Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe?
Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe?
Physicists and philosophers recently met to debate a theory of consciousness called panpsychism
Interesting article didnt know where it fit best so I wanted to share it here.
-
Interesting but I struggle to see how this hypothesis could ever be proven or disproven. If it can’t actually be tested then I don’t see how it presents more scientific value any other religious or superstitious belief.
-
I've long been fond of panpsychism, but I think it's less a hypothesis to be "proven" and more just a different way of framing the questions behind what consciousness is and how it can be defined. Under panpsychism consciousness isn't a binary property that some things have and other things don't, it's a continuum from zero to one (and if you count humans as "1" on the consciousness scale it also makes sense to consider values above that - there's no reason to assume that humans are the "most conscious possible" state of being).
So when you're reading about panpsychism and it says something like "individual electrons are conscious", bear in mind that they're proposing considering electrons to be, like, 10^-10 "consciousness units" worth of conscious. It's not like they're actually aware of themselves in some meaningful way like humans are. That's a common "giggle factor" problem for panpsychism. And it's also not saying that any arbitrary larger-scale structure us "more conscious" than humans, the way that the components of a large-scale structure interact is super important. A rock is not equivalently as "conscious" as a human brain even if they have the same number of particles interacting within them.
-
I prefer to consider it in terms of "dimensions of awareness". Humans have evolved hundreds, possibly thousands, of interlinked dimensions of awareness for just about everything from colors to body language. Simple automated systems with sensors have their own dimensions of awareness, from vision to heat to pressure. Whatever it is that they track and respond to. AI, however, is finally hitting the point where these dimensions of awareness are being stacked and linked together (GPT5 can see, hear, read, and respond) and it's only a matter of time and agency (aka executive functioning) before we see true AI consciousness.
-
Well, hypothetically, if someone defined the "consciousness" of every particle mathematically, and then figured out the laws that would allow us to compute (or at least approximate) the "consciousness" of a composite system (such as a brain), then we'd would have a genuine scientific theory.
-
I could see it being used to help develop theories about the gaps in understanding we have about our universe in theoretical quantum mechanics. That's the only field of thought that could lead to quantifiable experiments to test hypotheses.
-
Here's another way of framing it: qualia, by definition, is not measurable by any instrument, but qualia must exist in some capacity in order for us to experience it. So, me must assume that either we cannot experience qualia, or that qualia exists in a way we do not fully understand yet. Since the former is generally rejected, the latter must be true.
You may argue that neurochemical signals are the physical manefestation of qualia, but making that assumption throws us into a trap. If qualia is neurochemical signals, which signals are they? By what definition can we precisely determine what is qualia and what is not? Are unconscious senses qualia? If we stimulated a random part of the brain, unrelated to the sensory cortex, would that create qualia? If the distribution of neurochemicals can be predicted, and the activations of neurons was deterministic as well, would calculating every stimulation in the brain be the same as consciousness?
In both arguments, consciousness is no clearer or blurrier, so which one is correct?
-
So our subjective experience must “exist” because we experience it? This seems rather circular. My personal take, consciousness is an artifact of how our brains work. It’s not a thing that exists in any physical sense, it is simply part of the model our brain structures the stimulation it receives throughout the course of our lives.
-
“We decide that it exists so it exists” is a terrible argument.
Consequently, there’s no “trap” in attributing it to neurochemical signals. Emergence is a known phenomenon, and it’s present everywhere. Asking “which signal is qualia” is as nonsensical as asking “which atom is a star” or “which transistor is the video on my phone”. It’s a deflection and misdirection.
I get it, people want to feel magical. But there’s a name to magic that works - science. Neurochemical processes are no less magical than some untestable source of experiences, with one big difference - they demonstrably exist.
