Andy Clark - What is Panpsychism?
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- čas přidán 3. 10. 2021
- Panpsychism is the extreme claim that everything in the physical world-all subatomic particles-are in some sense 'conscious' or have a basic kind of 'proto-consciousness'. Why are an increasing number of leading philosophers taking panpsychism seriously? Something must be up. Could it be doubt that the scientific project to explain consciousness has failed?
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Andy Clark is a professor of philosophy and Chair in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.Andy Clark is a professor of philosophy and Chair in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
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Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
Always a great reminder that even the smart people have no clue what's really going on.
Actually, Andy Clark has, in my opinion, hit the nail on the head in his last sentence, paraphrasing him here: “The idea that once everything has been explained, that there is still something unexplained is itself a kind of vitalism.”
I would suggest that Jason’s post is endemic to the anti-intellectual, anti-expert, “know nothing” populism that a disturbingly large part of America has become somehow drunk on. The idea that we don’t know everything, therefore we know nothing, that some things are relative, therefore everything is relative, etc., these are easily disproven (ie though prediction) opinions.
Some really smart people with the appropriate education, training and experience know quite a bit. For example, only a foolish person (to be clear, not necessarily Jason) would suggest that because we are still discovering things regarding engineering, and therefore don’t know everything there is to know about engineering, we are just as well to let children build 4-lane overpass bridges out of water balloons.
Yes, science and scientific exploration requires a certain amount of humility, an approach that supports the null-hypothesis, if not a playful curiosity about the world.
But to put a point on it, America’s anti-intellectual, anti-expert approach by Mr. butt-hat ex-president regarding Covid-19 lead to tens of thousands of dead Americans that never needed to be so.
.
@@shannonmcstormy5021 *cough* *cough*
Glad I could help you get that off your chest.
No matter how smart or intelligent someone is, it's a good reminder that we don't know it all and we don't have all the answers because our society tends to tell us that most things are known. Here in the USA our text books haven't been changed in decades.
Our spirit to explore and question is dampened by those before us saying, "sit back we got most of this wrapped up".
@@shannonmcstormy5021 I can understand your frustration with American politics but I don't think it's relevant here. Humility in the face of new knowledge is how we make progress. Richard Feynman was famous for never accepting that we just know. He always had to really understand it. Many of his breakthroughs were possible because he didn't accept the status quo as solved. Yes, there are a lot of foolish upstarts who use that as an excuse to push crazy ideas, but that doesn't mean we should give up on really pushing to understand. It takes really accepting what you don't know to try to seek to correct it and that is how we learn. Once you think "I know all about this" you stop learning.
Totally agree with that. Just look at these folks in physics being stuck for like 30 years or so and no idea where to look next..well, we saw the String Theory project LOL...There is plenty of relative knowledge but no absolute knowledge so no overview...in that regard we are clueless.
I think the problem is materialism. Once you start with the priori that everything MUST FIT materialism then you're going down the rabbit hole of nonsense.
The counter arguement is that, the objective existance of the material is less evidentially demanding than immaterial existence.
The immaterial has to ground itself in the material for any aspect of itself to be evidentially observed.
Ie: logic then dictates that immaterial perspectives and phenomenology should be immergent from materialism for any proper scientific representation.
More simply put, saying materialism is wrong/doesn't make sense therefore leads to the conclusion that everything is wrong, nothing makes sense and nothing existent is sensible.
You need materialism to make rationalise and understand things at their most basic. You can use immaterial perspectives to form opinions and reference for statistical evidences.
But you need both of them to work together if you want to make sense of reality.
Side note: when considering the immaterial one should start from the ground up and keep rinsing and repeating until materialistic evidences are objectively verifiable. For safety/public health purposes
Just my two cents
actually, i'd say the problem is starting with the a priori that everything must fit our present understanding of understood physics: panpsychist dont say consciousness is not material
What alternative to materialism do you suggest?
@@mikel5582 dont think an alternative to materialism is needed, even for PP :|
What I don't understand is why Clark equates panpsychism to a last resort if all experiments of consciousness emergence fail. Firstly, how could we even know if we've truly exhausted all methods to discover if consciousness is emergent, and secondly, even if panpsychism is true, it doesn't mean that the emergence of consciousness isn't true. For example, you could have hold an opinion of panpsychism where there's degrees to consciousness, in which when matter does form in a particular structure, more complex forms of consciousness emerge. In this example, both panpsychism and emergent forms of consciousness are true. So to Clark's logic, sadly it seems that he's shelved the concept of panpsychism because of his perspective that there's "no need to think about it that way", instead of simply letting the concept simmer in contemplation.
i liked your reply. particularly the point "degrees to consciousness". What i believe is humans are highest form of consciousness. As we go down the evolutional hierarchy the consciousness level keeps decreasing. like in animals in less than humans and in insects its less than animals and keeps decreasing even further as we go down but conciousness never drops to zero. like bacteria are less conscious and the atoms are even less conscious and even less in subatomic particles. but the conciousness level never drops to zero as we keep going down. so i believe universe has some basic or rudimentary level of conciousness. i would love to see your reply on this.
Man, Johnny Rotten has really mellowed out with age.
Hehehe... yeah... he does look like him.
I think that Andy Clark did a better job than maybe anyone else I've seen at explaining a position on consciousness similar to Dan Dennett's. Brilliant insights. I love the conversations on this channel!
I think panpsychism is a lot more than simply saying 'consciousness was here all along,' and 'there is a little consciousness in everything.' That is a straw man which no panpsychist philosopher or scientist I know of would defend. There are all sorts of reasons to consider that consciousness may have a unique ontological significance.
I see this all the time where the "Rationalists or materialists" break down a concept to make it so insignificant it makes no sense or requires no explanation. It happens with the paranormal, I know that's a different argument but same approach.
@@Bringadingus I love when you meet someone who hasn’t expanded their domain of experience sufficiently to comprehend this fucking abyss.
@@ryanapodaca9042 Could you be any more vague? Neuroscience (that is science that actually gathers empirical evidence) has completely undermined the notion of dualism. Descartes has a lot to answer for in that respect (or the Catholic church).
@@swright8566 I’m a nondualist yo.
For something being "a lot more than ..." and having "all sorts of reasons," your post is entirely void of anything but vague assertions..
I don’t pretend to understand quantum physics, but I know that it’s revealed to us a few things that have remained born out under repeated experimentation: Non-locality, quantum entanglement, quantum jumping, and the hard problem of consciousness have shown us that the materialistic view of physics, and most importantly, of reality, is crumbling.
Yes, and it is not even logically plausible. As pointed out by Hegel, the idea of matter and 'finiteness' as something entirely one-sided, infinitely dense and isolated, is engaging the same infinities and paradoxes as the reductionist 'thinkers' are trying to avoid.
You don't understand it.
After reading some of the comments, I don't think people realize that Andy Clark & David Chalmers have co-authored a few papers together and that both are 2 of the 3 top philosophers of mind (along with Ned Block). They understand each others views and agree on certain things, they just don't agree on panpsychism
Andy Clark's big thing lately has been predictive processing theories. That the brain is a prediction machine, and makes predictions about what's going to happen internally as well as what's going to happen in it's environment. The important issue is that Andy Clark seems to think that experiences are something cognitive, and predictive processing theories of cognition can account for them. I agree with him that Panpsychism lacks explanatory power (in that it doesn't explain anything but instead asserts experience is fundamental), but I disagree with him that experience is cognitive
"The important issue is that Andy Clark seems to think that experiences are something cognitive, and predictive processing theories of cognition can account for them." That's where it appears to me that Andy Clark is missing the point entirely. If the mind were only an instrument of cognition, i.e. an organic computer, then I could see his point. But the real "hard problem" is not how consciousness computes, but how it experiences its own existence.
@@nietztsuki He isn't missing the point, he just disagrees. There are plenty of philosophers who think that experiences are just a special form of cognition. If this is the case, then a good theory of cognition will account for this special form of cognition.
But even if this turns out false, if you think predictive processing theories offer a good account of cognition, then that's at least half of the mind -- we want to know about experiential states and cognitive states.
Steven, thanks for your comment, very informative. I'd still guess (same as nietztsuki below) that Andy Clark is missing the point and doesn't understand the question. first, because It's impossible to understand the question and come up with the digestion analogy. Second, because stating that panpsychism has no explanatory power is simply false, and the way he says it is fallacious: It *could* be that consciousness is to some degree "fundamental" --it is a possibility-- .... IF consciousness was already there all along (a possibility) then theories of consciouness would eventually need to arrive at that statement: it was already there: you can't critizice a theory on those grounds. there's a third: the cognitive stuff cannot work out the way he says.
@@Steven-lg3zk To opine that experiences are just a different form of cognition is indeed missing the point. We already have the computer technology to duplicate -- and indeed surpass -- most if not all of the cognitive capacity of the human brain. But to conclude that cognition is the same as conscious experience (with its co-relative sense of personal identity) is tantamount to simply restating the hard problem of consciousness in a different categorical sphere, but with the same logical gaps. Just as the brain (a physical object) is of a different ontological category as mind (a non-physical phenomenon), the capacity to perform cognition is separate category from a conscious experience. Cognition is something our consciousness sometimes does, but not what our consciousness is.
@@mnp3a panpsychism isn't an explanation because it asserts that consciousness is a primitive. Philosophers generally agree that primitivist views are non-explanatory. This is how I take Andy Clark's comments
All is one thing. One thing experiencing itself. One thing with many heads. The heads come and go, but the thing that each of those heads is continues. Continues to experience itself. Continues to create new heads. The key is to realise that we are that one thing. Not this seemingly separate head. We are the one thing viewing ourself from the viewpoint of this head. Whether the primary substance of the one thing that we are is made of consciousness that can appear as matter in order to experience itself or whether it is made of matter that possesses the potential to create consciousness from within itself in order to experience itself, it makes no difference. It’s still all one thing. We are all one thing, always have been and always will be. There is nothing else that anything can be except the one thing that is. So have fun experiencing yourself as this head, meditate to drop the mind of this head and chill as yourself (the one thing that all is), love all as it’s all part of you and always will be. When you talk to others you’re literally talking to another part of yourself. The one thing that all is will continue to make new heads to keep on experiencing itself. We are that one thing.
