Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe?
November 9, 2023 12:42 PM Subscribe
More than 400 years ago, Galileo showed that many everyday phenomena—such as a ball rolling down an incline or a chandelier gently swinging from a church ceiling—obey precise mathematical laws. For this insight, he is often hailed as the founder of modern science. But Galileo recognized that not everything was amenable to a quantitative approach. Such things as colors, tastes and smells “are no more than mere names,” Galileo declared, for “they reside only in consciousness.”Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe? [Archive]
...These qualities aren’t really out there in the world, he asserted, but exist only in the minds of creatures that perceive them. “Hence if the living creature were removed,” he wrote, “all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated.”The Conscious Universe
Since Galileo’s time the physical sciences have leaped forward, explaining the workings of the tiniest quarks to the largest galaxy clusters. But explaining things that reside “only in consciousness”—the red of a sunset, say, or the bitter taste of a lemon—has proven far more difficult. Neuroscientists have identified a number of neural correlates of consciousness—brain states associated with specific mental states—but have not explained how matter forms minds in the first place. As philosopher Colin McGinn put it in a 1989 paper, “Somehow, we feel, the water of the physical brain is turned into the wine of consciousness.” Philosopher David Chalmers famously dubbed this quandary the “hard problem” of consciousness.
Scholars recently gathered to debate the problem... during a two-day workshop focused on an idea known as panpsychism. The concept proposes that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality, like mass or electrical charge. The idea goes back to antiquity—Plato took it seriously—and has had some prominent supporters over the years, including psychologist William James and philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell. Lately it is seeing renewed interest...
See also:
Philosophy Journal: The Case for Panpsychism
Ungated
SLYT long [1:46:30] long form: Panpsychism: Is Everything Conscious? - Dr. Phillip Goff, Phd.
SLYT long [1:46:30] form: Panpsychism: Is Everything Conscious? - Dr. Phillip Goff, Phd.
SLYT shorter form [00:36:01]: What is Panpsychism? | Rupert Sheldrake, Donald Hoffman, Phillip Goff, David Ladyman
SLYT shorter shorter [00:10:10] form: Panpsychism's Explanation of Consciousness with Phillip Goff
SLYT shortest [00:06:47] but by no means most comprehensible form so far: Consciousness Clips: Phillip Goff on Grounding and Emergent Panpsychism
Semi-previously: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious
posted by flyingfox at 12:59 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by flyingfox at 12:59 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I may disagree with Goff but you've got to admit this is a great title: 'Panpsychism is crazy, but it’s also most probably true'.
I think I posted this in a prior thread but Sean Carroll has a good take on the effort that would be required to redo physics if panpsychism were true.
I've just started reading Nicholas Humphrey's new book, Sentience, and right off the bat he encapsulates why panpsychism at least feels wrong: "Panpsychists—‘conscious everywhere’ theorists—believe that consciousness is a basic property of physical matter. Even a teacup has a smidgeon of conscious feeling. Panpsychism seems to me a really bad idea. What would a smidgeon be like? Whose experience would it be?"
posted by mittens at 1:10 PM on November 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think I posted this in a prior thread but Sean Carroll has a good take on the effort that would be required to redo physics if panpsychism were true.
I've just started reading Nicholas Humphrey's new book, Sentience, and right off the bat he encapsulates why panpsychism at least feels wrong: "Panpsychists—‘conscious everywhere’ theorists—believe that consciousness is a basic property of physical matter. Even a teacup has a smidgeon of conscious feeling. Panpsychism seems to me a really bad idea. What would a smidgeon be like? Whose experience would it be?"
posted by mittens at 1:10 PM on November 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
Point taken tclark, but, um, for the record,
36 minutes of Rupert Sheldrake, Donald Hoffman, Phillip Goff and David Ladyman are definitely more than one dude.
posted by y2karl at 1:17 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
36 minutes of Rupert Sheldrake, Donald Hoffman, Phillip Goff and David Ladyman are definitely more than one dude.
posted by y2karl at 1:17 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
The idea goes back to antiquity
I would argue that this may be simply because we, as a species, are utterly unable to conceive of any form of existence (in the very general sense) that isn't centered on us.
posted by aramaic at 1:28 PM on November 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
I would argue that this may be simply because we, as a species, are utterly unable to conceive of any form of existence (in the very general sense) that isn't centered on us.
posted by aramaic at 1:28 PM on November 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
From the evidence, the name Donald Trump suggests that rocks may well be at least as conscious as a great portion of the American populace.
posted by y2karl at 1:34 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 1:34 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Candy for theists.
Yet artificially sweetened, as far as I’m concerned, because if something like the Big Bang actually happened, you can only avoid an especially intractable version of the 'hard problem' by attributing consciousness to an almost infinitely dense and correspondingly hot lump of something or other.
Which is trading in a hard problem for an impossible one.
posted by jamjam at 1:44 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yet artificially sweetened, as far as I’m concerned, because if something like the Big Bang actually happened, you can only avoid an especially intractable version of the 'hard problem' by attributing consciousness to an almost infinitely dense and correspondingly hot lump of something or other.
Which is trading in a hard problem for an impossible one.
posted by jamjam at 1:44 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm going to restrict myself to ONE more comment, because this topic gets me very talky--the SciAm piece talks about the debate between Goff and Carroll, in which they 'were deep into the weeds of the so-called knowledge argument (also known as “Mary in the black and white room”).'
If you're not familiar with that thought experiment, the linked BigThink piece describes it--think of being in a black and white room, never having seen any other color; you research the color red, learning all about it, what things are red, what emotions we associate with red, all that, without ever having seen the color. Then you go out and see a red rose: Have you learned anything new?
What's crazy to me about that thought experiment is...it's performable in the real world. We could use 'chimerical' colors (which only exist as afterimages, so there's nothing out there in the world that is one of those colors)! Prepare the MRI! Warm up the EEG!
Anyway, that wasn't really to do with panpsychism at all, just me getting sidetracked while reading the article. (Now I gotta find out if anyone has actually looked at brains experiencing those colors for the first time.)
posted by mittens at 1:45 PM on November 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
If you're not familiar with that thought experiment, the linked BigThink piece describes it--think of being in a black and white room, never having seen any other color; you research the color red, learning all about it, what things are red, what emotions we associate with red, all that, without ever having seen the color. Then you go out and see a red rose: Have you learned anything new?
What's crazy to me about that thought experiment is...it's performable in the real world. We could use 'chimerical' colors (which only exist as afterimages, so there's nothing out there in the world that is one of those colors)! Prepare the MRI! Warm up the EEG!
Anyway, that wasn't really to do with panpsychism at all, just me getting sidetracked while reading the article. (Now I gotta find out if anyone has actually looked at brains experiencing those colors for the first time.)
posted by mittens at 1:45 PM on November 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
In terms of red, sour, etc I would abstract these types of things as ”meaning.” And meaning only exists because of life. In order for life to succeed, it needs to cast meaning unto both the inert matter surrounding it and unto other life forms. In the simplest sense, the categories of food/not food, me/not me, safe/not safe, mate/not mate, friend/foe ensure survival. And this extends from single cells up to us. Teacups aren’t alive, they don’t exist to survive and reproduce. Consciousness could be seen as the realm where this meaning exists, held by the thing for whom this meaning is significant. As a life form becomes more complex, meaning can extend beyond just survival. Consciousness becomes ultimately the way that the universe can actually experience itself, just as our own consciousness gives us the ability to experience ourselves. Panpsychism may just be all that is alive looking out at all that surrounds them.
posted by njohnson23 at 1:56 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by njohnson23 at 1:56 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I haven't delved into any of this here but I'm surprised to not see the name Roger Penrose mentioned here. I watched some talk by him where he's working on the basis that consciousness is what actually creates reality. One of the things he mentions is that everything about physics works forward and backward across what we call time, except for consciousness. It was like a 2 hour talk and I got lost about 30 minutes in even if I did try to surf the rest of the way to the end. Here's a Mind Matters article about him.
Now I'll go look at these articles here.
posted by hippybear at 1:57 PM on November 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
Now I'll go look at these articles here.
posted by hippybear at 1:57 PM on November 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
For counterbalance, my man Dan Dennet: The Magic of Consciousness.
posted by Meatbomb at 2:00 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Meatbomb at 2:00 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I would argue that this may be simply because we, as a species, are utterly unable to conceive of any form of existence (in the very general sense) that isn't centered on us.
Wouldn’t placing consciousness completely and only inside the brains of humans (consciousness not existing “out there” in the rest of the universe) be even more indicative of this way of thinking?
posted by flamk at 2:01 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Wouldn’t placing consciousness completely and only inside the brains of humans (consciousness not existing “out there” in the rest of the universe) be even more indicative of this way of thinking?
posted by flamk at 2:01 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I have to say that it seems backwards to me to consider consciousness a fundamental aspect of reality. Rather, reality (it seems to my tiny ant brain) would be an aspect of consciousness. When you consider the subjective nature of the experience of taste, color etc, and the recent online arguments (is the dress blue or silver?) And in fact the assault on reality posited by an entire political party, that the nature of reality is that of an aspect of consciousness.
posted by evilDoug at 2:02 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by evilDoug at 2:02 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Related: Temple Grandin on Visual Thinking and Animal Behavior.
posted by y2karl at 2:07 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 2:07 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I asked metafilter to help me take modern Pansychism seriously back in 2021 but it didn't work. However, there may be some links in there of interest to folks in this thread. (seriously, they were good answers with good links but I didn't leave feeling any different about the question than I had arrived)
It reminds me of another (to me) weird fringey "pan-" idea: pancomputationalism. See, if you make a really poor definition of "what is a computer", then philosophers are likely to conclude that anything—even something as simple as 1kg of inert granite—is "a computer", in some sense.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 2:19 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
It reminds me of another (to me) weird fringey "pan-" idea: pancomputationalism. See, if you make a really poor definition of "what is a computer", then philosophers are likely to conclude that anything—even something as simple as 1kg of inert granite—is "a computer", in some sense.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 2:19 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Wouldn’t placing consciousness completely and only inside the brains of humans
It would, if that were what I was suggesting.
I am, instead, suggesting that perhaps consciousness is essentially irrelevant to the Universe. It may exist, cease to exist, and then exist again without having any particular meaning in the broader context of reality. We simply insist it is important, because it is something we perceive ourselves as having, and therefore it must be important and meaningful.
posted by aramaic at 2:29 PM on November 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
It would, if that were what I was suggesting.
I am, instead, suggesting that perhaps consciousness is essentially irrelevant to the Universe. It may exist, cease to exist, and then exist again without having any particular meaning in the broader context of reality. We simply insist it is important, because it is something we perceive ourselves as having, and therefore it must be important and meaningful.
posted by aramaic at 2:29 PM on November 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
The biggest shift I've had in my thinking about consciousness came from reading Metazoa by Peter Godfrey-Smith. Its non-human-centric angle is refreshing from the off, and for me served to cut through a lot of the navel-gazing rabbit holes that other semi-popular philosophy writers spiral down.