-
-
-
A similar theory of consciousness was made popular by Babylon 5. It’s one of my favorite philosophical theories they discuss. In that show, the Minbari believe the universe manifests itself in each person in an effort to find meaning and understanding. Essentially, sentient life is as much a part of the universe’s core functioning as stars and planets. It develops as the way for the universe to explore and understand itself. To me, this concept is simpler, more beautiful, and more believable than all our human religions.
-
That’s Vedic philosophy in a nutshell.
-
100 percent agree with this.
-
-
As I see it, people keep developing mental constructs to make the experience of their own existence feel more meaningful, more important and potencially eternal, because the thought of insignificance and eventual death is just too scary.
-
For me, this is less an emotional support philosophy, and more an earnest curiosity about the nature of consciousness and reality.
-
For all the words we can use on it, it's lost on people who never had thoughts and experiences that prompted them to be curious about the nature of consciousness and reality.
It's like discussing the
bitternesssourness of a lemon with someone who never tried one.
-
-
It amazes me how many people will take the specialness of their experience as a given, even when thinking about the big picture is literally their job.
-
-
Why does philosophy constantly twist things into an over complicated mythical mess, and then act like it’s some novel insight? Like the things with colors: they only exist subjectively so they aren’t real in any other sense than being observed, so it’s only the observation that makes them real, and does that mean they are even real???
Yes, they are. Subatomic particles vibrate (or absorb vibrations) at specific frequencies, and therefor emit electromagnetic waves at certain frequencies when stimulated. That is real and objective. Evolution has left us with sensors and neurons that can detect and interpret some of these frequencies that appear to us as colors. That is subjective, but the science behind it is not. That’s what happens. Is the color real? Well, define the question better and there is an actual answer. The vibrations are real. Your interpretation is also real, but in a different way. Does the color exist without an observer? Well, what’s your definition of color? Does a tree falling in the woods with nothing to hear it make a sound? Well, what’s your definition of a sound?
-
The argument is not that they don't exist.
A color is an example that not all perceived can be described using terms of the physical world, and has variables that can only be experienced rather than described
-
It all exists in some capacity. Color is either the electromagnetic frequency emitted by particles when stimulated by radiation, or it is the electrochemical signals firing through your brain which process an image based on the way cells in your eyes absorb those frequencies. Or, more precisely I suppose, the intersection of both is where "color" exists, as one cannot occur without the other.
-
Red is light at the 480 THz range. Blue is light at the 670 THz range. I think that's perfectly described using terms of the physical world. If you're talking about "what we experience as color" as being difficult to describe in our consciousness, then sure but that's the case for every single thing we experience. Same way I can describe the musical note A as 440 Hz. Does an A to you sound the same to me? My tongue is sensing a sugar molecule, does the experience of tasting it feel the same to you?
Not a single human perception can be described in words, but we can all compare perceptions to other perceptions and agree on the same answer. Perceptions are simply us recognizing patterns in our environment. Red is me recognizing my eyeball is looking at an object reflecting light in the 480 THz range. You look at that red ball and you also recognize it as reflecting light at 480 THz. Does it need to be described any further?
-
-
Does a tree falling in the woods with nothing to hear it make a sound?
It's probably № 1 on my list of stupidest questions. The answer is yes.
-
Ah, but is a pressure wave propagating through air truly a sound if it does not interact with something that can hear? Or is it just the movement of air????
LoL, I'm sorry I couldn't help myself.
-
-
Why does philosophy constantly twist things into an over complicated mythical mess, and then act like it’s some novel insight?
I cannot stand that either, but this sort of pseudo-profundity is more common in some specific schools of thought, rather than philosophy in general.
-
I love this, it's an emotionally regulated rant that's so eloquently written that it's more intelligent and informative than the article in question.
-
Only if you stopped reading after the first paragraph and that's a position held by Galileo which, as comes immediately after, is outdated.
-
-
I suppose what it is is that smaller questions are answered, bringing along with these answers jargon and special terms, then these special terms are used to define greater special terms, and so on until you end up with a big twisty answer to a seemingly simple question, and people who haven't read the answers with the smaller special terms look at the twisty answer in understandable bemusement.
