2 recent papers on Integrated Information Theory (IIT)
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Philip Thrift
Jan 27, 2020, 4:12:11 AM1/27/20
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IIT vs. Russellian Monism: A Metaphysical Showdown on the Content of Experience
Matteo Grasso
Integrated information theory (IIT) (Oizumi, Albantakis and Tononi, 2014; Tononi et al., 2016) attempts to account for both the quantitative and the phenomenal aspects of consciousness, and in taking consciousness as fundamental and widespread it bears similarities to panpsychist Russellian monism (RM). In this paper I compare IIT's and RM's (in its categoricalist version) response to the conceivability argument, and their metaphysical account of conscious experience. I start by claiming that RM neutralizes the conceivability argument, but that by virtue of its commitment to categoricalism it doesn't exclude fickle qualia scenarios (e.g. inverted or changing qualia). I argue that IIT's core notion of intrinsic cause-effect power makes it incompatible with categoricalist versions of RM (Chalmers, 2013; Alter and Nagasawa, 2015) and, to the contrary, is best understood as entailing pandispositionalism, the view for which all properties are powers. I show that, thus construed, IIT can cope with both the conceivability and with the fickle qualia arguments, offers a promising way to account for the content of experience, and hence is preferable to categoricalist RM.
Is Consciousness Intrinsic?: A Problem for the Integrated Information Theory
Hedda Hassel Mørch
The Integrated Information Theory of consciousness (IIT) claims that consciousness is identical to maximal integrated information, or maximal Φ. One objection to IIT is based on what may be called the intrinsicality problem: consciousness is an intrinsic property, but maximal Φ is an extrinsic property; therefore, they cannot be identical. In this paper, I show that this problem is not unique to IIT, but rather derives from a trilemma that confronts almost any theory of consciousness. Given most theories of consciousness, the following three claims are inconsistent. INTRINSICALITY: Consciousness is intrinsic. NON-OVERLAP: Conscious systems do not overlap with other conscious systems (a la Unger’s problem of the many). REDUCTIONISM: Consciousness is constituted by more fundamental properties (as per standard versions of physicalism and Russellian monism). In view of this, I will consider whether rejecting INTRINSICALITY is necessarily less plausible than rejecting NON-OVERLAP or REDUCTIONISM. I will also consider whether IIT is necessarily committed to rejecting INTRINSICALITY or whether it could also accept solutions that reject NON-OVERLAP or REDUCTIONISM instead. I will suggest that the best option for IIT may be a solution that rejects REDUCTIONISM rather than INTRINSICALITY or NON-OVERLAP.
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Brent Meeker
Jan 27, 2020, 5:19:08 PM1/27/20
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It's my impression that Scott Aaronson's counter example pretty well
disposed of IIT.
Brent
Brent
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Philip Thrift
Jan 28, 2020, 12:18:42 AM1/28/20
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Is he in agreement with Mørch?
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Bruce Kellett
Jan 28, 2020, 12:49:54 AM1/28/20
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On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 4:18 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
What is Scott Aaronson's counterexample to IIT?
A simple search on Aaronson's blog gives many hits. Perhaps the most relevant is:
Is he in agreement with Mørch?
No.
Bruce
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Philip Thrift
Jan 28, 2020, 1:12:52 AM1/28/20
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(written 6 years ago)
and
(2019)
are in agreement in terms of their information processing criticism.
@philipthrift
Philip Thrift
Jan 28, 2020, 1:42:53 AM1/28/20
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If there are no experiences (experiential units, constituents, whatever) - wherever they may be in nature, assumedly in brains - to process, there is nothing to be integrated in the first place.
@philipthrift
Brent Meeker
Jan 28, 2020, 2:35:02 PM1/28/20
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On 1/27/2020 10:42 PM, Philip Thrift
wrote:
The bottom line for why IIT fails:
If there are no experiences (experiential units, constituents, whatever) - wherever they may be in nature, assumedly in brains - to process, there is nothing to be integrated in the first place.
