terms of brain function, would giving up be justified, and not be lazy?
Indeed. I don't regard panpsychism as giving up, but you do. And giving up on explaining consciousness in terms of brain function may not necessarily entail becoming a panpsychist anyway.
So, my question remains.
Er, semi-conscious?
This is helpful and clearly expressed. I think I do say 'ouch' because of the experience, although this is questionable as there may be times when I say 'ouch' in a sort of reflexive, automatic way, before I actually experience any pain. In fact, I think I've sometimes said 'ouch' and the pain never actually arrived, I was just expecting it. Anyway, maybe hunger would be a better example as reflex plays less of a role. I believe I eat because I feel hungry. Intuitively, experiences do generally seem to play a causal role in what we do. But maybe you don't agree with me. Perhaps you are an epiphenomenalist, or even an eliminativist, as your use of scare quotes around 'experience' might suggest?
Yes, I think your logic makes sense. I just think that experiences, feelings, etc, do play a causal role in what physically happens. That's what one would expect of a panpsychist.
So presumably your next query would be about the causal closure of the physical - there's no need, nor indeed room, for psychological explanations when the physical explanations are both necessary and sufficient? Would that be right?
That might be it! Depending on what you mean exactly. Can you give an example of a semi-conscious state?
Browsing TPF?
Could be! :)
Indeed. If there's a causal relationship that's an immutable fact about our shared reality (ie, not just a narrative we create to navigate it), then there'd be something missing in the causal explanations we have. But there's nothing missing. I can (theoretically) trace all the electrical and chemical reactions from the nerve endings of your tos through to the muscle fibres of your larynx and at no point is there a gap where I'd have to think "hey, where did that come from?". So causally, there's just no need for such an explanation.
Narratively, however, there's obviously a need for one. I too feel like I eat because I'm hungry, it's part of how we use the word 'because' in the context of human behaviour. But narratively, there are no right or wrong answers, whatever floats your boat.
So, personally, I don't have a problem with the 'story' of consciousness (as in our experiences) just being a façon de parler. A piece of magic we made up for plot reasons. As such, it can arise out of nowhere if it wants. It can supervene, it can be possessed by rock if you want. It really doesn't matter, whatever makes a good story.
My own position on causal closure is that physical explanations must be reducible to psychological ones.
What you have said is consistent with both epiphenomenalism and eliminativism. So what do you think of experiences then? Do we have them at all?
I treat 'experiences' as the packaging up and logging to memory of discrete subsections of the continuous interaction with our environment. As such they involve filtering (what bits of sensory inputs were relevant and what weren't), start and stop points (how to mark off 'the event' - I stubbed my toe), and most importantly of all, threading it into the various narratives we use to navigate the world (all the way from stories about my the body's edges, pain responses, and basic stuff like that to stories about how "the kid's need to bloody well tidy their rooms more often because that's the fifth time I've stubbed my toe on their damn toys!", or whatever). These all 'fix' the event in the memory so that it can form part of the models interpreting future events.
The doing of all this is what we call 'having an experience'. It's actually happening anything from a few milliseconds to a few minutes after the physical causes we think it's about. It's a post hoc storytelling exercise, it answers the question "what just happened there?"
Then I would disagree with you here. Just because living things move in relation to a stationary environment does not render them separate from it. There is no gap or space in between, and both entities continue to relate, interact and connect. The difference is that the limits of this interaction are determined by the overall organisation of the cell, as an integrated structure of highly variable chemical processes. Any ‘separation’ is assumed by a conscious observer.
Quoting Daemon
From what I can see it is a configuration as whole, rather than a boundary (appearance of separation) itself, that enables consciousness.
Quoting Daemon
I get this, and I do think there is awareness, but not consciousness. The bacterium as a whole is not aware of the attractant’s location. But a chemical process within this group is aware of changes in the chemical gradient of the attractant (allowed through by the chemical process in the cell wall). The chemical process has a relation of change with this gradient, which in turn has a relation of change with other chemical processes within the bacterium - ie. they demonstrate awareness of changes in this chemical process.
Well, that's the question. There are a couple of suggestions:
1) These processes are just what we mean by consciousness. We should ditch the old unscientific folk concepts, and redefine words so they make more sense in a modern context.
2) Reverse the burden of proof. Ask not "Why would it feel like something to perform these functions?" Instead, ask "Why wouldn't it feel like something to, say, enter into a modelling relationship with the environment?"
3) Keep pointing out, over and over again, how particular experiences are correlated with brain function, and how changes in experience are always and only accompanied by changes in brain function. And the obvious explanation here, is that experience just is the brain function, right? Surely you must, at some point, admit they are the same thing no? How stubborn or stupid are you? It's modern science. Wake up. This has been shown over and over. Your old superstitious wishful thinking has had its day.
What do you think of those?