Edit: This also happens to be one of life's big unanswered questions. I had an assignment on it for my MPhil a couple of years ago.
-
It does seems like philosophers do that sometimes, but how do you know there's electromagnetic radiation in the first place? You can't sense it unless if happens to vibrate in a narrow frequency range and even then only imperfectly. So, there's also really necessary philosophy. I guess it's just hard to objectively separate the quality stuff from the wankery.
-
-
Now I just know this article is wrong:
"But explaining things that reside “only in consciousness”—the red of a sunset, say, or the bitter taste of a lemon—has proven far more difficult"
Lemons are sour, damn it, not bitter! Lemons are part of the universe and sour, so any consciousness that perceives them as bitter is not part of the universe. /s
-
Maybe they've only eaten lemon skin? Which is definitely bitter
-
You gotta start somewhere..
-
-
-
No, it's not. Next question...
Seriously though, doesn't basically every experiment in brain surgery and neuroscience disprove this idea? We know how different structures in the brain contribute to consciousness. We can't explain the mechanism 100%, but that doesn't mean that every piece of matter secretly has some consciousness embedded in it. It's God of the Gaps nonsense.
I'm not against posting stuff like this. Obviously serious people take this idea seriously. Just none of the people taking it seriously study brains.
-
Altering or tinkering with the substrate will of course alter the ”functioning” of consciousness. This does nothing to demystify or explain its existence; it only proves that it “utilizes” or depends on that substrate.
If you remove the hands of a brilliant guitarist, you haven’t “proven” that musicality is purely a function of hand structure/mechanics.
-
What exactly is the brain the substrate for? All evidence up to this point indicates that the brain is the thing doing the thinking and feeling.
Without some seriously compelling evidence to the contrary, I'm going to assume you're talking about a soul or some other supernatural idea.
In your example of the guitarist, where would you say musicality actually comes from? I would say the brain, because there is plenty of evidence that brains exist and can be creative.
-
-
I mean no? Where did you get we have any idea how consciousness works at all? We have no idea what structures on the brain have anything to do with it, or if they have anything to do with it at all.
We know about brain structures shaping our personalities, memories and senses. But that’s not consciousness. Not at all.
Perhaps that is the misunderstanding?
Consciousness is awareness, experience. It’s the “observer” under the experience. THAT is a mystery, that is the hardest problem in science. Not “where in the brain do we process sadness?”…
-
Is your point that memory, emotions, and sensory input don't have anything to do with consciousness?
What exactly is consciousness doing without sensory input to process and memory to give those inputs context?
Why do you think "awareness" of sights and sounds is separate from the parts of the brain that process those sights and sounds?
-
-
Well, we know that the simple fact of observing an event changes it (see the Double Slit experiment), so consciousness has to have some kind of link to reality itself, no?
We currently do not know what consciousness even is exactly, and we know only about the human consciousness, but there can be other degrees of consciousness within other particles in the universe.
And even if current-day experiments disprove something, that doesn't mean it will in the future, just like before Einstein's laws of relativity proved that gravity bends spacetime and that it is relative according to the point of observation.
And I'm sure people that study neuroscience ask this same question from time to time. It's a scientist's duty to find the factual truth about things, even if they disprove everything they know so far. We can't rule out something as impossible just because we haven't observed it yet, as it would directly contradict the scientific method, and therefore cease to be science.
-
Well, we know that the simple fact of observing an event changes it (see the Double Slit experiment), so consciousness has to have some kind of link to reality itself, no?
I think you might be misunderstanding what “observation” means in that context.
In physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation. This is often the result of utilizing instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner.
-
Your opening statement is incorrect. Observation in the quantum mechanics sense does not have anything to do with consciousness. Observation is really just a form of interaction.
-
We can't rule out something as impossible just because we haven't observed it yet, as it would directly contradict the scientific method
Figuring out what's possible versus impossible isn't really part of the scientific method. The scientific method is about collecting and interpreting evidence. Where is the evidence that particles are conscious?
