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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Conscious awareness appears to be a fundamental aspect of the universe -- as fundamental as the four known fundamental forces -- and physics is concerned with describing the laws of the universe.

How could consciousness not be lumped in with physics, from this perspective?

It doesn't matter whether consciousness pervades the universe in a form of panpsychism, or is emergent out of interactions we already understand. Fluid mechanics is emergent too, in a sense -- that doesn't put it outside of physics.

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Fluid mechanics might actually be a good analogy. We know that fluid mechanics happens, and it's entirely made of already known physical interactions, yet the phenomenon is so complicated that it deserves to be its own field of study.

On the other hand, asking something like "Is viscosity a part of the fabric of the universe?" would be meaningless, because viscosity is not a property of any elementary particle or force. The complication arises out of how those groups of particles interact with each other.

At least, with fluid mechanics, there's a good physical abstraction that reduces real world phenomena into partial differential equations which work surprisingly well. When it comes to consciousness, we can't even ask "What's the consciousness per gram of this substance?" and I doubt such a question will become meaningful any time soon.

> Conscious awareness appears to be a fundamental aspect of the universe -- as fundamental as the four known fundamental forces -- and physics is concerned with describing the laws of the universe.

Why do you believe this to be true?

If it's a self-evident observation, try explaining it to me like I'm 5.

Sure, ELI5: the only things we actually know are from our conscious experience. Everything else we have to logically infer from those conscious experiences. Literally everything is built upon our conscious awareness. We have direct experience of our conscious awareness before we can even do physics to determine the four fundamental forces at all.

To clarify, consciousness isn't just a fundamental aspect of the universe -- for our human minds, it's the most fundamental aspect.

If you want to take this to an extreme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism

That's an interesting philosophy, but I don't see how consciousness is implied by the standard model or the current investigations into physics beyond the standard model.

It isn't. It still has to be integrated with it, that's the whole point. We don't know how gravity is implied by the standard model either, but we still know it's there.

The point is that, at the end of the day, it's still necessarily going to be physics.

I'm not a philosopher. I did study physics in college.

I do not see it necessary for consciousness to be as fundamental as electroweak interactions and so on. In my mind, it's perfectly possible for consciousness to be an emergent property of a complex system that itself is not conscious in any meaningful way.

Look at other examples of this; i.e. tensegrity.

To conclude that consciousness is as fundamental as bosons or gravity needs a lot of evidence.

Since you said so definitively that you believe that conclusion is true, I was hoping you had specific evidence on hand.

How can you conceive of bosons or gravity without consciousness? How can you possibly prove objective reality through the filter of subjective consciousness?

It doesn't matter how I conceive of anything. They existed for billions of years before I came around.

Even if, like, I take a solipsistic approach to life, objective reality has a sort of object permanence to it that's more stable than e.g. my dreams. So even if everything is a hallucination, the mechanism for preserving the information is the closest to "real" I can identify.

And from studying the things we call real, we understand physics. And from physics, I see nowhere that necessitates consciousness at a super low level.

Care to cite and explain the specific mechanisms that I'm not aware of that do necessitate it?

Just consider that everything you come in contact with, including the assertion of the sense-data that led you to the conclusion of "billions of years", is contaminated by the fact that is utterly impossible to disprove consciousness. Everything else that comes in through the senses can be doubted, but consciousness is the only thing you are in direct contact with. But I agree partially with you that there may be a form of consciousness that is more primary than our subjective consciousness (I think we agree that reality is a "real" logical system, probably infinite, and possibly intelligent itself). But we have a relationship with reality, in fact we may be a kind of accelerated rotation of it with reincarnative compartmentalization.

I've only read the first couple of chapters, yet, but this book lay out the philosophical problems with physicalism: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CGNXWTBN

> Everything else that comes in through the senses can be doubted, but consciousness is the only thing you are in direct contact with.

Every functioning human learns relatively early in life that certain experiences they have are simply fake - dreams, at the very least. Many people who suffer from hallucinations can also learn to trust that their own internal experiences are less valid than what others tell them is true.

