Is consciousness fundamental to reality? Let us know what you think! For more from Philip Goff -> iai.tv/video/the-many-voices-of-consciousness?KZread&+comment&

Sheldrake considers consciousness as 'prime,' non-reduceable; I love his perspective (though can't repeat it).

Hamilton's 4D quaternion algebra and consciousness: Quaternions are a type of mathematical object that extend the idea of complex numbers to four dimensions. They are often used in computer graphics and other applications where rotations in three-dimensional space are important. Some scientists and philosophers have proposed that quaternions might provide a mathematical framework for understanding aspects of consciousness that go beyond what can be explained by classical physics. One such theory is called the Orch-OR theory, which proposes that consciousness arises from quantum vibrations in microtubules inside neurons. This theory suggests that the vibrations can be modeled mathematically using 4D quaternions, which may provide a way to understand how the brain generates conscious experience.

I've always thought Roger Penrose and Stuart Hammeroff had the best theory with the Orch-Orr model of consciousness. Why it is not explored by more scientists with more resources mystifies me. And this theory of pansychism would fit with with it.

Lifting the Hard Problem of consciousness to a new level. Consciousness is self-control. This definition sets a task for modern cybernetics. A control system manages some object. Then, how can it control itself?

13:46 Does panpsychism allow us to decide whether a particular gathering was a work meeting, or a party?

@mnp3a

Жыл бұрын

you'd need hypotheses for setting the equivalents of drinking, music, dancing, chitchatting. Thats, for example, what integrated information theory does.

@ollie6133

Жыл бұрын

👏

@havenbastion

Жыл бұрын

Did anyone get nude?

We function consciously and unconsciously simultaneously. Therefore, consciousness is what something does, not what something is.

He still seems to think we need a basically mechanistic view of reality. Just that the mechanism of the "highest" consciousness is made up of littler pieces of consciousness. You might find Jessica Riskin's book "The Restless Clock" interesting. It's about the scientific & religious history of how we came to be dominated by mechanistic thinking as a way to think about what "alive" means. Great book.

@jezzamobile

Жыл бұрын

Yes. Especially given the concept that spacetime may be emergent from a non-local quantum substrate... Thinking in terms of everything being built up from physical particles seems almost quaint at this point...

Peirce's semiotic theory posits that reality is comprehensible through its signs and that everything in the universe participates in a semiotic process, while panpsychism holds that all reality is mental. These approaches could be complementary if we understand that semiotics is a fundamental aspect of mental reality. In other words, the semiotic process is not just present in conscious minds, but is a fundamental aspect of reality itself.

can the data of human experiences of consciousness be used to develop a theory of consciousness? probability and statistics might describe human experiences of consciousness?

In the matrix that I am creating, consciousness evolves proportionate to purpose.

@havenbastion

Жыл бұрын

In reality too.

something within oneself

different experiences observers have of space-time may have probability and statistics? conscious experience might also be formulated as probability and statistics?

Panpsychism resembles what Max Tegmark insinuated in one of his presentations proposing "perceptronium" etc. various qualitative levels of awareness.

@rileyhoffman6629

Жыл бұрын

Sounds reasonable to me.

CONSCIOUSNESS has been explained continually in channelling communications starting from Jane Roberts 'Seth' books and sessions and the following 'Elias' sessions from Mary Ennis from the 1990s until the present and 'Bashar' communications from Darryl Anka. Consciousness in nonphysical terms is the source of ALL reality spheres and within the expression of 'Time is the source of the material world of atoms etc. One only had to engage with this material and its explanations to understand that all of reality occurs within what consciousness - in more than physical terms - is. The evidence from those who have NDEs supports this understanding!. This is known and understood in channelling information.

If you are going to believe in emergent properties anyway - especially ones whose emergence you can't really experimentaly attribute to anything specific - then the only differet idea proposed by strong panpsychism is in what you believe there to have been before the emergence. "Nothing" is then the simplest explanation contrary to what you claim. Weak panpsychism seems to have a much stronger claim since at least it rids us from the emergence problem.

Great in depth interview, thanks

could consciousness relate to space-time? what would that mean for consciousness and space-time?

@havenbastion

Жыл бұрын

Literally everything relates to space/time. Everything has a unique position in the three physical dimensions, space, time, and scale.