Until there is a testable hypothesis, panpsychism doesn't have anything to do with science.
Others in this thread have already explained that consciousness doesn't play any role in the double slit experiment. I definitely understand your confusion there. I believed the same thing at one point. It doesn't help that some people purposely spread that false interpretation of the experiment because it's more interesting than reality.
-
-
-
What else would be then? Whatever happens is part of the universe development. We are the universe being conscious of itself. We think we are something else apart, or self made…
-
It's simply irrelevant. If you believe this theory exactly nothing changes about what you can predict about the world. That's what knowledge is all about. If you have a theory that doesn't behave differently under some different circumstances, you've essentially said nothing.
Also reminds me a bit of the chapter in "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" called "Is Electricity Fire?", if someone knows that.
-
There’s nothing wrong with speculation as long as everyone knows that’s what going on.
Take the work of Julian Jaynes for example; it’s fringe, it’s speculative, but he’s asking questions that nobody else asked before and that in itself is worthwhile because it can pave the way for better questions which are falsifiable.
-
Consider math, it doesn’t make any empirical predictions on its own, as it is just a set of abstract symbols and rules. Do you consider mathematical facts to be a form of knowledge?
-
Maths and reality are different. Very different. Reality can be explored empirically while maths is logic not empirical. We can never say we are 100% sure about the rules/laws we have discovered about our reality, but we can say for sure that a maths theorem is true or false.
Maths is a set of self-consistent tools that can be used to predict what happens in reality. The mathematical description of reality is an estimate, contains countless assumptions and inaccuracies about where things are and what properties they have. In fact in quantum physics, we literally can't know momentum and location at the same time.
Maths can describe (or I should say, approximate) realities that don't exist.
Because maths and reality are different domains, we can know different things about them using different approaches.
-
Arguably "it's impossible to violate energy conservation given time-invariant action" is an empirical prediction, and that's a specific case of Noether's theorem.
-
-
Yeah, this isn't really a theory yet. That doesn't necessarily mean it's an invalid concept, though. For example, if game theory turned up in fundamental physics somehow, wouldn't that suggest intelligence might be more fundamental than we assumed?
-
-
I actually just made a community for when you don't know where to post something.
-
The question is if consciousness only exist on this level.
We know that ant hives have a hivemind that is not present in the individual ant. Similarly humans can also be observed to create a zeitgeist on larger than the individual scale. Even individual humans pass through different states of consciousness from birth to death. So it very much seems that consciousness is scalable. So where are we on that scale, can it be scaled down as well as up?
Most things in the universe have recursive properties. They can be scaled up and down or be understood as the sum of their parts. Saying that consciousness is an emergent property is no different, but it's sort of dodging the question just as badly as someone saying it's a magical new law of nature.
Perhaps AI can help us determine what the minimum number of required parts to create the emergent property is and why it isn't present in the same setup with just one less part, or with a different complexity. I doubt we'll find the answer, but it might lead to some better questions.
-
You can make it unlimited if it's a strange loop.
-
-
No.
-
Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.
-
“The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.”
- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
-
i think that would be beautiful. [at the good times at least] being alive feels too special for it to just be some chemicals knocking about in the head, then you die and it stops
there's so much we don't know or understand about the world still -- imagine how INSANE the internet or even TV would be to people in the 1700s. what if there are secret frequencies for the soul?
-
Yes, the big majority of people from that time wouldn't even grasp the concept of our technology today. So we really should be humble, open minded and cautious with scientific facts, since "facts" can change over the course of time or changing significantly (or can be seen in a new light from new discoveries).
Also, we are not "just chemicals", since chemicals are made of particles that on a very low level are just energy. So we can be matter but also energy - both statements are true. Which leads to that phenomena, that there can be multiple answers that are equally true.
