At Aeon, philosopher Philip Goff argues for panpsychism:
It’s a short essay that only takes a couple of minutes to read.
Goff’s argument is pretty weak, in my opinion, and it boils down to an appeal to Occam’s Razor:
I maintain that there is a powerful simplicity argument in favour of panpsychism…
In fact, the only thing we know about the intrinsic nature of matter is that some of it – the stuff in brains – involves experience… The theoretical imperative to form as simple and unified a view as is consistent with the data leads us quite straightforwardly in the direction of panpsychism.
…the brains of organisms are coloured in with experience. How to colour in the rest? The most elegant, simple, sensible option is to colour in the rest of the world with the same pen.
Panpsychism is crazy. But it is also highly likely to be true.
I think Goff is misapplying Occam’s Razor here, but I’ll save my detailed criticisms for the comment thread.
OMG. This is really not that hard.
Yes, I believe that science will never solve the ‘hard problem’ and Yes Comte believed that science would never solve the “composition of stars” problem. (You with me so far?)
The difference is that I don’t think the hard problem is reachable by science because it is not an empirical question at all. Comte thought (like you, apparently) that if something is unsolvable by science it is unsolvable simplicter (by “any means”). I don’t agree with that, although it may well be the case that if something is unsolvable by science it will never be solved, since that’s the usual result. If I had to bet, I’d bet against its solution myself. But that’s not because of any prediction of mine regarding perennial deficiencies in technology, which was Comte’s error with the star problem; it’s because IMO it’s not a technological question at all–whether or not you and Comte can understand that.
And look, one can either can either grasp these distinctions or not. Positivists cannot. Repeating yourself on this matter suggests that you are in that group. That’s ok, I guess, but you don’t actually need to broadcast this inability of yours over and over again: we get it.
Processing doesn’t give rise to anything. The behavior of the brain is the experience.
Is there a mystery? Yes, but it is the mystery of existence, why there is something rather than nothing.
There is no additional mystery about things giving rise to things that are not things.
Ignoring mysteries doesn’t make them go away. They remain questions that you can’t answer.
keiths,
So you believe that ultimate reality may involve consciousness which is not dependent on physical brains. That is good to hear. It is a step up from materialism.
This isn’t that difficult, Alan.
Humans have been observing (and thinking about) their conscious experiences for a long time. Therefore, petrushka’s statement is silly…
We’ve done that already. Hence my response:
Whether some activities of the other hemisphere are invisible to the speaking hemisphere is orthogonal to whether we have observed our phenomenal consciousness. We have, and that’s what leads to the hard problem.
You won’t. Nobody every reads any of that stuff except Charlie and two or three other cultists who refuse to read anything else.
walto,
Which precludes you from arguing about it.
Alan Fox,
For what it’s worth, I understand keiths position pretty well. I understand what he means by consciousness — he’s talking about the ineliminably subjective standpoint that everyone has on their own experience and the ways that we are each manifestly aware of ourselves and our environments.
I take it that keiths overarching position here is something like the following: an induction over the history of science shows that reductive physicalism is very probably true, so it’s likely that some future discovery or experiment will show us how to reduce qualia to brain states even if we can’t understand that right now.
walto:
Which is exactly what Comte thought with regard to the composition of stars. He thought that such knowledge was inaccessible to science because scientists would never be able to make an observation that would resolve the question. It was out of empirical reach.
Just like you, with regard to the hard problem.
It doesn’t.
Three or four cultists can’t be wrong.
They’re pretty sure of that.
Glen Davidson
CharlieM:
It’s a mystery to me how you managed to reach that conclusion from what I wrote above.
GlenDavidson,
Do you have any arguments of any substance, or do you just like to let everyone know your personal opinions?
KN,
Yes, or some theoretical advance. For example, if someone came up with a theory showing, from first principles, that certain kinds of information processing were expected to give rise to phenomenal consciousness; and if that theory were successfully applied to both conscious and unconscious activity within our brains.
