Against Australian Zombies

[Neil]

Well the oscillations are also a physical process. Besides, what makes one conscious experience different from another? I don't see how you can get the incredible richness of consciousness out of that.

I mean the fallacy of saying consciousness is X has a long pedigree,but I don't think it works, and which wavefunctions are people collapsing in their NDE's ?

David

That's not really what I said. I said saying conscious is the oscillations (a physical process) is of a different logical type from saying that it is the informational structure of differences. This informational structure is composed of all differences (so to describe richness) and is NOT a physical process or thing.

 

[Neil]

Yes, I basically agree with that. IIT gives people a way to measure a property of signalling among neurons, but without some connection between that signalling and consciousness, it isn't possible to conjure consciousness up out of a formula! Neil seems to accept that to some extent because he wants to bring in QM, but the frustrating and exciting fact is that it is extremely hard to make a connection between consciousness and anything physical!

The connection with the wavefunction collapse is nearly certain (IMHO) to be relevant to consciousness, but it can't meaningfully be equated with it - it is like equating philosophy and pudding - a category error!

David

The von Neumann formalization makes the link between consciousness and the physical quite explicit.

It's not a category error to say that differences that make a difference (information) are experienced, since it would need to be experienced in order to make a difference. So by whom is it experienced? Consciousness.

 

[Sciborg_S_Patel]

The von Neumann formalization makes the link between consciousness and the physical quite explicit.

It's not a category error to say that differences that make a difference (information) are experienced, since it would need to be experienced in order to make a difference. So by whom is it experienced? Consciousness.

Neil, to try to put your argument into my layman terms ->

Philosophical zombies are impossible because human brains are devices meant to provide access (or efficacy?) to consciousness as per Von Neuman's interpretation of QM.

Thus anything physical similar in description to a human must possess consciousness.

 

[malf]

Neil, to try to put your argument into my layman terms ->

Philosophical zombies are impossible because human brains are devices meant to provide access (or efficacy?) to consciousness as per Von Neuman's interpretation of QM.

Thus anything physical similar in description to a human must possess consciousness.

Nicely put. At the very least proponents of the p zombie argument need to be very clear exactly of what the zombie is capable, and what it isn't.

Given it must have some interaction with its world, I've never really understood is how a p-zombie could ever be sure whether or not it was a p-zombie.

 

[David Bailey]

The von Neumann formalization makes the link between consciousness and the physical quite explicit.

Yes, but we observe a quantum state and collapse the wavefunction, but that really doesn't attempt to explain what consciousness actually is.

It's not a category error to say that differences that make a difference (information) are experienced, since it would need to be experienced in order to make a difference. So by whom is it experienced? Consciousness.

I thinking you are dancing on a pinhead - collapsing wavefunctions may be the communication link between consciousness and the physical world, but that doesn't define/explain consciousness - any more than you can explain how a TV works just in terms of the communication between its remote and the set! Take NDE's at face value - people separate from the physical world, and have all sorts of experience, but it is far from clear they have any wavefunctions to collapse!

David

 

[Sciborg_S_Patel]

Nicely put. At the very least proponents of the p zombie argument need to be very clear exactly of what the zombie is capable, and what it isn't.

Given it must have some interaction with its world, I've never really understood is how a p-zombie could ever be sure whether or not it was a p-zombie.

Isn't Terminator basically about p-zombies? I mean the first one.

 

[David Bailey]

Given it must have some interaction with its world, I've never really understood is how a p-zombie could ever be sure whether or not it was a p-zombie.

Surely a p-zombie would be an automaton - it would not be sure of anything - just as your toaster doesn't hold beliefs (I imagine :) ).

David

 

[malf]

Yes, I basically agree with that. IIT gives people a way to measure a property of signalling among neurons, but without some connection between that signalling and consciousness, it isn't possible to conjure consciousness up out of a formula!

Well there are correlative connections... Beyond those, what sort of connection would you find satisfactory?

You might well say that for signalling and consciousness to be connected it would require some pretty weird biology and physics... Well, Neil is pointing us towards physics that is indeed weird and completely unintuitive and we're only really scatching the surface of these disciplines.