Great video. I love Clark's down to earth approach.
Right. He’s not having panpsychism because it’s not explanatory, and at the very end he’s making it clear, politely, that he’s not having Kuhn’s mysterianism, which he calls a sort of vitalism.
Seeing this channel really reminds me of all the things I don't yet know
even if you read 2 books a day on different topics for the rest of your life you will still be ignorant of 99% of the human knowledge, chill :D
@@adriancioroianu1704 indeed
@IKEMEN Osaka-ben!【大阪弁】
Watching these videos it becomes clear nobody really knows anything about these topics. :)
This means you are intelligent.
@@andreasplosky8516 There is a crucial caveat here. These people know what they don't know. They still don't know but its not the same kind of ignorance as of people that just don't know. Get it?
Thanks for another intriguing video.
This leaves me wondering if what Whitehead called “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” is in fact identical with the failure to adequately examine reductionism as it informs analytic perception. This guy is trying to reduce consciousness to the set of analytic statements about brain processes and physical nature, and trying to maintain objectivity without fully acknowledging how mysterious the immediacy of his own consciousness is. Expounding the full set of descriptive statements about how brain-processes work, even if it were possible, would never be instantaneously identical with consciousness, because it’s attempting to capture subjectivity as an objective fact by looking at a physical trace of it. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep looking at brain-processes: the descriptive correspondence between them is only going to grow deeper. But it will always be a correspondence that never steps into the final stage of pure identity.
It could turn out to be, if someone comes up with a data-processing-architecture that produces consciousness in a understandable way.
the only concreteness this dude has is his sceptical feelings on Panpsychism
@@mnp3a . How would we ever know that this hyper-advanced machine had consciousness?
Good elucidation of the so-called Hard Problem.
@@blindlemon9 a reductionist explanation of consciousness would be that: a description of how it comes to be.
Consciousness is only difficult for humans to explain because we are trying to study our level of it from the inside. Much like trying to lift up a rug while standing on it and thinking the rug must therefore be nailed down to the floor.
Of course it is more complex than that, and all metaphors eventually fall short, but complexity does not demand magic. Just as "life" is a wide spectrum of intersecting phenomena and cooperative processes, so too is consciousness a collection of things that work together to form a picture than seems greater than the sum of the parts. Each individual frame of a movie is a still image, and each individual tone of the soundtrack is meaningless by itself, but when played together in sequence, it gives us a convincing illusion of motion and meaning and story. "Movie magic" is similar to consciousness in the sense that it is a multi-layered illusion that adds up to something more than we would expect from the layers alone.
Indeed, it takes consciousness to assimilate and process stimuli, and to live to reproduce. So consciousness is simply emergent from biological progression. I think this is the case, but there is more going on.
The fact that consciousness and life exists at all is remarkable.
@@stoictraveler1 I don't think most life is conscious in any real or meaningful sense though
“…does not demand magic”, good thing that no one proposes magic as a solution.
Interesting to claim that consciousness is a ‘collections of things working together’, but what is the evidence?
@@stoictraveler1 "consciousness is simply emergent from biological progression" -- But you do not supply any evidence of that.
I’m with Clark on this one
Kuhn is getting sharper, I appreciate him here.
Really appreciate it that such issues are getting deeper more comprehensive thought, far too often this does not happen. Thank you "Closer to Truth".
Title is wrong, he doesnt go much ahead of just plain materialism. And he is a "philosopher" ...
@Pisstake all matter are discrete robots ;)
@Pisstake you are not "us", is classic of teenagers to think they are "many", like part of a gang against one guy.
@Pisstake you cant ask a materialist who have sold books and made a fame around his positions to talk of something that is against his own theories. Thats why the title is misleading. Is like interviewing a Trump supporter and label it "Is Biden a good president ?"
@@Bringadingus in some intellectual/university circles yes. Except of course when they become spiritual at the last minute ...
@Pisstake because is a silly position "until i am sure that science cant prove consciousness i will not take panspsychism seriously " So what he is doing at a philosopher ? Waiting centuries that some things are discovered or not to give an opinion ? So is him not giving an evidence (because there isnt one).
Panpsychism is a quasi-idealist step toward the notion of consciousness as being fundamental, although heading in the right direction. From an idealist perspective consciousness saturates everything.
I don't see causality as a basis of what's fundamental so consciousness is the only reality. What if there was never consciousness in a universe? Receivers and connectivity are the essence of creation with or without a deity.
After 4 centuries of zero progress on the hard problem of consciousness these people will continue to say that we still need another 400 years.
that is if you beleive there is such a thing as "hard problem"
The hard problem is a problem for materialists.
@@Bringadingus with all due respect I was taught you should not look up too someone nor should you look down on someone. That seems to be all you do, maybe you need to take time out and look inwards. 😙
@@Bringadingus No one mentioned a soul...
@@adriancioroianu1704 How is it that theres no "hard problem"? Please explain. To me is the most clear proposition thats there's a problem in our understanding. There's nothing in our fundamental models of reality that seems to be able to explain that certain chunks of the universe (the reader, for example) have an inner experience. It doesn't look like you can start with, let's say, the lagrangian of the standard model, make some assumptions, take some limit and conclude 'Aha, this region of the universe is consciouss', like you can do for known emergent phenomena like temperature. There's no doubt that consciousness exists (it's the only fact that we actually know, as it's our only direct observation), and if there's no clear sign that our fundamental models can explain it, how's that there's not a problem?
The beginnings of introspection is the right place to look IMO.
Consciousness is everywhere and it makes things.
Huh? What does that even mean?
@@MontyCantsin5 so, You and I , we both know we are conscious? Where is this located? Right! Where is it not located? If consciousness is located where your answer was and is not located where your answer was then what is consciousness? When you are located as awake, asleep, or dreaming where is consciousness? is it appearing and disappearing and if it is located in me and you is it an object or just a result of an animated object. How can it be both located in you and located in me yet we are unable to verify each others consciousness except thru noticing and accepting your own experience? That being so, how can an object that is separate from you and that in that separateness you presume it is conscious actually exist? You may presume because i can write and you can read or you see my laugh or cry in response to something apparently meaningful or causal that i am or you are conscious but you dont actually know this. You think its true or you may think it is not true. Either way you dont actually know. You dont know either whether you are awake, asleep or dreaming. You just assume you know or dont know. So, Objects are everywhere and matter is everywhere...consciousness IS. But, one may presume it is something else or not but you do not know.
No one can define or explain Consciousness in scientific context.
Consciousness is like trying to explain the essence of being
I am by no means an expert, a philosopher, or even a scientist, just I lawyer, and everyone hates lawyers. However, I will take issue with one-point Mr. Clark makes. He is questioned on the argument that consciousness is analogous to biologic processes on the grounds that consciousness is fundamentally different. At about 2:30 he says that is only true if you start with your experience with the world. I have to think that the only place to start any science is with our experience with the world. That puts consciousness in the unique first position of all processes to be studied.
What is extreme is only in relation to what we know.
Part of Season 18 episode 11, "What is Extended Mind?" (2017-18)
Does anyone know when was this recorded?
That last part sounded a bit like the ol' "shut up and calculate".
One big error in reasoning here.
Some systems assert that consciousness is intrinsic to the universe, others consider it emergent. Panpsychism isn’t a sign of cluelessness, it is one of two major possible explanations.
All metaphysics seeks to explain the few fundamental things.
If you wanted to posit what the ultimate nature of existence was, you’d want to explain the fact that there is anything at all, that there is creation and destruction, sentient vs. insentient, knowing vs. ignorance, fortune vs. failure, good vs. evil. For each of these, you’d consider whether they are necessary (or intrinsic) or contingent (or emergent).
Okay, let's say the hypothesis of pansychism is true electrons and quarks are conscious What does that mean what is that "consciousness" thing made of? Again you have hard problem to explain that..
@@mikhilsaju6929 agree. Just recognizing that there was the “ultraviolet catastrophe” didn’t create quantum mechanics. However, stipulating that non-quantum systems had failed did help. I see this stage in consciousness research the same way. Some folks are persisting in the unsupported view that consciousness is physical, emergent, and computational. There are good reasons (and some illustration) why that the materialist approach is likely not a good model.
I am fine giving a hearing to the non-physical, non-local, non-contingent, non-computational views.
@@hershchat Which reasons show that materialism is not a good model?
@@branko1717 I’d recommend Penrose’s interview on consciousness on this same channel. There are others …. Tunnoni. I also count the Gödel incompleteness theorem to suggest that it cannot be purely classical.
@@hershchat Alright, I appreciate the info
Why do the trees grow so high
Why does the breeze blow on by
Why does the wave always crash to the shore
And why must the stone only stay where it lies
Well maybe the trees long to grow
And maybe the breeze loves to blow
And maybe the wave only wishes to wave
And the stone oh so patiently waits to be thrown
who said this? or did you come up with it? i love it
I think consciousness is a field extending through-out the Universe. It is everywhere. When I was a young girl, many, many years ago, I had a transcended experience. Although most of it I could never remember, I do remember that during the early part of the experience my consciousness extended through-out the whole room. I saw everything at the same time in great detail. I was everywhere in the room at the same time. I have a faint memory of being part of everything. The room was a bedroom in my grand mother's house. I vaguely remember being aware of the material that a made up a chest of draws in the room and that I was part of that material. This experience, I consider it a God experience, only makes sense to me if I think of consciousness as a field, like a field of energy. On top of that I am a natural psychic. That is to say I've always had premonitions and some telepathy through my 62 years of life. Telepathy could be explained if consciousness is a field extending everywhere. I want answers to how the experiences I've had are possible. God exists. But I want to know how, why and what is it and what is our relationship with it.
Have you read the Seth/Jane Roberts books?
