1. I exist. (Cogito, ergo sum). I’m a thinking, conscious entity that experiences existence at this specific point in time in the multiverse.
2. Our understanding of physics is that there is no fundamental thing that we can reduce conscious experience down to. We’re all just quarks and leptons interacting.
These appear to be in conflict. Taking (2) to its logical conclusion seems to imply that we live in a deterministic block universe, or at least we can frame our physical understanding as if we do. But if that’s true, and if the universe is big enough (it is a big place!), then somewhere out there in space or time is a computational process that resembles the me-of-right-now. Maybe a Boltzmann brain, or maybe a simulation of me in the future, or maybe just the split off Everett branches of alternate histories. Since there are multiple instances of me out there, how come I’m stuck in the “now”?
Any fundamental theory of physics must explain ALL the evidence we have available to us. This includes both highly precise quantum measurements, and the fact that I’m a thinking, conscious entity that experiences existence at this specific point in time in the multiverse. One of the chief problems here is that physics, so far as we can tell, is entirely local. We expect future physical laws to also be local. But our best guesses at understanding consciousness is that it is information processing, and is only really described at a much higher level than quarks and leptons. So our prior is that we need a physical theory that explains consciousness at the level of quarks and leptons, but that seems irreconcilable with our current understanding of biological consciousness. I’d accept an alternative theory if it led to testable predictions, but I’m not willing to bite the bullet of non-local physical theories of consciousness without experimental evidence. The prior for locality in fundamental physics is simply too high to realistically consider alternatives otherwise.
The jump to panpsychism is not an inference from evidence but rather a deduction from a reasonable prior: a local theory of consciousness would imply that (1) a single lepton interacting with a field (an electron emitting or absorbing a photon) has some epsilon experience of consciousness; and (2) conscious experience locally aggregates. So two electrons exchanging a photon is a single consciousness event of, say, 2*epsilon magnitude (although the relationship need not be linear). Higher order structure further aggregates this singular experience of consciousness, in a progression from quarks and leptons to atoms, to molecules, to organelles, to cell structures, to tissue, to organs, to entire organisms. However at some point the system interacts with a non-factorable stochastic boundary, the environment, which prevents further aggregation. The singularly conscious entity interacts with the environment, but each interaction is isolated and either peels off or adds epsilon consciousness stochastically, like the steady-state boundary between a liquid and a gas.
This so-far qualitatively descriptive theory explains why information-processing systems like our brains (or AI) have singular experiences of consciousness, without having to evoke theories like epiphenomenalism with questionable physical basis. My evidence for it is simply an Occam prior: it’s the simplest theory with local physics which explains the evidence. But as you expect of any local theory, what’s true of one part of the universe is true of another. If we have subjective experiences (and I’m not willing to bite the bullet of rejecting Descartes’ Cogito), then so does a rock. And the ocean. And every little thing in the universe. Indeed the universe itself is conscious, to whatever degree that makes sense in an inflationary universe with local physics, and we are just factorable complex interactions within that universal consciousness that experience our own subjective sense of self. When we “die”, our experience doesn’t stop.. but it does stop being interesting from a human standpoint, as we return to the stochastic random noise of the environment in which we live. [*]
This is the basis of a physical theory of consciousness I thought up almost two decades ago when I first encountered the quantum teleport thought experiment in a philosophy class, but it is also basically the same as Max Tegmark’s pansychic theory of consciousness, so I’ll just point you to his articles for more detail.
[*] Aside: if this is true, being cremated might be the worst possible outcome after death. Being worm food is better than being perfectly split up into the perfectly stochastic entities (gas molecules) and dispersed in the environment… It would also mean that cryonics works, however, but destructive mind uploading is a kill-and-copy operation.
Not surprisingly, I have a few issues with your chain of reasoning.
1. I exist. (Cogito, ergo sum). I’m a thinking, conscious entity that experiences existence at this specific point in time in the multiverse.
Cogito is an observation. I am not arguing with that one. Ergo sum is an assumption, a model. The “multiverse” thing is a speculation.
Our understanding of physics is that there is no fundamental thing that we can reduce conscious experience down to. We’re all just quarks and leptons interacting.
This is very much simplified. Sure, we can do reduction, but that doesn’t mean we can do synthesis. There is no guarantee that it is even possible to do synthesis. In fact, there are mathematical examples where synthesis might not be possible, simply because the relevant equations cannot be solved uniquely. I made a related point here. Here is an example. Consciousness can potentially be reduced to atoms, but it may also be reduced to bits, a rather different substrate. Maybe there are other reductions possible.