No, it fails because it doesn't agree with the common sense
assessment of what is conscious and what is not. From Scott's blog:
For we can easily interpret IIT as trying to do something more “modest” than solve the Hard Problem, although still staggeringly audacious. Namely, we can say that IIT “merely” aims to tell us which physical systems are associated with consciousness and which aren’t, purely in terms of the systems’ physical organization. The test of such a theory is whether it can produce results agreeing with “commonsense intuition”: for example, whether it can affirm, from first principles, that (most) humans are conscious; that dogs and horses are also conscious but less so; that rocks, livers, bacteria colonies, and existing digital computers are not conscious (or are hardly conscious); and that a room full of people has no “mega-consciousness” over and above the consciousnesses of the individuals.
Brent
For we can easily interpret IIT as trying to do something more “modest” than solve the Hard Problem, although still staggeringly audacious. Namely, we can say that IIT “merely” aims to tell us which physical systems are associated with consciousness and which aren’t, purely in terms of the systems’ physical organization. The test of such a theory is whether it can produce results agreeing with “commonsense intuition”: for example, whether it can affirm, from first principles, that (most) humans are conscious; that dogs and horses are also conscious but less so; that rocks, livers, bacteria colonies, and existing digital computers are not conscious (or are hardly conscious); and that a room full of people has no “mega-consciousness” over and above the consciousnesses of the individuals.
Brent
@philipthrift
On Tuesday, January 28, 2020 at 12:12:52 AM UTC-6, Philip Thrift wrote:
It seems that
(written 6 years ago)
and
(2019)
are in agreement in terms of their information processing criticism.
@philipthrift
On Monday, January 27, 2020 at 11:49:54 PM UTC-6, Bruce wrote:On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 4:18 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:What is Scott Aaronson's counterexample to IIT?
A simple search on Aaronson's blog gives many hits. Perhaps the most relevant is:
Is he in agreement with Mørch?
No.
Bruce@philipthrift
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Philip Thrift
Jan 28, 2020, 6:31:39 PM1/28/20
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Maybe. But the failure I wrote of applies if consciousness occurs only in brains (or even in just human brains) and IIT only applies to that. Unless IIT is modified as Mørch proposes, but then IIT would not be the same IIT that Aaronson is writing about 6 years ago.
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Bruce Kellett
Jan 28, 2020, 6:55:46 PM1/28/20
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On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 10:31 AM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
Maybe. But the failure I wrote of applies if consciousness occurs only in brains (or even in just human brains) and IIT only applies to that. Unless IIT is modified as Mørch proposes, but then IIT would not be the same IIT that Aaronson is writing about 6 years ago.
I don't think simple modifications to IIT to make it no longer IIT is going to allow it to escape from Aronson's critique. Besides, there is no "hard problem" of consciousness......
Bruce
Brent Meeker
Jan 28, 2020, 8:31:54 PM1/28/20
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On 1/28/2020 3:31 PM, Philip Thrift
wrote:
Maybe. But the failure I wrote of applies if consciousness occurs only in brains (or even in just human brains) and IIT only applies to that. Unless IIT is modified as Mørch proposes, but then IIT would not be the same IIT that Aaronson is writing about 6 years ago.
It would still fail though, because Scott's counter example includes
things made of matter:
In my view, IIT fails to solve the Pretty-Hard Problem because it unavoidably predicts vast amounts of consciousness in physical systems that no sane person would regard as particularly “conscious” at all: indeed, systems that do nothing but apply a low-density parity-check code, or other simple transformations of their input data. Moreover, IIT predicts not merely that these systems are “slightly” conscious (which would be fine), but that they can be unboundedly more conscious than humans are.
Brent
In my view, IIT fails to solve the Pretty-Hard Problem because it unavoidably predicts vast amounts of consciousness in physical systems that no sane person would regard as particularly “conscious” at all: indeed, systems that do nothing but apply a low-density parity-check code, or other simple transformations of their input data. Moreover, IIT predicts not merely that these systems are “slightly” conscious (which would be fine), but that they can be unboundedly more conscious than humans are.