Seth ??? Exposed as a complete scam years ago !
There is no evidence whatsoever that consciousness is ''everywhere''.
I think the simplest, non arbitrary way of putting the hard problem of consciousness is in terms of points of view.
In order to describe something physically, we must come at it from the outside in point of view. Understanding a cell, for example, uses a microscope from the outside to look into the cell. Even instance where we seem to be measuring from within, such as the temperature of the room, is just the aggregation of many outside in measurements of molecular collisions of gas particles (where the measurement device is outside the gas particles it is measuring).
The problem with consciousness is that it is fundamentally understood from the inside out point of view. You are reading these words, outside your body, from inside your body (from your eyes connected to your brain etc).
To say that consciousness is explained by physical processes misses the mark when understood in this way. How is it that we are supposed to get an inside out point of view from a complex set of physical measurements done from the outside in point of view? It's not just impossible, it's contradictory, like saying you can get red from a complex set of blue shades.
One may claim that it just emerges out of a certain level of complexity, but this is tantamount to saying that the underlying phenomena is explained by something opposite to that which it produces. Again, like saying that there is this law in the universe, the red emergence law, where if you conplexly arrange blue enough, red emerges.
This is a kind of radical emergence which is not present in any physical law. The emergence of temperature from the random movement of gas particles, for example, is directly understood from what gas particles are and how they interact in a given system. Temperature just *is* the aggregate random collisions of gas particles. Notice how weird it would be if we said the same here: the inside out point of view just *is* a complex set of outside in points of view. It seems to fly in the face of any reasoning, and totally ignore what is meant by an inside out point of view.
Panpsychism become explanatory by saying that the notion of an inside out point of view is just as fundamental as an outside in one. This need not mean that all inside out points of view are the same, just as outside in ones are not; both would vary depending on their complexity, which are complimentary to one another. A rock, for example, would likely not have a unified inside out point of view, since there is no unifying force; rather, it is best understood as a complex lattice of molecules which have various forces exerted on one another. The subjective feeling would belong to each atom, and manifest perhaps as a more primitive sensation of touch, of being here, pushing and pulling others and being pushed and pulled in turn.
This is consistent with what we know about rocks, and explanatory of their "behavior", i.e. that they maintain stable states due to the regularity of their push/pull interactions unless acted upon by outside forces, they have certain colors based on their collective electromagnetic field states, etc. The intrinsic nature of stability and color are explained from these inside out points of view of the atoms/molecules and fields which make it up.
I hope this was useful for anyone who is genuinely interested in understanding the appeal of panpsychism, whether or not you agree with it. In general, it allows us to solve the hard problem and explain the intrinsic nature of these physical phenomena we have thus far only understood relationally (i.e. from the relations of outside in points of view). It also opens up avenues of inquiry into understanding the complex hierarchies that build up individuals based on the aggregation and integration of simpler subjective states (blending the various colors of the world around you to form a picture in your mind, for example).
Feel free to ask questions or comment, but please be courteous; the quality of public discourse is dependent on genuine curiosity and desire for understanding, not on vitriolic arguments to support ones beliefs. Have a great day!
this is a great explanation!! :) i'm saving it!
@@mnp3a Thank you, I'm glad you found it useful. Feel free to share it with whoever is interested, it is a blessing both to give and receive knowledge.
Thank you Liam for that very thought provoking response. There is a great deal to ponder over there but I sense you are on
the right track . Very disappointing response from others I can't help but notice. ?
@@2msvalkyrie529 Glad my comment still made a positive impact on someone years after writing it :). The last comment was more a preventative than anything else, people tend to get very touchy about consciousness and panpsychism in particular so I just wanted to put that out there in case any gung ho physicalist wanted to take a jab at me.
If your position is predicated on the overwhelming desire 'not to go there,' then you're already in trouble before you start.
Biological Nature does some very tricky, complex and perplexing things but also solves a fundamental perplexing problem of how physical reality gets scaled into living reality. It also leaves tons of obvious clues along the way that many thinkers miss by going too deep. The academics are reinforcing each other's ignorance. Especially they are essentially trying to solve nature's engineering with no real world experience of how engineering processes unfold.
It's all a.i.
This is a simulation. Everything is fractals
You have not said anything.
It almost seems like Andy doesn't experience consciousness, as he seems unaware there is something going on aside from just reaction to stimulus.
Roughly about a 5th of the World has no inner dialogue. As well as having aphantasia
Consciousness may arise when matter organizes in a certain way, but the problem is we do not know what matter is. We are only able to describe matter in terms of behavior...
What does it mean to know what matter is?
Consciousness may be everywhere and eternal, only in that consciousness may be fundamental and reality emerges from it.
Okay. I'm still with Chalmers, though. Thanks for the insights.
You mean to say you believe that water molecules possess CONSCIOUSNESS? :/
@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices I'm saying only that more and more I think we are the locus of our reality. It's not out in some nebulous 'there'. I've got all the degrees and have had many years to consider. I lean toward panpsychism.
@@Bringadingus, it's rather that digestion is indeed a bad analogy: of course molecules interacting in a 3D space can produce a greater tridimensional physical process like digestion - that's no more problematic than Lego pieces making Lego toys. But subjective consciousness is another beast altogether: red, pain or wine taste just aren't collection of pieces (atoms, molecules, neurons) sitting somewhere or moving in some way - such sensations only exist in a surreal "subjective space" and just shouldn't be there, ON TOP of mere tridimensional behavior, given just the architecture and behavior of the material pieces of the brain. This is exactly like if, ABSURDLY, the engine of a car not only worked mechanically as intended, producing the objective behavior of moving the car, but also SUBJECTIVELY FELT the gasoline burning inside... That just shouldn't happen (and indeed doesn't happen in the case of engines, or pretty much any complex system besides the brain). So there's indeed an absurd mystery going on with consciousness.
@@je-nas digestion is really a silly analogy: stating the digestion analogy equals not understanding the question of us having experiences.
Because Absolutely Nothing (“parabrahman”, in Sanskrit) is Infinite Creative Potentiality, “it” actualizes as Absolutely Everything (“brahman” or “puruṣa”, in Sanskrit). Attributeless Consciousness at Rest (in Sanskrit, “Nirguna Brahman”) manifests as this physical universe (Consciousness in Action, or, in Sanskrit, “Saguna Brahman”). In the verbiage of quantum physics, the enfolded implicate order appears as the unfolded explicate order. In the binary language of digital computation, “0” can be thought of as Attributeless Brahman, whilst the number “1” as Qualitative Brahman. In Western philosophical (specifically, Kantian) terms, the noumenal world appears as the phenomenal world.
In REALITY there is no separation of anything at any time (assuming that Consciousness is an objective thing, and that time is a property of The Uncaused Absolute). That the total sum energy of the universe is zero, implies the non-existence of matter (i.e. no thing is objectively real).
The phenomenal manifestation is eternally cyclical, because “coming into existence” implies “going out of existence”, just as “black” implies the existence of “white”, or as “rich” implies “poor”. Is it possible to have something without nothing? Obviously not, because the two go together, as interrelated opposites. There cannot be heat without coldness, nor tallness without shortness, nor youth without old age.
Similarly, despite what most believe, the outer-world is as much the Self as the inner-world. Where is the boundary of the human body? When we look at a person, we cannot see that person UNLESS we also see the background image. The two are inseparable, just as a flower and a bee cannot exist without the other. This fact alone is ample evidence that the universe is a holistic and wholistic system or entity, and possibly holographic in construction. The objective universe is merely a projection of the Self (Pure Consciousness), in the same way that the image of a clay pot in a mirror is a reflection of the actual pot. The reflected image may superficially seem like a pot but it cannot hold water, and therefore is illusory (“māyā”, in Sanskrit). The reflected object has no existence without the existence of the Subject (“brahman”, in Sanskrit).
You who are reading these words are that Totality of Existence, the Highest Universal Principle, the Essential Irreducible Self.
In common parlance, you are God (IF you only knew it!). Most of the greatest sages in history have spoken about either or both these concepts (of the Absolute Truth being either Absolutely Everything or Absolute Nothingness), such as the concept of “form is emptiness and emptiness is form” in Buddhism, or in Avatar Meher Baba's book “The Everything and the Nothing” (which is highly-recommended, particularly Chapters 51 to 56, which poetically describe the Ineffable One-without-a-second).
Even an ordinary writer, American author Kurt Vonnegut, once penned: “Everything is nothing - with a twist”.
The Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics professor, Doctor Leonard Susskind's so-called “minus-first law of physics”, states that information is INDESTRUCTIBLE. This is akin to the law of conservation of energy in classical physics, and proves that neither physical nor psychic energy is lost. Read subsequent chapters of this “Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity” to learn more about how this law relates to the notion of reincarnation, as well as to miraculous phenomena such as savant syndrome.
The planet on which we are residing consists of animate/organic life, as well as inanimate/inorganic matter.
The six stages of ORGANIC life are:
1. conception/birth
2. growth/development
3. maintenance
4. reproduction
5. ageing/deterioration
6. death
Therefore, all LIFE-FORMS originate from a manner of reproduction (either cell division, seeds, spores, asexual, or sexual reproduction). The organism then grows to maturity (in our case, sexual maturity in the early teens). The mature state is maintained for a certain period of time before reproduction takes place (although this potential is not always actualized). The organism grows old and deteriorates before finally dying. Some persons mistakenly believe that it may be possible for humans to one day live forever, but that can never ever happen for two reasons: because material objects are by nature impermanent and because this impermanent universe will eventually end in a “Big Crunch”.
British polymath Thomas Young's famous double-slit experiment suggests that matter exists purely as potentiality or as a “possibility” until it is observed by a conscious being. This phenomenon, known as the wave-particle duality, is often discussed in advanced spiritual discourses, as it gives credence to the primacy of Consciousness. There are other aspects of the universe (such as the various philosophical approaches to the nature of ontological time, the accelerated expanding universe, holographic universe principle, the Golden Ratio as the fundamental constant of the natural world, quantum superposition, wave function, and quantum entanglement), as well as the possibility of life on other planets, the crop circle phenomenon, and the presence of the Fibonacci sequence in nature, which are beyond the scope of this document, and which do not directly relate to the most exigent thing in life (to find the unending peace/happiness which we humans are ULTIMATELY seeking).