The view he proposes is firmly materialist, gradualist and grounded; it holds that consciousness emerges by degree in physical systems as they develop more diverse modes of sensing and feedback in relation to their internal and external environments and the interface between them.
He does this whilst both staying sceptical on the panpsychic front and incisive about how often focus on qualia and the hard problem is presented in a pretty narrow, hand-wavy manner that cuts off much potentially useful speculation grounded in areas outside human brain and perception science.
posted by protorp at 2:51 PM on November 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
The view he proposes is firmly materialist, gradualist and grounded; it holds that consciousness emerges by degree in physical systems as they develop more diverse modes of sensing and feedback in relation to their internal and external environments and the interface between them.
He does this whilst both staying sceptical on the panpsychic front and incisive about how often focus on qualia and the hard problem is presented in a pretty narrow, hand-wavy manner that cuts off much potentially useful speculation grounded in areas outside human brain and perception science.
posted by protorp at 2:51 PM on November 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
consciousness emerges by degree in physical systems as they develop more diverse modes
Unfortunately for all these ideas we have a sample of one. We need at least a second, if not a few dozen more data points to make a reasonable theory. (that would be essentially a galactic civilization). Crows can use sticks as tools, and have memories, but never has an example of crow (whale, great ape, etc.) make a statement that they are self aware. So perhaps language is a requirement? But a chunk of granite, not even legitimately mystical.
posted by sammyo at 3:11 PM on November 9, 2023
Unfortunately for all these ideas we have a sample of one. We need at least a second, if not a few dozen more data points to make a reasonable theory. (that would be essentially a galactic civilization). Crows can use sticks as tools, and have memories, but never has an example of crow (whale, great ape, etc.) make a statement that they are self aware. So perhaps language is a requirement? But a chunk of granite, not even legitimately mystical.
posted by sammyo at 3:11 PM on November 9, 2023
if consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, would antimatter people have consciousness or anti-consciousness?
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 3:13 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 3:13 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
if consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, would antimatter people have consciousness or anti-consciousness?
My immediate philosophical or logic-based response would be to ask or suggest that antimatter people have antimatter-consciousness, not anti-consciousness, because otherwise you'd be conflating apples and oranges, not unlike comparing spin and anti-spin versus quark flavors or something, because the two domains or metrics don't actually map that way.
Granted I may still be brain damaged and mentally altered from reading every last word of Godel, Escher and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid something like 20 years ago and ending up in a totally mad fugue state for at least a month or two.
posted by loquacious at 3:26 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
My immediate philosophical or logic-based response would be to ask or suggest that antimatter people have antimatter-consciousness, not anti-consciousness, because otherwise you'd be conflating apples and oranges, not unlike comparing spin and anti-spin versus quark flavors or something, because the two domains or metrics don't actually map that way.
Granted I may still be brain damaged and mentally altered from reading every last word of Godel, Escher and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid something like 20 years ago and ending up in a totally mad fugue state for at least a month or two.
posted by loquacious at 3:26 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
The runaway ego you must need to insist that electromagnetic radiation around the 430 terahertz range only exists because your mind recognises it as red...
posted by krisjohn at 3:36 PM on November 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by krisjohn at 3:36 PM on November 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
There is zero evidence for panpsychism. Saying everything has a little bit of consciousness changes nothing. The universe continues the same in either case. That is not true of, electrons, for example. Unless your "theory" actual makes a difference, it has no value.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 3:51 PM on November 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 3:51 PM on November 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Without even needing to click on a single link I'm probably in the "conscious universe" camp because personally I've just experienced way, way too many inexplicable moments of real and totally ineffable magic even as a self-defined atheist or agnostic.
I'm totally fine with the whole mind-blowing concepts here, particularly with the modern post-psychedelic philosophy parts about consciousness arising from the efforts of the universe to observe itself.
The really, truly and stark-raving mad part of all of this is that if this is all true whether it's empirically able to be proven or not for me is this:
If this is true? Then I reason that all of the really horrible things that conscious beings on Planet Earth do to each other or cause to happen for any reason are very likely all of our own doing and fears and generally bad, un-hoopy vibes manifested by our own energy and thoughts and intent and what actually happens through the arrow of time and space as we know it.
And as a Gen X kid with an abject fear of nuclear weapons and warfare and existential dread, this is really quite horrible and frightening.
But on the other hand? I have a raging case of weltschmerz and hope and an equal number of good thoughts, as well. Yin-yang, badabing badabang.
This might make me a theist. Or it might mean I believe in the movie plot of Ghostbuster's 1 and 2 and bad vibe goo. Maybe it means I believe in the so-called Law of Attraction. Maybe we really do live in a simulation or holographic universe. Maybe I believe it's magic.
Or maybe Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody's gonna die. Come watch TV
But whatever it is? It's pretty clear to me that there's something there, here - or here-there - in the relationships between intent and thought, observation, and the fundamental nuts and bolts of consciousness and physics and observation and intent matter.
Maybe Answers Come in Dreams.
But maybe someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire and maybe the most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one's self to others and maybe even a sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music - these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence and maybe even we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. (-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, of course.)
posted by loquacious at 4:11 PM on November 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
I'm totally fine with the whole mind-blowing concepts here, particularly with the modern post-psychedelic philosophy parts about consciousness arising from the efforts of the universe to observe itself.
The really, truly and stark-raving mad part of all of this is that if this is all true whether it's empirically able to be proven or not for me is this:
If this is true? Then I reason that all of the really horrible things that conscious beings on Planet Earth do to each other or cause to happen for any reason are very likely all of our own doing and fears and generally bad, un-hoopy vibes manifested by our own energy and thoughts and intent and what actually happens through the arrow of time and space as we know it.
And as a Gen X kid with an abject fear of nuclear weapons and warfare and existential dread, this is really quite horrible and frightening.
But on the other hand? I have a raging case of weltschmerz and hope and an equal number of good thoughts, as well. Yin-yang, badabing badabang.
This might make me a theist. Or it might mean I believe in the movie plot of Ghostbuster's 1 and 2 and bad vibe goo. Maybe it means I believe in the so-called Law of Attraction. Maybe we really do live in a simulation or holographic universe. Maybe I believe it's magic.
Or maybe Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody's gonna die. Come watch TV
But whatever it is? It's pretty clear to me that there's something there, here - or here-there - in the relationships between intent and thought, observation, and the fundamental nuts and bolts of consciousness and physics and observation and intent matter.
Maybe Answers Come in Dreams.
But maybe someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire and maybe the most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one's self to others and maybe even a sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music - these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence and maybe even we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. (-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, of course.)
posted by loquacious at 4:11 PM on November 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
Oh, and not to abuse the edit window, I almost forgot: The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.
posted by loquacious at 4:18 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by loquacious at 4:18 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I feel like to even give this idea a fair shake, a person has to have a certain direct experiential understanding of how their own … being … generates conscious experience. (I hesitate to say mind or brain because… who knows?) Until then it’s a conceptual exercise in definitions and missing the point.
The simplest method is to sit quietly in self-inquiry. And the main question to ask is: what part of my conscious experience right now is separate from my mind? And then just sit and notice. Don’t think! Notice all the “awareness moments” that pop up every half second or so. And keep feeling in to each moment. It soon becomes clear that everything that pops up is part of the mind. There’s no “inside my head” and “outside my head” (how would you know???) it’s just experience. The sense of “me” being “here”? It’s also just a part of this giant field of awareness. The labels inside and outside become terribly arbitrary. Take that to its extension and you have…. Panpsychism. The fundamental unit of the universe is the ability to be aware of it, whether “it” = an electron, a self, or a star.
I never would have noticed this had I not sat down (with excellent “pointing out” instructions fwiw) and just felt around for myself. Then it became so glaringly obvious that it’s kind of silly not to have noticed it before.
So anyways. Ya. Panpsychism. We’re all one y’all!
posted by St. Peepsburg at 4:34 PM on November 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
The simplest method is to sit quietly in self-inquiry. And the main question to ask is: what part of my conscious experience right now is separate from my mind? And then just sit and notice. Don’t think! Notice all the “awareness moments” that pop up every half second or so. And keep feeling in to each moment. It soon becomes clear that everything that pops up is part of the mind. There’s no “inside my head” and “outside my head” (how would you know???) it’s just experience. The sense of “me” being “here”? It’s also just a part of this giant field of awareness. The labels inside and outside become terribly arbitrary. Take that to its extension and you have…. Panpsychism. The fundamental unit of the universe is the ability to be aware of it, whether “it” = an electron, a self, or a star.
I never would have noticed this had I not sat down (with excellent “pointing out” instructions fwiw) and just felt around for myself. Then it became so glaringly obvious that it’s kind of silly not to have noticed it before.
So anyways. Ya. Panpsychism. We’re all one y’all!
posted by St. Peepsburg at 4:34 PM on November 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I mean, I guess without consciousness the Universe is just a bunch of mathematical principles being would through matter across space-time. By some reasoning the entirely of existence already exists as a giant blob and can be traversed back and forth because all physics equations work both ways. And there's something where the speed of light is also the speed of causality, which is a thing that is a bit difficult to grok.
But ultimately it boils down to the fact that there is nothing about the Universe that allows it to know it, itself, exists unless there is something there observing it for itself.
It's a strange thing. We really truly have no idea what consciousness is, or wherefrom it springs, or of what it is composed or maintained. We only know about consciousness because we ourselves are conscious. The aforementioned granite block may or may not know it is a granite block. We cannot know if it knows this because what we know about the universe is specific to what our specific carbon-based automata can perceive, and we cannot perceive what there might be that a block of granite could perceive.
Gaaaa. This is a really long and difficult train of thought.
What is it about perception that causes a quantum probability field to collapse into a fixed point?
That right there is the basic problem with all of physics, I think. It's all math up until you bring an observer into it.
posted by hippybear at 4:55 PM on November 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
But ultimately it boils down to the fact that there is nothing about the Universe that allows it to know it, itself, exists unless there is something there observing it for itself.
It's a strange thing. We really truly have no idea what consciousness is, or wherefrom it springs, or of what it is composed or maintained. We only know about consciousness because we ourselves are conscious. The aforementioned granite block may or may not know it is a granite block. We cannot know if it knows this because what we know about the universe is specific to what our specific carbon-based automata can perceive, and we cannot perceive what there might be that a block of granite could perceive.
Gaaaa. This is a really long and difficult train of thought.
What is it about perception that causes a quantum probability field to collapse into a fixed point?
That right there is the basic problem with all of physics, I think. It's all math up until you bring an observer into it.
posted by hippybear at 4:55 PM on November 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
consciousness emerges by degree in physical systems
You might take that as part of the evidence about consciousness that any theory of consciousness should be required to explain.
At least, doesn't conscious experience seem to come in degrees, where we see gradations of conscious experience all around us in different kinds of living organisms? If that's right, gradations of conscious experience are a kind of pre-theoretical batch of evidence that requires explanation, or at least should be explained away.
Goff likes to argue that panpsychism should be preferred on grounds of simplicity and unification. But those theoretical virtues are only supposed to help select among different theories/hypotheses, all of which can explain the available evidence. I'm not sure how panpsychism is even compatible with gradations, so I'm not sure it actually enjoys the main benefits Goff claims.