That’s not what it means to be an empirical question. A technological incapacity does not make something other than empirical. (I hope you actually realize this and just want to keep arguing because you like being in that state.)
But you can examine what kind of answers are possible, and more to the point, what kinds of questions are productive and what kind are unproductive.
The “processing” metaphor is unproductive. Experience is as experience does. I learned that from Forrest Gump.
Experience does not “arise”. Experience is the activity.
If we build a device that sees green the way we see green, the device will experience green. If we build a device that impersonates a person seeing green, but does not have the same underlying architecture and does not track human perception on illusions and such, it will not experience green the same way we do.
Pf course it is possible to have experiences that do not track the usual human experience. People who are color blind or who lack the necessary brain structures. Personal experience does not have to be identical to human experience.
But experience is a behavior, and it requires a supporting substrate.
Computers that process sequentially and which are not massively parallel are not likely to experience. I can’t say it is impossible, but I’d bet the resources will not be available any time soon.
Did you make any kind of case for reading the seagull’s idiocy? Any more than you have for your Dear Leader, Steiner?
No you didn’t. Why should I respond to your baseless opinions with anything but a swipe at your lack of substance?
Glen Davidson
As I’ve said. You are a behaviorist–an honorable state, I think. Keiths is a positivist (though a more optimistic one than Comte)–also an honorable state. There’s nothing new about my position either: it’s a rather farty and pessimistic metaphysical one. I take it that Neil is a Gibsonian–also a fine thing to be, IMO.
I can’t exactly tell how to categorize KN; that may be because I’m not sufficiently up on today’s literature, because what he’s saying is really original, because he’s unclear, because I’m dense, or some combination of those.
One problem with the processing model is that programming perception is rather difficult. Machines like autonomous cars learn to perceive things like bicycles cutting across their path.
Anyone engaged in this kind of artificial intelligence knows that general learning is intractably hard. The theory is okay, but the hardware is not supportive.
When we have a computer architecture capable of general learning and which is economically feasible, we will be asking it how it perceives the world.
Now that would be an interesting induction. Since reductive physicalism is almost certainly false, it would be right up there with other bad examples of induction.
It’s just positivism.
Oh sure. I don’t rule out the possibility of scientific advance making progress in understanding how brains work, after a fashion, though it might be better to work up from simpler organisms, as Sy Garte suggests. I also think more effort should be devoted either to sorting out what a “quale” is or abandoning the concept for something more, well, scientific.
Qualia is a word of convenience, but it’s not particularly meaningful, let alone scientific. It’s all fine when you’re talking about “green” or whatever, then you get to abstractions and their visualizations, and it’s quite murky indeed. Do I “see” an ideal rectangle in my mind via qualia, or do those lines not really amount to “qualia”?
If I think of pressure, which has a certain “value” in my mind, is that a quale, or a set of qualia? I don’t think so (but it’s too unclear a term to be sure), and yet it’s not an experience very unlike an experience having “qualia.”
So I think it’s a fairly useless matter to pursue as such, rather, what’s important are other issues, like the “binding problem,” and how consciousness shifts, changes, and interacts. What matters is that there are “internal interactions,” not the sterile “quale” matter.
Glen Davidson
Fair enough.
I’ve always been negative on positivism.
We can definitely rule out that I’m being original. Probably a combination of factors 1 (you’re not up on today’s literature) and 3 (I’m unclear).
When it comes a lot of issues in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language, I’m basically a pragmatic naturalist in the tradition of Dewey and Sellars, together with the various philosophers they have influenced and the parts of the tradition that are crucial to them. (I’m particularly interested in how they naturalize Hegel’s critique of Kant, and I’m going to give Science of Logic another try this summer.)
When it comes to consciousness, the approach I find most promising is “neurophenomenology”, which consists of trying to identify the various neural states (via fMRI) correlated with conscious states. Some labs have been running scans on meditating Buddhist monks and other mindfulness practitioners, and showing how mindfulness training makes a measurable difference. I’m not completely versed in that literature but I find it very suggestive.