Yes, that's a good one! I can't imagine it wouldn't feel like anything. We have a face and mouth and body. Or better, are a body. Constantly resonating with the world outside and even enactingly shaping it. How could that go without consciousness? But still it leaves a gnawing. Maybe elementary particles contain the seeds already. They can't exist without interaction either. A mystery! :smile:
Ok, but I am positing the separation of organisms as a prerequisite.
Quoting Possibility
But awareness is an aspect of consciousness. The chemical process isn't aware of things in the way you are aware of things.
Yes, and I’m disagreeing with you on this point. I think that consciousness is hindered to the extent that the organism is separated from its environment. When the brain’s connection to the nervous system is impeded, we lose consciousness. Configuration as whole is not the same as separation.
Quoting Daemon
No argument with you there. But the way a chemical process is aware of things does contribute to the way we are aware of things.
Can you see the problem in your claim? ??u are making up concepts with an idealist quality that don't exist in nature.
like a head can have many "numbers of hair" our conscious states come display many levels. You can be asleep,half awaken, fully awaken, lethargic, distrusted,in a defuse state, in afocus state etc etc etc etc etc etc.
You need to revisit the concepts you use.
-? small metal plate being affected by temperature thus allowing a circuit to open or close is not what we identify as "being aware". Animals (including humans) are aware of things around them by processing stimuli through a central nervous system which allows them to identify meaning and predict implications.
There are Moocs (Neuroscience) that explain how specific mechanisms give rise to our affections and emotions and we reason them in to feelings.
These are all conscious states though. Here:
[conscious states: half awaken, fully awaken, lethargic, distrusted,in a defuse state, in afocus state]
[in-between states...????]
[non-conscious state: knocked out(?), dreamless sleep(?), dead, being a rock, being a blastocyst]
Really?! Then that is the end of the philosophy of consciousness. Yet why are neuroscientists and professional philosophers still talking about this as if they don't know the answer?
This is not as straightforward as you think it is.
yes, they are like there different stages of baldness.
-"[in-between states...????]"
-Why is it so difficult for you? You just listed the in between states ( half awaken, fully awaken, lethargic, distrusted,in a defuse state, in a focused state) and now you ask for those different states? Maybe you don't understand that a fully alerted state resemble a head full with hair and a lethargic a head with a few hair near its ears.....
-"[non-conscious state: knocked out(?), dreamless sleep(?), dead, being a rock, being a blastocyst] "
-....being completely bald...being conscious is not an option for rocks or blastocysts. Those do not have the capacity.
Why philosophers still talk about god or the supernatural when we have proven unnecessary and insufficient for more than 400 years?
There is plenty of scientific and philosophical work to be done on the brain and mind, but it doesn't have to do with the questions you may assume. Anil Seth has a great essay on AEON on why the hard questions in neuroscience have nothing to do with the pseudo "why" questions of the Hard problem of consciousness.
What is the answer to the question of life?
What was that proof in 2017?
What philosophers are talking about God?
1.That we don't need "artifacts" like Orgone energy or Élan vital to explain a pure biological process.
2. In 2017 a study was published showing that we are not living in a simulation.
3. The problem is that philosophers still believe that god is a philosophical subject...
I just found my old links on that study.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/physics/physicists-find-were-not-living-in-a-computer-simulation/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/physicists-confirm-that-were-not-living-in-a-computer-simulation/
https://www.sciencealert.com/quantum-complexity-rules-out-our-universe-as-a-computer-simulation
What philosophers? Certainly there are a few, but they write more for a religious audience.
While I don't find this topic all that interesting, the point is that if we were in a simulation we would not be able to determine it one way or another.
-How do you know? Do you understand whichclaim was challenged and what metrics were used to falsify it?
Do you have a particular journal you can reference?
https://philpapers.org/s/god
Thanks.
I'm sorry I'm not getting the point across properly. If you are interested, this article probably explains it much better than I have:
https://philpapers.org/rec/ANTAOC-2
The states you identified and I listed are not in-between states. They are all, fully, 100% states of consciousness. They all meet the definition. They are all experienced, it feels like something to be in those states. That means they are conscious states.
Philosophers don't actually talk about life all that much. They've let biologists have that concept.
Again, professional philosophers don't all that much. Some do, but then some scientists are also religious too.
OK, I may have a look at that, thanks. You do know that some neuroscientists are panpsychists don't you? Christof Koch and Guilio Tononi for example.
-I wish...
-"Again, professional philosophers don't all that much. Some do, but then some scientists are also religious too."
-First of all supernatural and religions are not the same. Anyone can be a philosopher. A payroll is not the criterion.
-"OK, I may have a look at that, thanks. You do know that some neuroscientists are panpsychists don't you? Christof Koch and Guilio Tononi for example. "
-Yes they are, but their metaphysical views are not part of the science. Science has high standards....a PhD alone doen't give our ideas a free pass..>Evidence are necessary.