Just as much, we may one day come to learn that our internal experience of consciousness is an illusion and that reality is we are all p-zombies. Of course, a physical theory of consciousness has to explain why and how we have this false subjective experience, but it's certainly conceivable that this might happen one day.

> They existed for billions of years before I came around.

And how did you come to learn this? Through your consciousness

Everything that you can know or experience is mediated through your consciousness

Anything you believe to be objective truth or reality, you came to believe through consciousness

There is no way for you (or anyone else for that matter), to know if anything really exists outside our own consciousness

This makes for an interesting philosophy discussion, but is not a useful observation about physics.

Physics is philosophy

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37721284

You might not like it and prefer to focus only on the models and the math

But fundamentally, all of our knowledge, including physics only really exists in our consciousness

You might also not find it useful, but that’s your own personal subjective opinion, not a universal objective truth (same goes for anything I’ve said)

Not even that. There is really nothing to discuss if the only thing I believed is that I exist, and anything else is potentially a hallucination. Even p ^ ¬p could be true, perhaps I'm just hallucinating the rule that says it isn't.

In a way yes, your whole reality is your own internal hallucination, and there is no way to break out of it

That doesn’t mean you can’t explore anything within that

In fact a lot of eastern philosophical and religious traditions focus exactly on that, how exploring your inner self is a valid and very good way of discovering reality

Not sure why you fixate on “nothing to discuss” or “conversation ending”

Neither the ideas above nor solipsism are dead ends, there’s plenty of exploration to be had within those

Now if you don’t like them or want to dismiss them, you are free to do so, that’s your own personal take, but that’s not an objective absolute truth

While you are right in some sense, your position is solipsistic, and solipsism is not considered a fruitful line of inquiry even in philosophy or religion. It is a conversation ender: there is nothing more to add to the conversation if I believe that I am the only thing that exists and there is no objective reality behind my consciousness. Even logic wouldn no longer be usable in arguments in this world view.

This argument leads to solipsism, so it's not very fruitful. That is, you can easily replace "bosons or gravity" with "everything in the universe except myself, including other humans" and your argument doesn't change.

But then you actually can't say anything about anything, since you're the only thing that really exists and everything else is a just a figment of your mind.

Nobody said consciousness is best described at the subatomic level next to bosons. It may be, it may not be. Currently there is no evidence in either direction. Gravity certainly proves that the standard model is quite incomplete so far, and we currently don't have the slightest idea how.

But I earlier used fluid dynamics as an example of emergence. To make the point that fluid dynamics is still physics.

Philosophically, the fact that consciousness is going to be part of physics is self-evidently true. It's true by definition if you believe that consciousness interacts with the universe as described by physics -- for which the specific evidence is that we're having this conversation in the first place.

> Nobody said consciousness is best described at the subatomic level next to bosons.

Above:

> Conscious awareness appears to be a fundamental aspect of the universe -- as fundamental as the four known fundamental forces

If it's as fundamental as the four fundamental forces, then it belongs in the same level of abstraction. Fluid dynamics isn't as fundamental as quantum chromodynamics.

I found the statement that consciousness is as fundamental should be worthy of further examination. Hence, my inquiry.

> But philosophically, the fact that consciousness is going to be part of physics is self-evidently true. It's true by definition if you believe that consciousness interacts with the universe as described by physics -- for which the specific evidence is that we're having this conversation in the first place.

Okay, yes, but that's a very different notion than what was discussed above. Consciousness being purely physical is, I believe, the most likely explanation. It being as fundamental as neutrinos is not.

(My primary account is rate limited, so I'm posting my final comment in this thread from my alt.)

> If it's as fundamental as the four fundamental forces, then it belongs in the same level of abstraction.

I didn't say that it belongs at the same level of abstraction, and no that isn't necessarily implied. It might be even deeper, it might be something in parallel that then interacts at a higher level, we currently don't have the slightest idea.

And there certainly isn't any evidence that it isn't as deep as neutrinos, for example. You assert that there is a "most likely explanation", but there isn't. Nothing is most likely when there is no evidence at all in any direction.

But we know consciousness interacts with the physical universe, so we can say that it's part of physics. We're just trying to locate where. But nothing rules out the subatomic level prima facie. The root-level comment attempted to do something like that, and I am pushing back on that.

