Panpsychism, materialism, and zombies

[Philip Thrift]

Philip Goff

Philip Pullman

moderator, Nigel Warburten

transcript of podcast

@ https://lithub.com/philip-goff-and-philip-pullman-talk-materialism-panpsychism-and-philosophical-zombies/

   ....

PG: You only get rich, human experience after millions of years of evolution. So the basis constituent is consciousness but it doesn’t mean every combinations of particles is conscious; it doesn’t meant the table is conscious, for example.

NW: Well, it does mean it is conscious on some level, doesn’t it?

PG: The things that make it up are conscious but maybe the table as a whole does not necessarily have its own experience. So, are you maybe sympathetic to the view that something distinctively human is kind of fundamental to the universe?

PP: Not to the universe; that couldn’t be possible if we believe the universe jumped into being with the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, or whatever it was. But yes, I do think there is something distinctive about human beings, which is our ability to reflect on our own experience. If I believe that glass of water is conscious maybe it is, but it’s not doing much reflecting. As far as we know. Maybe it’s in conversation with your glass. But ah, yes, in the stories I’ve written, clearly human self-consciousness, human awareness, came into being 30, 40 thousand years ago, something like that, and it’s based of course, on the coming of artistic, the remains of art. Cave paintings, the carvings on stones, that sort of thing. That seems to be a time when people were becoming interested in other things than where the next meal was. So yeah, I do think the sort of consciousness we could be able to display now and we display every day, did kind of emerge from something that was less conscious.

NW: That’s still a problem for a panscientist isn’t it? You have lots of little bits of conscious stuff and then you have this thing that can reflect on what matter is and whether it’s conscious or not.

PG: Look, all these views have problems and there is, it’s early days, in my view, of the science of consciousness. I suppose it seems to me that the challenges facing a panpsychist research program look to be more tractable than the problems facing, say, [an eliminative] materialist. The core of [eliminative] materialism as I’ve already labored, is you have this huge, explanatory gap between the purely quantitative objective properties, and the qualitative subjective, and I don’t think you’ve made any–– whereas the explanatory gap for the panpsychic is how did you get from very simple forms of consciousness to very complex forms of consciousness?

PP: It just makes sense to me.

PG: You think it’s true?

PP: Yeah.

——————————————

@philipthrift

[Eva]

Philip Goff did not say nothing substantial here.

Anyway panpsychism is full of problems, most notably 'combination problem' so it is not viable position.

[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, November 7, 2019 at 7:30:00 AM UTC-6, Eva wrote:

Philip Goff did not say nothing substantial here.

Anyway panpsychism is full of problems, most notably 'combination problem' so it is not viable position.

Except (as Galen Strawson, Philip Goff, Hedda Morch argue) it has less "problem" than all alternatives presented far.

(Galen Strawson) 

Realistic Monism

Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism

http://www.sjsu.edu/people/anand.vaidya/courses/c2/s0/Realistic-Monism---Why-Physicalism-Entails-Panpsychism-Galen-Strawson.pdf

Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery. It’s Matter.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/consciousness-isnt-a-mystery-its-matter.html

Philip Goff has an article in SA roday:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/galileos-big-mistake/

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

On 6 Nov 2019, at 11:30, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

Philip Goff

Philip Pullman

moderator, Nigel Warburten

transcript of podcast

@ https://lithub.com/philip-goff-and-philip-pullman-talk-materialism-panpsychism-and-philosophical-zombies/

   ....

PG: You only get rich, human experience after millions of years of evolution. So the basis constituent is consciousness but it doesn’t mean every combinations of particles is conscious; it doesn’t meant the table is conscious, for example.

NW: Well, it does mean it is conscious on some level, doesn’t it?

PG: The things that make it up are conscious but maybe the table as a whole does not necessarily have its own experience. So, are you maybe sympathetic to the view that something distinctively human is kind of fundamental to the universe?

PP: Not to the universe; that couldn’t be possible if we believe the universe jumped into being with the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, or whatever it was. But yes, I do think there is something distinctive about human beings, which is our ability to reflect on our own experience.

The recursion theorem of Kleene, as well as it first person interpretation by the machine, shows that the ability to reflect its own experience is common to all Gödel-Löbian-Solovay machines or entities. I recall that a Löbian machine is a Universal machine aware of its own universality (“aware” in the Theaetetus’ sense).

If I believe that glass of water is conscious maybe it is, but it’s not doing much reflecting. As far as we know. Maybe it’s in conversation with your glass. But ah, yes, in the stories I’ve written, clearly human self-consciousness, human awareness, came into being 30, 40 thousand years ago, something like that, and it’s based of course, on the coming of artistic, the remains of art. Cave paintings, the carvings on stones, that sort of thing. That seems to be a time when people were becoming interested in other things than where the next meal was. So yeah, I do think the sort of consciousness we could be able to display now and we display every day, did kind of emerge from something that was less conscious.

