Do Particles Have Consciousness? (qz.com) 498
An anonymous reader quotes Quartz:
Consciousness permeates reality. Rather than being just a unique feature of human subjective experience, it's the foundation of the universe, present in every particle and all physical matter. This sounds like easily-dismissible bunkum, but as traditional attempts to explain consciousness continue to fail, the "panpsychist" view is increasingly being taken seriously by credible philosophers, neuroscientists, and physicists, including figures such as neuroscientist Christof Koch and physicist Roger Penrose...
"Physical science tells us a lot less about the nature of matter than we tend to assume," says Philip Goff, a philosophy professor at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. "Arthur Eddington" -- the English scientist who experimentally confirmed Einstein's theory of general relativity in the early 20th century -- "argued there's a gap in our picture of the universe. We know what matter does but not what it is. We can put consciousness into this gap"...
An alternative panpsychist perspective holds that, rather than individual particles holding consciousness and coming together, the universe as a whole is conscious. This, says Goff, isn't the same as believing the universe is a unified divine being; it's more like seeing it as a "cosmic mess." Nevertheless, it does reflect a perspective that the world is a top-down creation, where every individual thing is derived from the universe, rather than a bottom-up version where objects are built from the smallest particles. Goff believes quantum entanglement -- the finding that certain particles behave as a single unified system even when they're separated by such immense distances there can't be a causal signal between them -- suggests the universe functions as a fundamental whole rather than a collection of discrete parts. Such theories sound incredible, and perhaps they are. But then again, so is every other possible theory that explains consciousness.
"Physical science tells us a lot less about the nature of matter than we tend to assume," says Philip Goff, a philosophy professor at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. "Arthur Eddington" -- the English scientist who experimentally confirmed Einstein's theory of general relativity in the early 20th century -- "argued there's a gap in our picture of the universe. We know what matter does but not what it is. We can put consciousness into this gap"...
An alternative panpsychist perspective holds that, rather than individual particles holding consciousness and coming together, the universe as a whole is conscious. This, says Goff, isn't the same as believing the universe is a unified divine being; it's more like seeing it as a "cosmic mess." Nevertheless, it does reflect a perspective that the world is a top-down creation, where every individual thing is derived from the universe, rather than a bottom-up version where objects are built from the smallest particles. Goff believes quantum entanglement -- the finding that certain particles behave as a single unified system even when they're separated by such immense distances there can't be a causal signal between them -- suggests the universe functions as a fundamental whole rather than a collection of discrete parts. Such theories sound incredible, and perhaps they are. But then again, so is every other possible theory that explains consciousness.
The law says NO! (Score:5, Funny)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:The law says NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on the definition of consciousness, doesn't it? AFAIK we still don't really understand that yet in ourselves, so answering the same question for the universe seems a bit premature at this point. That said, here is the one snippet from the fine summary that actually rings true to me, or at least potentially true:
Goff believes quantum entanglement -- the finding that certain particles behave as a single unified system even when they're separated by such immense distances there can't be a causal signal between them -- suggests the universe functions as a fundamental whole rather than a collection of discrete parts.
Whether that counts as consciousness or not is anybody's guess. What is perhaps more accessible to study is our human propensity for seeking consciousness... or rather, attributing consciousness to natural phenomena. Talk about "first world problems"... this is like a cargo cult for our technologically advanced society.
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Presumably, quantum entanglements are not conduits for information signaling, rather they are signals themselves...?
Note: I'm not a strong proponent of this theory, but I do find it intriguing.
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>Presumably, quantum entanglements are not conduits for information signaling
Entanglement is exactly a conduit for transmitting information. It just isn't a conduit for transmitting it faster than light. The entangled particle is subject to the same speed limit. You can interrogate it instantly, but you had to wait for it to arrive first.
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You can interrogate it instantly, but you had to wait for it to arrive first.
And you still can't do anything useful with that information until you hear back from the other measurer.
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Yes, in our four-dimensional space-time world they are conduits of information, but in the n-dimensional "world" of a universal consciousness they could simply be the firings of cosmic synapses, no?
Whoa. That is like, really deep. It is amazing to think that there is NO conclusive evidence that this is NOT true. You and the author of TFA should share the Nobel Prize for Non-Falsifiable-Physics.
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No, there's a lot more to it than that. It's quite provably not the same as having two envelopes with hidden contents.
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No, there's a lot more to it than that. It's quite provably not the same as having two envelopes with hidden contents.