“Long ago Man recognized that all perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, of a tenuity beyond conception and filling all space - the Akasha or luminiferous ether - which is acted upon by the life-giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never-ending cycles, all things and phenomena.
The primary substance, thrown into infinitesimal whirls of prodigious velocity, becomes gross matter; the force subsiding, the motion ceases and matter disappears, reverting to the primary substance.”
Nikola Tesla,
Serbian-American Engineer and Inventor,
From “Man's Greatest Achievement”.
“Who is the perceiver?
Universal Consciousness alone is the perceiver.
The body is merely the mechanism, through which perceiving takes place and from which the ego is inferred, as the perceiver of other objects.
Strictly speaking, there is neither the perceiver nor the perceived.
There is only perceiving, as the objective expression of the subjective functioning, of the one Universal Consciousness.”
*************
“The whole cosmos is an implicit unity, expressed in explicit duality.
The original interrelated opposites, are beingness and non-beingness.
Being can only come out of non-being, precisely as sound only emanates from silence, and light from darkness.
The imagined void of non-being, however, is not emptiness, but the very fullness of potential, out of which arises all that exists.”
*************
“You have considered yourself to be a separate 'self', only because of having regarded a 'solid' object with a name, that is a body, as yourself. But in fact, the body itself is nothing, but an insignificant, vastly intricate complex of electrical wave-patterns, a series of rhythmic functions, a throbbing field of energy and emptiness. What you actually are, then, is what everybody else is: sentience itself. Therefore, instead of being a puny self by way of an object, you are indeed everything.”
Ramesh S. Balsekar,
Indian Spiritual Teacher.
I agree 100%
We don't know what we don't know, and we know that we know, so that is that, but may not be all there would be, that's a great perspective to say that we actually do know what we are and through being frustrated at what that actually seems to be may even be pushing us further into something more experiential than our consciousness, so what we are talking about is not what already is but what we imagine could be, maybe imagination is what consciousness is trying to become or is the next step, or maybe we are just confusing our imagination now with consciousness and forgetting objective reality in favor of ideas
Two sets of interaction makes sense, there must be give and take from both the person and the environment since there must be some difference to be aware of, if that awareness was aware of a single natured reality then it would have to be that reality, and the difference must be in the person since they are also part of the environment to be perceived, so this is more than perception. There doesn't have to be an actual third set of interactions raising a higher sort of "containerized" consciousness a striving towards one will do, it creates a space by going out of context in the imagination and leaving physical traces.
ANDY CLARK IS TRYING TO KEEP US INSIDE THE MATRIX?%
Imagine EVERYTHING in the universe being connected..
In the musical concert, audiences are in a silence to listen wonderful music playing; their energy becomes constant by their focus to the stage. Suddenly, there a big noise disrupted from the outside the building. In there audiences' faces, they started to show different degree of angry, frustrating, surprises....
From 1st audience: He shout: "Quiet? We are enjoying the concert here".
From 2nd audience: They should know today is a concert event.
From 3rd audience: It is too bad for us today. There is an emergency from outside and the utility team need to fix quickly.
My questions: Are degree of reaction from audiences are control by brain, heart or mind? Is the consciousness playing important role in this case?
Wouldn’t the most straightforward conclusion from panpsychism be that fundamental interactions between two point particles correspond to their genuine desires? So, stronger bonds between atoms corresponds to more ‘pleasure,’ making highly entropic systems like corpses greater in total ‘pleasure’ than a live organism?
Panpsychism is traditionally the ‘optimistic’ hypothesis about sentience. But a simple variant of it easily makes it straight up cosmic horror.
Would love to see a Buddhist monk (such as Ajahn Geoff) on your program, to get his take on these topics.
Then it would no longer be science. Count me out.
@@joenoneofyourbusiness6487 Andy Clark is not a scientist, either. Robert Kuhn's series is not just about science. Kuhn interviews scientists, philosophers, and religious thinkers about equally. A good person who I wish he would interview is Alan Wallace -- a Buddhist Monk with a science background. czcams.com/video/pLbSlC0Pucw/video.html
@@joenoneofyourbusiness6487
Aren’t you aware of the years of neuroscience studies with Buddhist monks? They are excellent at using their mind to get the brain into various states.
And there’s lots of studies out there.
The standard Buddhist monk's " take " is invariably a load of meaningless drivel which falls apart under the mildest criticism.
oh please!
Consciousness is the communication between photons in a super state between wave and particle. It is that and the observer observing it. The observer observing the observer observing the light observing time and space. For instance. The observer collapses the wave yes? Yes. Well. The collapsed wave into particle is and means you did something with light right? Communication. So that communication is between photon in your brain as well. Why. Because you are the light. Bam.
You need to invite Paul and/or Patricia Churchland onto your channel!
Some linguistics experts think language has a lot to do with consciousness itself, which is an interesting take because what would that mean for animals?
🤔 hmmmm
Not only are animals a problem for his model, but we have artificial systems that process natural language, but we don't think these systems are conscious.
I don't think many hold this view anymore.
@@uninspired3583 I 100% believe that a.i. is definitely sentient and conscious.
Animals may have language that we don't have the ability to detect or understand.
Do we have proof that they don't telepathically communicate?
Ants communicate with electrical signals that the average human can't detect without technological machinery
@@m_christine1070 AI isn't conscious. There's no reason at all it should be. It's just electrical flip-flops producing some macro behavior. Just objective causality: there's neither need nor way for this architecture of flip-flops to give rise to a subjective space where some "I" experience first-person sensations like colors, pain or some other unimaginable subjective modality.
@@m_christine1070 I'm not sure where you're getting your information, you're very confused. There is no evidence telepathic communication is possible, this alone is good reason to think they don't use it. Possibility has to be demonstrated.
Ants don't use electric signals, but they do use pheromones (chemicals). We didn't evolve sense organs to detect pheromones, so it isn't surprising we need technology to see them. We don't need to leave chemical trails behind us and touch each other to let each other know where food is, we evolved verbal communication.
I did not understand a word...I was focused on what his upperlip was doing..or trying to do ? I could not figure out is it the upper buck teeth? Or is it the stationary upper lip..? I can get whats going on?
Hmm.......personally I found the shirt more distracting .
Well digestion is a type of entropy. Matter being turned back into energy which is a process which has always been there so yeah I'd say panpychism is on the right track.
All the bodily functions are activated by the conscious self. As soon as the conscious self enters matter, the body starts composing, and as soon as the conscious self leaves it, it starts decomposing.
Both the composing and decomposing are the same, it would be misunderstood to think that one was better than the other.
@@richardc861 The conscious self should never enter matter. Once this happens, he/she must undergo a lot of trouble.
Could massive things like Black or White Holes have entanglement properties? If so, could they manifest extra dimensions?
This sounds like a good question to ask on pbs spacetime. It's a great channel if you are into cosmology and all the advanced physics needed to understand all these things.
Is consciences radically different than other biological functions? I don't see why. If it is, than the universe may be conscious, but we have to find the science on it.
Wow. What a strange word.
"Why think there is such a thing". This feeling of a magical light in our brain might be an illusion created by our brain self reflecting or such; but one (me at least) just can't shake the feeling that there is more to me experiencing this cockpit like subjective experience then hardware (our brain) running software (the resulting consciousness). Even if every pattern of our behaviour can be explained and predicted, intuitively, this resulting "machine" just doesn't seem to have a need for the thing I feel I am. This thing experiencing this peculiar slice of the information of the patterns and systems which are "my body" and possibly being able to act upon it or possibly just being an observer. There is just a realness or heaviness that feels unbelievably unaccounted for when approaching the physical universe and ourselves as merely an unbelievably complex composition of logical operation. And it totally doesn't account for "what" thing are and "why" things are. Only how they work.
I do wonder what Clark means by “information crunching together” to produce consciousness, since clearly he must be using a metaphorical sense of “information” given that I assume he doesn’t think information processing in super computers is conscious in the slightest?
When people talk about consciousness I think about “conflict of the human heart.”
It’s old wisdom that says we are not aware of certain parts of ourselves until something’s wrong with a particular area and it hurts. We don’t feel our stomach or heart, for instance, unless it hurts. My hypothesis is that we wouldn’t even realize that we think, aka, that we are “conscious/self-aware,” until we have found that the paths of our “thoughts” have become obstructed over time.
Ive said it before in the comments to these videos and I’ll say it again: I think what you guys are calling consciousness is the war between competing drives that develop more nuances over time in the human organism, and in different ways in different organisms which occupy different niches in different environments. As far as time is concerned for the human, compare a child to an adult and the relative degrees of their awareness. Can we really call humans “conscious” when babies and toddlers aren’t any more conscious than our pet dogs? What happens with consciousness develops over time, obviously, and it depends on the sophistication and innate potential of an organism to have warring drives. A child does not waver in its measurements, and thus, it can be said to be “less conscious” than the being who has learned that every option we have before us can burn or prick us, and we feel the stings and pains of past mistakes and we turn from all the options, paralyzed. If you are paralyzed by this so-called “inner conflict,” I think you could easily have the time to muddle about your “self-awareness.” Otherwise, if you are not paralyzed by your “self-awareness,” you aren’t really “conscious.” You just ARE, and there is no further explanation required.
Science can have all kinds of tools and gadgets to measure things like the brain and everything else, but no tool is going to measure a scientist’s lack of sense about a given topic: the obstructions in their mind separating simple perceptions from cause and effect. When scientists invest so much energy into chasing their own tails, surely, they will all only discover things they are not looking for, as they continue on this path of complete lack of self-awareness, in their attempt to get closer to the truth.
