The World View That Has No Name

Well, I didn't realize you had panpsychist leanings. I seem to have got the wrong end of the stick again with some of my comments. Although panpsychism is really hard for many people to swallow, I for one would take a theory that says everything is experiential over one that says the non-experiential produces the experiential.

To be honest, though, I don't think it matters very much whether panpsychism or emergentist materialism or something else is the correct theory. No pun intended.

There is an important technical argument against panpsychism. QM requires that each type of particles is indistinuishable - every electron is identical to every other one. This is actually built in to the equations of QM. For example, if you take the wave function of a 2-electron system, it will be a function of X1,Y1,Z1 and X2,Y2,Z2 (the spatial coordinates of both electrons). If you swap any two electrons over, the wave function changes sign, but this has no physical consequences. This makes it damn hard to see how you can attach a 'soul' to a chunk of matter!

If electrons were distinct, QM would give some crazy answers. For example, electrons in a multi-electron atom could all fall into the lowest energy level! Molecules would not hold together!

Emergence just seems to be an intellectual cop-out in this context (not yours, but of those who propose the idea).

David
 
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There is an important technical argument against panpsychism. QM requires that each type of particles is indistinuishable - every electron is identical to every other one. This is actually built in to the equations of QM. For example, if you take the wave function of a 2-electron system, it will be a function of X1,Y1,Z1 and X2,Y2,Z2 (the spatial coordinates of both electrons). If you swap any two electrons over, the wave function changes sign, but this has no physical consequences. This makes it damn hard to see how you can attach a 'soul' to a junk of matter!

If electrons were distinct, QM would give some crazy answers. For example, electrons in a multi-electron atom could all fall into the lowest energy level! Molecules would not hold together!

Emergence just seems to be an intellectual cop-out in this context (not yours, but of those who propose the idea).

David

Is that what people like Koch are arguing though? I didn't get that sense from reading Koch, but I might have missed it.
 
Is that what people like Koch are arguing though? I didn't get that sense from reading Koch, but I might have missed it.
I don't know - do you have a particular link in mind? What other way is there to read the idea of panpsychism - I mean if you try to attach mind to something larger - let's say organic molecules - the problem is that these are supposed to be mere manifestations of the QM of electrons (and the nucleons, of course). This gets you back in the same muddle - how do you ascribe mental properties to something that is made of simpler components?

Don't forget that people like Koch are basically facing a contradiction in their world view, and are also subject to pressures in other directions because thinkers that start to finally see the arguments against materialism - think of Nagel - tend to get stomped on in a pretty brutal way!

David
 
I agree with this 100%.

I'd just like to add that science in the West has become rigid in so many ways, and hopelessly mixed up with a brand of politics. We should always distinguish between the ideal of science, and the way it currently works.

David

Too true. More manipulation shown in this research I recently came across. How citation manipulation can cause information cascades leading to unfounded authoritive claims. I think this happens on a far greater scope than this paper encompasses.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2714656/pdf/bmj.b2680.pdf
 
On the subject of AI, I've just watched this brief and informal video about the Turing test:


I think prof. Brailsford makes a good point in asking if the Turing Test/Imitation Game (not exactly the same thing) would be really sufficient to discriminate a human mind from an "synthetic" one. As he says the bandwidth of interaction seems very limited, indeed.

cheers
 
The idea of inert objects being experiential can also be rejected on the basis that consciousness is a dynamic process, there is no stretch of the imagination that allows me to see consciousness as a static thing or property.

In reality of course there are no "static things." All process is at a molecular and submolecular level dynamic. So I partly agree.

But it is entirely possible we misunderstand the nature of experience, though i like the poetic nature of your analogy.

What do you have in mind. I don't think we can misunderstand it as a sense of presence, which is the important essential. Other things sponsor experience, but I'm not sure how they participate in experience itself.
 
There is an important technical argument against panpsychism. QM requires that each type of particles is indistinuishable - every electron is identical to every other one. This is actually built in to the equations of QM. For example, if you take the wave function of a 2-electron system, it will be a function of X1,Y1,Z1 and X2,Y2,Z2 (the spatial coordinates of both electrons). If you swap any two electrons over, the wave function changes sign, but this has no physical consequences. This makes it damn hard to see how you can attach a 'soul' to a chunk of matter!