My guess is that consciousness is an entangled state, so basically when you have a bunch of neurons together they get entangled so it acts as one quantum system. So that's how a little quantum system can be conscious and then a bigger system can be conscious is through entanglements. That's my guess. I think it comes from Roger Penrose

There's another way we can study consciousness: we can try to understand how a general anaesthetic works to disrupt consciousness but not breathing and lower brain functions. We've been anesthetising people for 150 years and still don't understand how it works.

@WizardSkyth

Жыл бұрын

Indeed ketamine does that by blocking glutamate in the brain allowing access to the areas of psyche accessible by psychedelics working via different chemical pathways such as LSD via serotononergic system, showing that the chemicals don't cause the states of psyche but rather act as keys .

@mnp3a

Жыл бұрын

this has been tried for quite a while now. Its an old and active area of research

Maybe consciousness is emergent. Just like it's hard to see how a plant could emerge from quantum fields, it's hard to see how subjective experience could emerge from brain cells.

@nyworker

Жыл бұрын

It's hard to see because you literally can't see it or presently imagine it scientifically. However we do feel it and experience it.

@mnp3a

Жыл бұрын

a plant emerging from quantum fields is kinda easy today, even if the story we tell ourselves might have huge gaps in it. consciousness is so much trickier that it is actually very reasonable to keep in mind that the alternative of it being somehow fundamental is possible.

@idonotlikethismusic

Жыл бұрын

@@mnp3a Actually, if my recollection of the scientific method is correct, first a hypothesis is proposed, and then evidence is collected that either validates or negates the hypothesis. Evidence collection follows hypothesis generation; a hypothesis is not based on evidence (that would be what a theory would do).

@mnp3a

Жыл бұрын

@@idonotlikethismusic yep.

If the postulate is that fundamental particles are conscious then everything is necessarily conscious. I don’t see that this is a viable hypothesis unless you can show examples of nonbiological consciousness. If we set aside super determinism the difference between consciousness and non consciousness would be the ability to act independently based on internal stimuli.

Galileo "separated out" consciousness but he may have just as easily done that to digestion, muscle function and bone structure. The problem with C is that it happens deep in neuron functions that cannot observe. All they can presently do is observe macro functions like blood flow in brain areas.

@mnp3a

Жыл бұрын

hi there. I'd say you are perhaps misunderstanding Galileo! He was not separating "consciousness" as in "hey lets leave this bodily function besides cause whatever!". He realized that some of our experiences can be made intersubjective, or "public". What does that mean: every human experience can be separated in two parts: the part of the experience that can be publicly shared **without discrepancies**, that is, you can GRANT there will be no discrepancies if we sit and try; and the part of the experience that cannot really be shared without discrepancies, or at least you cannot grant there will be none. So, if you are eating pizza margherita, you can share without discrepancies the list of ingredients, time in the oven, place of the restaurant, shape/weight of the table, etc. You can also share the taste of the pizza. But that cannot be granted to not have discrepancies. Any disagreement on, say, amount of tomato in the sauce or weight of the dough, we can expect to reach some agreement. But if you disagree on the quality of the taste, then thats it, there is no going forward. Galileo set aside all the stuff that prevent us from moving forward in these collective agreements, thats why science is astoninshingly incremental. The most incremental and stable product of our cultures in the last 500 years or so. The qualities of experience were left out by the methodological split into public: observables/measurables and private: qualities of experience. So: its not that they left consciousness behind, but rather that the methodology of science necessarily left the qualities of experience beside. Claiming that the same methodology can be applied to the qualities of experience is not being an advocate of science, but simply not understanding this aspect of the methodology itself.

@nyworker

Жыл бұрын

@@mnp3a Good points. No doubt we all own an electronic kitchen scale that weighs things in grams so we can convey the exact recipe amounts to each other. So the methodology of recipe sharing and cooking works great. However very few people know how an electronic scale works at the circuit level.

@nyworker

Жыл бұрын

To put it more succinctly we've had advanced physics and mathematical science since Galileo and Newton. Followed by the social sciences of the late 19th and 20th. But ALL sciences themselves including mathematics are still languages. So..... What is language? Or really it is understanding language itself that is still a new science.

@nommopilot

Жыл бұрын

@@nyworker Is the concept of language hard to understand? Surely it is just the emergence of communally understood correlations between objects and symbols. Evolution has facilitated increasingly complex iterations of this principle, but any given language is a set of grammatical rules for different types of symbol-object correlation. (Where object can include physical and conceptual content). I believe neurobiologists have a pretty detailed (if incomplete) understanding of the neural mechanisms of language in humans, verified through understanding how various neural conditions can disrupt various aspects of language processing.