Yup. See and understand Bell's inequality for the details.
Re:The law says NO! (Score:5, Interesting)
This argument seems to be: quantum entaglement is weird, and consciousness is weird, so they must be related somehow.
Oh FFS (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because it is easily-dismissible bunkum.
We don't know what consciousness is with any certainty at all, other than many animals seem to exhibit what most of us would agree upon as calling "consciousness."
It's at least wildly premature (and very likely completely absurd) to decide that it is now a component of the inanimate.
The thinking here — and I'm being very generous with the term — is so muddy as to be utterly opaque and pointless.
so, if matter is smashed into antimatter... (Score:2)
is that murder, with the eggheads as accomplices?
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What the law says doesn't matter (see what I did there?), because the science is settled:
Particles cause Global Warming, and they don't even have a bad conscience about doing so.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, are we out of real scientific problems to study?
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We aren't out of science, but on the other hand we are also not out of bongs to hit. While this is the case, questions like this will still be asked.
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- The one where stuff becomes sufficiently complicated and (insert long and bamboozling set of random examples of complicated systems and a grab bag of barely coherent ideas) and presto consciousness happens for some reason, apparently (c/f strange loops etc)?
IMO It's this one. Consciousness is difficult to define, which means that explaining the process of how it emerges is just as (or more) difficult. But the same principle can be applied elsewhere. For instance: How many monkeys banging on things with sticks does it take to make music? There's no definitive answer, but that doesn't mean that monkeys banging on things with sticks can't be music. It can, if it's ordered properly.
I think people tend to dislike this hypothesis because it reduces the marvelous (us
Re: No (Score:5, Insightful)
I think people tend to dislike this hypothesis because it reduces the marvelous (us) to the mundane.
It's so sad that anyone would see it that way. I find the beauty and elegance of universal laws and natural selection to be far more marvellous than a mundane bearded guy in the sky.
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Exactly this. Most people have not studied the intricacies of reinforcement learning or evolutionary algorithms, thus, think it's some kind of magic soul stuff, or at least quantum stuff, or please, at least let it be panpsychism! Just because they can't see how interesting, complex and powerful are the RL and EA frameworks they need to postulate a magical explanat
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
For instance: How many monkeys banging on things with sticks does it take to make music? There's no definitive answer, but that doesn't mean that monkeys banging on things with sticks can't be music. It can, if it's ordered properly.
I'll have a go at this question. (Disclosure: my answer is shaped after a comment I read by Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, and a perspective in the spirit of American composer John Cage.)
It takes only one monkey to make music. The key thing is this: intent.
- If the monkey is banging things on sticks with its own intent to make music, then the monkey is making music.
- If someone brings a monkey on stage and has them bang something with sticks, then the monkey's handler is making music, because the handler is expressing intent in the presentation.
- If someone observes a monkey banging on something with sticks and finds that it conveys something interesting, then the observer is making music (out of her/his environment) because s/he infers intent in the observation.
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- The one where stuff becomes sufficiently complicated and (insert long and bamboozling set of random examples of complicated systems and a grab bag of barely coherent ideas) and presto consciousness happens for some reason, apparently (c/f strange loops etc)?
The one where life spontaneously forms, spends a few billions years mucking about (literally), the Cambrian Explosion happens [wikipedia.org] creating more complex forms, gradually resulting in species with a system dedicated to gathering and analyzing sensory input [wikipedia.org]. Since even for crude organisms, more analysis can sometimes lead to increased more fitness (not always, see crocodiles), it's not unreasonable that the end product was a species with some much analytic capability it could analyze itself, and analyze itself ana
Re: No (Score:2)
Yes, in some fields we reached the point where the final scientific question can only be logically answered with... God!
Sorry, you're wrong. God is a figment of your imagination; the only logical answer is pixie dust.
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Seriously, are we out of real scientific problems to study?
Yes, in some fields we reached the point where the final scientific question can only be logically answered with... God!
A solution (for desperate scientists): extend science to philosophical fields (and try to sound as less ridiculous as possible while giving ridiculous explanations for something that can be perfectly logically explained with... God!)
* I am a Christian Greek - even without my personal experience of God, i think i (as my famous ancestors) could understand the perfectly logical philosophical answer: ...God!
The correct response to that is not "God". It's "Jesus" as in "Jesus H Fucking Christ".