Neil seems to accept that to some extent because he wants to bring in QM, but the frustrating and exciting fact is that it is extremely hard to make a connection between consciousness and anything physical!

Is it really easier to make connections between consciousness and anything non-physical?

 

[David Bailey]

Well there correlative connections... Beyond those, what sort of connection would you find satisfactory?

You might well say that for signalling and consciousness to be connected it would require some pretty weird biology and physics... Well, Neil is pointing us towards physics that is indeed weird and completely unintuitive and we're only really scatching the surface of these disciplines.
Is it really easier to make connections between consciousness and anything non-physical?

The real problem is that the only bit of physics that relates to consciousness, is the idea that observing a wavefunction collapses it. Say for example, you have an electron in a state which is a mixture of +1/2 or -1/2 about the Z axis, well observing it will collapse the wave function and return one answer or the other. However, it is worth noting that you have to use something physical to do the observation - e.g. a photon of radio frequency energy. Even if it could be collapsed by light photons, you would still be using light photons - not just 'observing' in some abstract sense.

The idea is that each time the system you are observing interacts with say incoming photons, it gets more and more entangled, but that ultimately something at some indeterminate point in the brain, doesn't entangle the wavefunction still further, but collapses it!

And remember that this is just one interpretation of QM!

My feeling is that consciousness does indeed collapse wavefunctions, but that does not in itself explain what consciousness is.

David

 

[malf]

The real problem is that the only bit of physics that relates to consciousness, is the idea that observing a wavefunction collapses it. Say for example, you have an electron in a state which is a mixture of +1/2 or -1/2 about the Z axis, well observing it will collapse the wave function and return one answer or the other. However, it is worth noting that you have to use something physical to do the observation - e.g. a photon of radio frequency energy. Even if it could be collapsed by light photons, you would still be using light photons - not just 'observing' in some abstract sense.

The idea is that each time the system you are observing interacts with say incoming photons, it gets more and more entangled, but that ultimately something at some indeterminate point in the brain, doesn't entangle the wavefunction still further, but collapses it!

And remember that this is just one interpretation of QM!

My feeling is that consciousness does indeed collapse wavefunctions, but that does not in itself explain what consciousness is.

David

So, again, what sort of connections would you find satisfactory? What sort of connections do you see that support a non physical explanation?

 

[Neil]

The real problem is that the only bit of physics that relates to consciousness, is the idea that observing a wavefunction collapses it. Say for example, you have an electron in a state which is a mixture of +1/2 or -1/2 about the Z axis, well observing it will collapse the wave function and return one answer or the other. However, it is worth noting that you have to use something physical to do the observation - e.g. a photon of radio frequency energy. Even if it could be collapsed by light photons, you would still be using light photons - not just 'observing' in some abstract sense.

The idea is that each time the system you are observing interacts with say incoming photons, it gets more and more entangled, but that ultimately something at some indeterminate point in the brain, doesn't entangle the wavefunction still further, but collapses it!

And remember that this is just one interpretation of QM!

My feeling is that consciousness does indeed collapse wavefunctions, but that does not in itself explain what consciousness is.

David

Science doesn't say what entities are. If you want to know what it is, I say it is in principle accessible via introspection. That will provide the answer.

 

[Sciborg_S_Patel]

Science doesn't say what entities are. If you want to know what it is, I say it is in principle accessible via introspection. That will provide the answer.

This points to certain issues with the whole zombie conception from the immaterialist side. Chalmers bases his demarcation of hard & easy based on what's observable from a third person perspective. Yet this narrows the domain of consciousness considerably.

The example Tallis uses is pain - if the feeling of pain has no effect, why did we evolve to have it?

It's in theory possible to think of a zombie that would withdraw its hand from a burning stove, but could such a being really have the same structure as us if our bodies are utilizing consciousness?

Really zombies and colorless rooms confuse the issue for many people IMO, though I figure they have their place as they do help some people understand what's under contention.

 

[Neil]

This points to certain issues with the whole zombie conception from the immaterialist side. Chalmers bases his demarcation of hard & easy based on what's observable from a third person perspective. Yet this narrows the domain of consciousness considerably.