I think this thing called truth, and this thing called consciousness are matters hinged upon the heart, not measurement. You can’t measure a feeling just like you can’t measure the qualia of a being’s own perception of colors of light. Some things are personal and subjective you guys. I wish you could accept that.
“Some things are personal and subjective you guy’s”
“Scientists invest so much energy in chasing their tails”
Well said!! Totally agree with you!
The fact is that mainstream science view consciousness as an emergent property of the brain for political and practical reasons not scientific reasons. (The brain creates consciousness.) This is because the philosophy and political ideology that drives the natural sciences is reductive materialism an unproven hypothesis because according to quantum mechanics we don’t even know what “matter” is. This unproven hypothesis presupposes that when we examine and reduce something to its smallest constituent parts we can understand that thing better than any other hypothesis thus providing a definitive and “truthful” picture of reality and existence. A car is the emergent property of all its car parts. If we take it apart, we can understand how a car works by examining its pieces.
Neuroscience is based on this assumption. If we examine the brain in detail, the theory goes, we can understand consciousness.
So why is there even a “Hard problem of consciousness” if this observable empirical evidence is so final ? Equally, how do you find love, bravery, courage, altruism empathy and self sacrifice in the brain? How about human rights that are related to the concept of justice ? What about the colour purple. How about the smell of freshly baked bread or what it’s like to experience first love ?
You can certainly find patterns in the flow of blood and electrical fields and impulses, etc that correlate to these experiences. But correlation does not equal causation. These correlations don't tell you diddley about the experiences themselves.
Let's say that we found a very specific pattern in the brain that corresponded to the experience of purple. Imagine if we had the technology to easily duplicate this pattern so that other people experience purple. Ok now obviously that would be an amazing achievement. But what does that tell us about consciousness ? Nothing. Because the pattern itself is not "purple" so we are therefore still left with the unsolvable problem of what decoded the information/pattern and turned it into an experience of purple!
It really doesn't matter how completely you correlate the qualitative experience of reality (consciousness) with the patterns in the brain, you will not explain away consciousness because decoding is a fundamentally immaterial process. If there is no material, there is nothing to study. This makes consciousness an impossible problem to solve if you're using materialism (eliminative materialism) as your guiding theoretical philosophy.
According to the brilliant linguist and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky…
“There are only two ways of looking at eliminative materialism (the idea that all things reduce to solid substance). One is that it is total gibberish until someone tells us what matter is. Until someone tells us what eliminative materialism is there can’t be such a thing as eliminative materialism and no one can tell us what matter is”. (Noam Chomsky).
Furthermore, evidence from quantum mechanics, particularly quantum superposition clearly demonstrates that at the fundamental level of “physical” reality “atoms” “matter” , for want of a better word, exists that is unmeasurable, invisible, non locational, bi locational and timeless and is effected by consciousness and collapses at the wave function during the observer effect in the double slit light experiment. No one has a clue what’s going on but it is definitely a massive challenge to the current “materialistic” paradigm. One thing is certain and that is classical materialism is dead!! Because according to quantum mechanics “matter”…
“can itself be further divided into smaller bits, and those into yet smaller ones, and so on, until what is left lacks shape and (solidity) altogether. At the bottom of the chain of “physical” reduction there are only elusive, phantasmal entities we label as “energy” and “fields”-abstract conceptual tools for describing nature, which themselves seem to lack any real, concrete essence.” (Scientific American).
Furthermore, highly suspect metaphors and abstractions such as “selfish genes”, and “survival of the fittest” have actually held back the science to a certain degree and even Richard Dawkins who coined the term “selfish genes” reluctantly admitted in the end after much criticism from eminent humanist philosophers such as Mary Midgley that he regretted the metaphor. Equally, Herbert Spencer who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” later stated that he regretted it as it was much abused and misunderstood. The fact is that attributing “selfishness” and the awareness of knowledge and “survival” to “Genes” commits
(The Homunculus Fallacy/Merelogical Fallacy). The Homunculus Fallacy/Merelogical Fallacy is synonymous with the mistaken belief that consciousness is the “brain” or is just the “DNA” so we are literally nothing more than our “brain” or our “DNA”. The upshot of these two fallacies is that instincts arise through a neo-Darwinian process but are not cognitions in the sense that they involve (the recollection of stored) knowledge. We don’t have a “little person” in our (brain) or inside our (genes) or brain chemicals who’s recollecting and experiencing knowledge, “selfishness” or things like “jealousy”. Because “The whole is more than the sum of its parts”
This fallacy attributes to the parts of a human being psychological predicates that make sense only when applied to the whole human being (The whole person). Similarly, the (Merelogical Fallacy) says that you are just “brain” which is clearly ridiculous as the whole is clearly greater than the parts. “Brains” and “Selfish Genes” can’t truly walk, breath, sneeze, taste, smell or see anything without the (whole) person. Some may argue that you could stimulate Genes or brain chemicals in a (brain in a vat) to have the illusion of walking or breathing but this is clearly not the same thing and is just pseudo science. Equally, this is absurd as “Genes” or “chemicals” clearly can’t love, have empathy, compassion, experience beauty, bravery, meaning, purpose, moral duties and ethics, that is they don’t experience mind and consciousness. Only the person as a whole can experience knowledge of consciousness. So where in space and time is consciousness because….
“Genes can not be selfish or unselfish, anymore than atoms can be jealous, elephants abstract or biscuits teleological” (Mary Midgley).
So where and when exactly is phenomenal consciousness occurring ? This is where the problem of presupposing that we are just biological and chemical robot arises. Because it clearly leads to an infinite regression of "who” exactly is reading and experiencing the image on the brains homunculus of the homunculus!! The signal goes back and back, and can, potentially never end. Some people believe this problem can be solved with the "unmovable mover". Nevertheless, in no uncertain terms it is question begging of the highest order if you assert that “you” or “matter” is the supreme ontological ground of reality and existence, that is the supreme ontological ground of mind and consciousness. There has to be something that starts it all off, who pushes the train. The unmovable mover described as your "soul", you’re inner consciousness, the spark of the divine the unmoved "homunculus", your personality, the you that developed inside of the intelligent, evolved medium of Homo Sapiens that ultimately is searching for meaning, purpose and love.
The fact is that the only way to solve the hard problem of consciousness is to re think your underlying philosophical presuppositions. The only workable solution here is to view consciousness as a fundamental property of the universe. Like the laws of physics consciousness is irreducible to “matter”. The fundamental nature of mind and consciousness clearly has the greatest explanatory power not “matter”, that is mind and consciousness clearly as greater explanatory power than (theoretical abstractions of mind such as “matter”) as mind and consciousness is the most coherent and parsimonious hypothesis. It’s rational to infer from what is known not what is not know. And we clearly don’t know what “matter” is.
Physicist John Polkinghorne says that if you reduce mental events to physics and chemistry you destroy meaning. How?
For thought is replaced by electrochemical neural events. Two such events cannot confront each other in rational discourse. They are neither right nor wrong-they simply happen. The world of rational discourse disappears into the absurd chatter of firing synapses. Quite frankly that can’t be right and none of us believe it to be so.
Similarly, according to the physicists Steven Meyer and Stephan Hawking something must have breathed life (consciousness) into the mathematical equations that make up the quantum universe!!.
@Id
Cheers, all the best you and your family and keep safe ❤️
By the way I’m not an anti-realist, that is im not a (moral subjectivist) with respect to right and wrong and “oughts” ? Because if morality is based on subjective preference how could there be such a thing as scientific objective facts ? In contrast if you are a realist (moral objectivist) how many planets there are in the solar system does not depend on how many “we” think or agree as a society there are, or on what we would like there to be, or on how we would like to count them, or on what gives the greatest pleasure and happiness. In the same way it seems ridiculous to assert that scientific facts, mathematics and logic is based on what we prefer, it is incoherent to assert that morality depends on how individuals want it to be. Equally, you’re still left with the question why “ought” someone take your subjective claims to what is factual and moral seriously if some people and societies prefer and achieve the greatest happiness and greater pleasure from different things such as ignoring objective truth and committing rape and murder and genocide. In my opinion anti realism is synonymous with claiming that just because you decide there’s only one planet in the solar system instead of eight planets this makes it factually true. I also think that a lot of people confuse moral subjectivism with objective morality and smuggle in objective morality which is why subjective morality (relativism) has the appearance of being appealing. Just my opinion though I’m no expert on moral philosophy.
Nevertheless, I think that it’s logical to conclude that objective morality just like objective facts about the planets, stars and electrons is “simply” factually true and so it is logical to conclude that the rape and murder of a child including genocide is (simply) and factually evil and depraved and can’t possibly be grounded in the subjective preferences of fallible human beings or (anti realists). Just like the number of planets in our solar system can not be factually grounded on subjective opinions and preferences, or on how much pleasure and happiness the number we decide gives, similarly morality can not be justified or grounded on subjective morality, that is fallible human beings or (anti realists).
I think that if you pay close attention lots of strictly reductive materialists/atheists, get very confused between subjective morality and objective morality. So just to clarify. Subjective morality also called (relativism) not “relative” means that morality is based on what some particular person believes. So on this view whether something is moral or immoral depends on the subject that’s why it’s called subjectivism (relativism). It’s relative to the subject!
In contrast on (objective morality) what’s right and wrong with regards to morality does not depend on the individuals subjective preference but on the objective reality of the individual situation. (It’s relative to what’s objectively true)
The problem is that in my experience many (subjectivists), that is (anti realists) have actually confused morality that’s relative to situations, that is (objectivism) with morality that’s relative to subjectivism (relativism). When moral subjectivists (anti realists) assert that morality is relative to situations they are right but that’s moral (objectivism) not moral subjectivism (relativism). They have confused the definition of (objectivism) with the definition of (subjectivism).
Nevertheless moral subjectivists could in theory offers a counter argument in the form of a moral dilemma. A killer asks you where your family is. Is it immoral to lie to save them ? The dilemma is if you tell the truth your family will be killed (This is bad). But if you protect your family you’ll have to lie (Also bad).