Brent
Philip Thrift
Jan 29, 2020, 3:32:36 AM1/29/20
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Hedda negates the unboundedly more.
Even rocks have information-processing properties.
Quartz crystal computer rocks
"Irrational Computing" has interlinked a series of untreated crystals and minerals to create a primitive signal processor.
@philipthrift
Philip Thrift
Jan 29, 2020, 3:59:09 AM1/29/20
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Is the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness Compatible with Russellian Panpsychism?
The Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is a leading scientific theory of consciousness, which implies a kind of panpsychism. In this paper, I consider whether IIT is compatible with a particular kind of panpsychism known as Russellian panpsychism, which purports to avoid the main problems of both physicalism and dualism. I will first show that if IIT were compatible with Russellian panpsychism, it would contribute to solving Russellian panpsychism’s combination problem, which threatens to show that the view does not avoid the main problems of physicalism and dualism after all. I then show that IIT and Russellian panpsychism are not compatible as they currently stand, because of a problem which I will call the coarse-graining problem. After I explain the coarse-graining problem, I offer two possible solutions, each involving a small modification of IIT. Given either of these modifications, IIT and Russellian panpsychism may be fully compatible after all and jointly enable significant progress on the mind-body problem.
Conclusion
I have suggested two ways of resolving the coarse-graining problem and rendering IIT and Russellian panpsychism compatible. These suggestions involve substantive modifications of some basic principles of IIT, either the Exclusion postulate or the coarse-graining principle.
Given one of these modifications, IIT would support (significant progress towards) a solution to the combination problem for Russellian panpsychism. IIT would support this solution either on its own, in view of its explanatory claim according to which the principles of mental combination are a priori deducible from phenomenological axioms, or on the basis of its purely correlational claim taken together with either the phenomenal bonding view or the fusion view of mental combination.
@philipthrift
Bruno Marchal
Jan 29, 2020, 1:09:43 PM1/29/20
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On 29 Jan 2020, at 00:55, Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 10:31 AM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
Maybe. But the failure I wrote of applies if consciousness occurs only in brains (or even in just human brains) and IIT only applies to that. Unless IIT is modified as Mørch proposes, but then IIT would not be the same IIT that Aaronson is writing about 6 years ago.
I don't think simple modifications to IIT to make it no longer IIT is going to allow it to escape from Aronson's critique. Besides, there is no "hard problem" of consciousness……
The hard problem of consciousness is the nth materialist version of the mind-body problem.
With mechanism, that problem is indeed solvable. Consciousness is just anything simultaneously true, non provable, knowable, even indubitable (knowingly for “rich" entities) and non definable, and indeed the logic of machine self-reference shows that all machine looking inward, in the way allowed by mathematical logic (theoretical computer science) will bring a term to describe this, and is a good candidate to be called consciousness. But the mind-body problem is not solved per se by this, as the physical universe vanishes from the ontology, and the laws of physics have to be retrieved from a special statistics on the computations, and indeed that gives both quantum logic, and a many-histories interpretation of the observable in arithmetic.
Now, I am not sure if that works for you as you seem to believe in a material ontology, so you need a non Turing emulable notion of mind… (an idea that I find premature, let us test mechanism before speculating it is false. Mechanism is used in biology Drawinism, and is currently implied by all know physical theories, except for very special use of GR, known to be incompatible with QM).
Bruno
Bruce@philipthrift
On Tuesday, January 28, 2020 at 1:35:02 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
On 1/27/2020 10:42 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
The bottom line for why IIT fails:
If there are no experiences (experiential units, constituents, whatever) - wherever they may be in nature, assumedly in brains - to process, there is nothing to be integrated in the first place.