NW: That’s still a problem for a panscientist isn’t it?

Yes, that is a bit of a problem for anyone attaching consciousness to 3p descriptible things. It is Searle's error, again and again. This requires a non mechanist theory of mind.

You have lots of little bits of conscious stuff and then you have this thing that can reflect on what matter is and whether it’s conscious or not.

PG: Look, all these views have problems and there is, it’s early days, in my view, of the science of consciousness. I suppose it seems to me that the challenges facing a panpsychist research program look to be more tractable than the problems facing, say, [an eliminative] materialist. The core of [eliminative] materialism as I’ve already labored, is you have this huge, explanatory gap between the purely quantitative objective properties,

Of course this does not exist. The physical reality is a first person plural construction, driven by the first person differentiation of the histories corresponding to the many computations (whose existence is purely arithmetical).

Computer science explains how quanta and qualia appears, and the explanation is testable thanks to the quanta which can be compared with the (human) observation.

Bruno

and the qualitative subjective, and I don’t think you’ve made any–– whereas the explanatory gap for the panpsychic is how did you get from very simple forms of consciousness to very complex forms of consciousness?

PP: It just makes sense to me.

PG: You think it’s true?

PP: Yeah.

——————————————

@philipthrift

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[Eva]

Galen Strawson say that consciousness is matter. I don't think so. When I am unconscious my brain does not dissapear.

[Brent Meeker]

On 11/7/2019 6:28 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Thursday, November 7, 2019 at 7:30:00 AM UTC-6, Eva wrote:

Philip Goff did not say nothing substantial here.

Anyway panpsychism is full of problems, most notably 'combination problem' so it is not viable position.

Except (as Galen Strawson, Philip Goff, Hedda Morch argue) it has less "problem" than all alternatives presented far.

They also have less of an answer.  It's essentially just a label to paste over the problem.

Brent

[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, November 7, 2019 at 12:13:46 PM UTC-6, Eva wrote:

Galen Strawson say that consciousness is matter. I don't think so. When I am unconscious my brain does not dissapear.

Strawson says (In the NYTimes article) that it's the ordinary everyday picture of matter that people have that is the problem.

@philipthrift

[Eva]

A was into panpsychism 5 years ago and I read Galen Strawson's book. If I good remeber, he was arguing that if acording to physicalism all phenomena are material and qualia exist, qualia are material, so matter has subiective quality. Something like this.

[Philip Thrift]

On Friday, November 8, 2019 at 6:27:02 PM UTC-6, Eva wrote:

A was into panpsychism 5 years ago and I read Galen Strawson's book. If I good remeber, he was arguing that if acording to physicalism all phenomena are material and qualia exist, qualia are material, so matter has subiective quality. Something like this.

Galen Strawson on panpsychism:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi-TOxtczQQ

He sums it up all there, in 10 minutes.

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 7 Nov 2019, at 19:13, Eva <evalor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Galen Strawson say that consciousness is matter. I don't think so. When I am unconscious my brain does not dissapear.

I agree. To equate consciousness (which we know to exist) with Matter (an unconscious construct of the mind in the mechanist theory of mind) does not make much sense. It is a category error consisting in identifying what we do not understand.
It is easier to explain the illusion of matter to someone conscious than the illusion of consciousness (and what could that be?) to a piece of matter.

Bruno

>
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[Philip Thrift]

On Sunday, November 10, 2019 at 6:13:27 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 7 Nov 2019, at 19:13, Eva <evalor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Galen Strawson say that consciousness is matter. I don't think so. When I am unconscious my brain does not dissapear.

I agree. To equate consciousness (which we know to exist) with Matter (an unconscious construct of the mind in the mechanist theory of mind) does not make much sense. It is a category error consisting in identifying what we do not understand.
It is easier to explain the illusion of matter to someone conscious than the illusion of consciousness (and what could that be?) to a piece of matter.

Bruno

People will likely keep saying X is not matter - or the same thing: X is not material - where X = mind, consciousness - but it is the worst philosophical error in human history (as Rorty said).

I say ignore all books/writing that say the "not matter" thing, and throw away any such books you have in your library.

@phillipthrift   

[Eva]

I think @Bruno is right - consciousness is not matter. It looks that consciousness is kinda abstract - certain kind of patterns of neuronal activation is what's necessary for consciousness. Without that, brain is not conscious. Maybe matter (particles) itself are indywiduated only by relations. This view is called ontic structural realism.
So if I have to, I would bet rather on pan(prosto)psychism, not panpsychism :)