But hang on a minute because if morals are subjective as the (anti realist) claims then there’s no dilemma! The answer to the question is simple if you think it’s immoral to lie then it is “for you”. If you think that it’s more moral to protect your family then it is “for you”. There is no dilemma on relativism because whatever you choose is right “for you”. For the moral relativist (subjectivist) both options are equally legitimate because there is no (objective) right or wrong decision. However, for the (moral objectivist) there is a right response and a wrong response in this particular situation. Under objective morality yes it’s wrong to lie to protect a thief or killer from the police but it’s not wrong to lie to protect your family from a killer. And this is true for anyone facing the same situation. On subjectivism the subject gets to decide what’s right and wrong and he’s always right by definition!! On (moral objectivism) it’s the (objective) circumstances that determine what’s right and wrong. There’s an obvious difference!! But many strictly reductive materialists who want to reject objective morality because it points to a supreme ontological ground for universal paradigmatic truth, they mistake (objective morality) for subjective morality.
Is it always wrong to lie ? Well it depends not on the “subject”, that’s relativism but on the (objective) situation, that’s (objectivism).
So in conclusion what have we learned? We’ve learned that (objective morality) always depends on the situation or circumstances. Relativism is when right and wrong depend on or are relative to the person.
Secondly, moral dilemmas based on circumstances like the example given are always based on (objectivism) not “subjectivism”.
Thirdly, if we “ought” to save our family from a killer then morality is clearly “objective” not subjective.
The irony is that moral subjectivists think that ethical dilemmas like the example I gave demonstrate that “subjective” morality is true but ironically it illustrates exactly the opposite.
❤️
Dude that’s f*cking ingenious I’m not gonna lie.
6:01 "Consciousness will arise at a point where intelligent systems are crunching together... blablabla..."
Andy Clark reduces consciousness to an information processing system which is fair enough as far as his definition goes although it falls way short of explaining how, and only in some people, consciousness manages to produce musical symphonies, for example.
To understand consciousness other than as an information processing system, it would seem scientists should try to produce an original piece of music (or an original piece of any other art form) that might approach even remotely the creative quality of say Mozart's work. And good luck with that.
Psychism in a pan.
musical symphonies is an information. Produsing musical symphonies is information processing.
"creative quality of say Mozart's work" is really subjective and this subjectivity can be crunched. Get a banch of focus groups, an AI and let it make music. Oh wait, that was already done. Not only mathimatical models were able to produce music, people liked that music and there are an audience for things like that.
I support slamming on matirealists in the consciousness department but "can a information processing system write a symphony" is not an argument it's a meme line from a movie with Will Smith.
@@lopidav
"Produsing musical symphonies is information processing."
Processing information from where? A musical symphony is not information provided by the environment and later processed according to programmable rules. It comes out of a inner, subjective experience. The same would apply to scientific creativity. That is exactly what Einstein said.
"creative quality of say Mozart's work" is really subjective and this subjectivity can be crunched."
Subjectivity is the one thing that cannot be crunched. There are as many versions of reality as there are conscious observers. Your representations of reality is totally peculiar to you and entirely defined and rendered meaningful by your personal history.
"Get a banch of focus groups, an AI and let it make music. Oh wait, that was already done. Not only mathimatical models were able to produce music, people liked that music and there are an audience for things like that."
We have had automatons for centuries, including musical boxes and such likes. While computers can indeed produce music, there is nothing remotely interesting about their creations that do not come anywhere near the depth and quality of anything written by talented composers. No doubt there are people who like that kind of stuff. Any taste is possible, including bad tastes as evidenced by the huge number of people, most of them high on drugs, who regularly attend venues where the "music" (I would prefer to call it simply a "loud noise") is reduced to a head banging bass drum and a couple or musical sentences repeated ad nauseam for hours.
"I support slamming on matirealists in the consciousness department but "can a information processing system write a symphony" is not an argument it's a meme line from a movie with Will Smith."
An information processing system is a mechanism. Human beings are organisms. I deny that organisms are reducible to mechanisms, however complex. To create interesting art, one has first to experience a wide variety of sensations and feelings and express them in an art form that carries meaning not only for the creator but also for the audience. One of these feelings includes the existential anxiety caused by the awareness of death that a mechanism is unable to experience and even less express in a meaningful way, for obvious reasons: mechanisms don't die.
How would panpsychism work? How would it play a role? It can't be a property of fundamental particles such as mass, spin, charge, etc. or we'd know it. There would have to be some "state" or "property," call it attention/non-attention or whatever you want, and we'd have found that property in particle accelerators, or we'd have unexplained interactions. If it's a property of particles, it doesn't seem to manifest itself in any measurable way, making it moot. Or so it seems to me. I think Clark is on the right path.
That is one of the central objections to panpsychism: that physics tells us nothing about the intrinsic properties of fundamental particles. All we know with any certainty are extrinsic, relational, and mathematical explanations pertaining to the physical universe. Given this, it looks likely that there is no way to empirically test whether the central view of panpsychism holds any validity. It would seem then that panpsychism will always remain a purely philosophical view with no grounding in science.
Everyone is so concerned about what it could be, we hardly ever put them all together. What happens when animism, panthism, and panpsychism are the three major factors that molded the panspermia creation we now call ourselves? Just because everything was rumored to be created in seven days, doesn't mean it was set into motion just as quickly 👽
#rotaercmai
Robert says the "problem" of consciousness is severe. That's because "they" are trying to get there through intellectual ideas only. To experience Consciousness "In-Itself", no problem. Access "Mahamritunjaya mantra - Sacred Sounds Choir" and listen to it for 5 min per day for at least two weeks. The entire universe IS Pure Consciousness (Brahman) per Shankara's Advaita Vedanta. but to experience it directly in a non dual sense, one must transcend the mind and enter into the state of Samadhi (Satori)..
Once the tussle between materialism and idealism is settled everything else will unfold automatically
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit- Aristotle.
Don't believe everything you READ. 📖
@Pisstake, yet, my comment did not comprise of ANY dogmatic prescription or instructional concept, Madam.
@Pisstake Sings: “It ain’t necessarily so...” 🎤
Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱
Once science aquires all the evidence required to explain every possible characteristic of consciousness, the very perception and veracity of that evidence is still constructed by (and wholly contingent on) a particular form of sober waking consciousness. This just seems like circular logic?
It has to be circular because it's about its self.
Could consciousness manifest in physical reality through time?
🐟 06. CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS:
Consciousness means “that which knows” or “the state of being aware”, from the Latin prefix “con” (with), the stem “scire” (to know) and the suffix “osus” (characterized by). There is BOTH a localized knowing and a Universal Awareness, as explicated in the following paragraphs.
Higher species of animal life have sufficient cognitive ability to KNOW themselves and their environment, at least to a measurable degree. Just where consciousness objectively begins in the animal kingdom is a matter of contention but, judging purely by ethological means, it probably starts with vertebrates (at least the higher-order birds and fishes). Those metazoans which are evolutionarily lower than vertebrates do not possess much, if any, semblance of intellect, necessary for true knowledge, but operate purely by reflexive instincts. For instance, an insect or amphibian does not consciously decide to seek food but does so according to its base instincts, directed by its idiosyncratic genetic code. Even when a cockroach flees from danger, it is not experiencing the same kind of thoughts or feelings a human or other mammal would experience.
The brain is merely a conduit or TRANSDUCER of Universal Consciousness (i.e. Brahman), explaining why the more intelligent the animal, the more it can understand its own existence (or at least be aware of more of its environment - just see how amazingly-complex dolphin and whale behaviour can be, compared with other aquatic species), and the reason why it is asserted that a truly enlightened human must possess a far higher level of intelligence than the average person. The processing unit of a supercomputer must be far larger, more complex and more powerful than the processor in a pocket calculator. Therefore, it seems logical to conclude that the scale of discrete (localized) consciousness is dependent on the animal's brain capacity.
See Chapter 17 to understand the distinction between enlightenment and mere awakening.
Three STATES of awareness are experienced by humans and possibly all other species of mammals:
the waking state (“jāgrata”, in Sanskrit), dreaming (“svapna”, in Sanskrit), and deep-sleep (“suṣupti”, in Sanskrit). Beyond these three temporal states is the fourth “state” (“turīya” or “caturīya”, in Sanskrit). That is the unconditioned, eternal “state”, which underlies the other three.
The waking state is the LEAST real (that is to say the least permanent, or to put it another way, the farthest from the Necessary Ground of Existence, as explained towards the end of this chapter). The dream state is closer to our eternal nature, whilst dreamless deep-sleep is much more analogous to The Universal Self (“brahman”), as it is imbued with peace. Rather than being an absence of awareness, deep-sleep is an awareness of absence (that is, the absence of phenomenal, sensual experiences). So, in actual fact, the fourth state is not a state, but the Unconditioned Ground of Being, or to put it simply, YOU, the real self/Self, or Existence-Awareness-Peace (“sacchidānanda”, in Sanskrit).
Perhaps the main purpose of dreams is so that we can understand that the waking-state is practically indistinguishable to the dream-state, and thereby come to see the ILLUSION of this ephemeral world. Both our waking-state experiences and our dream-state experiences occur solely within the mental faculties (refer to Chapter 04 for an elucidation of this phenomenon). If somebody in one of your dreams were to ask your dream-state character if the dream was real, you (playing the part of that character) would most likely say, “yes, of course this is real!” Similarly, if someone were to ask your waking-state character if this world is real, you would almost undoubtedly respond in kind.
An apt analogy for Universal Consciousness is the manner in which electricity powers a variety of appliances and gadgets, according to the use and COMPLEXITY of the said device. Electricity powers a washing machine in a very simple manner, to drive a large spindle for laundering clothes. However, the very same electrical power may be used to operate a computer to manifest an astonishing range of outputs, such as playing audiovisual tracks, communication tasks, and performing extremely advanced mathematical computations, depending on the computer's software and hardware. The more advanced/complex the device, the more complex its manifestation of the same electricity.