And it is also possible that constructing consciousness out of quarks and leptons is impossible because of “hard emergence”. Of the sorites kind. There is no atom of water. A handful of H2O molecules cannot be described as a solid, liquid or gas. A snowflake requires trillions of trillions of H2O molecules together. There is no “snowflakiness” in a single molecule. Just like there is no consciousness in an elementary particle. There is no evidence for panpsychism, and plenty against it.
Postulating hard emergence requires a non-local postulate. I’m not willing to accept that without testable predictions.
I don’t really see how “ergo sum” is an assumption. If any thing it is a direct inference, but not an assumption. Something exists that is perceiving. Any theory that says otherwise must be incorrect.
If consciousness only “emerges” when an information processing system is constructed at a higher level, then that implies that the whole is something different than the aggregate of its many individual interactions. This is unlike shminux’s description liquid water emerging from H2O interactions, which is confusing of map and territory. If a physical description stated that an interaction is conscious if and only if it is part of an information processing system, that is something that cannot be determined with local information at the exact time and place of the individual interactions.
I’m biting the bullet of QM (the standard model, or whatever quantum gravity formulation wins out) being all there is. If that is true, then explaining subjective experience requires a local postulate not an added rule, which results in panpsychism.
Taking (2) to its logical conclusion seems to imply that we live in a deterministic block universe,
That was not implied by (2) as stated, and isn’t implied by physics in general. Both the block universe and determinism are open questions (and not equivalent to each other).
One of the chief problems here is that physics, so far as we can tell, is entirely local.
[emph. added]
Nope. What is specifically ruled out by test’s of Bell’s inequalities is the conjunction of (local, deterministic). The one thing we know is that the two things you just asserted are not both true. What we don’t know is which is false.
What is specifically ruled out by test’s of Bell’s inequalities is the conjunction of (local, deterministic). The one thing we know is that the two things you just asserted are not both true. What we don’t know is which is false.
I think you’re nitpicking here. While we don’t know the fundamental laws of the universe with 100% confidence, I would suggest that based on what we do know, they are extremely likely to be local and non-deterministic (as opposed to nonlocal hidden variables). Quantum field theory (QFT) is in that category, and adding general relativity doesn’t change anything except in unusual extreme circumstances (e.g. microscopic black holes, or the Big Bang—where the two can’t be sensibly combined). String theory doesn’t really have a meaningful notion of locality at very small scales (Planck length, Planck time), but at larger scales in normal circumstances it approaches QFT + classical general relativity, which again is local and non-deterministic. (So yes, probably our everyday human interactions have nonlocality at a part-per-googolplex level or whatever, related to quantum fluctuations of the geometry of space itself, but it’s hard to imagine that this would matter for anything.)
(By non-deterministic I just mean that the Born rule involves true randomness. In Copenhagen interpretation you say that collapse is a random process. In many-worlds you would say that the laws of physics are deterministic but the quasi-anthropic question “what branch of the wavefunction will I happen to find myself in?” has a truly random answer. Either way is fine; it doesn’t matter for this comment.)
In many-worlds you would say that the laws of physics are deterministic
The only thing non-deterministic in QM is the Born rule, which isn’t part of a MWI block universe formulation. (You need a source of randomness to specify where “you” will end up in the future evolution of the universe, but not to specify all paths you might end up in.)
We also need (I would think) for the experience of consciousness to somehow cause your brain to instruct your hands to type “cogito ergo sum”. From what you wrote, I’m sorta imagining physical laws plus experience glued to it … and that physical laws without experience glued to it would still lead to the same nerve firing pattern, right? Or maybe you’ll say physical laws without experience is logically impossible? Or what?
I don’t find the question relevant. That’s a physicist’s application of Occam’s razor: extra postulates about consciousness don’t affect physical calculations, so we should ignore them—just like MWI vs CI doesn’t affect experimental predictions, so a physicist shouldn’t care what interpretation is used.
But my concern is the intersection of physics and philosophy: what moral weight should I give in my utilitarian assessment of possible futures outcomes? Whether a life form is conscious or not doesn’t matter much from a physicists perspective because it doesn’t affect the biochemical calculations, but it does matter to the question “should I protect this life?”
There is a division in the transhumanist community between whether one should identify with the instance of a computation, or the description of a computation. This has practical, real-world consequences: should I sign up for cryonics (with the possibility of revival, but you suffer some damage) or brain preservation (less damage, but only destructive uploading options)?