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 4:58 PM on November 9, 2023
You might take that as part of the evidence about consciousness that any theory of consciousness should be required to explain.
At least, doesn't conscious experience seem to come in degrees, where we see gradations of conscious experience all around us in different kinds of living organisms? If that's right, gradations of conscious experience are a kind of pre-theoretical batch of evidence that requires explanation, or at least should be explained away.
Goff likes to argue that panpsychism should be preferred on grounds of simplicity and unification. But those theoretical virtues are only supposed to help select among different theories/hypotheses, all of which can explain the available evidence. I'm not sure how panpsychism is even compatible with gradations, so I'm not sure it actually enjoys the main benefits Goff claims.
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 4:58 PM on November 9, 2023
hippybear that’s beautifully put
I have a couple of times in deep meditation experienced self as awareness, and awareness as a pervasive field of encompassing all objects of conscious experience and then…. And then… the field looked back at me, an empty self that wasn’t there and never was. Like the eye of the universe, or the “man behind the curtain” from wizard of oz. It lasted but a portion of a second but it profoundly altered how I orient my self in regards to being alive… the ground of being was changed as they say.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 5:13 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I have a couple of times in deep meditation experienced self as awareness, and awareness as a pervasive field of encompassing all objects of conscious experience and then…. And then… the field looked back at me, an empty self that wasn’t there and never was. Like the eye of the universe, or the “man behind the curtain” from wizard of oz. It lasted but a portion of a second but it profoundly altered how I orient my self in regards to being alive… the ground of being was changed as they say.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 5:13 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
consciousness is chemistry nothing more.
wait.
everything in the universe that is perceived is formed through chemistry.
no
chemistry is everything.
fuck.
posted by clavdivs at 5:53 PM on November 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
wait.
everything in the universe that is perceived is formed through chemistry.
no
chemistry is everything.
fuck.
posted by clavdivs at 5:53 PM on November 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think therefore I am - Descartes
I am therefore I think - Kierkegaard
I am I am I am - Popeye
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:55 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I am therefore I think - Kierkegaard
I am I am I am - Popeye
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:55 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
What does the panpsychist say about people probably not having conscious experiences when they're asleep or sedated?
I didn't see that kind of evidence addressed.
My guess is that some sort of "emergent property of complex nervous systems when they're functioning in certain ways" type theory of consciousness will fit the available evidence better.
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 6:08 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I didn't see that kind of evidence addressed.
My guess is that some sort of "emergent property of complex nervous systems when they're functioning in certain ways" type theory of consciousness will fit the available evidence better.
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 6:08 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
"If you could blow the brain up to the size of a mill and walk about inside, you would not find consciousness."
-Leibniz
posted by clavdivs at 6:10 PM on November 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
-Leibniz
posted by clavdivs at 6:10 PM on November 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
As a meta-question, how can laypeople constructively engage with these topics? Like, philosophy in particular seems like a discipline where shower thoughts and stoner rants might very, very occasionally give some genuine insight (I think that's true on more topics than we'd like to admit, but in our defense stoned people can be so annoying). But, as an example, here's an excerpt from one of the linked pieces from the SA article:
If any professional philosophers or metaphysicists or whatever are reading, how can we helpfully talk about this stuff without getting buried by vocabulary flashcards or being yet another annoying stoner?
posted by Riki tiki at 6:12 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
It seems that no matter which position one takes on the mind-body problem, one will be forced to reject at least one of four highly plausible claims. Let's call these four claims "the Quadrad":Like, okay, a bunch of consideration and doing a bit of Wikipedia spelunking allows me to make sense of most of that, and I suspect that's more accessible than a lot of modern philosophy writing. But it also has that Dunning-Kruger thing where now I'm aware a bunch of new terms someone could throw at me to shut down any thoughts I might contribute. And even in that piece, the author had to put a "don't @ me if you think I'm using the terms wrong" disclaimer.(1) Robust consciousness exists -- that is, qualia-laden, inherently subjective consciousness exists (i.e., deflationism is false).It is important for what follows that I am stipulatively defining "deflationism," "dualism," "panpsychism," and "emergentism" as the denials of (1), (2), (3), and (4), respectively. I recognize that people use these terms in other ways...
(2) All of the fundamental lower-level stuff of which human beings are composed is, ultimately, the same sort of stuff as the fundamental lower-level stuff of which ordinary material objects like tables, mountains, and stars are composed. (i.e., dualism is false).
(3) The fundamental lower-level stuff of which ordinary material objects are composed is not robustly conscious (i.e., panpsychism is false).
(4) Robust consciousness does not result from combining lower-level entities that are not themselves robustly conscious (i.e., emergentism is false).
If any professional philosophers or metaphysicists or whatever are reading, how can we helpfully talk about this stuff without getting buried by vocabulary flashcards or being yet another annoying stoner?
posted by Riki tiki at 6:12 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
"how can we helpfully talk about this stuff without getting buried by vocabulary flashcards" - hah, I think you have to be willing to go a bit into jargon land when investigating a philosophical topic that's at the boundary of science. If Goff is right, Galileo got this all started by distinguishing what he called "primary affectations" (shape, size, motion, solidity) from qualities like colors and warmth that would be "annihilated" if perceivers were. plausibly, lots of jargon-tolerance was required to get modern science up and running.
That said, somebody like Chalmers has ditched talk of "qualia" and instead just talks about "conscious experience" -- experiencing a stark shade of purple, experiencing a dull pain, etc. b/c he thinks the qualia jargon doesn't help.
TL/dr - there's no hard-and-fast rules except don't let anybody push you around with jargon they can't or won't explain.
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 6:29 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
That said, somebody like Chalmers has ditched talk of "qualia" and instead just talks about "conscious experience" -- experiencing a stark shade of purple, experiencing a dull pain, etc. b/c he thinks the qualia jargon doesn't help.
TL/dr - there's no hard-and-fast rules except don't let anybody push you around with jargon they can't or won't explain.
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 6:29 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
how can laypeople constructively engage with these topics?
I hope this won't sound...I don't know, snooty against philosophy or something, but whenever I dig into this topic, I find it useful to set the philosophy part aside, and focus on the science, because there is so much more science writing that is clear, and full of discoveries and suggestive findings, than there is writing by philosophers. I am so willing to be proved wrong on that point, if anyone wants to toss out some accessible philosophers who talk about consciousness or free will or whatever.
When I see scientists go, "If we look at Aristotle," or "Turning to Schopenhauer," I grit my teeth and wait for more stuff about brains. But if a non-physicist says, "Now the funny thing about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle--" I have to quickly skip to the next chapter.
posted by mittens at 6:30 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I hope this won't sound...I don't know, snooty against philosophy or something, but whenever I dig into this topic, I find it useful to set the philosophy part aside, and focus on the science, because there is so much more science writing that is clear, and full of discoveries and suggestive findings, than there is writing by philosophers. I am so willing to be proved wrong on that point, if anyone wants to toss out some accessible philosophers who talk about consciousness or free will or whatever.
When I see scientists go, "If we look at Aristotle," or "Turning to Schopenhauer," I grit my teeth and wait for more stuff about brains. But if a non-physicist says, "Now the funny thing about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle--" I have to quickly skip to the next chapter.
posted by mittens at 6:30 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
(ugh, the perils of the edit window closing...i finished that comment and was like, wait, dennett is super-accessible and fun, searle's a creep but clear, so clearly there are readable people on the less science-side of things.)
posted by mittens at 6:41 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by mittens at 6:41 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
perhaps something along the lines of the metaphysics of consciousness. David Chalmers.
The Conceivability Argument.
"According to this argument, it is conceivable that there be a system that is physically identical to a conscious being, but that lacks at least some of that being's conscious states. Such a system might be a zombie: a system that is physically identical to a conscious being but that lacks consciousness entirely. It might also be an invert, with some of the original being's experiences replaced by different experiences, or a partial zombie, with some experiences absent, or a combination thereof. These systems will look identical to a normal conscious being from the third-person perspective: in particular, their brain processes will be molecule-for-molecule identical with the original, and their behavior will be indistinguishable. But things will be different from the first-person point of view. What it is like to be an invert or a partial zombie will differ from what it is like to be the original being. And there is nothing it is like to be a zombie.There is little reason to believe that zombies exist in the actual world. But many hold that they are at least conceivable: we can coherently imagine zombies, and there is no contradiction in the idea that reveals itself even on reflection. As an extension of the idea, many hold that the same goes for a zombie world: a universe physically identical to ours, but in which there is no consciousness. Something similar applies to inverts and other duplicates.
From the conceivability of zombies, proponents of the argument infer their metaphysical possibility. Zombies are probably not naturally possible: they probably cannot exist in our world, with its laws of nature. But the argument holds that zombies could have existed, perhaps in a very different sort of universe. For example, it is sometimes suggested that God could have created a zombie world, if he had so chosen. From here, it is inferred that consciousness must be nonphysical. If there is a metaphysically possible universe that is physically identical to ours but that lacks consciousness, then consciousness must be a further, nonphysical component of our universe. If God could have created a zombie world, then (as Kripke puts it) after creating the physical processes in our world, he had to do more work to ensure that it contained consciousness.
We can put the argument, in its simplest form, as follows:
1) It is conceivable that there be zombies
(2) If it is conceivable that there be zombies, it is metaphysically possible that there be zombies.
(3) If it is metaphysically possible that there be zombies, then consciousness is nonphysical.
(4) Consciousness is nonphysical.
A somewhat more general and precise version of the argument appeals to P, the conjunction of all microphysical truths about the universe, and Q, an arbitrary phenomenal truth about the universe.
(1) It is conceivable that P&~Q.
(2) If it is conceivable that P&~Q, it is metaphysically possible that P&~Q.
(3) If it is metaphysically possible that P&~Q, then materialism is false."
(4) Materialism is false.
posted by clavdivs at 6:49 PM on November 9, 2023
The Conceivability Argument.
"According to this argument, it is conceivable that there be a system that is physically identical to a conscious being, but that lacks at least some of that being's conscious states. Such a system might be a zombie: a system that is physically identical to a conscious being but that lacks consciousness entirely. It might also be an invert, with some of the original being's experiences replaced by different experiences, or a partial zombie, with some experiences absent, or a combination thereof. These systems will look identical to a normal conscious being from the third-person perspective: in particular, their brain processes will be molecule-for-molecule identical with the original, and their behavior will be indistinguishable. But things will be different from the first-person point of view. What it is like to be an invert or a partial zombie will differ from what it is like to be the original being. And there is nothing it is like to be a zombie.There is little reason to believe that zombies exist in the actual world. But many hold that they are at least conceivable: we can coherently imagine zombies, and there is no contradiction in the idea that reveals itself even on reflection. As an extension of the idea, many hold that the same goes for a zombie world: a universe physically identical to ours, but in which there is no consciousness. Something similar applies to inverts and other duplicates.