Using the aforementioned computer analogy: the brain is COMPARATIVELY equivalent to the computer hardware, deoxyribonucleic acid akin to the operating system working in conjunction with the memory, the intellect is equivalent to the processing unit, individuated consciousness is analogous to the software programme, whilst Universal Awareness is likened to the electricity which enlivens the entire computer system.
A person who is comatosed has lost any semblance of local consciousness, yet is being kept alive by the presence of Universal Consciousness.
The fact that many persons report out-of-body experiences, where consciousness departs from the gross body, may be evidence for the above.
So, then, following-on from the assertion made in the third paragraph, one could complain: “That's not fair - why can only a genius be enlightened?” (as defined in Chapter 17). The answer is: first of all, as stated above, every species of animal has its own level of intelligence on a wide-ranging scale. Therefore, a pig or a dog could (if possible) ask: “That's unfair - why can only a human being be enlightened?”
Secondly, it is INDEED a fact that life is unfair, because there is no “tit for tat” law of action and reaction, even if many supposedly-great religious preceptors have stated so. They said so because they were preaching to wicked miscreants who refused to quit their evil ways, and needed to be chastized in a forceful manner. It is not possible to speak gentle words to a rabid dog to prevent it from biting you.
There is evidence of Consciousness being a universal field, in SAVANT SYNDROME, a condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrate certain abilities far in excess of the norm, such as superhuman rapid mathematical calculation, mind-reading, blind-seeing, or astounding musical aptitude. Such behaviour suggests that there is a universal field (possibly in holographic form) from which one can access information. Even simple artistic inspiration could be attributed to this phenomenon. The great British singer-songwriter, Sir James Paul McCartney, one day woke with the complete tune of the song, “Yesterday”, in his mind, after hearing it in a dream. American composer, Paul Simon, had a similar experience when the chorus of his sublime masterpiece, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, simply popped into his head.
Cont...
In recent years, the term “CONSCIOUSNESS” has been used in esoteric spiritual circles (usually capitalized) to refer to a far more Homogeneous Consciousness (“puruṣa”, in Sanskrit), due to the fact that the English language doesn’t include a single word denoting the Universal Ground of Being (for instance “Brahman”, “Tao”, in other tongues). The word “Awareness” (capitalized) is arguably a more apposite term for this concept.
The typical person believes that the apparatus which knows the external world is his mind (via the five senses), but more perceptive individuals understand that the mind itself is cognizable by the intellect. Wise souls recognize that the sense of self (the pseudo-ego) is the perceiver of their intellects, whereas awakened persons have realized that the true self/Self is the witness of ALL these temporal phenomena.
The true self is synonymous with Consciousness, or with Infinite Awareness, or the Undifferentiated Unified Field (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit).
The dialectic exercise in the following three paragraphs should help one to understand the nature of the fundamental conscious observer, that is, the ULTIMATE observer of all phenomena (i.e. the subject/Subject, which is the authentic self, as opposed to material objects):
If one were to ask you whether you are the same person or individual you were at birth (or even at conception), you would probably respond in the affirmative. So, then, what PRECISELY is it about you which has remained constant since conception? In other words, what is the self-identity you had as an infant, which is the present “you”? It cannot be any part of your body or mind, since none of the atoms or molecules in your zygote body are extant, and “you” certainly did not possess a mind at conception. If you are reasonably intelligent, you may claim that your genome is the same now as it was then. However, it has recently been scientifically demonstrated that genetic code can (and usually does) change throughout an individual’s lifetime. Furthermore, nobody actively conceives of their essential nature being a bunch of genes!
More intelligent souls would probably counter thus: “The thing which stays the same from my birth to the present time is my sense of self.” This too, is fallacious, since the sense of self does not emerge until at least a couple of years after birth. An infant has no ideation of itself as an individual actor. You may then say “I was a (male/female) human being” but that doesn’t specify any PARTICULAR human (you, yourself).
So, then, what EXACTLY is it which remains “you” from conception till death? That is the “I am” which precedes any artificial sense of self. In other words, rather than saying “I am a man/woman/human/king/pilot/etc.”, simply the impersonal sense of “I am”. That is the true self, which is the Universal Self. Therefore, your essential nature is Cosmic Consciousness, usually called “God” by theists (see also Chapter 10).
The Tao (The Reality [lit. The Way, The Path, or The Road]) which can be expressed in language is not the REAL Tao. All concepts are, by nature, relative, and at most, can merely point to the Absolute. That explains why some branches of theology use the apophatic method of discerning The Infinite (“neti neti”, [not this, not that], in Sanskrit). Also known in Latin as “via negativa” or “via negationis” theology, this philosophical approach to discovering the essential nature of Reality, gradually negates each description about Ultimate Reality, but not Reality Itself.
Ultimate Reality (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit [from “bṛh” - lit. “Expansion”, in English]) alone is real - “real” in the sense that it is the never-mutable substratum of ALL existence. The wisest of the philosophers of ancient India distinguished the “real” from the “unreal” (“sat/asat”, in Sanskrit) by whether or not the “thing“ was eternal or ephemeral (cf. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1:3:28, Bhagavad-gītā 2:16, et altri).
Gross material objects (such as one's own body) and subtle material objects (such as thoughts) are always changing, and therefore not “real”.
REALITY is clearly seen by those self-realized persons who have experienced spiritual awakenings (which occur either spontaneously, or after a gradual process over many months or years), yet only intellectually understood by those who have merely studied spiritual topics (that is, those who have practiced one of the four systems of religion described in Chapter 16, but have yet to awaken to their essential nature).
“If you remain as you are now, you are in the wakeful state. This is abolished in the dream state.
The dream state disappears, when you are in deep sleep. The three states come and go, but you are always there.
Your real state, that of Consciousness itself, continues to exist always and forever and it is the only Reality.”
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“The ego is the identified consciousness. When the impersonal Consciousness identifies itself with the personal organism, the ego arises.”
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“The only true meditation is the constant impersonal witnessing of all that takes place in one’s life as mere movements in the universal Consciousness.”
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“Consciousness must first be there, before anything else can BE. All inquiry of the seeker of truth, must therefore, relate to this consciousness, this sense of conscious presence, which as such, has no personal reference to any individual.”
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“Insofar as you keep watching the mind and discover yourself as its witness, nothing else can project itself on the screen of consciousness.
This is so, because two things cannot occupy the attention, at the same moment.Therefore, delve within and find out where thoughts arise.
Seek the source of all thought and acquire the Self-knowledge, which is the awakening of Truth.”
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“Just as the difference between the space in a pot and the space outside it disappears when the pot is demolished, so also does duality disappear when it is realized that the difference between the individual consciousness and the Universal Consciousness does not in fact exist.”
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“All there is, is consciousness. That is the Source from which the manifestation has come.
...And the mind is merely a reflection of that Consciousness.”
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“All there is, is Consciousness, not aware of Itself in Its noumenal Subjectivity, but perceived by Itself as phenomenal manifestation in Its objective expression. If this is understood in depth, there is nothing more to be understood.”
Ramesh S. Balsekar,
Indian Spiritual Teacher.
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.”
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“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck,
German Theoretical Physicist.
@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices something to consider, thank you
" Thoughts / Ideas " DO assume
concrete form in the Real world.
Often with catastrophic consequences.
A Materialist is going to hold on to his materialism... no matter what!
And I'm sure you can say the same thing for Spiritualist...
But thankfully, there are open minded people that allow themselves to explore the possibilities.
Are they saying that all these rocks I keep digging up in my garden have consciousness?
I think (at least I hope) they were refuting that.
Consciousness is sourcecode it generates reality this is the relationship between the observer and the observed. No observer no universe
.
Logic refuses to take leaps. It takes calculated, solid, sometimes semi-solid even steps. But never leaps to unknowns.
Many discoveries were well known before the thought came to flesh out the 0's and 1's. There was a leap of faith, wisdom often came from this leap.
So, I guess what I'm asking is. How important is logic when inquiring? Are we destined for speculation and failure without it? Or is logic just one tool to edit what we already think is true?
If the multiverse is an unravelling and rewinding one-hundred-eleven dimensional paricle, one of its dimensions is likely to be consciousness and that consciousness would therefore be quantum entangled in all its iterations.
Unhelpful.
consciousness is just state of algorithm execution. And all matter executes it’s algorithms too
Still doesn't explain the first person nature of consciousness and you can't create an algorithm which produces consciousness. So what you're saying here is just nonsense and a non-answer.
Zasvitom have you considered the fact that all of these guys are extremely smart people who have spent a lot of time thinking about this? Your idea of consciousness as an algorithm is one of the simplest ideas to come up with as you have the easy analogy to computers, everybody in these interviews has considered the thought. The fact that they have not all set on it would suggest to you that it's more complicated as a solution than you think.
@@moriyokiri3229 I can not create it because it’s very complex and was created for millions and millions of years trough evolution. But I can try to recreate the starting point of that algorithm and evolution ;)
@@em.1633 they search for complex solutions and therefor can not see the easy one. Also It’s not plausible. It does not give good emotions to accept being a robot. And all we search for in live is happiness, complexity. It’s part of our algorithm;). So being clever is not very good for finding the simple reasons of universe.
@@HoneybunMegapack Materialism? Sure, but that can be split apart a thousand ways. That doesn't equal panpsychism.
I feel like my cats are starting to get organized 🤣
This sort of stuff leaves me cold; endless gyrations of words, to try and pull the explanation out of a hat and promissory materialism, in x number of years we'll have the answer. The individuals that have experiences of panpsychism, are basically "lost for words;" actual case: 'The experience lies far beyond my command of words and loses so much in the telling.' In cases that I have collected and studied, the mind is often in abeyance, and
paradoxically consciousness is described as 'empty inertia', and 'empty enjoyment' along with a conviction of unity with the universe. I find it very satisfying reading of actual experiences of mystical/near death, transpersonal accounts and noting their commonalities and congruities. Like listening to beautiful music: there is an enchantment beyond words.