No, it fails because it doesn't agree with the common sense assessment of what is conscious and what is not. From Scott's blog:
For we can easily interpret IIT as trying to do something more “modest” than solve the Hard Problem, although still staggeringly audacious. Namely, we can say that IIT “merely” aims to tell us which physical systems are associated with consciousness and which aren’t, purely in terms of the systems’ physical organization. The test of such a theory is whether it can produce results agreeing with “commonsense intuition”: for example, whether it can affirm, from first principles, that (most) humans are conscious; that dogs and horses are also conscious but less so; that rocks, livers, bacteria colonies, and existing digital computers are not conscious (or are hardly conscious); and that a room full of people has no “mega-consciousness” over and above the consciousnesses of the individuals.
Brent
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Brent Meeker
Jan 29, 2020, 2:01:38 PM1/29/20
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On 1/29/2020 12:32 AM, Philip Thrift
wrote:
On Tuesday, January 28, 2020 at 7:31:54 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
On 1/28/2020 3:31 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
Maybe. But the failure I wrote of applies if consciousness occurs only in brains (or even in just human brains) and IIT only applies to that. Unless IIT is modified as Mørch proposes, but then IIT would not be the same IIT that Aaronson is writing about 6 years ago.
It would still fail though, because Scott's counter example includes things made of matter:
In my view, IIT fails to solve the Pretty-Hard Problem because it unavoidably predicts vast amounts of consciousness in physical systems that no sane person would regard as particularly “conscious” at all: indeed, systems that do nothing but apply a low-density parity-check code, or other simple transformations of their input data. Moreover, IIT predicts not merely that these systems are “slightly” conscious (which would be fine), but that they can be unboundedly more conscious than humans are.
Brent
Hedda negates the unboundedly more.
How? And does she provide a bound relative to human consciousness?
Even rocks have information-processing properties.
The rock that computes everything?
Brent
Brent
Quartz crystal computer rocks"Irrational Computing" has interlinked a series of untreated crystals and minerals to create a primitive signal processor.
@philipthrift
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Brent Meeker
Jan 29, 2020, 2:32:06 PM1/29/20
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Her suggested solution relies on an implausible application of her
intutition:
According to
this problem, macro-consciousness has too many qualities. In physics, we find a limited
number of fundamental particles (about 17, according to the standard model). This suggests a
correspondingly limited number of basic microphenomenal qualities. In our experience,
however, we find an apparently endless number of different phenomenal qualities (colors,
sounds, emotions and so on). It is hard to see how all these qualities can result (without radical
emergence) just from combining a small number of basic microphenomenal qualities in
different ways
I don't know that "radical emergence" means, but I suspect it accounts for sugar tasting different than starch.
Brent
According to
this problem, macro-consciousness has too many qualities. In physics, we find a limited
number of fundamental particles (about 17, according to the standard model). This suggests a
correspondingly limited number of basic microphenomenal qualities. In our experience,
however, we find an apparently endless number of different phenomenal qualities (colors,
sounds, emotions and so on). It is hard to see how all these qualities can result (without radical
emergence) just from combining a small number of basic microphenomenal qualities in
different ways
I don't know that "radical emergence" means, but I suspect it accounts for sugar tasting different than starch.
Brent
Philip Thrift
Jan 29, 2020, 2:55:39 PM1/29/20
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Mørch's "fusion"(of information and experiential constituents) is that the more information-processing (IP) power there is (like a human brain being on top) the more experientiality it is capable of.
So IP-power would be a measure of consciousness potential.
Now the human brain IP-power is like 10^whatever times that of a rock.
Also, a human brain has more IP-power than that of a chimp - its language ability shows that.
A chimp can write the alphabet, so why can't it write stories with them?
@philipthrift
Brent Meeker
Jan 29, 2020, 7:17:11 PM1/29/20
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Fine. So why not base consciousness on information processing
power? Panpsychism then adds nothing by mysticism.
Now the human brain IP-power is like 10^whatever times that of a rock.
Is it? A rock has a lot of atoms that can be a lot of states, like
1e30. Maybe it has to do with connections and signals and sensors
and environment. Not IIT.
Also, a human brain has more IP-power than that of a chimp - its language ability shows that.
And your computer has more arithmetical ability than you do.
Brent
Brent
A chimp can write the alphabet, so why can't it write stories with them?