I think if we are around in 20 years we will have efficient and inexpensive devices that see bicycles and pedestrians and road hazzards, rather than the expensive and cumbersome current devices that process information and compute the liklihood of action required. Such abilities will evolve in ways that are not practical via top down design.
I can foresee problems with evolutionary learning processes in the context of self-driving vehicles. A few innocent pedestrians would have to be sacrificed garnering a little adverse publicity, perhaps. Maybe we need accurate (enough) models of the (car driving) environment in which to test and select the fitter systems before trying them out in reality. With climate change gaining pace, maybe we shouldn’t worry about trying to develop self-driving vehicles.
Ah, “…if we are around in 20 years… ” 😉
I’m currently reading a Putnam book on value theory and have been surprised how often he refers to Dewey, a philosopher of whom I’ve never read more than a few pages. Like you, Putnam was a big fan.
I’m waiting until there is a major earthquake in California, that shifts the land by several hundred feet or more. Will the self-driving vehicle follow the road? Or will it follow the GPS directions which will be about where the road was before the earthquake?
Dewey is very good, and even today somewhat under-rated. He’s not as original and interesting as Peirce or James, but he does one thing that I find extraordinarily powerful: he takes the question, “why is democracy good for us, and how should we educate for better democracy?” and make it central to his entire philosophical project (epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, etc.).
+1
Self driving vehicles are already here. Accident avoiding cars are standard in some brands. Cars with automatic braking have half the accidents of cars without.
2019 Subarus wil have as standard features: automatic braking, lane drift warning and correction, blind spot detection. Side traffic detection in reverse, and adaptive cruise control. Volvo has a city mode that will follow the car ahead and do thes starting and stopping. Both brands read road signs for speed limits, detours and other warnings. Volvo systems will disengage if the driver doesn’t keep hands on the wheel and make minor steering adjustments occasionally, even though the system is capable of following lane markings.
All these things will be required in a few years on new cars. Humans will still be accountable for any pedestrians wacked.
petrushka,
So all those IT departments are just flushing money down the toilet. Stupid gits.
Is the behavior of the vacuum cleaner the experience, too?
Um, no. It’s the mystery of why certain kinds of physical processes give rise to phenomenal consciousness while others — including those underlying the operation of vacuum cleaners — do not (as far as we know, anyway).
Before continuing, please cite where I have said traditional IT is wasting money.
Hint: what I have said is that existing computer architecture is not optimized for general learning, and that this optimization is greatly desired, but currently out of reach.
I have also expressed my expectation that improvements in architecture are most likely to evolve from projects involving autonomous robots. Such robots currently exist, but could use improvement in performance and cost.
I’ve further expressed an opinion that experience (qualia) is a function of architecture, specifically, massively parallel architecture. It is my personal opinion that the cheapest and most energy efficient massively parallel architecture will be largely analog, and that brains are hybrid digital/analog. Which is why brains having only a few million components outperform much larger electronic computers.
What I haven’t said yet is that I believe the secret formula for brain architecture is an analog computer that is digitally configured. My example of this from computer science is the evolved frequency discriminator circuit. It is a digital circuit, but the function derives from the timing of the circuits. It was an unexpected result.
Most people on this site believe that humans obtained their powers through evolution, not through design. On this basis it would make sense for us to pursue evolutionary approaches rather than design ones if we want to create entities that mimic human abilities and behaviour.
What we need is to develop a substrate and an architecture that lets AI entities evolve, at accelerated pace, in environments designed to steer their evolution towards giving them the abilities we desire. Basically, robots with a capability to rearrange and modify their internal architecture, a mutable ‘gene pool’ that drives and controls these modifications, and a way to selectively transfer new developments to the next generations.
Robots need to be placed in challenging environments and have more sex.
Oh, and the autonomous car problem could be tackled by also developing autonomous artificial pedestrians and putting them together in a safe off-road environment for learning purposes.
Autonomous cars are trained, pretty much as you suggest, although eventually they have to encounter real pedestrians. I don’t know how this is going. Google has been quiet for a while, and Uber just had a fatal accident.
