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Pantheism and panpsychism

fromderinside said:
All I have is what I can demonstrate. Those demonstrations for me always support us being machines winding down like every thing else.
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A machine would say that.
EB
 
fast said:
sdelsolray said:
I suspect you would get farther if you offer definitions of "consciousness" and "awareness" before you go any further. Perhaps a consensus of definitions can be obtained. That would help, don't you agree?
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If we both agree to call a tail a leg and both conclude the dog has 5 legs, we'd both be wrong.
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Leg
n. One of the jointed organ joined to the trunk of an animal that it uses for locomotion or support.
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If a dog used its tail for locomotion or support it would be a leg.
EB
 
veclock said:
sdelsolray said:
I suspect you would get farther if you offer definitions of "consciousness" and "awareness" before you go any further. Perhaps a consensus of definitions can be obtained. That would help, don't you agree?
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By consciousness I mean an inner experience. By awareness I mean information about the environment, gathered from senses/sensors regardless of an inner experience.
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I concur with the distinction you've made. Awareness is not the same thing as consciousness. Rather, one can be consciously aware. Actually, placing "ness" on the end of a word doesn't turn it into a thing. Awareness is the state of being aware. Likewise consciousness is the state of being conscious. I blame Plato for promoting the idea of thingness through his theory of Ideal Forms. I think it's more useful to consider the interrelatedness of things. This is especially true of language, where words are defined by combinations of other words. To conflate two words is a clue that one or both are not properly understood. And it's often at the root of philosophical disagreements.

ETA: Just like the word concur. It may be thought of as identical with the word agree. But it actually communicates a degree of approval or sympathy along with agreement.
 
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tantric said:
obligatory Teilhard de Chardin reference:

<snip>... In 1923, C. Lloyd Morgan took this work further, elaborating on an "emergent evolution" which could explain increasing complexity (including the evolution of mind). Morgan found many of the most interesting changes in living things have been largely discontinuous with past evolution. Therefore, these living things did not necessarily evolve through a gradual process of natural selection. Rather, he posited, the process of evolution experiences jumps in complexity (such as the emergence of a self-reflective universe, or noosphere).
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Defining Emergence in Physics http://www.nature.com/articles/npjquantmats201624

The term emergent is used to evoke collective behaviour of a large number of microscopic constituents that is qualitatively different than the behaviours of the individual constituents. This usage is appealingly intuitive but problematically ill-defined: it is vague concerning what qualifies as a large number and what constitutes a qualitative difference. In some contexts, an anthropic definition is offered—something is qualitatively new if it cannot be straightforwardly understood in terms of known properties of the constituents. Among the many shortcomings of this definition, perhaps the most glaring is that it implies that as soon as something is understood it ceases to be emergent; this would mean that understanding the emergent properties of quantum materials (a major focus of this journal) would be oxymoronic.

...

Real systems always have a finite number of constituents. When that number is large, it is possible to make increasingly accurate approximate predictions based on reference to the infinite number limit. For instance, a persistent current in a superconducting ring actually has a finite rate of decay. However, since the rate vanishes exponentially with the size of the system, the associated caveat rapidly becomes irrelevant for all practical purposes. It is commonplace for a macroscopic ring to have a decay rate that can be experimentally bounded to be less than one over the life of the universe!

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If, however, life and consciousness are sharply defined only in the thermodynamic limit, then we are only approximately alive and operationally conscious.
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Herbert Feigl
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/feigl/
Modern quantum physics, on a very basic level, employs laws which have "organismic" character, as for instance the exclusion principle of W. Pauli which holds even for single atoms. It is conceivable that much of what is called "emergent novelty" on the chemical and biological levels of complexity may ultimately be explained in terms of the organismic or holistic features of the laws of atomic and molecular dynamics; and that, given those basic micro-laws, the only composition laws (which scientists often take for granted like "silent partners") are simply the postulates and theorems of geometry and kinematics. This is indeed my own, admittedly risky and speculative, guess; that is to say, I believe that once quantum dynamics is able to explain the facts and regularities of organic chemistry (i.e. of non-living, but complex compounds) it will in principle also be capable of explaining the facts and regularities of organic life.
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In essence if one is too lazy to derive all outcomes of combination one claims emergence. Of course that would defeat basis tenets of science with a Trump factor such as "I know things which will remain hidden in my mind".
 
Treedbear said:
veclock said:
By consciousness I mean an inner experience. By awareness I mean information about the environment, gathered from senses/sensors regardless of an inner experience.
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I concur with the distinction you've made. Awareness is not the same thing as consciousness. Rather, one can be consciously aware. Actually, placing "ness" on the end of a word doesn't turn it into a thing. Awareness is the state of being aware. Likewise consciousness is the state of being conscious. I blame Plato for promoting the idea of thingness through his theory of Ideal Forms. I think it's more useful to consider the interrelatedness of things. This is especially true of language, where words are defined by combinations of other words. To conflate two words is a clue that one or both are not properly understood. And it's often at the root of philosophical disagreements.

ETA: Just like the word concur. It may be thought of as identical with the word agree. But it actually communicates a degree of approval or sympathy along with agreement.
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A German or a Chinese person be you not.
 
bilby said:
fast said:
Speakpigeon said:
Leg
n. One of the jointed organ joined to the trunk of an animal that it uses for locomotion or support.
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If a dog used its tail for locomotion or support it would be a leg.
EB
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I want to throw something at you. :D
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He's only pulling your tail.
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Speaking of tails, is it animal abuse when I throw rubber bands at the feline animal (my cat) that barges it's way through the front door (and doesn't shut the damn door, I might add) and props its body up in front of the TV? That wagging swaying funny looking thing attached to its body (be it a leg or tail) blocks those words scrolling across the screen on CNN that usually says something about Trump. Since there is physical contact of sorts, and because some people like to associate touch as abuse, let us agree to use a more conservative definition of "abuse" so I won't feel bad about my authoritarian-minded mode of attack. Water doesn't work; he just licks and satisfies his thirst; plus the tv gets mist.
 