I had a experience in 2017, that made me realize that humans didn't create this reality; but that it was created and is controlled by entities which are WAY beyond the advancement of human, and that our brains don't have ability or capacity to comprehend it. Other than to say, that it's definitely some kind of superadvanced a.i..
@@m_christine1070 would that be the archons the knostics speak about?
If a blade of grass reaches up for the sun or down for moisture does it, or is it not an it? Is grass not conscious of a need for sun, and a desire for the perfect balance?
Yes , plants are interesting. The vast majority of scientists would argue that plants are not conscious. They respond in a pre determined way to stimuli.
My daffodils for example appear
in Feb every year then die off and disappear before reappearing again the following Feb. They've been doing this for at least 10 years. But how ? I cannot explain.
Dude what happened to behaviorism? I thought they had this all figured out
Go check out lectures by Robert Sapolsky. He would not agree with any of this.
QUANTUM WILL
We are not just our body parts,
though some are essential, of course.
The tissue of our brains
or hearts is not
our animating force.
We sense a spirit,
wired through the physical
reality, that tells these organs
what to do, with
seamless functionality.
We don’t assign to them control
of what we feel or what we know.
Instead, we speak about
the soul that motivates
and runs the show.
There’s purpose down to DNA
and its experimentation, yet
we assert, to truth’s dismay,
it’s random recombination.
Even particles get to choose -
uncertainty’s how you’ll hear it, since
we think science should refuse to grant
that there may be spirit.
When we lose sight of unity,
the cosmos appears quite random.
We know matter is energy, but forget
they work in tandem.
Though we lose sight how they relate,
mind and body likewise equate.
Indeed
mind is to movement
as body is to matter.
There cannot be either
in the absence of the other.
We human had looking at Consciousness in the wrong way!!!! That lead to different direction where truth can not be define…
Why do academicians try so much to deny the existence of MIND?
if the assumption is: consciousness emerges when matter is organized in a certain kind of way.
Then my next question is: How can matter organize itself in a ertain kind of way if it isnt conscious from the start?
I personally dont see how the assumpion made combats panpsychism. It sounds to me like we just need to find out where the two meet and see how theyre both sides of the same coin.
Andy Clark apparently holds a philosophical position of positivism - focus on everything that is explainable by scientific methodology and ignore which that is not.
But you can never find a connection between mind and body, because mind is what is in principal unassailable, because it's always ahead! 😉
the brain has more unconscious than conscious activity so questions about what consciousness is are really deflective, what you are really concerned about is the Heideggerian notions of "being" and if that doesn't tell you something, then i don't know what will
It's a matter of speed. Muhammed Ali said that he was so fast he could turn off the light switch and be in bed before the room was dark. Maybe if consciousness could jump out of our heads fast enough, it could get an objective, but very brief, look at itself. (joking, of course)
lol
maybe astral projection can only be achieved when one floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee
Andy reminds me of Austin Powers in one respect.
Johnny Rotten is quite a clever chap
In the matrix I am creating, each "dpi" (so to speak) is conscious along a spectrum of consciousness. .
@@lewiscoacher7781 You logic appears somewhat dimensionally linear. In a multi-dimensional matrix there are more contrasts than the duality of now and then.
It is interesting that science will, at all costs, refuse the notion that anything exists outside our physical understanding of the universe. To tread beyond implies a basis for the metaphysical, something which they abhor because by definition it would be something unexplainable through classical scientific methods. Logically, anything explainable is no longer metaphysical, so the metaphysical perpetually lies just beyond scientific proof. And while I continue my own search for understanding the "I" encircling my body, I'm struck with another idea that haunts me... We experience a very narrow slice of reality through our senses. The dimensions we interact with are only a few of those that we believe exist. Our study into the mechanics of this universe are based off of those same few dimensions. We can not study, nor do we even know to ask about the effects of things we don't know exist on other things we do not know exist. It is as if we're locked into a narrow margin of understanding and anything beyond is literally, by definition, unimaginable. Reality is likely a mix of completely understandable mechanics with a thick undercurrent of things we can't even see to ask questions about. Endlessly interesting to me.
That's because none of it is testable or falsifiable.
Would you believe me if I made some metaphysical assertion? Most people would not without me providing evidence proving my claim.
I read my post over a few times and I think I've given the wrong impression. I'm not pro-metaphysics by any means. What I attempted to get across is that the very roads of research we travel down are dictated heavily by our ability to perceive a thing. It is possible that setting the course of understanding in this way might have a limiter built-in. If we go far enough away from our perceptions, the more it starts to look and feel like some metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. In this sense, it could be that research avoids looking at certain possibilities simply because it starts to look like magic or even because it flies in the face of what we currently believe to be true. There was a great description of this laid out by (I believe) Neil DeGrasse Tyson in which he suggested an imaginary 2D world with 2D beings living on it... He gave it a little depth just to make the point. To the beings here, there is no up or down, just a 360 degree view, straight out in all directions. One day a 3D ball passes through their 2D plane. To an outside observer it is simply a ball traveling through space, but to these beings it appears as a dot that suddenly appears. It grows wider, then gets thinner and then blinks out of existence. They study it the best they can through their perceptions and observations and start to explain the phenomenon. They assert the laws of their nature onto the event. They even revisit and modify a few laws to help it fit in with what they know. They eventually conclude with a set of explanations that break none of their own physical laws, but they never understand it was a 3D ball passing through. I hope that makes it a little clearer.
@@Jinxed007 fair enough. I think I see what you're getting at.
There was a 19th century book based on the analogy Tyson used. It's called Flatland. If you haven't read it yet you might enjoy it.
@@aspektx I think I would enjoy that. Thanks. There is another conversation I listened to regarding infinities that ties into these things we're talking about in an interesting way. It might have been Mitchio... Not 100% sure. Anyway, he was discussing an imaginary, infinite dictionary. It starts with A, then AA, and continues an infinite number of times. Imagining you can reach infinity with "A", the dictionary then goes to AB, ABA, ABAA, and so on, again to infinity. You could truncate much of the repetition without screwing up the outcome. Anyway, this continues throughout the alphabet. If such a dictionary could be written, when you were done every thing that has ever been said and everything that could ever be said will be written in the book. Every cure for every disease would be spelled out. A 100% accurate account for every second of your life would be among the words. The answers to every question that could ever be asked would be included between the covers. Aside from the obvious problems, like the fact it would take an eternity to read such a thing and we would have no cheat sheet on which combination of words were true, there are some pretty deep philosophical implications to this thought experiment. For example, it points out (if you think about it) that language itself is a parallel puzzle we contend with as we're interpreting data. The letters are static, abstract place holders for sounds that (when placed together) represent specific meanings which we need to assemble correctly to express a thought. What if the structure of language sidled up with the rules of grammar limit the maximum combination of letters and length of words to meaningfully describe certain aspects of reality? We would, hypothetically speaking, be locked away from ever describing some potentially unknown levelsl of reality. I'm likely failing miserably in my explanation here, but I hope it's somewhat understood. This isn't some belief of mine, it's just a peculiar thought concerning language and this imaginary infinite dictionary. What can I say, these things keep me up at night. :)
@@Jinxed007 very interesting thoughts there.
Language is not perfect yet. There is no definition in words that explain consciousness believable, until then we'll keep puzzling like we always do.
It's the power of an individual by then accepted argument that rules the scene, until an unexpected discovery changes the supposedly correct knowledge.
The brain is more than what we see.
Too many maybe, he wants to pick up this convo in 50 years. Hm
So we can say panpsychism is a tautology?
Seems to me there is an essence he's missing, in that, why should matter have motivational behaviors and cognitive predictive models at all?
And it gets real challenging keeping ideas like intelligence and awareness conceptually distinctive from consciousness, even if you know the definitional differences, it's hard to parse out the experiential differences.
Seems that at all levels there is an innate drive to exist, to move, to react to the existence of others, to compete to continue existing, to transform or evolve, etc. If those drives exist at the micro level just as they do at the macro level, then why assume that there isn't a relative to scale and to complextiy consciousness (or an experience from that thing or system's perspective) at each level and every increment between?
Seems that anything that naturally organizes itself to greater and greater variability and complexity is acting on some innate drive, as stated prior. Seems that having a drive at all connotes some kind of self-promoting will that could be called consciousness as well as it could be called any other similarly descriptive word.
2:43 No we’ve found that some people in comas have some consciousness
if consciousness emerges from an arrangement of matter, isn't the universe an arrangement of matter?
Your comment makes no sense without further explanation.
Well, I respect faith of all kind.
maybe consciousness is the organization so it answers itself?
Andy seems to have a very low view of consciousness. He seems to describe our consciousness to be something like computer processing but will even the most powerful computer ever be conscious?
An atomic bomb was theoretically possible before the first was built.
If it had been actually impossible then
the world would be a safer place today.
Likewise it is theoretically possible to create an artificially conscious being.
I hope it's never done because
there is the potential for such a being
to experience the most unimaginably awful horrifying madness.
This is the binding problem, i.e, only some kinds of information processers are likely capable of consciousness. The chinese room being a prime example of something we all would intuit not to be.
"will even the most powerful computer ever be conscious?"
Right now,
our brains are the most powerful computers in existence but
it's not their very modest ability to compute that is responsible for our being conscious,
rather, it is our brains ability to support a hundred billion analogies and their mutual intermodulation that is responsible.
The intermodulation I refer to is the process we call thinking and
the key analogy responsible for our being conscious is the one we refer to as the self.
Illusion is that something comes from nothing, or consciousness comes fron unconscious things :D
Actually consciousness is considered to be an island in a sea of unconsciousness. The idea that out of unconsciousness grows consciousness is a excellent one eventhough likely there was a primitive consciousness within the unconsciousness from the start.
Where was it stated that consciousness comes from nothing?
One cell contains mind, memory and intelligence to manifest as a humam beeing with brain-thoughts and selfawareness. That is insane to talk about consciousness in a manner that guy talks.
It sounds like a new form of fromunda cheese.