From the conceivability of zombies, proponents of the argument infer their metaphysical possibility. Zombies are probably not naturally possible: they probably cannot exist in our world, with its laws of nature. But the argument holds that zombies could have existed, perhaps in a very different sort of universe. For example, it is sometimes suggested that God could have created a zombie world, if he had so chosen. From here, it is inferred that consciousness must be nonphysical. If there is a metaphysically possible universe that is physically identical to ours but that lacks consciousness, then consciousness must be a further, nonphysical component of our universe. If God could have created a zombie world, then (as Kripke puts it) after creating the physical processes in our world, he had to do more work to ensure that it contained consciousness.
We can put the argument, in its simplest form, as follows:
1) It is conceivable that there be zombies
(2) If it is conceivable that there be zombies, it is metaphysically possible that there be zombies.
(3) If it is metaphysically possible that there be zombies, then consciousness is nonphysical.
(4) Consciousness is nonphysical.
A somewhat more general and precise version of the argument appeals to P, the conjunction of all microphysical truths about the universe, and Q, an arbitrary phenomenal truth about the universe.
(1) It is conceivable that P&~Q.
(2) If it is conceivable that P&~Q, it is metaphysically possible that P&~Q.
(3) If it is metaphysically possible that P&~Q, then materialism is false."
(4) Materialism is false.
posted by clavdivs at 6:49 PM on November 9, 2023
BTW I like this thread even more than the "Let's turn Lake Superior into a loaf of bread" thread, which is going to be an all time favorite.
It feels like it's been a while since we've really and truly contemplated some beans.
Also:
MetaFilter: how can we helpfully talk about this stuff without getting buried by vocabulary flashcards or being yet another annoying stoner?
And:
MetaFilter: ugh, the perils of the edit window closing...
posted by loquacious at 6:57 PM on November 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
It feels like it's been a while since we've really and truly contemplated some beans.
Also:
MetaFilter: how can we helpfully talk about this stuff without getting buried by vocabulary flashcards or being yet another annoying stoner?
And:
MetaFilter: ugh, the perils of the edit window closing...
posted by loquacious at 6:57 PM on November 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
And I'm left to contemplate, can you take a time lapse of an electron? Like, the act of observing it causes the wave function to collapse into a point, but if you continue to observe it, does the wave function remain collapsed at the same point? If you just stare at it forever, does it just never ever move?
I know, yes, some of this is actually solved by the attasecond laser Nobel Award from this year, which actually can somehow trace electrons across molecules. Although, it could be argued, the laser pulses themselves represent a breaking of observation so the electron is observed in one place then observed in another place but is the movement itself actually observed? Or did the laser look away briefly?
posted by hippybear at 7:03 PM on November 9, 2023
I know, yes, some of this is actually solved by the attasecond laser Nobel Award from this year, which actually can somehow trace electrons across molecules. Although, it could be argued, the laser pulses themselves represent a breaking of observation so the electron is observed in one place then observed in another place but is the movement itself actually observed? Or did the laser look away briefly?
posted by hippybear at 7:03 PM on November 9, 2023
in Double-Slit experiment, laser looks at you.
posted by clavdivs at 7:16 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 7:16 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yes, yes, consciousness is all well and good. I just want to know where I put this Descartes before the horse joke.
posted by evilDoug at 8:05 PM on November 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by evilDoug at 8:05 PM on November 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
The idea that philosophy has captured all useful discussion of any aspect of consciousness is too absurd even to be laughable.
posted by jamjam at 8:08 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by jamjam at 8:08 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Descartes before the horse joke.
Demons are a nightmare.
posted by clavdivs at 8:21 PM on November 9, 2023
Demons are a nightmare.
posted by clavdivs at 8:21 PM on November 9, 2023
If any professional philosophers or metaphysicists or whatever are reading, how can we helpfully talk about this stuff without getting buried by vocabulary flashcards or being yet another annoying stoner?
The unfortunate truth is that you can't contribute to philosophy (or not much) without getting into detailed arguments. And understanding the details often requires knowing jargon or formalism or both. The situation is similar in other professional fields. How can you contribute to physics without knowing any mathematics? How can you contribute to jurisprudence without knowing the names of any legal cases? How can you contribute to anatomy and physiology without doing any dissections? Maybe there are ways, but they are going to be non-obvious and limited.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 9:00 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
The unfortunate truth is that you can't contribute to philosophy (or not much) without getting into detailed arguments. And understanding the details often requires knowing jargon or formalism or both. The situation is similar in other professional fields. How can you contribute to physics without knowing any mathematics? How can you contribute to jurisprudence without knowing the names of any legal cases? How can you contribute to anatomy and physiology without doing any dissections? Maybe there are ways, but they are going to be non-obvious and limited.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 9:00 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I find analytical idealism a much more interesting idea than panpsychism. Panpsychism is just trying to prop up materialism. We should just accept that consciousness is fundamental. What we experience is created by consciousness and not by matter. Time, space, and matter are our interface to understanding trans-personal mental processes. We can already prove much of our reality is created by our mental processes.
posted by betaray at 9:15 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by betaray at 9:15 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
terrifying if true
posted by worbel at 9:34 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by worbel at 9:34 PM on November 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Panpsychism is often presented as an opposition to or rejection of materialism/physicalism, but ironically both start from the same underlying premise: that nothing new can ever appear in the universe. One just takes determinism all the way up, and the other consciousness all the way down. But it is clear that new things do appear, no matter how gradually (e.g. life).
For me, if you are looking for the One Thing That Explains It All, you're doing it wrong. And both physicalism and panpsychism qualify.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:28 PM on November 9, 2023
For me, if you are looking for the One Thing That Explains It All, you're doing it wrong. And both physicalism and panpsychism qualify.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:28 PM on November 9, 2023
I'm enjoying all the comments dismissing panpsychism for being small-minded. Good diss.
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 12:10 AM on November 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 12:10 AM on November 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think there's another side to that problem Pyrogenesis, which ends up being even more of a roadblock, which is the urge to somehow conjure out of thin air the All That Explains The One Thing...
To bang the same drum again, this is where Godfrey-Smith pushes a perspective that cuts through so much of the woolly grandiosity. A starting point of looking for clarity in our understanding of the origins of mind and experience (note the lower case) wherever these might reasonably be situated is much more reasonable and apt to build progress than putting a sample of one on a pedestal and hoping for its own quasi-mystical introspective genius to one day summon The Answer(s) in a flash.
A quote from the review I linked before seems worth adding here :
Godfrey-Smith is a gradualist about consciousness who thinks that being conscious isn’t a lights on/lights off sort of phenomenon. His arguments against the on-or-off view are grounded in the evolutionary premise that that at least some of the physical-biological transitions in the story of consciousness were gradual changes, and that with gradual physical changes we should expect gradual experiential changes. He sets up this view at the beginning of the book when he endorses a form of identity theory according to which physical activity of a sensing and acting body is conscious experience. The physical and biological structures and processes of bodies don’t cause mind, they are mind. This means that there is something special about life that gives us an experiencing mind. Not all living beings experience, but life is a prerequisite for consciousness
(Sidenote on the detail, he presents cnidarians as at the very least an interesting waystation on the road to felt-experience between the almost certainly absent of bacteria or amoebae, the very hard to deny of molluscs and arthropods and the ehhh now that's really a hard question of plants and fungi.)
It's very much a work of philosophy informed by a biologist's approach; thinking about it in the context of this discussion I find it striking how much else put forward in the study of consciousness seems rooted in the cultural baggage of physics being The Science that concerns itself with finding Big Answers to Hard Problems.
posted by protorp at 12:54 AM on November 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
To bang the same drum again, this is where Godfrey-Smith pushes a perspective that cuts through so much of the woolly grandiosity. A starting point of looking for clarity in our understanding of the origins of mind and experience (note the lower case) wherever these might reasonably be situated is much more reasonable and apt to build progress than putting a sample of one on a pedestal and hoping for its own quasi-mystical introspective genius to one day summon The Answer(s) in a flash.
A quote from the review I linked before seems worth adding here :
Godfrey-Smith is a gradualist about consciousness who thinks that being conscious isn’t a lights on/lights off sort of phenomenon. His arguments against the on-or-off view are grounded in the evolutionary premise that that at least some of the physical-biological transitions in the story of consciousness were gradual changes, and that with gradual physical changes we should expect gradual experiential changes. He sets up this view at the beginning of the book when he endorses a form of identity theory according to which physical activity of a sensing and acting body is conscious experience. The physical and biological structures and processes of bodies don’t cause mind, they are mind. This means that there is something special about life that gives us an experiencing mind. Not all living beings experience, but life is a prerequisite for consciousness
(Sidenote on the detail, he presents cnidarians as at the very least an interesting waystation on the road to felt-experience between the almost certainly absent of bacteria or amoebae, the very hard to deny of molluscs and arthropods and the ehhh now that's really a hard question of plants and fungi.)
It's very much a work of philosophy informed by a biologist's approach; thinking about it in the context of this discussion I find it striking how much else put forward in the study of consciousness seems rooted in the cultural baggage of physics being The Science that concerns itself with finding Big Answers to Hard Problems.
posted by protorp at 12:54 AM on November 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
How can you contribute to physics without knowing any mathematics? How can you contribute to jurisprudence without knowing the names of any legal cases?
While I absolutely agree with this, there's the added problem that since consciousness is about what it's like to be a self--an issue we're all intimately familiar with--it really does feel like our expertise at being selves should give us at least instincts on how things work in our heads. And our folk psychology does have a place--our theories about ourselves are the things we are trying to see if someone has proved--but it's very frustrating to both have a mind and not be able to figure it out! (A frustration I guess we don't really have about our hearts or pancreases, at least until they begin to fail; nobody is sitting at their computer reading this thread and composing a comment on how they think their heart works, based on their observations.)
My example of something that feels a certain way to me, that I believe science says I have backwards, is the link between consciousness and theory of mind. To me, it seems like ToM in some form must come first. Not in a deep what-is-it-like-to-be-them but an understanding that there is a them with motives and behaviors of its own that warrant predicting, that, when brains get good at that, then can be reflected onto ourselves-as-a-them. (I guess there was some of this in the excitement over mirror neurons a while back, which sort of fizzled out, but the idea that we learn who we are by conceptualizing others has stuck with me.)
Turning to protorp's comment on Metazoa (which I really want to read now), Kevin Mitchell's Free Agents covers what may be a similar point, that there's something very interesting and new that happens at points in evolution, that is material, it is physical, but whose processes are new, different, and can contain meaning; life begins in the creation of bits having causal insulation between their insides and outsides. Later, to accommodate its senses and understanding its position in the world, an organism must develop a sense of self and outside-self--a long, long distance from consciousness obviously, but a sense that you wouldn't have predicted just watching molecules in the ocean blop around amongst themselves a few billion years prior. Self-sustaining processes create new things in the world, even though the processes are taking place using material bits.
posted by mittens at 5:03 AM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
While I absolutely agree with this, there's the added problem that since consciousness is about what it's like to be a self--an issue we're all intimately familiar with--it really does feel like our expertise at being selves should give us at least instincts on how things work in our heads. And our folk psychology does have a place--our theories about ourselves are the things we are trying to see if someone has proved--but it's very frustrating to both have a mind and not be able to figure it out! (A frustration I guess we don't really have about our hearts or pancreases, at least until they begin to fail; nobody is sitting at their computer reading this thread and composing a comment on how they think their heart works, based on their observations.)