@philipthrift
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Philip Thrift
Jan 30, 2020, 4:28:51 AM1/30/20
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If a rock has more information processing power than a brain, and if consciousness is information processing (a lot of it) then why isn't a rock conscious?
But a rock isn't conscious!
@philipthrift
Brent Meeker
Jan 30, 2020, 12:26:09 PM1/30/20
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According to panpsychists (and maybe IIT) it is.
Brent
Brent
Philip Thrift
Jan 30, 2020, 12:59:37 PM1/30/20
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from Ph.D. Thesis - Hedda Hassel Mørch
What do defenders of panpsychism normally mean when they say that everything is mental? It seems generally agreed upon that the “pan” of “panpsychism” requires that mentality is to be attributed to at least every fundamental and concrete thing, in addition to humans and other animals. Being concrete means being non-abstract, perhaps in virtue of being spatiotemporal, so numbers and other abstract objects are excluded from the thesis. The fundamental concrete entities are often taken to include at least the ultimate particles of physics, but to exclude most ordinary objects like tables, chairs and rocks.
Therefore, panpsychism does not require that such ordinary objects [like tables, chairs and rocks] have mentality
(as emphasized by Strawson [Realistic Monism*]. The same goes for more esoteric objects sometimes considered by philosophers, such as undetached rabbit parts or the set of my nose and the planet Venus (however, see Goff (forthcoming) for an argument to the contrary). Such presumably non-fundamental things can be regarded as mental only in virtue of having mental parts or constituents, i.e., in the same indirect way that we ordinary think of a society of people as having mentality.
@philipthfit
Brent Meeker
Jan 30, 2020, 6:34:00 PM1/30/20
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On 1/30/2020 9:59 AM, Philip Thrift
wrote:
On Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 11:26:09 AM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
On 1/30/2020 1:28 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Wednesday, January 29, 2020 at 6:17:11 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
On 1/29/2020 11:55 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
Now the human brain IP-power is like 10^whatever times that of a rock.
Is it? A rock has a lot of atoms that can be a lot of states, like 1e30. Maybe it has to do with connections and signals and sensors and environment. Not IIT.
Also, a human brain has more IP-power than that of a chimp - its language ability shows that.
And your computer has more arithmetical ability than you do.
Brent
If a rock has more information processing power than a brain, and if consciousness is information processing (a lot of it) then why isn't a rock conscious?
But a rock isn't conscious!
According to panpsychists (and maybe IIT) it is.
Brent
from Ph.D. Thesis - Hedda Hassel Mørch
What do defenders of panpsychism normally mean when they say that everything is mental? It seems generally agreed upon that the “pan” of “panpsychism” requires that mentality is to be attributed to at least every fundamental and concrete thing, in addition to humans and other animals. Being concrete means being non-abstract, perhaps in virtue of being spatiotemporal, so numbers and other abstract objects are excluded from the thesis. The fundamental concrete entities are often taken to include at least the ultimate particles of physics, but to exclude most ordinary objects like tables, chairs and rocks.
Therefore, panpsychism does not require that such ordinary objects [like tables, chairs and rocks] have mentality
Right. Having solved the problem of where mentality comes from by
simply asserting it's inherent in everything, then panspychism was
faced with the problem that ordinary objects were obviously not
conscious (Aaronson's common sense critereon). So this solved that
asserting that only special arrangements of fundamental particles
are conscious. Panpsychists haven't been able to say exactly which
arrangements are conscious but some people are betting in brains.
Brent
Brent
(as emphasized by Strawson [Realistic Monism*]. The same goes for more esoteric objects sometimes considered by philosophers, such as undetached rabbit parts or the set of my nose and the planet Venus (however, see Goff (forthcoming) for an argument to the contrary). Such presumably non-fundamental things can be regarded as mental only in virtue of having mental parts or constituents, i.e., in the same indirect way that we ordinary think of a society of people as having mentality.