> I didn't say that it belongs at the same level of abstraction, and no that isn't necessarily implied.

The definition of fundamental is, in this context, best compared with this one from Merriam Webster: "of or relating to essential structure, function, or facts" -- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fundamental

When you compare things using "as", you're stating equivalence.

The statement "Conscious awareness appears to be a fundamental aspect of the universe -- as fundamental as the four known fundamental forces" states that consciousness is as relative to the essential structure as the four fundamental known forces.

The most literal meaning of what you said above is: Consciousness is as relative to the essential structure, function, or facts as the four known fundamental forces.

If that's not what you intended, then you're free to acknowledge that you misspoke, and to correct your previous statement with a clearer, more precise meaning.

But to say "and no that isn't necessarily implied" is wrong.

> The most literal meaning of what you said above is: Consciousness is as relative to the essential structure, function, or facts as the four known fundamental forces.

Yes, that is absolutely what I meant.

That doesn't mean that it operates at the specific level of bosons or the force of gravity, which is what I read your comment as suggesting.

It's been a pleasure conversing -- I sadly no longer have time to continue, but these are exactly the kinds of debates philosophers of consciousness have -- there's a lot to clarify and figure out! It's a fascinating field.

> Yes, that is absolutely what I meant.

> That doesn't mean that it operates at the specific level of bosons or the force of gravity, which is what I read your comment as suggesting.

This is a contradiction.

If something is as fundamental as bosons, then it operates at the same level as bosons. Otherwise, it's not as fundamental as bosons. It could be more fundamental, it could be less.

I gave the examples of tensegrity and fluid dynamics above. That they're not as fundamental as quantum fields doesn't make them any less real. They're just not as fundamental.

So which is it?

> It's been a pleasure conversing -- I sadly no longer have time to continue, but these are exactly the kinds of debates philosophers of consciousness have -- there's a lot to clarify and figure out! It's a fascinating field.

I understand. I'm leaving my response for anyone else who agrees with you to pick up should they choose.

You've just demonstrated the anthropic principle. Intelligent contemplation requires a lot of things so we will see them and can see them as fundamental, but they might be obscure in the universe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

No, you are misunderstanding the anthropic principle. That merely explains statistical things such as why it might be hard to find intelligent life elsewhere.

The anthropic principle is a concept we've created out of our conscious observation of the universe. But take away our consciousness and you take away any and all of our knowledge of any universe whatsoever.

Consciousness cannot be "obscure" when it is the basis for one's own experienced reality, the substrata underlying everything else. Consciousness experience is fact; our conceptual understanding of the universe is mere theory. Well-tested theory, but theory nonetheless.

> Consciousness cannot be "obscure" when it is the basis for one's own experienced reality, the substrata underlying everything else.

That you can do any of this has consciousness as a precondition, it is of significance to us but we are most likely a statistical anomaly in the Universe. It is statistically probable that we have this rather fragile viewpoint on the Universe, that's only available in small places for short times, because consciousness has preconditions.

For people who work in or consume TV and film maybe the video camera seems fundamental to the nature of the world, but it wasn't very important before it was created.

Not the parent commenter, but perhaps this helps:

1. Some people believe that conscious awareness exists on top of physics. I.e., something happens and conscious awareness notes that it happens. Here there is a flow of information going from physics to (our) conscious awareness. But not necessarily in the other direction.

2. The above (1) is not likely to be the true. We discuss conscious awareness in this physical world. Hence physics "knows" that conscious awareness exists, and thus there is at least also a flow of information in the other direction.

One might go further, and start questioning whether it is physics that does not really exist, and only our conscious awareness exists ...

What about physics implies consciousness?

I've often heard some hand-wavy remarks about quantum physics, but they're largely unconvincing.

For example, a wavefunction will collapse because we use e.g. photons to measure a particle as it enters one of two slits. It's the act of measurement, not the introduction of a conscious mind, that causes the collapse. So that doesn't track.

Funny because the whole argument does work better if you imagine the proponents are 5. "I'm special therefore the universe must care about me and my thoughts"

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