My example of something that feels a certain way to me, that I believe science says I have backwards, is the link between consciousness and theory of mind. To me, it seems like ToM in some form must come first. Not in a deep what-is-it-like-to-be-them but an understanding that there is a them with motives and behaviors of its own that warrant predicting, that, when brains get good at that, then can be reflected onto ourselves-as-a-them. (I guess there was some of this in the excitement over mirror neurons a while back, which sort of fizzled out, but the idea that we learn who we are by conceptualizing others has stuck with me.)
Turning to protorp's comment on Metazoa (which I really want to read now), Kevin Mitchell's Free Agents covers what may be a similar point, that there's something very interesting and new that happens at points in evolution, that is material, it is physical, but whose processes are new, different, and can contain meaning; life begins in the creation of bits having causal insulation between their insides and outsides. Later, to accommodate its senses and understanding its position in the world, an organism must develop a sense of self and outside-self--a long, long distance from consciousness obviously, but a sense that you wouldn't have predicted just watching molecules in the ocean blop around amongst themselves a few billion years prior. Self-sustaining processes create new things in the world, even though the processes are taking place using material bits.
posted by mittens at 5:03 AM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
We can already prove much of our reality is created by our mental processes.
I think it's more correct to say our perception of reality is created by our mental processes. Our brains construct a simulation of the world based of fragmentary input, e.g., we "see" an entire room even though we only focus on a small bit of it at a time.
Those mental constructions are a function of our evolution. We perceive walls as opaque because we have receptor for certain frequencies of the EM spectrum. If we had receptors for what we call radio waves rather than what we call light, our "reality" would be very different. Walls would have a certain transparency in that scenario.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:51 AM on November 10, 2023
I think it's more correct to say our perception of reality is created by our mental processes. Our brains construct a simulation of the world based of fragmentary input, e.g., we "see" an entire room even though we only focus on a small bit of it at a time.
Those mental constructions are a function of our evolution. We perceive walls as opaque because we have receptor for certain frequencies of the EM spectrum. If we had receptors for what we call radio waves rather than what we call light, our "reality" would be very different. Walls would have a certain transparency in that scenario.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:51 AM on November 10, 2023
We really truly have no idea what consciousness is, or wherefrom it springs, or of what it is composed or maintained.
I do.
Here's how I look at it:
The starting point is that the world just is what it is, and my job as a conscious entity is to build an understanding of it that minimizes my risk of getting hit by a bus. If there are parts of my understanding that turn out not to describe their corresponding parts of the world very well, then the defect is in my understanding and not in the world.
Therefore, it is impossible for me to say definitively that the world is this way or that way or any other way, because that very act of being definitive is primarily part of my process of understanding rather than primarily part of the world; my definitions are part of the world only in the weak and trivial sense that I am myself part of it, and my understandings are part of me. This is the map vs territory distinction and it's very, very useful.
Another distinction I consider very useful is to divide understandings of the world into two loose categories: structure on the one hand, and behaviour on the other. Obviously there's overlap - behaviours can be structured, as for example music, and structures can exhibit characteristic patterns of behaviour, as for example life, but in general it's very helpful to maintain a fairly clear distinction between structure and behaviour when it comes to trying to understand what any given thing is, because that pretty much dictates what kind of understanding we're going to find satisfactory.
Some examples of things that we mainly identify on the basis of structure: chairs (obviously no philosophical disquisition will be taken seriously unless chairs get a mention somewhere), buildings, trees, TFG's hair.
Some examples of things that we mainly identify on the basis of behaviour: music, dance, flow, orbits, vibe, energy (both the physics and newage kinds), zeitgeist, fascism.
Note particularly that the behaviour/structure distinction is not inherently materialist nor physicalist. It's applicable to all kinds of analysis purely because language is about things and any kind of world-interrogation is going to reveal behaviour patterns that recur across multiple kinds of interesting structure and structural patterns that exhibit multiple kinds of interesting behaviour.
Consciousness, I would argue, meets all of the recognition criteria to be best classed as a behaviour. It's a behaviour exhibited by certain kinds of structure (currently all of which also exhibit life) under suitable conditions, in the same essential sense as the sound of a gong is a behaviour exhibited by certain configurations of sheet metal under suitable conditions.
The entire philosophical project of trying to analyze consciousness (or life, come to that) as if it were an inherent property or attribute of things rather than a frequent or even occasional behaviour exhibited by them, thereby trying to make it conceptually abstractable in much the same manner as a physicist might abstract mass or charge, has long struck me as too woolly-minded to justify anything like the amounts of ink spilt on it over the centuries. Worse still is mistaking consciousness for a structure, which you pretty much have to do in order to start in with questions like "wherefrom it springs or of what it is composed or maintained".
And any discussion that attempts to use the phrase "the fabric of the universe" as if it meant something profound and mysterious is instantly dubious as well. The fabric of the universe is what the Emperor's New Clothes get cut from every time some tedious new shithead decides it's his turn to be Philosopher King.
The world is an elephant and we are all blind men, and arguing that some or other aspect of the world is fundamental and essential to its nature - such as that it is material, or is spiritual, or is divine, or is conscious, is just silly. The world just is what it is, it contains many kinds of bus, and most of it gives zero shits what any of us has got to say about it. I for one revel in that glorious indifference.
Panpsychism is just silly. To take the idea of consciousness-as-attribute and hurl it about and spread and smear it all over until it covers everything like the pink stain from The Cat In The Hat Comes Back achieves nothing more than making a huge conceptual mess just for fun as far as I can see.
So VOOM.
posted by flabdablet at 6:09 AM on November 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
I do.
Here's how I look at it:
The starting point is that the world just is what it is, and my job as a conscious entity is to build an understanding of it that minimizes my risk of getting hit by a bus. If there are parts of my understanding that turn out not to describe their corresponding parts of the world very well, then the defect is in my understanding and not in the world.
Therefore, it is impossible for me to say definitively that the world is this way or that way or any other way, because that very act of being definitive is primarily part of my process of understanding rather than primarily part of the world; my definitions are part of the world only in the weak and trivial sense that I am myself part of it, and my understandings are part of me. This is the map vs territory distinction and it's very, very useful.
Another distinction I consider very useful is to divide understandings of the world into two loose categories: structure on the one hand, and behaviour on the other. Obviously there's overlap - behaviours can be structured, as for example music, and structures can exhibit characteristic patterns of behaviour, as for example life, but in general it's very helpful to maintain a fairly clear distinction between structure and behaviour when it comes to trying to understand what any given thing is, because that pretty much dictates what kind of understanding we're going to find satisfactory.
Some examples of things that we mainly identify on the basis of structure: chairs (obviously no philosophical disquisition will be taken seriously unless chairs get a mention somewhere), buildings, trees, TFG's hair.
Some examples of things that we mainly identify on the basis of behaviour: music, dance, flow, orbits, vibe, energy (both the physics and newage kinds), zeitgeist, fascism.
Note particularly that the behaviour/structure distinction is not inherently materialist nor physicalist. It's applicable to all kinds of analysis purely because language is about things and any kind of world-interrogation is going to reveal behaviour patterns that recur across multiple kinds of interesting structure and structural patterns that exhibit multiple kinds of interesting behaviour.
Consciousness, I would argue, meets all of the recognition criteria to be best classed as a behaviour. It's a behaviour exhibited by certain kinds of structure (currently all of which also exhibit life) under suitable conditions, in the same essential sense as the sound of a gong is a behaviour exhibited by certain configurations of sheet metal under suitable conditions.
The entire philosophical project of trying to analyze consciousness (or life, come to that) as if it were an inherent property or attribute of things rather than a frequent or even occasional behaviour exhibited by them, thereby trying to make it conceptually abstractable in much the same manner as a physicist might abstract mass or charge, has long struck me as too woolly-minded to justify anything like the amounts of ink spilt on it over the centuries. Worse still is mistaking consciousness for a structure, which you pretty much have to do in order to start in with questions like "wherefrom it springs or of what it is composed or maintained".
And any discussion that attempts to use the phrase "the fabric of the universe" as if it meant something profound and mysterious is instantly dubious as well. The fabric of the universe is what the Emperor's New Clothes get cut from every time some tedious new shithead decides it's his turn to be Philosopher King.
The world is an elephant and we are all blind men, and arguing that some or other aspect of the world is fundamental and essential to its nature - such as that it is material, or is spiritual, or is divine, or is conscious, is just silly. The world just is what it is, it contains many kinds of bus, and most of it gives zero shits what any of us has got to say about it. I for one revel in that glorious indifference.
Panpsychism is just silly. To take the idea of consciousness-as-attribute and hurl it about and spread and smear it all over until it covers everything like the pink stain from The Cat In The Hat Comes Back achieves nothing more than making a huge conceptual mess just for fun as far as I can see.
So VOOM.
posted by flabdablet at 6:09 AM on November 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Overall I’m not really sure how I feel about panpsychism, except that current state of affairs with explaining consciousness is likely similar to something like older theories like the humours or luminiferous aether, where there’s a fundamental knowledge gap we have somewhere which means there is just no way we can currently get close to the truth of the matter, and instead we can only make fumbling guesses as to what overall properties the vague shape of an explanation might have.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 6:28 AM on November 10, 2023
posted by Jon Mitchell at 6:28 AM on November 10, 2023
I just want to know what bombastic lowercase pronouncements would have to say about all this.
posted by joannemerriam at 6:39 AM on November 10, 2023
posted by joannemerriam at 6:39 AM on November 10, 2023
Many philosophers at the meeting appeared to share Goff’s concern that physicalism falters when it comes to consciousness. “If you know every last detail about my brain processes, you still wouldn’t know what it’s like to be me,” says Hedda Hassel Mørch, a philosopher at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences.Assumes facts not in evidence.
"Know" and "every last detail" are the characteristic weasels that mark this line of argument.
The only way to make "every last detail" of my brain processes even slightly knowable is to have real-time access to them and the ability to integrate and extract meaning from their entirety, also in real time, and the only structure that has that is me, and when I'm asleep or even simply not paying attention then not even I know what it's like to be me.
Currently, the inviolable privacy of our own interiors is such that we know as strongly as we could ever possibly know anything that nobody else could ever possibly get "every last detail" about our internal processes. We're simply not in any position to draw valid conclusions about how things could be were violating that privacy to become somehow possible.
And no, FMRI doesn't count. Believing that FMRI imagery comes even close to revealing "every last detail" about the subject's brain behaviour reveals deep ignorance about both the limitations of that technology and the sheer amount of detail involved.
posted by flabdablet at 6:41 AM on November 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
The other way the "every last detail" argument falls over is that in fact we do have a workably reliable way to model another person's interior to some extent, based solely on exposure to their behaviour, even if the details are sorely lacking; we call that empathy, and highfalutin academic philosophy doesn't often reveal much of it.