@nyworker

Жыл бұрын

@@nommopilot True, more data about language but language is still conscious or has meaning. Conscious emergence and meaning which occur at the deeper neuronal level explanation is still not complete.

From the existence of nature- to the nature of existence...

Finally, the REAL actual MOST important problem, which is not suicide as Camus thought, is finally being discussed more and more. I'm seeing more and more videos recently popping up, about the only true philosophical problem. Good.

does human experience of consciousness demonstrate existence of consciousness?

@isaac1572

Жыл бұрын

Yes, consciousness can only exist in a living, thinking brain. 'I think therefor I am' demonstrates that our own consciousness is the only 'objective' fact that we can known. All other sensory inputs are tainted by the limits of our senses and human interpretation, and so can only be 'subjective'.

@havenbastion

Жыл бұрын

Subjective can mean arbitrary or contingent. Spiritual matters (of the patterns in the mind, no woo) are always contingent, never arbitrary.

Already he's contradicting himself. He says we do not find consciousness in an empirical way, and yet introspection is necessarily internal empiricism. The sensing of self by self. While this empiricism cannot so easily be shared, unlike extrospective empiricism and so it cannot become paradigmatic qua itrospective, it is still essentially self sensing self.

If you just consider "consciousness" to be confined within the realm of physical reality ... of course you would perceive a stalemate. It must be explored throughout the totality of the universe, in every state, in every time.

@WizardSkyth

Жыл бұрын

not only in the "universe" but even beyond

@isaac1572

Жыл бұрын

No, consciousness can only exist in a living, thinking brain. To search for consciousness elsewhere would be to lose yourself in a 'stalemate'.

@WizardSkyth

Жыл бұрын

The NDEs disprove that

@isaac1572

Жыл бұрын

@@WizardSkyth NEAR death experiences do not 'support' consciousness existing outside of a living conscious brain. When a persons heart has initially stopped and they are not breathing, every cell in the body is still alive for a number of minutes, but they are unconscious. When they are revived through CPR, heart beating, breathing, and consciousness returns; some people describe a common occurrence of having been above their body looking down, and being drawn towards a light. The most plausible explanation for this, is the effect of oxygen returning to normal levels within a semi-conscious brain that is capable of receiving some sensory input, coupled with imagination, as full consciousness returns.

@martinwilliams9866

Жыл бұрын

​@@isaac1572 The most plausible explanation is not necessarily the right one.

Very important work here!

I think what we are observing everything with is the same entity in all living creatures, and may all existing things in the universe. The ulimate subject is the conschiousness and the ultimate object is the univers. This subjekt i think is without beginnimg and and end, and the object is. This omnipresent subject is not a thing and the object is. A big difference is this..ehe

I an answer to all his questions... its all in your head.

What else is there to know about the brain? It's just an internetwork of neurons. Neurons are just cells.

@namero999

Жыл бұрын

Please let the international community of neuroscientists know, they must have missed the memo.

@Arunava_Gupta

Жыл бұрын

@@namero999 Oh, so neurons are not mere cells? Some mysterious contraptions maybe? Please get yourself a anatomy textbook. 😀

The brain/mind of man together with all the elements of the human anatomy is a product of higher universal intelligence. It is the unifying field of the entire universe that is the same unifying field that combines all functions of the brain as total experience. Just by means of analogy an alien from a planet without water would not be able to make sense of the formula H20, this can only be known by direct experience. In like manner the study of musical symbols alone does not lead to the experience of music that may evoke all kinds of memories, or emotional experiences as a biological reaction. Also, to mention the electromagnetic field of nature is vital to every cell function and biological process, we are part of nature not a separate entity.

I think consciousness might be highly connected to phenomenological information activity outside the universe/between universes. I'm running some information theoretic computer models which seem to imply there is a much vaster external state of reality which has life-like properties long before inflationary transitions come along and create universes and their more mundane laws of physics emerge.....

a rock does not look in a mirror a ask him self why I look like that

@frojojo5717

Жыл бұрын

A rock has no eyes to look nor a brain to think, so no surprise.