@philipthfit
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Bruce Kellett
Jan 30, 2020, 6:40:03 PM1/30/20
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On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 10:34 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
On 1/30/2020 9:59 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:Therefore, panpsychism does not require that such ordinary objects [like tables, chairs and rocks] have mentality
Right. Having solved the problem of where mentality comes from by simply asserting it's inherent in everything, then panspychism was faced with the problem that ordinary objects were obviously not conscious (Aaronson's common sense critereon). So this solved that asserting that only special arrangements of fundamental particles are conscious. Panpsychists haven't been able to say exactly which arrangements are conscious but some people are betting in brains.
In other words, panpsychism, like IIT, is load of ad hoc drivel.
Bruce
Philip Thrift
Jan 31, 2020, 4:29:07 AM1/31/20
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On Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 5:34:00 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
On 1/30/2020 9:59 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 11:26:09 AM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
On 1/30/2020 1:28 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Wednesday, January 29, 2020 at 6:17:11 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
On 1/29/2020 11:55 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
Now the human brain IP-power is like 10^whatever times that of a rock.
Is it? A rock has a lot of atoms that can be a lot of states, like 1e30. Maybe it has to do with connections and signals and sensors and environment. Not IIT.
Also, a human brain has more IP-power than that of a chimp - its language ability shows that.
And your computer has more arithmetical ability than you do.
Brent
If a rock has more information processing power than a brain, and if consciousness is information processing (a lot of it) then why isn't a rock conscious?
But a rock isn't conscious!
According to panpsychists (and maybe IIT) it is.
Brent
from Ph.D. Thesis - Hedda Hassel Mørch
What do defenders of panpsychism normally mean when they say that everything is mental? It seems generally agreed upon that the “pan” of “panpsychism” requires that mentality is to be attributed to at least every fundamental and concrete thing, in addition to humans and other animals. Being concrete means being non-abstract, perhaps in virtue of being spatiotemporal, so numbers and other abstract objects are excluded from the thesis. The fundamental concrete entities are often taken to include at least the ultimate particles of physics, but to exclude most ordinary objects like tables, chairs and rocks.
Therefore, panpsychism does not require that such ordinary objects [like tables, chairs and rocks] have mentality
Right. Having solved the problem of where mentality comes from by simply asserting it's inherent in everything, then panspychism was faced with the problem that ordinary objects were obviously not conscious (Aaronson's common sense critereon). So this solved that asserting that only special arrangements of fundamental particles are conscious. Panpsychists haven't been able to say exactly which arrangements are conscious but some people are betting in brains.
Brent
As Strawson puts it:
One thing we do know about matter is that when you put some very common-or-garden elements (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sodium, potassium, etc) together in the way in which they're put together in brains, you get consciousness like ours – a wholly physical phenomenon. (It's happening to you right now.) And this means that we do, after all, know something about the intrinsic nature of matter, over and above everything we know in knowing the equations of physics. Why? Because we know the intrinsic nature of consciousness and consciousness is a form of matter.
If one took the human brain and built a massively parallel computer that executed a simulation of the equations (physical theory) for all the neuronal cells of the brain and it was conscious, that would disprove panpsychism.
@philipthrift
Alan Grayson
Jan 31, 2020, 4:51:16 AM1/31/20
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True for those who never dropped LSD. AG
Philip Thrift
Jan 31, 2020, 5:09:22 AM1/31/20
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Excellent point.
via Twitter friend of mine - https://twitter.com/PeterSjostedtH
Philosopher of mind Peter Sjöstedt-H discusses the hidden impact psychedelics have had on philosophy and asks if such extreme, altered modes of mind could help give us answers to some of the big questions facing the philosophers and scientists of today. Peter is an Anglo-Scandinavian philosopher of mind and author. He lives in West Cornwall and is engaged in his PhD with the University of Exeter, where he also teaches philosophy modules and writing skills. Peter is the inspiration behind the inhuman philosopher Marvel Superhero, Karnak. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.
He is a proponent of panpsychism—the theory that everything material has an element of consciousness. His work even helped to inspire the new form of Marvel’s “inhuman philosopher” character, Karmak.