If the panpsychic consciousness-in-every-interaction postulate I stated is true, then morality and personal utility comes down instance of computation, not description of computation camp. This means cryonics (long sleep) is favored over brain preservation (kill-and-copy), and weird stuff like quantum suicide are also ruled out as options.
1. I exist. (Cogito, ergo sum). I’m a thinking, conscious entity that experiences existence at this specific point in time in the multiverse.
2. Our understanding of physics is that there is no fundamental thing that we can reduce conscious experience down to. We’re all just quarks and leptons interacting.
These appear to be in conflict. Taking (2) to its logical conclusion seems to imply that we live in a deterministic block universe, or at least we can frame our physical understanding as if we do. But if that’s true, and if the universe is big enough (it is a big place!), then somewhere out there in space or time is a computational process that resembles the me-of-right-now. Maybe a Boltzmann brain, or maybe a simulation of me in the future, or maybe just the split off Everett branches of alternate histories. Since there are multiple instances of me out there, how come I’m stuck in the “now”?
Any fundamental theory of physics must explain ALL the evidence we have available to us. This includes both highly precise quantum measurements, and the fact that I’m a thinking, conscious entity that experiences existence at this specific point in time in the multiverse. One of the chief problems here is that physics, so far as we can tell, is entirely local. We expect future physical laws to also be local. But our best guesses at understanding consciousness is that it is information processing, and is only really described at a much higher level than quarks and leptons. So our prior is that we need a physical theory that explains consciousness at the level of quarks and leptons, but that seems irreconcilable with our current understanding of biological consciousness. I’d accept an alternative theory if it led to testable predictions, but I’m not willing to bite the bullet of non-local physical theories of consciousness without experimental evidence. The prior for locality in fundamental physics is simply too high to realistically consider alternatives otherwise.
The jump to panpsychism is not an inference from evidence but rather a deduction from a reasonable prior: a local theory of consciousness would imply that (1) a single lepton interacting with a field (an electron emitting or absorbing a photon) has some epsilon experience of consciousness; and (2) conscious experience locally aggregates. So two electrons exchanging a photon is a single consciousness event of, say, 2*epsilon magnitude (although the relationship need not be linear). Higher order structure further aggregates this singular experience of consciousness, in a progression from quarks and leptons to atoms, to molecules, to organelles, to cell structures, to tissue, to organs, to entire organisms. However at some point the system interacts with a non-factorable stochastic boundary, the environment, which prevents further aggregation. The singularly conscious entity interacts with the environment, but each interaction is isolated and either peels off or adds epsilon consciousness stochastically, like the steady-state boundary between a liquid and a gas.
This so-far qualitatively descriptive theory explains why information-processing systems like our brains (or AI) have singular experiences of consciousness, without having to evoke theories like epiphenomenalism with questionable physical basis. My evidence for it is simply an Occam prior: it’s the simplest theory with local physics which explains the evidence. But as you expect of any local theory, what’s true of one part of the universe is true of another. If we have subjective experiences (and I’m not willing to bite the bullet of rejecting Descartes’ Cogito), then so does a rock. And the ocean. And every little thing in the universe. Indeed the universe itself is conscious, to whatever degree that makes sense in an inflationary universe with local physics, and we are just factorable complex interactions within that universal consciousness that experience our own subjective sense of self. When we “die”, our experience doesn’t stop.. but it does stop being interesting from a human standpoint, as we return to the stochastic random noise of the environment in which we live. [*]
This is the basis of a physical theory of consciousness I thought up almost two decades ago when I first encountered the quantum teleport thought experiment in a philosophy class, but it is also basically the same as Max Tegmark’s pansychic theory of consciousness, so I’ll just point you to his articles for more detail.
[*] Aside: if this is true, being cremated might be the worst possible outcome after death. Being worm food is better than being perfectly split up into the perfectly stochastic entities (gas molecules) and dispersed in the environment… It would also mean that cryonics works, however, but destructive mind uploading is a kill-and-copy operation.
Not surprisingly, I have a few issues with your chain of reasoning.
Cogito is an observation. I am not arguing with that one. Ergo sum is an assumption, a model. The “multiverse” thing is a speculation.
This is very much simplified. Sure, we can do reduction, but that doesn’t mean we can do synthesis. There is no guarantee that it is even possible to do synthesis. In fact, there are mathematical examples where synthesis might not be possible, simply because the relevant equations cannot be solved uniquely. I made a related point here. Here is an example. Consciousness can potentially be reduced to atoms, but it may also be reduced to bits, a rather different substrate. Maybe there are other reductions possible.