@aaronrobertcattell8859

Жыл бұрын

@@frojojo5717 😁

@mnp3a

Жыл бұрын

so..? what?

Panpsychism adds nothing to the conversation. Describing everything as conscious in this manner is the same as saying a pile of silicon is a computer.

@mnp3a

Жыл бұрын

It adds a hypothesis: consciousness is fundamental and not derivable from the rest of our world model. You may not like the hypothesis, but it is just like any other scientific hypothesis. It also grants us a prediction: technology might be able to algorithmically simulate consciouness, but will not be able to algorithmically produce it. Again, you may not like the prediction, but it is a scientific prediction just like any other. Build a conscious algorithm and panpsychism is done. Dont build it and it stays possible.

@isaac1572

Жыл бұрын

@@mnp3a Proposing an hypothesis that has zero supporting evidence is about as useful as saying god may, or may not exist.

@nommopilot

Жыл бұрын

@@mnp3a how would you verify an algorithm's consciousness? I can write a very simple algorithm to print "I am conscious". I'm quite happy to say that while pan psychism is possible, it is no more convincing than any other unfalsifiable religious assertion humans have made.

@mnp3a

Жыл бұрын

​@@nommopilot Thats the famous hard problem. If you want to make sure an algorithm is conscious, you need to have description of consciousness in the same language in which you describe an algorithm. Which we dont have, because we dont know what and how consciousness is made of. Some people get really annoyed when someone points this out. If you want people to stop looking at alternative views for consciousness you only need to describe either consciousness, awareness, experiencing or feeling, in completely algorithmic terms. So far it hasnt been done.

Panpsychism and its strong emergence likely explain the underlying consciousness. The forces in material objects likely behave like absorptions, and the consciousness (Pali: Vignana) is likely a special (Vi) observer/absorption (Gnana) in material objects. The special meditation called Vipassana (special seeing) meditation is helpful to look at the nature of the observer clearly.

It's far more simple, this isn't philosophy. Philip, this is all gobbledygook.

I think panpsychism and dualism are the result of magical thinking, in other words, lazy thinking. Famous examples: homunculus, elon-vitale, philosopher's stone, Irreducible complexity, etc. Essentially: 1. Anything can be explained by currently known causes; nothing new to learn. 2. If it's complex, there must be agency at work.

@havenbastion

Жыл бұрын

Wisdom illuminates, it does not obscure. Any idea more complex than what it's trying to explain is intellectually regressive.

How ridiculous that he does not mention the old science of consciousness, aka mysticism. Goff's sort of pseudo-scientific thinking depends on woefully poor scholarship. It's a scandal that so many academics are so ignorant.

my theory is consciousness is god made as much as I cringe at saying this i cant not believe it to be true. So many NDE experiencers talk about being out of the body and conscious and also meeting god. My own NDE I wont bore you with that story but one thing I will tell you that is interesting is when you are out of your body and conscious there is no breathing and time as we know it does not exist. SO therefore time and being human and on this earth are connected but consciousness is connected to the quantum level of where time does not exist. So the connection to god in the afterlife can be eternal because consciousness returns to a quantum state of where breathing is not required. Hope that makes sense if it doesnt reread.

I think this man is just muddying the discussions. Let neurobiologists make progress in that area. Philosopher need to shut up, as phlogistonists needed to shut up about fire, elan-vitalists needed to shut up about life and theologians needed to shut up about gods. Let science do its work, and do not mislead us, while you still can and are being taken seriously by some.

@ollie6133

Жыл бұрын

You may or may not be surprised to hear that neurobiologists are doing a lot of philosophy to try and understand consciousness. Infact, at this stage in the science of consciousness, science and philosophy are one and the same thing. If you don't understand that, then you have absolute no idea about consciousness science.

@ollie6133

Жыл бұрын

Infact 'pholgistonists' were scientists. Phlogiston theory was a scientific theory. A poor one as we now understand oxidisation etc. But it nevertheless had explanatory power at the time. It really was to the best of their knowledge. But it was superseded. So any story of phlogiston being wrong is entirely because of science and nothing else. It doesn't at all work as an analogy.

@thstroyur

Жыл бұрын

And why do you think that? Because scientism. How do I know that? Because I love wisdom more than you do, apparently.

@dustman96

Жыл бұрын

@@ollie6133 Hypothesizing is not the same a philosophizing.

@user_user1337

Жыл бұрын

@@thstroyur Dude ...