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I think quite a lot of progress has been made. We've learned a lot about neuroscience and still haven't found any hints of magic. We have found some hints that much of our subjective experience is misleading. My own feeling is that what we perceive as "consciousness" is mostly the part of our brain that likes to make up stories about how special it is making up stories while our subconscious, that does all the work, rolls its metaphorical eyes.
Binary or a spectrum? (Score:2)
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Think about an artificial neural network. Each time you add a layer you improve the quality of the output, all other thin
Re:Binary or a spectrum? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never understand why people even believe in "consciousness"
Because we each know that we individually have consciousness.
It's a thing, a not very well deifned thing, but a thing nonetheless. No reason to believe it' unique to hu-mons though.
We don't even have free will.
Don't we? Before saying we don't have it, would you mind defining what on earth free will is meant to be?
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How do you know that we all have consciousness? What if you're the only one, and it's your mental model that assigns what you call consciousness to the rest of us, based on our highly complex but unconscious actions?
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Because we each know that we individually have consciousness.
Know this, do we? What's the proof?
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I think, therefore I think.
Re: Binary or a spectrum? (Score:2)
How do you know you're not just programmed to think that you think?
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If we do not have free will, wouldn't that imply that it is wrong to punish people for their crimes? What if we have suffering but not free will?
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If we do not have free will, wouldn't that imply that it is wrong to punish people for their crimes? What if we have suffering but not free will?
If we don't have free will then it isn't wrong to punish you, either.
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Unless you feel as if you have free will.
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Nobody with actual understanding claims humans do not have free will. What is claimed (and rightfully so) is that many decisions are not made using free will. But claiming the absence of free will just shows that the person making that claim lacks in intelligence.
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I knew you were going to say that.
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You're not thinking fundamentally enough. The "free will" argument with regard to physics comes from the idea of a deterministic universe: If every particle's present and future is exactly determined by its history, then that also includes the particles in our brains and bodies and therefore anything we say or do can be interpreted as a result of our particles having no choice as their path was determined at the time of the big bang, and 14 billion years of banging around led us to kill that poor woman wh
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Think about an artificial neural network. Each time you add a layer you improve the quality of the output, all other things held constant. ... increasing the amount of neurons or layers change nothing.
Plain wrong.
NNs don't work that way. And for most problems there is an 'optimal' amount of layers/neurons
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So much ignorance and stupidity in one single posting. Impressive. Just strengthens my point that physicalist are merely another stupid fundamentalist religious group that cannot see what is real.
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Just make sure, if he shows up at your party, he isn't packing heat.
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Free will seems optional, but subjective experience (or at least my subjective experience: I'm just assuming you exist and are aware of the fact) is undeniable. And for subjective experience you need awareness of subjective experience, aka consciousness.
What it is, and whether AI has it, I have no idea, though I do find panpsychism more probable than any alternatives I'm "aware" of.
How do you know that what you call a "subjective experience" is not your nervous system merely receiving inputs and processing them? If you grow some neurons on a dish and wire them to process electrical signals so that they process different voltages differently, they have to in some way have a a way of distinguishing voltages.
Humans are just very sophisticated versions of the above. We process light, sound, touch, smell, taste etc. And we need to distinguish one color from another and one face from ano
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That's an axiom, not an answer.
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You said:
I've never understand why people even believe in "consciousness".
The reason people "believe" in it is because people are themselves conscious. At least, I am. I think, therefore I am. In fact, the only thing I can know for sure is that I, a conscious being, exist. I can know this because I am the one knowing it.
Similarly we imagine we are conscious and have free will.
This is balderdash. And it's a frequent argument (often from shitty internet capital-A Atheists) now. If consciousness is imaginary, or an illusion, then who the fuck is imaging it or being deceived by that illusion? Who is experiencing it? The ve
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sounds like a cave man describing lightning (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:sounds like a cave man describing lightning (Score:5, Informative)
I thought you had a poor understanding of physics. Now I realize you don't know what emergent phenomena are.
Emergent phenomena aren't magic. They're properties or behaviour of complex systems that depend on that complexity. That behaviour is usually difficult to predict from the properties of individual system constituents.
One of the simplest examples is electricity. We know that electrons carry unit negative charges and we think they're real physical particles. When you look at the behaviour of electricity in bulk materials, it is convenient to think of electrons (actual particles) and holes (pseudoparticles that are actually the absence of an electron). Holes, movement of holes, etc. are all emergent phenomenon.