@philipthrift
Bruno Marchal
Jan 31, 2020, 5:23:06 AM1/31/20
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On 30 Jan 2020, at 18:59, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 11:26:09 AM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
On 1/30/2020 1:28 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Wednesday, January 29, 2020 at 6:17:11 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
On 1/29/2020 11:55 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
Now the human brain IP-power is like 10^whatever times that of a rock.
Is it? A rock has a lot of atoms that can be a lot of states, like 1e30. Maybe it has to do with connections and signals and sensors and environment. Not IIT.
Also, a human brain has more IP-power than that of a chimp - its language ability shows that.
And your computer has more arithmetical ability than you do.
Brent
If a rock has more information processing power than a brain, and if consciousness is information processing (a lot of it) then why isn't a rock conscious?
But a rock isn't conscious!
According to panpsychists (and maybe IIT) it is.
Brentfrom Ph.D. Thesis - Hedda Hassel MørchWhat do defenders of panpsychism normally mean when they say that everything is mental? It seems generally agreed upon that the “pan” of “panpsychism” requires that mentality is to be attributed to at least every fundamental and concrete thing, in addition to humans and other animals. Being concrete means being non-abstract, perhaps in virtue of being spatiotemporal, so numbers and other abstract objects are excluded from the thesis.
This automatically makes that “panpsychism” incompatible with Mechanism. With Mechanism, we are abstract, immaterial being. We can understand this by the fact that in principle we can change our body for a new one every morning, and we can download ourself on the net, etc. With Mechanism, we possess a (local) body (emerging from infinitely many computations), and so we are not that body: we possess it like we can possess a bike or a car. Advantage: we can save our soul on an hard-disk. Problem (psychological problem for some): we are duplicable, and duplicated by huge number (perhaps transfinite cardinal) “all the time”, personal identity is an indexical illusion, physics is reduced to arithmetic/meta-arithmetic, etc.
The fundamental concrete entities are often taken to include at least the ultimate particles of physics, but to exclude most ordinary objects like tables, chairs and rocks.Therefore, panpsychism does not require that such ordinary objects [like tables, chairs and rocks] have mentality
But then why put some consciousness in their elementary parts, and what make a brain transporting consciousness and not a table or a chair?
An answer would that it is the organisation of matter which counts, but then we are back to some form of mechanism.
(as emphasized by Strawson [Realistic Monism*]. The same goes for more esoteric objects sometimes considered by philosophers, such as undetached rabbit parts or the set of my nose and the planet Venus (however, see Goff (forthcoming) for an argument to the contrary). Such presumably non-fundamental things can be regarded as mental only in virtue of having mental parts or constituents, i.e., in the same indirect way that we ordinary think of a society of people as having mentality.
Physicalism entails a non Mechanist theory of Mind, but Physics never address the problem of consciousness/matter, and is based on no evidence available. Again, I think it is better to test simpler theory before jumping to magical conclusion…
I try hard to find some sense to “panpsychism” which would be coherent with Mechanism (Darwin & Co.). The close I could imagine is that the arithmetical truth would have some consciousness, but then it has to be something rather weird.
Only person are conscious. Consciousness is just knowledge, and knowledge is just true belief. Physical consciousness is more: it is belief + truth + consistency (that makes it “immediate” indubitable” and keep intact its undefinability (that we feel when we introspect ourselves).
This also has many consequences like explaining “free-will”, providing a functional role to consciousness, and a general role in the selection of the computational histories (but those are not related: free-will is NOT that selection!).
It provides also an objective theory of morality (or more general Protagorean virtue), but the theory is “negative”. It says that it is immoral to do moral. It explains that a religious or moral sermon leads to the contrary effects, and explain why the institutionalisation of religion/moral leads to Atheism and Suffering (a point rather well explained by the Marquis de Sade, up to make him doubt at some point of atheism, as Sade realise that if the goal is to make people suffering: the institutionalisation of religion gives the better tool for doing this. You can recognise the laws of “Wellcome to insecurity” by Lan Watts, but also single out by the Taoists (Lie-tseu notably) and which all have the shape []x -> ~x. Of course in theology (G) we have already a pretty simple solution:
[]<>t -> ~<>t
If I prove my consistency then I am inconsistent. Consistency is a sort of abstract ancestor of all moral virtue, and somehow, morality is related to surviving.