The example Tallis uses is pain - if the feeling of pain has no effect, why did we evolve to have it?

It's in theory possible to think of a zombie that would withdraw its hand from a burning stove, but could such a being really have the same structure as us if our bodies are utilizing consciousness?

Really zombies and colorless rooms confuse the issue for many people IMO, though I figure they have their place as they do help some people understand what's under contention.

I do think that the example of Mary in the colorless room as well as zombies can be used to help to frame the hard problem. It seems that there has been so much materialist brainwashing left over from the late 1800s physics and early 20th century psychology that some people literally cannot even understand what the hard problem is supposed to see. Many have become completely blind to the most obvious, certain, and intimate aspect of the universe that we wish to understand.

But, as you point out, it is only a tool to help advance the conversation. The zombie example is particularly bad, because it assumes a classical world that exists "out there," which allows for a zombie to exist and function in that world. But worse yet is another excellent point you bring up, that conscious experience actually provides information above and beyond physical processes alone. The "what it's like" to experience things actually gives us information of a different logical type, and I think consciousness can be used to gain information and process information in a way not able to be done by computation.

This brings me to something I've been working on, which is an epistemology that is based on conscious experience and plausible reasoning. In my opinion, a great deal of confusion is caused in the philosophy of mind by the metaphysical assumptions of a classical world "out there," and that we as conscious beings exist "within" that world, and we "have" consciousness. This is a mess of confusion, which causes even worse confusion when trying to figure out consciousness. Some of the more recent information-based quantum interpretations that treat the world like a giant simulation are starting to get at it, but still none of these make any sense without consciousness. It is unavoidable. There is no way to derive the experiential from the completely non-experiential. Physicalists such as Galen Strawson make this excellent point, but then they claim that experience is physical. I am fine with this in a sense, because to me it is quite clear that this redefines what "physical" means, but it seems that many seem to think that it redefines or categorizes experience within the normal conception of the physical! It's complete nonsense.

But back to the epistemological question. Conscious experience provides information above and beyond what can be done through physical processing alone. It allows one to grasp something by experiencing a holistic informational structure that says what things are like (even if they are filtered through the brain!). This holistic grasping is what makes understanding possible. This, I suggest, solves the problem of understanding in philosophy, because understanding makes no sense without conscious experience. Otherwise, understanding presupposes understanding, i.e. you can explain understanding, but you must end with, 'do you understand?' Understanding is logically prior to the explanation of understanding, and it seems like an infinite regress. But I contend it is quite simple, in that conscious experience is the basis for understanding. It is what is logically prior to an explanation of understanding. Through experience one can understand, and gain further understanding.

It is through this understanding based on conscious experience that allows us to get at what "truth" might be. This is another major problem in philosophy and philosophy of science. This is not a regression to Platonism, nor a modern fetish with logic where we cannot answer any issue in philosophy of science. The understanding that we gain from conscious experience allows us to use plausible reasoning to determine how true something is, and this allows us to call theories "more true," getting away from the relativistic aspects of Kuhnian philosophy, or the rejection of any truth value to a theory. Getting away from the use of pure logic allows philosophy of science, and the practice of science to make sense. Logic has its place, especially in creating models to describe behavior of certain aspects of the world, but these tautologies cannot deal with the situations we have in existence and philosophy of science. It may seem that abandoning logic in favor of plausible reasoning is going backwards, but this is not so when one realizes that conscious experience, and the understanding we gain from it, and the ability to get at what is true, allows plausible reasoning to work. It is certainly fallible, and logic can help to guide it, but ultimately the world is understandable because of conscious experience. (and accessible experientially via deep mystical experience)

A further role for conscious experience is that of ordering the physical world. One must realize that a collapse of a wavefunction gives one definite state, eliminating all the other potential states. This creates order, and is also the basis for creativity. Conscious experience orders the physical world, and in advanced enough organisms, conscious experience can now use intent to further enhance this organizing capability. If it weren't for conscious experience, the physical world would exist in a mixture state of an incredible amount of potential outcomes, but once conscious experience arises, this orders this system an eliminates all the histories that did not lead up to the conscious event. This is kind of like the cause-effect repertoire of IIT. This is also how life began, and how the universe began.