The idea that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon is precisely the opposite of suggesting it's some kind of magic. It's the idea that consciousness is a very non-magical property of a complex system of interacting parts that is difficult to predict by extrapolating knowledge of the individual constituents.
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No. Apparently, you don't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Biology is an emergent property of chemistry which is an emergent property of physics.
There are lots of examples of physical properties of materials that are emergent properties.
Emergent behavior and processes are all around us and are studied by actual scientists in various fields specifically created to study emergent behavior -- many with the goal of learning how that behavior emerges from the underlying physics so that one can predict new prope
How did this make it onto the Slashdot main page? (Score:5, Insightful)
So many weasel phrases. "increasingly being taken seriously by credible" . Nope. It's a fringe view, and for good reason. Pure speculation, a kind of god of the gaps, no mechanism proposed, no explanatory or predictive power.
Re:How did this make it onto the Slashdot main pag (Score:5, Insightful)
For awhile I tried voting on the firehose, but I found myself getting both far dumber and far more angry.
Dumber because of all of the fucking stupid shit submitted, and angry because the "editors" of the site posted that shit even if it got well downvoted to make sure there was shit to post angrily about to drive ad revenue.
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So many weasel phrases. "increasingly being taken seriously by credible" . Nope. It's a fringe view, and for good reason. Pure speculation, a kind of god of the gaps, no mechanism proposed, no explanatory or predictive power.
You're really hurting a lot of particles' feelings.
Probably not (Score:2)
So if the idea is that complex consciousness (animals, humans) derive from the consciousness of the mass of aggregated simple particles, I would think that an understanding of biological processes related to childhood development, adulthood, and then aging would seem to deny that theory. Our consciousness does not change enough over time such that it would reflect our aggregated mass and changes in the individual particles we have over our lives as our cells die-off and are replaced.
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So if the idea is that complex consciousness (animals, humans) derive from the consciousness of the mass of aggregated simple particles
and if that's the case, then why aren't the other things conscious ? Like chairs or trees, or my left buttock ?
What is this new age waffle doing on slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Total bokum, consciousness is an emergent property of physical processes in the brain. As in a sufficiently powerful computer can create simulated entities moving about within it. No need to invoke some non corporal essence to explain the behavior of such entities.
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> consciousness is an emergent property of physical processes in the brain
Interesting theory, can you explain how it is falsifiable?
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(So, total crap).
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Well, if I remove your brain you'll lose the ability to post to slashdot
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That is a statement, or even an axiom, but not a prove. ...
Now go and remove his brain
How long do we wait for his posts to conclude he will never ever post again?
as a physicist... (Score:5, Interesting)
The nature of consciousness is a very interesting problem to study. The question in the headline is not asked seriously, but for a purpose in the larger discussion.
Pay attention to what the scientists involved in the discussion are talking about (and ignore the philosophers... they need to learn some more math and quantum mechanics). Is the universe deterministic? How many independent decision makers can co-exist simultaneously? In physics, we understand the bounds of these questions, but can't answer them yet. The concept of particles as independent actors is an extension of allowing multiple interacting consciousnesses to an absurd limit. It's presented by physicists as a mathematically impossible situation, to demonstrate that there will be some limit or law on what can be conscious. Having one consciousness in the universe is appealing to the way physicists think.
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Quantum entanglement does not imply information exchange. Read up on the Physics sometime.
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Having one consciousness in the universe is appealing to the way physicists think.
Indeed. And then you have that for every question there is an explanation that simple, elegant, clear and wrong. Seems to be what happened here. These people are intellectually _lazy_.
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Some questions are so very insipid physicists should have nothing to do with them; let's not make a laughing stock out of the field. Let's leave unverifiable fantasies to fiction writers and theologians.
Note to "credible philosophers" (Score:2)
Ender's Game Series (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ender's Game Series (Score:5, Funny)
Orson Scott Card actually dug into this a bit in the later part of the Ender's series with the philotic twining and aiuas as the fundamental core of the universe, that particles essentially willed themselves into existence in an increasingly hierarchical way, and that they could be called into existence by others. Base matter was a certain kind of aiua possessed of a will that could bond and bind energy into a material form, while consciousness was an aiua that could govern and rule over other aiuas. That theory always seemed to resonate a bit well as a universal kind of spirituality intertwined with physics. In any case, it made for great reading.