It's not a superpower - the ease with which some people find themselves befuddled into empathising with ChatGPT is more than enough evidence of that - but it's not nothing either.
posted by flabdablet at 6:55 AM on November 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
It's not a superpower - the ease with which some people find themselves befuddled into empathising with ChatGPT is more than enough evidence of that - but it's not nothing either.
posted by flabdablet at 6:55 AM on November 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm not sure what all is going on under the hood, but like flabdablet, I'm pretty sure that consciousness is a verb, not a noun.
posted by LooseFilter at 7:37 AM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by LooseFilter at 7:37 AM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think it's more correct to say our perception of reality is created by our mental processes.
I would agree. It's just that materialists call our perception of reality, "reality".
Hoffman argues that even our perception of receptors and the EM spectrum are evolutionary tricks like the opaqueness of walls or the experience of pain. That's the point; we know that so much of what we perceive is a fabrication until we get to things like brains and receptors and say, no, this must be real. When evolutionarily, there's a disincentive to perceive any accurate information and only incentives towards perceptions that increase fitness. With the beetle example, we see where those perceptions that increase fitness fail because they do not accurately reflect reality.
posted by betaray at 7:43 AM on November 10, 2023
I would agree. It's just that materialists call our perception of reality, "reality".
Hoffman argues that even our perception of receptors and the EM spectrum are evolutionary tricks like the opaqueness of walls or the experience of pain. That's the point; we know that so much of what we perceive is a fabrication until we get to things like brains and receptors and say, no, this must be real. When evolutionarily, there's a disincentive to perceive any accurate information and only incentives towards perceptions that increase fitness. With the beetle example, we see where those perceptions that increase fitness fail because they do not accurately reflect reality.
posted by betaray at 7:43 AM on November 10, 2023
Panpsychism means instead of having to explain one kind of consciousness, we have to explain two: the kind you have when awake and aware, and the kind your body, like all physical objects ‘just has’ all the time anyway, even when dead meat. It seems an unpromising way to go.
posted by Phanx at 7:48 AM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Phanx at 7:48 AM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
METAFILTER: we helpfully talk about this stuff without getting buried by vocabulary flashcards or being yet another annoying stoner
posted by philip-random at 8:15 AM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by philip-random at 8:15 AM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
and ummm, Yes.
To the lead question here: Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe?
Assuming that the Universe is real. Whatever real means. And here I'm reminded of an old discussion with a friend. We might have been high on something:
HIM: Reality is easy. Reality is everything by which I genuinely mean EVERYTHING. Not just what is observable, trackable, definable. Not just everything one might notice via their various senses, but also everything they think about and whatever odd notions those thoughts might conjure. And it's the same for everyone else, everything else. Every impression, every emotion, every fantasy, every dream, every mistake, every amazing thing -- all real.
ME: So reality is actually anything but simple, it's impossibly complex.
HIM: I did see it all once in tangible form while very high on weapon's grade LSD -- the actual weave of the stuff itself, comprised primarily of fractal eruptions and reductions and ... ... other weird forms I have no words for, but they pop up sometimes on psychedelic album covers.
ME: Oh yeah. That stuff.
HIM: It is impossible to even begin to imagine how fabulously deep and yet high and dimensional reality is. Unless you happen to have a particularly brave imagination.
And then we put on some Clash or something.
posted by philip-random at 8:36 AM on November 10, 2023
To the lead question here: Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe?
Assuming that the Universe is real. Whatever real means. And here I'm reminded of an old discussion with a friend. We might have been high on something:
HIM: Reality is easy. Reality is everything by which I genuinely mean EVERYTHING. Not just what is observable, trackable, definable. Not just everything one might notice via their various senses, but also everything they think about and whatever odd notions those thoughts might conjure. And it's the same for everyone else, everything else. Every impression, every emotion, every fantasy, every dream, every mistake, every amazing thing -- all real.
ME: So reality is actually anything but simple, it's impossibly complex.
HIM: I did see it all once in tangible form while very high on weapon's grade LSD -- the actual weave of the stuff itself, comprised primarily of fractal eruptions and reductions and ... ... other weird forms I have no words for, but they pop up sometimes on psychedelic album covers.
ME: Oh yeah. That stuff.
HIM: It is impossible to even begin to imagine how fabulously deep and yet high and dimensional reality is. Unless you happen to have a particularly brave imagination.
And then we put on some Clash or something.
posted by philip-random at 8:36 AM on November 10, 2023
I have a friend who’s into panpsychism but after checking out the Wikipedia entry (to start), I don’t really understand what it’s purporting to solve. It feels a bit like an attempt to give meaning to the universe that I don’t think is there, or maybe to make us feel a sense of connectedness and purpose so we’re less lonely. But is it an Occam’s razor-style solution to anything, or is it more like the simulation theory stuff, I.e. fun dorm room discussion fodder but without any possible evidence?
posted by caviar2d2 at 9:13 AM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by caviar2d2 at 9:13 AM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
The psychedelic DMT causes the brain to become hyperconnected, scans reveal.
posted by mittens at 9:56 AM on November 10, 2023
posted by mittens at 9:56 AM on November 10, 2023
Oh, has this conversation gotten to discussing the elves? I figured it might get there eventually.
posted by hippybear at 10:04 AM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 10:04 AM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Many philosophers at the meeting appeared to share Goff’s concern that physicalism falters when it comes to consciousness. “If you know every last detail about my brain processes, you still wouldn’t know what it’s like to be me,” says Hedda Hassel Mørch, a philosopher at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences.
My response to this is "so what?" If I give you the source code to a computer program and then a full dump of it's current state, you still may end up knowing very little about how it got there or the states it passed through asking the way. Consciousness is not a state or a static attribute, but a time-based process, one akin to a simulation of the outside world.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 10:48 AM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
My response to this is "so what?" If I give you the source code to a computer program and then a full dump of it's current state, you still may end up knowing very little about how it got there or the states it passed through asking the way. Consciousness is not a state or a static attribute, but a time-based process, one akin to a simulation of the outside world.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 10:48 AM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Consciousness is a self-referential persistent hallucination that occurs within the dream realm when a perceived entity requires a quantum state change in order to combat entropic decay.
Consciousness is what happens when the sleeping body needs someone to move it around to add nutrients to or eliminate waste from the system or to perform the necessary in order to add new dreamers.
Every time you wake up, the universe rebuilds itself from the scraps of your subconscious.
Wake up, neocortex... the density matrix has you.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:52 AM on November 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
Consciousness is what happens when the sleeping body needs someone to move it around to add nutrients to or eliminate waste from the system or to perform the necessary in order to add new dreamers.
Every time you wake up, the universe rebuilds itself from the scraps of your subconscious.
Wake up, neocortex... the density matrix has you.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:52 AM on November 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
I wonder about panpsychists mistakenly classifying evidence about neural correlates of consciousness as entirely irrelevant to a theory of consciousness just because, in their view, this kind of evidence is insufficient to explain consciousness.
Take discovering a precise neural correlate for consciously experiencing a vivid shade of blue. I get the core intuition behind the hard problem of consciousness that that discovery won't explain why that particular shade of blue is experienced rather than a different shade or no color. But the discovery of a neural correlate still seems like relevant evidence that a theory of consciousness should accommodate.
And there seems to be substantial evidence of this kind requiring accommodation (I'm just quoting a couple bullet points from a 2016 article called Neural correlates of consciousness: progress and problems):
* The best candidates for full and content-specific NCC (Neural Correlates of Consciousness) are located in the posterior cerebral cortex, in a temporo-parietal-occipital hot zone.
* A combined transcranial magnetic stimulation–electroencephalography procedure can predict the presence or absence of consciousness in healthy people who are awake, deeply sleeping or under different types of anaesthesia, and in patients with disorders of consciousness, at the single-person level.
If every kind of physical stuff has consciousness, as panpsychists believe, why is a temporo-parietal-occipital hot zone but not other brain regions correlated to conscious experience? Why are only certain procedures that detect very specific kinds of brain activity capable of predicting the absence of conscious experience? Even if there's an "explanatory gap" between this kind of brain science and conscious experience, it still seems like relevant evidence.
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 1:45 PM on November 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Take discovering a precise neural correlate for consciously experiencing a vivid shade of blue. I get the core intuition behind the hard problem of consciousness that that discovery won't explain why that particular shade of blue is experienced rather than a different shade or no color. But the discovery of a neural correlate still seems like relevant evidence that a theory of consciousness should accommodate.
And there seems to be substantial evidence of this kind requiring accommodation (I'm just quoting a couple bullet points from a 2016 article called Neural correlates of consciousness: progress and problems):
* The best candidates for full and content-specific NCC (Neural Correlates of Consciousness) are located in the posterior cerebral cortex, in a temporo-parietal-occipital hot zone.
* A combined transcranial magnetic stimulation–electroencephalography procedure can predict the presence or absence of consciousness in healthy people who are awake, deeply sleeping or under different types of anaesthesia, and in patients with disorders of consciousness, at the single-person level.
If every kind of physical stuff has consciousness, as panpsychists believe, why is a temporo-parietal-occipital hot zone but not other brain regions correlated to conscious experience? Why are only certain procedures that detect very specific kinds of brain activity capable of predicting the absence of conscious experience? Even if there's an "explanatory gap" between this kind of brain science and conscious experience, it still seems like relevant evidence.
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 1:45 PM on November 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Speaking of...well, speaking of whether the hard problem actually exists, one of the many threads that were linked to here, led me to Patricia Churchland's 'The Hornswoggle Problem': "Although I agree that consciousness is, certainly, a difficult problem, difficulty per se does not distinguish it from oodles of other neuroscientific problems. [...] My lead-off reservation arises from this question: what is the rationale for drawing the division exactly there? Dividing off consciousness from all of the so-called 'easy problems' [...] implies that we could understand all those phenomena and still not know what it was for . . . what? The 'qualia-light' to go on? Is that an insightful conceptualization? What exactly is the evidence that we could explain all the 'easy' phenomena and still not understand the neural mechanisms for consciousness? [...] That someone can imagine the possibility is not evidence for the real possibility. It is only evidence that somebody or other believes it to be a possibility. That, on its own, is not especially interesting. Imaginary evidence, needless to say, is not as interesting as real evidence, and what needs to be produced is some real evidence."
posted by mittens at 2:30 PM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 2:30 PM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
But of all the phenomena in the Universe as described by physics, truly only consciousness requires a forward arrow of time to exist. That's an interesting thing, I think.
I don't think that consciousness has been described by physics, but basically everything in the Universe EXCEPT consciousness has been.
posted by hippybear at 3:05 PM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't think that consciousness has been described by physics, but basically everything in the Universe EXCEPT consciousness has been.
posted by hippybear at 3:05 PM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
For me (and maybe me alone!) it all comes down to monism vs dualism, and maybe the question of whether or not consciousness is something at all. If you maintain that consciousness isn't anything at all, I don't know how to understand that. There is a perception of these words on the screen. If you maintain that there isn't, what does perception even mean?
Given things like the perception of these words on the screen, if they aren't part of the material world (e.g., in the traditional dualist view) then what are they and how do they interact with the material world? I can't conceive of an answer to that would make any sense or at least not be religious/faith-based.