If electrons were distinct, QM would give some crazy answers. For example, electrons in a multi-electron atom could all fall into the lowest energy level! Molecules would not hold together!

Emergence just seems to be an intellectual cop-out in this context (not yours, but of those who propose the idea).

David

Hello David. But by the Pauli Exclusion Principle no two identical fermions can ever be in the same quantum state. Thus, even at that level, things can never be entirely collapsed. This isn't an argument against panpsychism, really. Though, I do concede that one electron is probably not much (if at all) different from another electron in terms of its experientiality, assuming of course that it has one.
 
Hello David. But by the Pauli Exclusion Principle no two identical fermions can ever be in the same quantum state. Thus, even at that level, things can never be entirely collapsed. This isn't an argument against panpsychism, really. Though, I do concede that one electron is probably not much (if at all) different from another electron in terms of its experientiality, assuming of course that it has one.
Pauli Exclusion Principle is what I am talking about - it manifests itself in the fact that the wavefunction is anti-symmetric with respect to exchanges of electrons.

I think it is a strong argument against panpsychism because it shows that you can't really associate consciousness with the lowest level components of matter. If you want to associate it with a higher level, well you get back to the old arguments about how you can bring several non-conscious components together and get something that is conscious - precisely the arguments that motivated the idea of panpsychism!

David
 
David, I don't have an answer for you on this. I don't feel qualified to even offer the smidge of an opinion.

My approach to scientists like Koch and Penrose is to sit back and see if anything comes out of the research. If they think their hypotheses have enough potential to merit active exploration then I am certainly not in a position to say "STOP!"

I'm not endorsing Koch's version of panpsychism as likely true. It has some intuitive appeal for me based on the descriptions I've read of it, but I am not in a position to advocate for or against it. I'll voice support for the effort and watch with interest.

What I like about their approach is that they are not sitting back and saying: "We'll, gosh the hard problem says that matter can't, even in principle, produce consciousness, so I'm not going to bother!" They have ideas about certain properties of matter, have developed hypotheses, and have set out to see if they can confirm them.

By the way, when it comes to quantum mechanics, I'm quite wary of how people extrapolate from their understanding (accurate or not) of the findings to date to broad comments about the nature of the universe, or to support their favourite "ism." I get the instinct to - its almost irresistible! QM is just so sexy! But I really do think people should resist. Quantum mechanics, it seems to me, is hard enough to really grasp the basics - let alone the implications!

It also seems to me that we have a long way to go before we understand it well enough to draw firm "ism" conclusions - shouldn't we at least wait until we have a unified theory? I get the weirdness of matter at the quantum scale and yet somehow most of that weirdness goes away when it comes to the macro scale - we KNOW we're missing something, right? Shouldn't we have a better idea of what is before we jump to conclusions?)
 
My approach to scientists like Koch and Penrose is to sit back and see if anything comes out of the research. If they think their hypotheses have enough potential to merit active exploration then I am certainly not in a position to say "STOP!"
I think both Koch and Penrose are grasping at straws rather than totally give up on materialism - their stance may be partly political. Panpsychism sounds attractive until you think about the true nature of matter. Penrose's search for "non-computational processes" in the brain, also seems a bit way out - not least because although such processes might circumvent his Gödel theorem argument, there isn't a hint as to why such processes would be conscious!
I'm not endorsing Koch's version of panpsychism as likely true. It has some intuitive appeal for me based on the descriptions I've read of it, but I am not in a position to advocate for or against it. I'll voice support for the effort and watch with interest.

What I like about their approach is that they are not sitting back and saying: "We'll, gosh the hard problem says that matter can't, even in principle, produce consciousness, so I'm not going to bother!" They have ideas about certain properties of matter, have developed hypotheses, and have set out to see if they can confirm them.
Of course the idea is not to sit back, but to realise that once you accept that mind != brain, a lot of data that has been excluded from discussion, simply has to be taken into account. Have you read Irreducible Mind - that book is stuffed with observations by scientists and medical people of phenomena that we would call ψ, and which demonstrate that mind != brain. The best place to start would be to take the phenomena documented in IR, and try to reproduce and extend them.

The point is that the Koch and Nagel and Penrose realise that the simplistic idea of consciousness as a computation is dead. Even if panpsychism were somehow true, we would be dealing with a vastly different conception of consciousness from the standard one, and it just wouldn't make sense to rule out things like ESP a-priori.