I think you're speaking of a mythical fourth book in the Ender's series, which was never written because Card lost his mind. Same kind of thing as the Matrix sequels and the Star Wars Christmas Special, the universe acts to prevent certain outcomes from occurring.
Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
"...the "panpsychist" view is increasingly being taken seriously by soon to be considered less-credible philosophers, neuroscientists, and physicists, including figures such as neuroscientist Christof Koch and physicist Roger Penrose.."
From the article:
"Consciousness is a fundamental feature of physical matter; every single particle in existence has an âoeunimaginably simpleâ form of consciousness, says Goff. These particles then come together to form more complex forms of consciousness, such as humansâ(TM) subjective experiences."
Logically the larger the object, the "more" consciousness it has. A 200t pile of sand would be "more conscious" than a person or a dog?
Essentially, they can't explain how consciousness arises from physics, so they claim all the constituent parts 'have consciousness'. Just admit you don't know something and then try to figure it out; handwavy intellectual caulking slobbed into whatever gaps exist in your understanding don't make it smooth: it simply shows you're lazy.
It seems a pretty long, awkward, and torturous way to just desperately try to avoid actually calling it animism and religion.
Re:Correction (Score:4, Insightful)
Essentially, they can't explain how consciousness arises from physics, so they claim all the constituent parts 'have consciousness'.
A few thousand years ago, people could not explain fire, so they imagined it contained elemental particles [wikipedia.org] of fire. Who needs modern physics anyway?
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Essentially, they can't explain how consciousness arises from physics, so they claim all the constituent parts 'have consciousness'. Just admit you don't know something and then try to figure it out; handwavy intellectual caulking slobbed into whatever gaps exist in your understanding don't make it smooth: it simply shows you're lazy.
It seems a pretty long, awkward, and torturous way to just desperately try to avoid actually calling it animism and religion.
Could not agree more. The only value that this nonsense has is confirming that Physics still has no clue what consciousness is and that those claiming they know it are just full of it. Incidentally, the same is true for intelligence, but that is harder to see.
Yes, and her full name ... (Score:3)
... is Dolly Particles and she has a theme park and big tits and stuff.
Look, this was settled already (Score:2)
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Indeed. That was another nice demonstration how very wrong people that actually should know better can be. Sure, it is a possible model, but the "proof" for the probability was as incompetent and disconnected as it gets. Reminded me of a certain type of "proof" for the existence of "God" that is about similarly stupid.
Superstition, mysticism, and other nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
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You are not any better than those you look down on. Yes, they are stupid and are going into baseless mystic "explanations". But the actual Scientific state-of-the-art is that we have no clue what consciousness (and intelligence) is and there are no Scientific reasons to believe we will find out. Science has never managed to accurately describe anything even remotely comparable and hence there is no precedent. Postulating "we will find out" is just mysticism that ascribes unlimited power to Science.
Kinda (Score:4, Interesting)
First, the materialist view demands that whatever consciousness is, it must merely emerge from matter. For various reasons, this materialist position runs into brick walls and is a dead end. This is Descartes’ point: if you are faced with consciousness and matter, and are wondering which one might be the illusory one, you are going to have to pick matter as the illusory one. All the materialist positions run into this simple fact, that if you just close your eyes and wonder what is truly real, all you can say is that you are existing, you have a sence of existing, and that experience would not be present without your consciousness - - meanwhile, what arises in your awareness, lights and souds, you cannot know if they are real or a dream or the matrix or whatever - - every night we wake from dreams which we had no idea at the time were merely dreams, as they felt real whist you were dreaming (and sometimes you notice and have a lucid dream) so who is to say what you will decide about this life, should you wake up to a higher level after you leave this body? Nobody knows, but the problem remains, a consistent world with physical laws is no guarantee that this world of matter is the true reality, and after all, mathematics is extremely rigorous and consistent and yet all in the mind, so the mind can generate extremely complex and rigorous phenomena yet 100% mind-stuff - - meanwhile, you are always certain of consciousness - - even at night dreaming, you have proof of consciousness - - so consciousness would win, if you had to pick one. So what to do? We cannot pick materialist beliefs. The answer is that consciousness and matter are both real, forever. Trying to explain one in terns of the other always causes problems.
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All the materialist positions run into this simple fact
If there was such a simple and valid argument that could undermine the materialist position, there wouldn't be so many materialists. Apparently, the argument is less convincing than you think it is.
should you wake up to a higher level after you leave this body
We have never seen any sign that this is possible. Your theory is running into a brick wall here.