So, finding dualism hard to swallow, I land on monism. And given my assertion that the perception of the words on this page is actually happening, that perception has to be an aspect of the one single substance that is the world/universe/reality/etc.
Do I think rocks actually have personalities and are looking back at me and thinking "hey, there's a guy looking at me"? No. Do I think I and others are the universe looking at itself? Yes. If that's panpsychism then count me in
posted by treepour at 3:17 PM on November 10, 2023
Given things like the perception of these words on the screen, if they aren't part of the material world (e.g., in the traditional dualist view) then what are they and how do they interact with the material world? I can't conceive of an answer to that would make any sense or at least not be religious/faith-based.
So, finding dualism hard to swallow, I land on monism. And given my assertion that the perception of the words on this page is actually happening, that perception has to be an aspect of the one single substance that is the world/universe/reality/etc.
Do I think rocks actually have personalities and are looking back at me and thinking "hey, there's a guy looking at me"? No. Do I think I and others are the universe looking at itself? Yes. If that's panpsychism then count me in
posted by treepour at 3:17 PM on November 10, 2023
truly only consciousness requires a forward arrow of time to exist
Well, there's also entropy.
posted by mittens at 3:28 PM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Well, there's also entropy.
posted by mittens at 3:28 PM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
If anything else, this thread has made me finally look up hornswoggle. But where is the Yosemite Sam clip when you need one?
posted by y2karl at 4:14 PM on November 10, 2023
posted by y2karl at 4:14 PM on November 10, 2023
I think hornswoggle was a vocabulary word attached to Moby Dick in 10th grade for me?
I have no idea why they thought 10th grade was the appropriate age for Moby Dick, but that's how things were back then.
posted by hippybear at 4:16 PM on November 10, 2023
I have no idea why they thought 10th grade was the appropriate age for Moby Dick, but that's how things were back then.
posted by hippybear at 4:16 PM on November 10, 2023
"Let's consider the text of the novel Moby Dick. Suppose we want to explain how someone who encounters the printed text gets to conjure up a mental picture of the great white whale. First, we must explain how the text tells the story. Then, how a reader of English makes sense of it. But, of course, neither the text nor the sense-making has to be white or whale-like." --the aforementioned Nicholas Humphrey on neural correlates of consciousness.
posted by mittens at 7:39 PM on November 10, 2023
posted by mittens at 7:39 PM on November 10, 2023
I think hornswoggle was a vocabulary word attached to Moby Dick in 10th grade for me?
Horatio Hornblower here.
posted by clavdivs at 7:56 PM on November 10, 2023
Horatio Hornblower here.
posted by clavdivs at 7:56 PM on November 10, 2023
Right okay, but by the time you've encountered the white whale, you've read maybe 100 pages of text that aren't the plot of the story at all but instead are about what whaling is, how it is performed, what it implies, how it tears at the bodies of those doing it, and much much more.
So I'd say the text is a tiny bit whale-like insofar as to a modern reader, even me 40 years ago, was left wondering what all this FLESH was that I was going to have to burrow through to get to the true meat of the story.
Of course, much like Les Miserables when read in its complete form, it is in these digressions that one builds the framework within which the actual meaning of the novel finds its form.
I think maybe this is a factor of novels that was more typically found in novels from 200 years ago but is now maybe only found in genre novels that work heavily in world-building today, like SF or Fantasy. But back in the day of Hugo or Melville it was a part of actual novels -- you'd take the time to spend a few thousand words, maybe several, to create the setting in which the story you wish to tell could find its setting, and not relying on the reader to have this information inside of them.
Pynchon also does this, although through a much more sideways method, and does indeed assume a lot of knowledge of the reader even while building a framework that doesn't rely on full information to pull the plot forward.
And I think I've perhaps digressed from this thread's topic.
posted by hippybear at 8:32 PM on November 10, 2023
So I'd say the text is a tiny bit whale-like insofar as to a modern reader, even me 40 years ago, was left wondering what all this FLESH was that I was going to have to burrow through to get to the true meat of the story.
Of course, much like Les Miserables when read in its complete form, it is in these digressions that one builds the framework within which the actual meaning of the novel finds its form.
I think maybe this is a factor of novels that was more typically found in novels from 200 years ago but is now maybe only found in genre novels that work heavily in world-building today, like SF or Fantasy. But back in the day of Hugo or Melville it was a part of actual novels -- you'd take the time to spend a few thousand words, maybe several, to create the setting in which the story you wish to tell could find its setting, and not relying on the reader to have this information inside of them.
Pynchon also does this, although through a much more sideways method, and does indeed assume a lot of knowledge of the reader even while building a framework that doesn't rely on full information to pull the plot forward.
And I think I've perhaps digressed from this thread's topic.
posted by hippybear at 8:32 PM on November 10, 2023
The topic of this thread is the convergence of thought and reality. I'm not sure it's actually possible to digress from the thread.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:09 PM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:09 PM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
...Between thought and expression
Lies a lifetime
Situations arise
Because of the weather...
posted by y2karl at 9:51 PM on November 10, 2023
Lies a lifetime
Situations arise
Because of the weather...
posted by y2karl at 9:51 PM on November 10, 2023
Panpsychism is what happens when somebody who thinks they're clever gets shown the magic smoke explanation for electronics and doesn't understand that it's a joke.
posted by flabdablet at 10:16 PM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 10:16 PM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
truly only consciousness requires a forward arrow of time to exist
Nope. That's true of behaviours in general, and is in fact the basis of the distinction between behaviour-things and structure-things.
It is possible - common, even - to analyze things that we would ordinarily consider to be behaviours using a conceptual toolkit similar to what we'd apply to things that we'd ordinarily treat as structures. Doing that requires just one trick: treating time as if it were a spatial dimension.
Applying that trick yields models that we can interrogate in ways that don't make an essential distinction between past and future, and such models can indeed be tremendously useful as the success of modern physics attests.
But it's easy to lose track of the fact that the building of any such model involves making a deliberate choice to ignore the most glaringly obvious feature of time: the inexorable replacement of now by now. And no model of any kind is capable of telling us anything useful about the things that are not even in it; that would be a contradiction.
It took me years of feeling simultaneously compelled by and horribly dissatisfied with the the Block Universe before eventually working out that "the arrow of time" is essentially just more magic smoke. It doesn't actually add any value to any workable, useable, applicable, useful structuralized model of behaviour exactly because structuralization inherently ignores it, but saying the words as if they referred to some missing ingredient that could in some way be wedged into such a model makes some people feel better. Which leads to half-assed point-missing confusion-creation systems like presentism and growing-block.
Actual unification will need better tricks, yet to be devised.
Consciousness does not require [a forward arrow of time to exist]; a forward arrow of time is part of some kinds of mental model, not all. Pretty sure none of the cats who live in my house have bothered to build any model quite so abstract.
Nor does consciousness [require a forward arrow of time] in order to exist. Consciousness, like every thing that exists, just does so regardless. In particular, regardless of whether we glean more insights from pondering it in primarily behavioural or primarily structural terms, and regardless of where we draw our model-making boundaries between the thing and that which it is not.
posted by flabdablet at 11:25 PM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Nope. That's true of behaviours in general, and is in fact the basis of the distinction between behaviour-things and structure-things.
It is possible - common, even - to analyze things that we would ordinarily consider to be behaviours using a conceptual toolkit similar to what we'd apply to things that we'd ordinarily treat as structures. Doing that requires just one trick: treating time as if it were a spatial dimension.
Applying that trick yields models that we can interrogate in ways that don't make an essential distinction between past and future, and such models can indeed be tremendously useful as the success of modern physics attests.
But it's easy to lose track of the fact that the building of any such model involves making a deliberate choice to ignore the most glaringly obvious feature of time: the inexorable replacement of now by now. And no model of any kind is capable of telling us anything useful about the things that are not even in it; that would be a contradiction.
It took me years of feeling simultaneously compelled by and horribly dissatisfied with the the Block Universe before eventually working out that "the arrow of time" is essentially just more magic smoke. It doesn't actually add any value to any workable, useable, applicable, useful structuralized model of behaviour exactly because structuralization inherently ignores it, but saying the words as if they referred to some missing ingredient that could in some way be wedged into such a model makes some people feel better. Which leads to half-assed point-missing confusion-creation systems like presentism and growing-block.
Actual unification will need better tricks, yet to be devised.
Consciousness does not require [a forward arrow of time to exist]; a forward arrow of time is part of some kinds of mental model, not all. Pretty sure none of the cats who live in my house have bothered to build any model quite so abstract.
Nor does consciousness [require a forward arrow of time] in order to exist. Consciousness, like every thing that exists, just does so regardless. In particular, regardless of whether we glean more insights from pondering it in primarily behavioural or primarily structural terms, and regardless of where we draw our model-making boundaries between the thing and that which it is not.
posted by flabdablet at 11:25 PM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Well but consciousness absolutely does require the sense of a forward arrow of time. Otherwise as I'm writing this comment, I will expect the letters to appear shortly before I type them. There's no learning without cause-then-effect, and placing our imagined behaviors on either side of that equation. (Pain signals define a timeline: Stub your toe and surface nerves send a sharp quick cry of pain, but shortly after, the deeper nerves send a duller, longer-lasting moan. Always in that order for almost any pain you feel.)
But what kind of time? I like this notion of thick time--that there's something in consciousness-paying-attention that creates a viscosity in the perceived passage of time. That moment of stubbing my toe doesn't just send two different pain signals to my brain, the presence of them in my brain reverberates, the moment lasts, I am in an elongated present while the world passes by unheeded at its usual rate. Whereas something that doesn't cause me to pay much attention--the napkin in the corner of my vision, maybe--it doesn't stick around as long, it's a blur and gone.
posted by mittens at 6:05 AM on November 11, 2023
But what kind of time? I like this notion of thick time--that there's something in consciousness-paying-attention that creates a viscosity in the perceived passage of time. That moment of stubbing my toe doesn't just send two different pain signals to my brain, the presence of them in my brain reverberates, the moment lasts, I am in an elongated present while the world passes by unheeded at its usual rate. Whereas something that doesn't cause me to pay much attention--the napkin in the corner of my vision, maybe--it doesn't stick around as long, it's a blur and gone.
posted by mittens at 6:05 AM on November 11, 2023
consciousness requires a forward arrow of time
That assumption seems a bit circular: if you define consciousness as a linear progression of experiences, then yes. But it's easy to come up with other models of consciousness.
What if we imagine "my consciousness" as someone making a Rube Goldberg-esque music video like OK Go's This Too Shall Pass. In the process I'm probably doing things like:
In other words, just because our brain meat has sensory input and memory that seem bound by forward-arrow time, doesn't mean that it encapsulates our full consciousness, nor that our free will can only be expressed within those physical limits.
posted by Riki tiki at 3:53 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
That assumption seems a bit circular: if you define consciousness as a linear progression of experiences, then yes. But it's easy to come up with other models of consciousness.