" I know that i know nothing"
-
-
No, consciousness is just what it feels like when a meat brain uses its meat to change its focus of attention; which gives rise to beliefs (some of them even true!) about a meat brain having a self.
It takes time, because brains are made of meat, and meat is slow.
It's leaky, because brains are made of meat, and meat oozes.
It generates the image of a "self" because brains are in meat bodies and actually do have physical continuity rather than being disconnected instants of computation; a term for "I, me, myself" is a rough model of the existence of brain features like memory, meat features like hormones, and even ape social-behavior features.
Attention/awareness is leaky and takes time; meat pumps rhythmically; and chemicals stick around.
And the meat brain can notice its own meaty doings. Just as it builds models of the outside world, it builds models of itself, with thoughts like "I am in the middle of doing an action" or "I am impatient" or "I feel sleepy" or "OW, LEG CRAMPS SUCK!" That is, its attention can range over not only the leg cramp itself, but its own reaction to having a leg cramp, including how the existence of leg cramps fits into its larger model of whether the world is a terrible place.
It usually comes up with a lot of correct beliefs out of this reflection, like "this is my leg, not your leg" and "I know English" and "Wow, I am distractable this morning, maybe it's the strong coffee". But it also comes up with dubious beliefs like "I am an eternal soul", "I am fully continuous in time", or "Oh God, what sin did I commit to deserve this leg cramp?"
("This is my leg, not yours" is important because there's nothing anyone can do to your leg that will make my leg cramp go away. The "self/other" distinction is important to consciousness because it has real-world implications; bodies really are physically disconnected from one another, which is why depersonalization can be an unhealthy thing for a consciousness to do too much.)
There's no reason to believe ChatGPT or the like are conscious, because they don't have the properties that consciousness is a model of. They're not fed information about their own well-being or place in the world. They don't observe their own processing. They do run largely as disconnected instants of computation. They don't live in a space where having a sense of "self/other" is effective.
(Not yet, anyway. There are folks out there trying to build AI systems that do have the feedback loops that might generate something like consciousness. This is probably a bad idea, and may even be an evil one.)
-
I like your reasoning very much, really well said!
-
-
Conciousness is just an emergent property of the multiple parts of the brain trying to interpret and respond to its surroundings.
Edit: I stand by what I said, but you all don't need to be so mean and vile about it....
-
That sounds like a swell, materialist solution, but it just kicks the can down the metaphysical road and creates more questions than it answers. What parts of the brain interact to create it? What is the subjective experience "made" of? Some kind of energy? How much complexity is required for it to emerge? Are there levels of consciousness? Are babies born with a consciousness that grows more robust over time, or does it pop in at some discrete level? Does the galaxy have an emergent consciousness, it's certainly more complex than the human brain. What about the universe?
Even if "it's an emergent property" is true, it's not a very useful answer. It's like saying babies come from the hospital, it skips over the part we're asking the question about.
Panpsychism is probably the most scientifically conservative explanation of consciousness. "Energy fields permeating the universe and interacting with each other" is the model scientists use to explain many, many phenomena, from electromagnetism to mass.
-
We don't have all the answers yet but we're making progress in finding them.
All the evidence so far seems to indicate that consciousness is a purely physical phenomenon .. despite the fact that it may not seem so to us
-
-
is just
My favorite response for this is 'point to your mind.'
My mean response is 'notexecutive@shi.itjust.works is just a random user name with some words attached and no person actually exists behind it.'
Another response could be "A car is just some wheels and an engine."
Sure would be fun to watch someone try and drive some wheels and an engine.
-
The point of emerging systems is that they tend to be more than just a sum of their parts:
-
No.
-
If it's just the universe, what would the universe want to experience? Should everybody live comfortably and kind of predictably or would the universe want to experience the maximally possible variance in life?
-
Scientific American asking questions that can't possibly be answered. Not very scientific.
-
Did anybody read it to the end? I found myself wondering how many vegans were at the conference around the time they were talking about fish.