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All the materialist positions run into this simple fact
If there was such a simple and valid argument that could undermine the materialist position, there wouldn't be so many materialists. Apparently, the argument is less convincing than you think it is.
And fail. Materialism is just a surrogate for religion to a certain type of person. They are about as ignorant and inaccessible to rational arguments as the religious ones.
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if you are faced with consciousness and matter, and are wondering which one might be the illusory one
Well, there's your problem. You're starting out with a bad premise. A false dichotomy. Why does what we describe as consciousness have to be anything other than an adequately complex feature of physical processes (as seen in such things as a suitably complex neurological system, as we have)?
But, no. People who desperately need a subject for that term paper they're righting for their wackadoo professor, or who need clicks on their blog, or simply don't have the intellectual courage to admit that they're
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Well, your premise runs into the problem that it actually says nothing.
Using words “emergent” and “complexity” actually say nothing.
HOW does it emerge? HOW DOES MATTER BECOME QUALIA?
And why would complexity have anything to do with that? HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT AN ANT IS NOT SENTIENT?
I emphasise those two points, excuse the caps.
I am all for throwing away thousands of years of religious dogma. But materialism has also become a dogma. Most “smart” people get round it by si
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That is false. Cats a certainly conscious but know jack shit about math
I disagree .. cats are very well versed in the calculus of "whats in it for me?"
Bullshit popular science (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry. I really have enough of this. As somebody who worked for 10 years in Quantum Science (experimental), I already know that when the word consciousness appears in a physics context, 5 lines later there will a reference to entanglement.
Let me express that *obviously* most physicists are unhappy with Quantum Mechanics and Kopenhagen Interpretation not being emergent from a known appropriately local theory of the universe, but this frustration should not lead to shit like this.
Let me state my view on this:
* Entanglement does not allow to transmit information fast than light
* In the meantime, we understand the observer/measurement problem much better than let's say 30 years ago. It is acceptable for people being educate before 1981-1990 in quantum mechanics not to have knowledge about dephasing by a coupled bath, but this doesn't make it good science to push everything which we don't understand to consciousness
* We can calculate decoherence rates of quantum states for given coupling strengths and temperatures. These rates are, in aqueous solution quite high, which clearly expresses that information processing in the brain will not happen by quantum processes which can not be described by reaction rates of molecules/ions.
* Assuming that particles have consciousness is not a scientific theory, since it is not falsifiable. (All the particles in your experiment *wanted* to fly that way today, and the day before and the day before, but maybe they change their mind)
* Experiments like mind-matter unification project and other tests of esoteric theories going in this direction never showed any result beyond what could be expected.
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Indeed. There is no way to even begin explaining consciousness based on Physics as known today. Claiming differently as a scientist is just completely unethical and irresponsible. The actual state of things is that we have no clue what is going on with regards to consciousness and it is important to make that absolutely clear. This nonsense just opens the door for religion and devalues Science. That is not good at all.
Star Trek TNG did it first: (Score:3, Informative)
The last quote should really be: "Shut Up, Wesley!".
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/... [wikia.com]
No (Score:2)
Stop being so credulous.
Babylon 5 (Score:2)
Delenn: "Then I will tell you a great secret, Captain. Perhaps the greatest of all time. The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make up this station, and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are starstuff. We are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out. And as we have both learned, sometimes the universe requires a change of perspective."
Why as us? (Score:2)
Definition of Consciousness (Score:3)
If you expand the definition of Consciousness to absurd lengths (anything that interacts with anything else), then any conclusions you draw will be meaningless.
Morphic resonance? (Score:2)
Sound like the type of nonsense... (Score:2)
... that arises when people desperate for an explanation do not have even nearly enough data to form one. Hence boundless speculation ensues that has no value as an actual explanation. Look for example also to religion and the average ridiculous urban myth.
The sane thing is to accept that we have no clue what consciousness is. Also, incidentally, we have no clue what intelligence is, we can only somewhat describe its effects. This is harder to see, but a dive into the relevant research makes it amply clear.
On a comisc scale... (Score:2)
Define your terms (Score:2)
The assertion means nothing unless consciousness is defined in an objectively testable manner. If it is, then you can test to see whether it's true or not.
People making assertions about "consciousness" generally handwave and say "you know what I mean", whereas actually you only "sort of" know what they mean, and if you're going to make this kind of assertion, details are significant.
