The idea that all things are conscious is gaining academic credibility | Hacker News Reader

The idea that all things are conscious is gaining academic credibility

qz.com

31 pointsnikbackm17 comments

I thought Quartz did better articles.

>> It’s very hard to get consciousness out of non-consciousness,” says Chalmers. “Physics is just structure. It can explain biology, but there’s a gap: Consciousness.”

It’s completely and utterly unproductive to discuss a phenomenon that no one has a good definition. When the problem statement is vague, how can you engage in a scientific endeavor?

This whole article sounds like I took a trip down to the nearby Psychic reader.

David Chalmers has spent the better part of his career trying to arrive at a consensus definition of consciousness. [1] It's not exactly fair to fault the author of this article for failing to do so. Chalmer's interview with Sam Harris gives a pretty good overview of the difficulties that arise when we specifically try to define and explain consciousness in anything beyond the most general terms. [2]

[1] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=o8AfF3MAAAAJ

[2] https://samharris.org/podcasts/the-light-of-the-mind/

> David Chalmers has spent the better part of his career trying to arrive at a consensus definition of consciousness. It's not exactly fair to fault the author of this article for failing to do so.

It is, however, fair to fault everyone who purports to make claims about the relation of “consciousness” to anything else (much less everything else) who cannot define how “consciousness” is used in their claim (which need not be a consensus definition.)

Such claims are inherently without substance and impossible to even meaningfully discuss, much less prove or refute.

Reading just who says what in the article explains:

"the “panpsychist” view is increasingly being taken seriously by credible philosophers"

"...says Philip Goff, a philosophy professor at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary."

"David Chalmers, a philosophy of mind professor"

"writes Hedda Hassel Mørch, a philosophy researcher"

"Goff" "Goff" "Goff"

"Chalmers quotes his colleague, the philosopher John Perry."

BTW:

"Goff believes quantum entanglement [...] suggests the universe functions as a fundamental whole rather than a collection of discrete parts."

Pure bunkum. Quantum entanglement is very limited phenomenon (in the sense of contribution to the rest of physical phenomena), here it's used only because it sounds "sciency" not because it's relevant.

Nice attacks. It would make more sense if you had more than pure bunkum to back them up..

Quantum entanglement is happening constantly everywhere. For instance, electrons in atoms are entangled. A single particle can be entangled with the vacuum. Entanglement is always relative..everything could be entangled but we don't have sight of the other party. A notable thought by Gerard Hoof't and other prominent physicists-- is that time forms fundamentally from entanglement of space.

Links below in order to provide facts to Dr. Attacqq: (queue sciency words to intimidate..Boo!)

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_there_natural_entangle...

> Quantum entanglement is happening constantly everywhere

This doesn't mean it isn't a limited phenomenon

When you come up with the right probability measure for comparing infinities that lack cardinalities, get on that millenium prize.

What are you talking about? How does this relate to the topic at hand?

Your probability has to be out of some set of events. You want to talk about a fraction of space where an infinitesimal phenomena is happening? Zoinks! How about a fraction of time? Zoinks!

You don't realize how silly the question you are asking is, when considering infinitesimals and infinities.

I still don't know what you're talking about. The phenomenon is limited in the sense it doesn't support some of the claims being made. If you can't "talk about a fraction of space where an infinitesimal phenomena is happening" this also would supports that these claims are not credible..

You're right. If we could define consciousness more exactly, we would necessarily know a lot more about it.

That doesn't mean it doesn't exist or can't be investigated though.

Then why don't we also investigate chakra, god, the jabberwocky.. etc.

We do.

A scientific investigation of the jabberwocky?

> That doesn't mean it doesn't exist or can't be investigated though.

If you can't define it, there is no “it” to investigate, and no way of saying that it does or doesn't exist, since either statement is meaningless without a definition of what “it” is.

Consciousness is linked to psychology and philosophy. Any -logy is just a way of naming things--a level of indirecion--while -sophy is one name of the thing we want to name, philanthropically. As it leads to physical change one way or another the psychology of physics is merrily taken into account as evidenced by several godly identifications with the sky and stars, cosmology for short, while model building and phenomenology necessarily take a standpoint at ground level into account, as with the limit of light speed and the Relativity in Einstein's thought experiments. And quantum physics is certainly philosophical and projected onto the consciousness.

Wow... I had this same thought... While stoned and drunk out of my mind in Amsterdam...

It all boils down to information, information storage, and information processing. Draw a closed surface around any region of space. Information enters the bounded region in the form of light, fields, pressure waves, particles, potentials, etc... This information bounces around a bit, interacts with the matter and stored information within, and eventually, some information leaves.

Happens with empty space, a rock, a person, anything. Who is to say that this process has any more meaning when a brain is involved...

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