And it is also possible that constructing consciousness out of quarks and leptons is impossible because of “hard emergence”. Of the sorites kind. There is no atom of water. A handful of H2O molecules cannot be described as a solid, liquid or gas. A snowflake requires trillions of trillions of H2O molecules together. There is no “snowflakiness” in a single molecule. Just like there is no consciousness in an elementary particle. There is no evidence for panpsychism, and plenty against it.
Postulating hard emergence requires a non-local postulate. I’m not willing to accept that without testable predictions.
I don’t really see how “ergo sum” is an assumption. If any thing it is a direct inference, but not an assumption. Something exists that is perceiving. Any theory that says otherwise must be incorrect.
That is not obvious.
If consciousness only “emerges” when an information processing system is constructed at a higher level, then that implies that the whole is something different than the aggregate of its many individual interactions. This is unlike shminux’s description liquid water emerging from H2O interactions, which is confusing of map and territory. If a physical description stated that an interaction is conscious if and only if it is part of an information processing system, that is something that cannot be determined with local information at the exact time and place of the individual interactions.
I’m biting the bullet of QM (the standard model, or whatever quantum gravity formulation wins out) being all there is. If that is true, then explaining subjective experience requires a local postulate not an added rule, which results in panpsychism.
That was not implied by (2) as stated, and isn’t implied by physics in general. Both the block universe and determinism are open questions (and not equivalent to each other).
[emph. added]
Nope. What is specifically ruled out by test’s of Bell’s inequalities is the conjunction of (local, deterministic). The one thing we know is that the two things you just asserted are not both true. What we don’t know is which is false.
Actually the superdeterminism models allow for both to be true. There is a different assumption that breaks.
I think you’re nitpicking here. While we don’t know the fundamental laws of the universe with 100% confidence, I would suggest that based on what we do know, they are extremely likely to be local and non-deterministic (as opposed to nonlocal hidden variables). Quantum field theory (QFT) is in that category, and adding general relativity doesn’t change anything except in unusual extreme circumstances (e.g. microscopic black holes, or the Big Bang—where the two can’t be sensibly combined). String theory doesn’t really have a meaningful notion of locality at very small scales (Planck length, Planck time), but at larger scales in normal circumstances it approaches QFT + classical general relativity, which again is local and non-deterministic. (So yes, probably our everyday human interactions have nonlocality at a part-per-googolplex level or whatever, related to quantum fluctuations of the geometry of space itself, but it’s hard to imagine that this would matter for anything.)
(By non-deterministic I just mean that the Born rule involves true randomness. In Copenhagen interpretation you say that collapse is a random process. In many-worlds you would say that the laws of physics are deterministic but the quasi-anthropic question “what branch of the wavefunction will I happen to find myself in?” has a truly random answer. Either way is fine; it doesn’t matter for this comment.)
Well, I wasn’t nitpicking you. Friedenbach was assserting locality+determinism. You are asserting locality+nondeterminism, which is OK.
FWIW I was asserting this:
The only thing non-deterministic in QM is the Born rule, which isn’t part of a MWI block universe formulation. (You need a source of randomness to specify where “you” will end up in the future evolution of the universe, but not to specify all paths you might end up in.)
Interesting!
We also need (I would think) for the experience of consciousness to somehow cause your brain to instruct your hands to type “cogito ergo sum”. From what you wrote, I’m sorta imagining physical laws plus experience glued to it … and that physical laws without experience glued to it would still lead to the same nerve firing pattern, right? Or maybe you’ll say physical laws without experience is logically impossible? Or what?
I don’t find the question relevant. That’s a physicist’s application of Occam’s razor: extra postulates about consciousness don’t affect physical calculations, so we should ignore them—just like MWI vs CI doesn’t affect experimental predictions, so a physicist shouldn’t care what interpretation is used.
But my concern is the intersection of physics and philosophy: what moral weight should I give in my utilitarian assessment of possible futures outcomes? Whether a life form is conscious or not doesn’t matter much from a physicists perspective because it doesn’t affect the biochemical calculations, but it does matter to the question “should I protect this life?”
There is a division in the transhumanist community between whether one should identify with the instance of a computation, or the description of a computation. This has practical, real-world consequences: should I sign up for cryonics (with the possibility of revival, but you suffer some damage) or brain preservation (less damage, but only destructive uploading options)?
If the panpsychic consciousness-in-every-interaction postulate I stated is true, then morality and personal utility comes down instance of computation, not description of computation camp. This means cryonics (long sleep) is favored over brain preservation (kill-and-copy), and weird stuff like quantum suicide are also ruled out as options.