But this forces us to come to the realization of the Vedantic doctrine of non-creation. Nothing has ever happened. The universe was never created. There was no "big bang" or anything like it that "occurred" 13.7 billion years ago. It is a fairy tale. The universe evolved as a huge number of potentials, and the one that lead to life "collapsed" upon that conscious experience, no matter how unlikely that was. Fine-tuning is an illusion, since conscious experience collapsed the history with the parameters needed to support life. But nothing was ever created. Potentialities have just been experienced within consciousness. No universe was born.

But coming back to what you said, from a functionalist perspective, no, zombies would not be the same as us even assuming for sake of conversation that they could exist. They would not have the understanding that we gain from conscious experience. They could not use plausible reasoning as we do. Conscious experience obtains information of a different logical type of a higher order. And beyond that, without consciousness, there is nothing that says that any of it could "really happen" in any sort of the way we view it which is needed to create the apparently classical world which we think exists!

 

[David Bailey]

Neil,

I think you need to think a little wider. For example, I think plenty of good evidence has been presented here that life could never have evolved by natural selection, and that some form of ID is needed to explain it. I don't think the intelligence involved would look anything like the traditional idea of God, and indeed there may have been multiple intelligences rooting for different species - so they end up in arms races.

Looked at like this, consciousness/intelligence preceded life, so the primordial wavefunction didn't collapse as soon as consciousness evolved!

Indeed, all the evidence for consciousness after/between life suggests (at least to me) that while observing the wavefunction may be consciousnesses way of controlling matter, it isn't fundamental to consciousness. Most people report that in their NDE's consciousness was enhanced.

Physicalists such as Galen Strawson make this excellent point, but then they claim that experience is physical. I am fine with this in a sense, because to me it is quite clear that this redefines what "physical" means, but it seems that many seem to think that it redefines or categorizes experience within the normal conception of the physical! It's complete nonsense.

I agree!

I think you should give more thought to how a conscious being knows which QM levers to pull - do I collapse this part of the wavefunction, or that, or do I bias the collapse this way or that (if biasing the QM probabilities is part of the game).

My hunch is that presentiment has some part to play in that process. Perhaps our minds can watch the wavefunction evolve a short distance into the future, and hence figure out what to do.

The ability to control is pretty vacous unless you know what the controls will do!

David

 

[Neil]

Neil,

I think you need to think a little wider. For example, I think plenty of good evidence has been presented here that life could never have evolved by natural selection, and that some form of ID is needed to explain it. I don't think the intelligence involved would look anything like the traditional idea of God, and indeed there may have been multiple intelligences rooting for different species - so they end up in arms races.

No offense, but ID is purely lazy thinking. I reject the notion that ID is needed to explain evolution of life. In fact, life probably began via some sort of quantum walk-like effect, so that even though it was improbable, it happened. This effect is seen in photosynthesis in that the process shouldn't be as efficient as it is, but because of quantum properties of electrons travelling inside the cell, the electron "takes all potential paths" (potentially) but the most efficient path collapses which allows for efficiency that seems impossible. I guarantee the same sort of effects happen in the creation of life itself (where the combination of chemicals needed to form life was highly improbable, but because they all occurred in potential, the one that created life collapsed that consistent history), and it may be involved in evolution itself, where potentialities of mutations or genetic changes can "occur" potentially, only to collapse on an actual outcome. This could be involved in the discontinuous phenomena in evolution, where there are sharply punctuated periods of fast evolution. Plus, I think there is something interesting going on when we look at how fear from operant conditioning can be passed on to offspring...that is weird, but who knows, it may operate somehow through quantum information transmission in the epigenome.

Looked at like this, consciousness/intelligence preceded life, so the primordial wavefunction didn't collapse as soon as consciousness evolved!

Except there is zero evidence to support that, nor is there any good reason for me to even think that is a plausible scenario since the premise is unsound.

Indeed, all the evidence for consciousness after/between life suggests (at least to me) that while observing the wavefunction may be consciousnesses way of controlling matter, it isn't fundamental to consciousness. Most people report that in their NDE's consciousness was enhanced.