The problem I see is that it is not sufficient for autonomous vehicles to be safer than human driven vehicles. At this stage, untrusted, they must be perfect.
Aircraft have been pretty much autonomous for a while. The degree differs from one aircraft to another. Military fighters could not fly at all without computers.
This is in reply to my statement about your position: “So you believe that ultimate reality may involve consciousness which is not dependent on physical brains.”
Well let me try to explain.
You wrote
This is a misinterpretation of Seagall.
Here is what he wrote:
He is saying that, as Whitehead understands it, reductive materialism views ultimate reality as consisting of the motion of atomic particles which are not living or conscious in any way. Life and consciousness are emergent and not fundamental.
So IMO if you believe that matter in its fundamental form does not preclude life and consciousness, then you are open to the possibility that atoms are in some way living and conscious. It’s as simple as that.
No, that’s fallacious. (Fallacy of division)
Are you sure? And here I thought that the Mona Lisa is beautiful because each speck of paint on the canvas contains a tiny little bit of beauty.
It’s one of the possible interpretations of vitalism. Rather than claim some special force is added to matter to produce life, you claim the vital force is inherent in matter.
I am trying to ascertain what keiths believes and what he understands Whitehead’s position to be. I don’t see where the fallacy is.
If you believe that matter in its fundamental form does not preclude plastic gnomes, then you are open to the possibility that atoms are in some way plastic gnomes. It’s as simple as that.
Yes, it’s that simple. Minded.
Glen Davidson
But it does preclude plastic gnomes. For a start plastic is a compound and therefore not fundamental. It’s that simple.
Yes, I can see that you don’t.
Oh, so you actually meant that if you think that atomistic matter (or if not that, what?) doesn’t preclude (whatever that means, I’m taking it as it could support) life and consciousness, then you are open to the possibility that atoms are in some way living and conscious?
Well, I suppose so, but I hardly think that’s news, or an issue here.
Glen Davidson
PS Obviously a lot hangs on “fundamental matter” for you, while of course it just means “matter” (sans claims of magical stuff, it would seem) for the rest of us. It would be better to explain what you mean with your amorphous terms.
Well you will need to explain why you think it is a fallacy of division.
(I have to dash, don’t expect a quick reply to further comments)
Your thinking is a textbook example of the fallacy of division. This is not a matter of opinion.
1. Water is wet.
2. Water is composed of H20 molecules.
3. Therefore, each H20 molecule is wet.
is fallacious, and for the exact same reason, so is.
1. Some configurations of matter are alive and conscious.
2. Matter is composed of subatomic particles [or whatever we posit at the level of ‘fundamental physics’]
3. Therefore, each subatomic particle is alive and conscious.
Kantian Naturalist,
It’s ironic that sometimes Charlie’s claiming that science is too reductionist, and here he seems to be pushing for nothing but reductionism within science (albeit to impoverish it in favor of woo).
It reminds me of UD. “Chance worshipper!” “No, see all of these things that make evolution (or whatever) not just chance?” “Ah ha, you can’t even stick to your convictions, chance worshipper.”
Glen Davidson
CharlieM:
No, what he’s saying is what he wrote:
“No room” means “no room”, Charlie — including by emergence. And since by Segall’s lights “scientific materialism” leaves no room for life or consciousness, he thinks it needs to be replaced with something that does leave room for them: namely Whitehead’s philosophy.
Segall denies that emergence can account for life and consciousness in a physicalist framework. Hence my statement:
CharlieM:
That’s the fallacy of division, as others have pointed out. It ignores an obvious alternative: that aggregates can be alive, or conscious, even if their constituents are neither.
petrushka:
It’s the implication of what you (carelessly) wrote:
petrushka:
keiths:
If processing didn’t give rise to something — namely, processed information — then IT departments wouldn’t bother with it, and evolution wouldn’t have selected for it.
Do you really not see that parallel processing is still information processing?
The claim that you and Neil are making — that brains don’t process information — is goofy.