People are attached to matter, and they are right, if they want to keep up its existence, you need to reject mechanism. But Mechanism explain both consciousness (and qualia, …) and the “matter appearance”,
May be if you decide that number are God’s object of thought, that is “ideal object”, then mechanism is a panpsychism, but that does not teach us anything new, and it is better to avoid metaphysics at the level of the numbers, given that we are using the numbers to define all the rest and formulate the metaphysical question.
What *is* coherent here (not with Mechanism, but with the “fundamental result” (that Mechanism and Materialism are incompatible), is the search for pretty weird theory of mind, when you want keep an ontological matter).
Bruno
@philipthfit
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Philip Thrift
Jan 31, 2020, 5:34:37 AM1/31/20
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I don't think that panpsychism is coherent with Mechanism (as I understand your definition of Mechanism).
And scientists seem to assign "lower-levels" of consciousness (experientiality) to at least some non-human animals.
@philipthrift
Alan Grayson
Jan 31, 2020, 6:05:13 AM1/31/20
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It's actually visible when you're high enough, and doesn't appear to manifest will. Of course, the naysayers will say with great confidence (and no authority) that it's an hallucination. AG
Brent Meeker
Jan 31, 2020, 9:45:47 PM1/31/20
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A non-sequitur. The valid conclusion is we know
something about certain arrangements of matter.
If one took the human brain and built a massively parallel computer that executed a simulation of the equations (physical theory) for all the neuronal cells of the brain and it was conscious, that would disprove panpsychism.
And how would you know whether or not it was conscious? From its
behavior (which is how we tell whether other people or animals are
conscious)...but in that case why is it relevant that it be a
simulation of a human brain. Anything that passes the conscious
behavior test, should be counted conscious.
Brent
Brent
Brent Meeker
Jan 31, 2020, 9:56:50 PM1/31/20
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On 1/31/2020 2:34 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>
> Physicalism entails a non Mechanist theory of Mind, but Physics never
> address the problem of consciousness/matter, and is based on no
> evidence available. Again, I think it is better to test simpler theory
> before jumping to magical conclusion…
>
> I try hard to find some sense to “panpsychism” which would be coherent
> with Mechanism (Darwin & Co.). The close I could imagine is that the
> arithmetical truth would have some consciousness, but then it has to
> be something rather weird.
>
> Only person are conscious. Consciousness is just knowledge, and
> knowledge is just true belief.
has a false belief. Do you conclude he is not conscious when he thinks
of this belief?
> Physical consciousness is more: it is belief + truth + consistency
> (that makes it “immediate” indubitable” and keep intact its
> undefinability (that we feel when we introspect ourselves).
>
> This also has many consequences like explaining “free-will”, providing
> a functional role to consciousness, and a general role in the
> selection of the computational histories (but those are not related:
> free-will is NOT that selection!).
>
> It provides also an objective theory of morality (or more general
> Protagorean virtue), but the theory is “negative”. It says that it is
> immoral to do moral.
reached a reductio.
Brent
Bruno Marchal
Feb 1, 2020, 10:21:23 AM2/1/20
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I tend to assume consciousness in all living being from bacteria to most higher mammals. Reading the news I get some doubt for the human though.
It remains a vexing problem with mechanism to decide at which moment adding neurons/connexion (in the brain or outside, like with internet) diminishes consciousness instead of expansing it.
All universal numbers “are" conscious, and indeed the unprogrammed universal numbers are the starting point of the universal consciousness flux, whose differentiation leads to the physical reality. This works, and lead to an arithmetical transparent interpretation of the Moderatus-Plotinus theory of Reality.
Bruno
@philipthrift
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