What if we imagine "my consciousness" as someone making a Rube Goldberg-esque music video like OK Go's This Too Shall Pass. In the process I'm probably doing things like:
- Test runs to see what parts are working, reviewing and discarding those partial videos
- Working on different segments separately and out of order, rather than start-to-finish
- Revising earlier segments because of something I learned while working on a later segment
In other words, just because our brain meat has sensory input and memory that seem bound by forward-arrow time, doesn't mean that it encapsulates our full consciousness, nor that our free will can only be expressed within those physical limits.
posted by Riki tiki at 3:53 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Test runs to see what parts are working
This alone requires an arrow of time. There's no causality without it, and no creature can evolve a way to make those evaluations without causality.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 4:10 PM on November 11, 2023
This alone requires an arrow of time. There's no causality without it, and no creature can evolve a way to make those evaluations without causality.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 4:10 PM on November 11, 2023
The arrow of time, the collapse of the quantum field, and consciousness/the observer all seem to be things that we have basically zero explanation for in any of our current abilities to describe. We know they seem to exist. And we're really really fucking good at describing all manner of other things to a really amazing degree. But those things... we have nothing.
posted by hippybear at 8:00 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by hippybear at 8:00 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Exactly. Which lamentable state of affairs I see as proceeding directly from over-reliance on structuralization - the analysis of behaviour as if it were structure, via world-models that treat time as a freely tweakable parameter - as our primary toolkit for understanding the world.
If we spent less of our lives attempting to dominate time in this fashion, and more just sitting quietly inside it and allowing the non-analytical parts of our consciousnesses to deal with it without constantly joggling their elbows, I'm sure whole classes of things would bother us a lot less than they do.
But what would I know? All my best ideas happen behind a drum kit.
posted by flabdablet at 11:36 PM on November 11, 2023
If we spent less of our lives attempting to dominate time in this fashion, and more just sitting quietly inside it and allowing the non-analytical parts of our consciousnesses to deal with it without constantly joggling their elbows, I'm sure whole classes of things would bother us a lot less than they do.
But what would I know? All my best ideas happen behind a drum kit.
posted by flabdablet at 11:36 PM on November 11, 2023
no creature can evolve a way to make those evaluations without causality.
I put it to you that countless lineages have been evolving pro-survival self-identification and world-modelling capabilities along the lines sketched by Riki tiki for at least hundreds of millions of years before we turned up and invented the idea of causality.
posted by flabdablet at 11:44 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I put it to you that countless lineages have been evolving pro-survival self-identification and world-modelling capabilities along the lines sketched by Riki tiki for at least hundreds of millions of years before we turned up and invented the idea of causality.
posted by flabdablet at 11:44 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Riki tiki, if you're interested in ways in which distributed systems can develop some sense of global event ordering without needing any kind of centralized coordinator, you might enjoy pondering Lamport timestamps.
posted by flabdablet at 5:18 AM on November 12, 2023
posted by flabdablet at 5:18 AM on November 12, 2023
I mean there really are quite a few unsolved problems out there! I don't know that consciousness is really the same kind of problem that the other ones are, although our folk-theories on consciousness definitely do make other problems seem harder--our sense of self is private, inside our skulls, available to no one else (so we think), and that mystery is infectious. Like, whyever else would we put consciousness in the same sentence as wave-function collapse, except (a) both are problems that haven't been solved, but importantly, (b) popular explanations of wave-function collapse lean heavily on the idea of an observer, which (c) inspires us to think there's something special about us-as-observer having an effect on particles.
Similarly, why would our evolved instincts about time have anything to do with what time actually is? We'd never stay up late for midnight conversations about the mysterious nature of length. "Check it out, though...what if this measurement could get shorter instead of longer?" (In the subtext of flabdablet's "countless lineages" comment, there's also a hint of causality, red in tooth and claw...where are these lineages now? Do they have any sort of competitive advantage against creatures that have a clear perception of before-and-after? The cat who confuses what's before the chase and what's after, does not get a mouse!)
posted by mittens at 6:30 AM on November 12, 2023
Similarly, why would our evolved instincts about time have anything to do with what time actually is? We'd never stay up late for midnight conversations about the mysterious nature of length. "Check it out, though...what if this measurement could get shorter instead of longer?" (In the subtext of flabdablet's "countless lineages" comment, there's also a hint of causality, red in tooth and claw...where are these lineages now? Do they have any sort of competitive advantage against creatures that have a clear perception of before-and-after? The cat who confuses what's before the chase and what's after, does not get a mouse!)
posted by mittens at 6:30 AM on November 12, 2023
where are these lineages now?
Loads of them are riding around in our guts. We're like their self-driving cars.
posted by flabdablet at 8:02 AM on November 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Loads of them are riding around in our guts. We're like their self-driving cars.
posted by flabdablet at 8:02 AM on November 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I put it to you that countless lineages have been evolving pro-survival self-identification and world-modelling capabilities along the lines sketched by Riki tiki for at least hundreds of millions of years before we turned up and invented the idea of causality.
Do this animals give birth before mating? Attack prey before sensing it? Poop before eating rahter than after? Causality isn't a human invention, it is as far as we can tell, and integral part of how the universe works. That we don't have a good explanation (other than it possibly being related to entropy) doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:27 AM on November 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Do this animals give birth before mating? Attack prey before sensing it? Poop before eating rahter than after? Causality isn't a human invention, it is as far as we can tell, and integral part of how the universe works. That we don't have a good explanation (other than it possibly being related to entropy) doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:27 AM on November 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Man, if those gut bacteria are conscious, they're gonna be taking me to court over last night's pizza.
posted by mittens at 8:31 AM on November 12, 2023
posted by mittens at 8:31 AM on November 12, 2023
I suspect you'll find that their accountability processes grind rather less slowly than the judicial system and nowhere near as fine.
Do this animals give birth before mating? Attack prey before sensing it? Poop before eating rahter than after?
This is the kind of question that would never even occur to a consciousness that didn't habitually apply structural analogues when modelling behaviours. Hypothetical sequencing inversions like that are par for the course when working with models that have time as a free parameter but I'd be very surprised to encounter them in real life.
Causality isn't a human invention, it is as far as we can tell... (emphasis mine)
Pick one.
That we don't have a good explanation (other than it possibly being related to entropy) doesn't mean it doesn't exist
Never said causality doesn't exist, only that we invented it as an organizing principle. Point is that the world just does what it does whether or not any reasoning being happens to be paying any given part of it any attention. Neither the trees falling in the forest nor the little woodland critters they frighten by doing so pay any mind to controversy on how noisy that process is allowed to be sans human supervision.
Principles as abstract as causality don't exist as things in their own right - can't - until the advent of minds capable of manipulating those principles, or indeed of working with concepts as thoroughly abstracted from experience as "thing" in the first place. Because those concepts and those principles are parts of a reasoning creature's world model. Map features, not territory.
Where we get in trouble with causality, specifically, is the way we act so pleased with ourselves for having such a lovely concept-wrangling toy to play with that we start just making shit up about it. We scooch it along the ground making vroom vroom noises and pretending it's a real red racing car, completely oblivious to what should be the obvious fact that as for any principle there are limits to its applicability.
There are people walking this planet who actually believe that everything happens for a reason. The manifest impossibility of teasing out what any such reason might actually be in countless cases just gets brushed aside with comments like "well there must be one, even if I don't know what it is".
No, there mustn't. The world is under no obligation whatsoever to conform to our preconceived notions, and insisting that it shall is contra-survival.
posted by flabdablet at 9:37 AM on November 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Do this animals give birth before mating? Attack prey before sensing it? Poop before eating rahter than after?
This is the kind of question that would never even occur to a consciousness that didn't habitually apply structural analogues when modelling behaviours. Hypothetical sequencing inversions like that are par for the course when working with models that have time as a free parameter but I'd be very surprised to encounter them in real life.
Causality isn't a human invention, it is as far as we can tell... (emphasis mine)
Pick one.
That we don't have a good explanation (other than it possibly being related to entropy) doesn't mean it doesn't exist
Never said causality doesn't exist, only that we invented it as an organizing principle. Point is that the world just does what it does whether or not any reasoning being happens to be paying any given part of it any attention. Neither the trees falling in the forest nor the little woodland critters they frighten by doing so pay any mind to controversy on how noisy that process is allowed to be sans human supervision.
Principles as abstract as causality don't exist as things in their own right - can't - until the advent of minds capable of manipulating those principles, or indeed of working with concepts as thoroughly abstracted from experience as "thing" in the first place. Because those concepts and those principles are parts of a reasoning creature's world model. Map features, not territory.
Where we get in trouble with causality, specifically, is the way we act so pleased with ourselves for having such a lovely concept-wrangling toy to play with that we start just making shit up about it. We scooch it along the ground making vroom vroom noises and pretending it's a real red racing car, completely oblivious to what should be the obvious fact that as for any principle there are limits to its applicability.
There are people walking this planet who actually believe that everything happens for a reason. The manifest impossibility of teasing out what any such reason might actually be in countless cases just gets brushed aside with comments like "well there must be one, even if I don't know what it is".
No, there mustn't. The world is under no obligation whatsoever to conform to our preconceived notions, and insisting that it shall is contra-survival.
posted by flabdablet at 9:37 AM on November 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
So Goff has this thing out in SciAm, "Understanding Consciousness Goes Beyond Exploring Brain Chemistry," which I was merrily reading along until he mentioned the recent thing on assembly theory--a paper I could make neither heads or tails of (not unusual; I'm not a scientist), but was on the verge of posting an FPP about anyway, because it sparked this fun response from a biologist: "My own feeling is that this is a poorly written paper, as evidenced by the inability of many biologists to understand what it is trying to do, and much of the negative reaction to the work springs from the hard-to-follow framing and use of phrases that echo creationist talking points."
posted by mittens at 12:09 PM on November 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 12:09 PM on November 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
The manifest impossibility of teasing out what any such reason might actually be in countless cases just gets brushed aside with comments like "well there must be one, even if I don't know what it is".
God. That is so irritating and so common, and it's just so, so, so difficult to approach/deal-with in a friendly manner. Not because it makes me angry (it does) but because it's so deeply impenetrable to logic.
Why?
...because.
Wait, because why?
...because.
What?
...just because. I know it.
How do you know it?
...I just do. It feels right.
posted by aramaic at 6:25 PM on November 12, 2023
God. That is so irritating and so common, and it's just so, so, so difficult to approach/deal-with in a friendly manner. Not because it makes me angry (it does) but because it's so deeply impenetrable to logic.
Why?
...because.
Wait, because why?
...because.
What?
...just because. I know it.
How do you know it?
...I just do. It feels right.
posted by aramaic at 6:25 PM on November 12, 2023
It's not like it's just a random-dipshit-met-at-the-festival position, either. Steven Hawking famously wondered in print what it was that breathed fire into the equations and made a universe for them to describe, prompting countless Very Serious People to nod along like fucking bobble head dolls.
I enjoy referring such people to the work of metaphysicist Alex Cox.
posted by flabdablet at 8:25 PM on November 12, 2023
I enjoy referring such people to the work of metaphysicist Alex Cox.
posted by flabdablet at 8:25 PM on November 12, 2023
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