It's worth noting that this is from a philosophy professor addressing the "hard problem of consciousness" which is usually eq
Quickly folks (Score:2)
aether of the mind, eh? (Score:2)
All these articles and discussions have a feeling of attempts to explain how electromagnetic waves propagate. We do not know so there must be Luminiferous Aether!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Philip Pullman's dust (Score:2)
This is the idea in some of Philip Pullman's books [wikipedia.org]; that dust (some kind of new particle), which permeates the universe, is somehow responsible for conciousness. The books are fantasy aimed at kids, but are a fun read.
As for panpsychist, an interesting idea ... can we please have some theories that make predictions that we can test.
additive property of consciousness? (Score:2)
So particles have "small amount of consciousness" and by putting them together you get more organized forms?
The same way multiple noise generators would produce a coherent music?
And rules of entropy?
This is so wrong on some many levels.
A plausible theory, even if wrong. (Score:4, Interesting)
The responses here to this article not surprisingly run the gamut from hokum and bunk to contemplative science and philosophy. This is to be expected because this is a speculative subject for which there is no patent answer, so one can assess or react to it in any number of legitimate and respectable ways, from doctrinaire belief to dismissive skepticism. There are however a few points worth considering before adopting too strong of an opinion either way.
1) The world has always been full of charlatans and phony philosophers promulgating ridiculous beliefs meant to beguile and defraud the intellectually weak and unwary, purveyors of fud (fear-uncertainty-doubt), self-serving false prophets who seek power or recognition through the intimidation of retarded ideas. Any sensible person who is not cognizant of that reality of history and human nature risks succumbing to the worst nightmares that mankind has ever produced. Thus, kudos to the skeptics who keep us honest and prevent intellectual derailments.
2) However, the universe is also full of rich wonders awaiting our discovery. We only know what we know today because of the efforts and insights of scientists and philosophers before us, and we in turn are the intellectual stepping stones to the generations that follow. Unanswered questions seek their solutions, and we, the stewards of finding and preserving new knowledge, must not become complacent with what we already know, but must seek the new knowledge that awaits around the corner of the next experiment or observation. Thus, kudos to those dreamers and believers with the enthusiasm to seek the answers to the next question.
Consider the evolution of discovery in human society up until this point. Flip a wall switch and we can see at night without first gathering wood and rubbing two sticks together. Would that not have seemed like magic to a neolithic citizen? We can talk to each other around the world in real time, audio, video, and data. Even Marconi and Morse, who could have understood the technologies perfectly well, would probably have marveled where we have come since their innovations, yet for much of history prior to them, such technologies would have been magic, the work of god or the devil. People in the times of Cleopatra, Constantine, and Charlemagne might have explained flying machines and human flight as the work of divine endowment, yet we hop planes as easily as a chariot, and even the Montgolfier and Wright brothers would have marveled at the pictures that come to use from Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto. Our science was the magic and mysticism of prior generations. There is a vast universe of unknown knowledge that awaits discovery, so we must keep open eyes and minds not to overlook what to future generations might seem so obvious.
Even when an idea, a postulate, a hypothesis, a theory proves to be wrong, just a fantasy, it may often light the way to real discovery. We debase the alchemists of prior times because they are perceived as being on a fool’s quest to transform base metals. Yet in their times, they did not know that gold could not be made by simple mixing and stirring of common items. We only know that because they discovered and proved that for us smug people from the future. While they never found the philosopher’s stone and the secret of transformation, they discovered the properties of materials and chemistry. Our modern chemical sciences and technologies were not born in an intellectual big bang at the end of the 18th century. They are the formalization of vast chemical and metallurgical knowledge gained by empiricism and limited scientific experimentation garnered over millenia before.
Copernicus was not successful because of a metaphysical epiphany, but because, trying to first work the numbers from the church doctrine point of view, he could not account for the motion of the planets. he was brave enough to buck society and take a fresh look. How many meritorious grants from promising post docs have been buried because t
Sleep experiment (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Gravity obeys a relatively (sorry for the pun) simple law.
It is not conscious.
This whole thing is bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
"Deep and thoughtful" has no value as indicator of accuracy. Humans have created the most "deep and thoughtful" nonsense based on absolutely nothing. Just look at organized religion.
Re: (Score:2)
And fail. "Emergent property" is a Science in-joke. It means "we have absolutely no clue what is going on and how that happens". Physics does not allow emergent properties.