Bumping this thread as I want to express some thoughts about the subject and get some more interesting perspectives from you intelligent people!

On the question "What is consciousness"... I'm going to drop lots of questions down below.

Let's assume the brain creates consciousness. How does it do that? Brain activity. Is it the flow of electrons in the brain, or flow of information? If it's electrons, is consciousness made out of electromagnetism? Is the complex interconnectivity creating a specific flow of electrons, almost like a new state of matter, resulting in consciousness? If it's the flow of information, would consciousness arise with brain activity consisting of other particles and forces rather than electrons and electromagnetism? Or even, imagine a huge brain where there was an identical flow of information, but instead of electrons, the flow of information was transmitted with apples. Would that brain be conscious, or would it just be a mechanic simulation? Does it have to be this complex interconnected flow, or could it be any flow? Is the internet conscious? Could the flow of electrons in a computer be conscious? The flow of electrons in a worms brain? The flow of electrons in a lightning bolt? The flow of the electrons in the universe? The flow of one electron? Is consciousness in our brain the sum of the individual hypothetical "quantum consciousness" of each electron?

Electrons are just waves in the electromagnetic field, right? Then what is brain activity? A very complex interconnected vibration in the electromagnetic field. That might lead one to reason that consciousness is there as a fundamental feature of the universe, in the same way as temperature is? Steer it up, you will have an increase in temperature. Steer it up, perhaps in the right way, and you will have an increase in consciousness. But yet again, why would the electromagnetic field be special.

There are of course neurological facts that might answer some of these questions rather quickly... like why is the sleeping brain not conscious while it has lots of activity going on...

I wonder if technology like Neuralink might begin to answer some of the questions about consciousness. Because with Neuralink we can have brain to brain connection. If you view consciousness as two clouds, would the clouds begin to bridge?

Another thing I wonder, do you think physics will come to a point where it cannot progress any further without adressing consciousness? Or that adding consciousness to the equation at least might open up new areas in physics? If consciousness is a fundamental part of the universe, then I suspect that the "equation of everything" might need to address is as well?

Hope I brought something interesting to the table! :)
 
If consciousness were electromagnetism then an MRI would cause great disruption to it.
 
untermensche said:
If consciousness were electromagnetism then an MRI would cause great disruption to it.
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Hmm that's a valuable insight. But doesn't MRI (fMRI) measure brain activity? If it would interfere with the brain activity, it wouldn't be a good tool to measure it, would it...? Doesn't that mean that the flow of electrons is unaffected?
 
veclock said:
untermensche said:
If consciousness were electromagnetism then an MRI would cause great disruption to it.
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Hmm that's a valuable insight. But doesn't MRI (fMRI) measure brain activity? If it would interfere with the brain activity, it wouldn't be a good tool to measure it, would it...? Doesn't that mean that the flow of electrons is unaffected?
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fMRI looks at blood flow.

From the Wikipedia article about fMRI:

This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area of the brain is in use, blood flow to that region also increases.
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The fMRI still uses a strong magnetic field but it is more tuned to looking at blood flow.

You are right. If consciousness was an electrical or magnetic effect an fMRI would disrupt it.

The electrical effect of a neuron is caused by the creation of an action potential. It is cause by a separation of charge by separating ions across the membrane. Since the separation of charge is across a membrane a strong magnetic field does not seem to disrupt it.

And the nerve impulse is an all or nothing response so it seems the MRI does not disrupt this cellular activity either.

It also seems the MRI does not disrupt the activity of neurotransmitter.
 
untermensche said:
fMRI looks at blood flow.

From the Wikipedia article about fMRI:

This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area of the brain is in use, blood flow to that region also increases.
Click to expand...

The fMRI still uses a strong magnetic field but it is more tuned to looking at blood flow.

You are right. If consciousness was an electrical or magnetic effect an fMRI would disrupt it.

The electrical effect of a neuron is caused by the creation of an action potential. It is cause by a separation of charge by separating ions across the membrane. Since the separation of charge is across a membrane a strong magnetic field does not seem to disrupt it.

And the nerve impulse is an all or nothing response so it seems the MRI does not disrupt this cellular activity either.

It also seems the MRI does not disrupt the activity of neurotransmitter.
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Yes I know it measures blood flow, but I can't see why that would make any difference to my argument.

Ok, so you first conclude "If consciousness was an electrical or magnetic effect an fMRI would disrupt it".
Then you say that the nerve impulses/separation of ions across the membrane is not affected by the magnetic field.

But... what is the nerve impulse then? What forces are involved in the separation of ions? It's not so much protons and neutrons reacting? It's mostly due to electrons, right?
 
I am saying the action potential that sends an electrical impulse down the cell is not consciousness.

These action potentials and impulses are not connected. They are not a single entity.

Every impulse is started with chemical activity and results in chemical activity, not electrical activity.

Each electrical impulse is separated from the previous and next impulse by mechanical activity of the cell and chemical activity.

They cannot be forming some greater whole based on electricity. They are not connected. They are adjacent.

My opinion.
 
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