Consciousness doesn't "observe the wavefunction." That implies that consciousness exists aware outside of spacetime, and somehow can float beyond the physical world and watch the wavefunction. That's not in any way what I am suggesting. Nor am I saying that consciousness is a property of matter, or just a fundamental properties of quantum fields, nor is it just an arrangement or aggregate of matter, nor is it computation. It is the non-material and therefore non-local holistic informational structures that make up conscious experience. I don't really see why informational relations cannot exist non-locally after bodily death. I don't really know, but I think that is a detail that would be worked out within the given framework I provided.

I agree!

I think you should give more thought to how a conscious being knows which QM levers to pull - do I collapse this part of the wavefunction, or that, or do I bias the collapse this way or that (if biasing the QM probabilities is part of the game).

My hunch is that presentiment has some part to play in that process. Perhaps our minds can watch the wavefunction evolve a short distance into the future, and hence figure out what to do.

The ability to control is pretty vacous unless you know what the controls will do!

David

Presentiment may play a role, but I am unsure as to what role and to what extent it is typically used. Maybe it is common and maybe uncommon. But I think you are viewing the biasing of quantum potentialities strangely. Conscious experience manipulates the physical based on trial and error that involves feedback. As an infant, your conscious control is very poor, but over time of trial and error, conscious intention figures out what patterns of activity to activate in order to get the desired outcome. In this sense, biasing the potentialities in quantum theory would be about as mysterious as how your consciousness knows "what levers to pull" to raise your hand!

This supports the concept of psi learning from Russel Targ, in that it is an ability that is amendable to practice. Plus, I would also argue that just like the brain operates on informational structures of a higher order to cause action, i.e. it activates entire patterns of neural activity rather than activating individual neurons (or even lower, acting on the neurotransmitters, or lower still, calcium ion channels), the same thing occurs with psi. Our consciousness acts on informational structures of the same order, and can bias outcomes of macroscopic events by biasing the probability distribution on von Neumann chains. In other words, perhaps through a quantum Zeno effect (which is represented mathematically via non-local projection operators), the brain could probe informational structures of the same order which biases the outcome for that macroscopic event to occur.

 

[David Bailey]

Neil,

So perhaps I can sum up your position as something like this. Before life existed, the wavefunction of the universe evolved without collapse, performing a sort of quantum computation searching ever larger configurations of matter, until one day it hit on something that was conscious, and that collapsed the whole thing and life had kicked off.

David

 

[Neil]

Neil,

So perhaps I can sum up your position as something like this. Before life existed, the wavefunction of the universe evolved without collapse, performing a sort of quantum computation searching ever larger configurations of matter, until one day it hit on something that was conscious, and that collapsed the whole thing and life had kicked off.

David

Yes! That is correct.

 

[David Bailey]

Yes! That is correct.

Well I suppose you have to ask yourself what it could possibly be about that configuration of matter that would give it the gift of consciousness when all the others didn't have it! Don't say IIT :)

I am fairly sure that collapsing the wave function is a part of the story, but a number of lines of evidence seem to suggest that consciousness really does survive death:

1) NDE's. Remember that these are reported as being super vivid, not degraded by poor hardware, and some go on for some time.

2) Multiply blinded experiments with mediums (Julie Beischel).

3) Rather good evidence that some people get reincarnated.

I feel that people who want to claim a physical explanation for consciousness and certain phenomena like ψ, always end up discarding a lot of evidence that contradicts their theory.

None of these people have hardware to run on while they are not embodied.

ID isn't a lazy theory, it is a stopgap way of saying that traditional natural selection is not an adequate explanation. Even if massive quantum search is the explanation, the ID folk have made a huge contribution by invalidating conventional evolution theory - give them their due.

However, remember that the evidence for 'ID' (or non-NS evolution if you prefer) isn't just associated with the beginnings of life - it seems to have operated over and over again, and once conscious beings exist presumably your massive quantum search wouldn't work!

David

 

[Neil]

Well I suppose you have to ask yourself what it could possibly be about that configuration of matter that would give it the gift of consciousness when all the others didn't have it! Don't say IIT :)

It has to do with entropy, or with regards to life, specifically, it is that of negentropy.