By the way, when it comes to quantum mechanics, I'm quite wary of how people extrapolate from their understanding (accurate or not) of the findings to date to broad comments about the nature of the universe, or to support their favourite "ism." I get the instinct to - its almost irresistible! QM is just so sexy! But I really do think people should resist. Quantum mechanics, it seems to me, is hard enough to really grasp the basics - let alone the implications!
Well it is doing pretty well to be roughly 90-100 years old and still sexy!

David
 
I think both Koch and Penrose are grasping at straws rather than totally give up on materialism - their stance may be partly political. Panpsychism sounds attractive until you think about the true nature of matter. Penrose's search for "non-computational processes" in the brain, also seems a bit way out - not least because although such processes might circumvent his Gödel theorem argument, there isn't a hint as to why such processes would be conscious!

I dunno. Do they seem like they are only going through the motions to you? To me it looks like quite a lot of effort for mere window dressing.

In any event - like I said, I'm not going to opine on how likely either of them are to succeed - and I'm certainly not going to touch the Godel argument!

Of course the idea is not to sit back, but to realise that once you accept that mind != brain, a lot of data that has been excluded from discussion, simply has to be taken into account. Have you read Irreducible Mind - that book is stuffed with observations by scientists and medical people of phenomena that we would call ψ, and which demonstrate that mind != brain. The best place to start would be to take the phenomena documented in IR, and try to reproduce and extend them.

As you know, I'm in favour of furthering the pursuit of parapsychology. I'm not the experiments that have been done so far have been developed enough to the point that their findings should be included in related fields - but I am in favour of giving it the resources to potentially get there. For now, in terms of related fields I think it should be kept in mind, kept an eye on, and reflected on.


The point is that the Koch and Nagel and Penrose realise that the simplistic idea of consciousness as a computation is dead. Even if panpsychism were somehow true, we would be dealing with a vastly different conception of consciousness from the standard one, and it just wouldn't make sense to rule out things like ESP a-priori.

I don't rule out anything a-priori. Including that matter has properties that we haven't fully understood.

Note that my understanding of Koch's version of pansychism is not that every thing or every piece of matter has full blown consciousness - but rather that when combined in the right way, matter has properties that produce conscious experience. It's the particular configuration that produces the processes that we call "conscious". I have no problem conceiving that it involves something other than computation.

Well it is doing pretty well to be roughly 90-100 years old and still sexy!

David

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't knocking QM. I was knocking drawing unwarranted conclusions about the nature of the universe based on (often faulty) understandings of QM.
 
Pauli Exclusion Principle is what I am talking about - it manifests itself in the fact that the wavefunction is anti-symmetric with respect to exchanges of electrons.

I think it is a strong argument against panpsychism because it shows that you can't really associate consciousness with the lowest level components of matter. If you want to associate it with a higher level, well you get back to the old arguments about how you can bring several non-conscious components together and get something that is conscious - precisely the arguments that motivated the idea of panpsychism!

David

But, no two quantum states can ever be entirely identical (this is why the Prestige-style cloning experiment can't work). Electrons are therefore distinguished by their space-time information attributes. I see no reason at all from this why electrons cannot be primitive states of experience.
 
But, no two quantum states can ever be entirely identical (this is why the Prestige-style cloning experiment can't work). Electrons are therefore distinguished by their space-time information attributes. I see no reason at all from this why electrons cannot be primitive states of experience.
We aren't talking about quantum states but actual particles. If you want to associate fragments of consciousness with a quantum state, you seem to get back into the same weirdness that you get associating consciousness with a mechanism. I mean, a quantum state is a dynamical system - e.g. an electron in 'orbit' around a hydrogen atom - defined by an equation. Does it make sense to claim that fragments of consciousness are attached to that - rather than the actual particles of which it is composed?

David
 
We aren't talking about quantum states but actual particles. If you want to associate fragments of consciousness with a quantum state, you seem to get back into the same weirdness that you get associating consciousness with a mechanism. I mean, a quantum state is a dynamical system - e.g. an electron in 'orbit' around a hydrogen atom - defined by an equation. Does it make sense to claim that fragments of consciousness are attached to that - rather than the actual particles of which it is composed?

David

To be honest, I don't see any *real* trouble with saying that those systems are a "fragment"(?) of experience any more than particles are.
 
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