I am fairly sure that collapsing the wave function is a part of the story, but a number of lines of evidence seem to suggest that consciousness really does survive death:

1) NDE's. Remember that these are reported as being super vivid, not degraded by poor hardware, and some go on for some time.

2) Multiply blinded experiments with mediums (Julie Beischel).

3) Rather good evidence that some people get reincarnated.

I feel that people who want to claim a physical explanation for consciousness and certain phenomena like ψ, always end up discarding a lot of evidence that contradicts their theory.

None of these people have hardware to run on while they are not embodied.

I don't see how that contradicts my theory. I mentioned how the informational relations, that are non-material and non-local, could potentially survive death. The organizing power of consciousness could perhaps maintain this negentropy after death.

I think what is tripping you up is your conception of what "physical" means. Let me give a comparison of two statements, the first of which was very probably stated in some form in the early 20th century regarding quantum theory:

"There's just no way a physical particle could be in two places at the same time and interfere with itself!"

And now compare this to our modern "Hard Problem" typical comment:

"There's just no way that consciousness could arise from a purely physical brain."

Notice the similarity? In both cases, the conception of the word "physical" is causing problems. I contend that quantum theory does not have anything physical about it, in the normal common usage of the term. The "physical" is made up of informational relations of potential experiences. That's what's "physical." Does a "physical" explanation of consciousness now sound so implausible? Who experiences those differences (information)?

ID isn't a lazy theory, it is a stopgap way of saying that traditional natural selection is not an adequate explanation. Even if massive quantum search is the explanation, the ID folk have made a huge contribution by invalidating conventional evolution theory - give them their due.

However, remember that the evidence for 'ID' (or non-NS evolution if you prefer) isn't just associated with the beginnings of life - it seems to have operated over and over again, and once conscious beings exist presumably your massive quantum search wouldn't work!

David

We don't need ID to identify limitations of current evolutionary theory, just as we don't need ID to identify the limitations of current physical/cosmological theories. They may be pointing out the limitations, certainly, but they are holding back real explanations with anti-intellectual explanations. The real progress is made by realization of limitations from within the scientific discipline. ID, being outside the scientific disciplines, is not just pointing out limitations of current evolutionary theory: by strongly supporting a conclusion for which there is no evidence, they are only contributing to anti-intellectualism that seems more motivated by religion than scientific progress.

 

[David Bailey]

We don't need ID to identify limitations of current evolutionary theory, just as we don't need ID to identify the limitations of current physical/cosmological theories. They may be pointing out the limitations, certainly, but they are holding back real explanations with anti-intellectual explanations. The real progress is made by realization of limitations from within the scientific discipline. ID, being outside the scientific disciplines, is not just pointing out limitations of current evolutionary theory: by strongly supporting a conclusion for which there is no evidence, they are only contributing to anti-intellectualism that seems more motivated by religion than scientific progress.

Well I hope I am not anti-intellectual!

I think the Hard Problem argument applies just as much to the quantum world as it does to the classical one (were such to exist). The problem of connecting experience to physical matter or to matter described by wavefunctions is the same - there isn't a way to derive experience out of quantum evolution, other than vigorous hand waiving.

You didn't even touch my point that once consciousness existed, your idea of evolution by quantum search would have had to end, because there would be conscious beings to collapse the wavefunction.

You also didn't really answer my points about possible continuation of consciousness outside the body, because again the evidence suggests that conscious beings actually experience stuff out there - their conscious state isn't just passively stored away! Indeed, many reports speak of an enhancement of consciousness outside the body.

I think science will need a big shake-up to tackle these issues, but that consciousness will have to become a first class component of reality - not just something tied to QM wavefunction collapse. To me, a good start would be to look at all the evidence of ψ phenomena, if it is reasonably robust - without picking and choosing the evidence based on one particular idea.

ID is too often presented as God just designing organisms, but I think it should be seen more as a revolt against traditional evolution theory, which is clearly inadequate - something you seem to agree with because you want to handle the problem with massive quantum search. I am not religious in any traditional sense, and I think the mechanism of evolution is a really open and exciting question.

We probably aren't going to agree :)

David