Everything in our universe may be conscious, scientists say | Hacker News Reader

Everything in our universe may be conscious, scientists say

popularmechanics.com

14 pointsNoRagrets17 comments

https://web.archive.org/web/20240326052240/https://www.popul...

I doubt it. Luckily the article is very low on details, so it's probably fine for me to refute this by asking: why are we not conscious while asleep?

And what happens if a rock is split in two? Will it automatically split into two conscious minds? Why does this not happen with humans when they clip their toenails?

It's not often that I feel an urge to oppose philosophical theories, but this one is just plain lazy.

I find the sensation to see my consciousness slipping out under me always _so odd_! I try to observe the process of falling asleep within myself when I fall asleep. So far, I've never been able to fully make it through.

I once read about the idea in some book about Buddhism, was sceptical and realized it'd be fun to try! For a lifetime!

It definitely doesn't harm my ability to fall asleep. It helps me a bit actually, as I can sense in myself what it takes for me to fall asleep. I'm a really bad sleeper, nowadays (because of this) I am only semi-bad.

> why are we not conscious while asleep?

I think this question confuses two different usages of the term "conscious". In the sense of consciousness as in self-awareness, we are such when we're asleep as much as when we're awake.

The larger issue in terms of this article is that we don't have a rigorous definition of what "consciousness" actually is or how to test for it. All I can know with certainty is that I am conscious, everything else is speculation. In that sense, "everything may be conscious" is a correct statement because of the "may be" part. We can't say for certain one way or the other.

From a scientific standpoint it seems easier to reject "knowing with certainty" than to accept that there must be consciousness.

Not to say that the scientific standpoint is the best here, but there are many areas to investigate still, before giving up :)

From a scientific standpoint, we know that consciousness exists, because we experience it. From an equally scientific standpoint, we don't really know what it is objectively and so we can't say with certainty that it exists anywhere outside of ourselves.

Obviously, the odds are extraordinarily high that it does exist in entities outside ourselves, but it's not a scientifically "proven" thing yet. It's just a very reasonable assumption that is taken as an axiom.

> before giving up

Who's giving up, and giving up on what?

Experiencing something does not necessarily imply that it exists, at least from a scientific standpoint. Experiencing God, or qualia such as colors are just some examples of things that some people reject the existence of. Perhaps I should be more precise in the definitions of "experience", "consciousness", and "existence", but I hope that you catch my drift.

I agree that it's highly likely that other animals experience consciousness in a similar way as we do. I'm not so sure about plants or LLMs, though. And I find it highly unlikely that protons or rocks have consciousness.

About the giving up, I was referring to the panpsychists who gave up on explaining consciousness from a materialist or naturalist perspective.

If panpsychism is true, presumably we are also conscious when we are dead.

Dreaming is just a different form of consciousness.

> Luckily the article is very low on details

The only real detail the article gives is that one of the main proponents of panpsychism is Rupert Sheldrake, who is better known for his theory of "morphic resonance" and his mass-market books about various metaphysical and parapsychological topics.

In short, it's unclear that there's any actual "science" behind any of this.

There's also not any science behind the assumption that all matter is inherently dead, and that by complex arrangements of atoms it can become conscious. These are questions that are beyond the ability of science to currently shed much light on.

Panpsychism is what you get if materialism can't be proven. Sure, maybe there is a neural correlate of consciousness, but there is no proof of it. If no neural (or perhaps quantum?) correlate can be found, it would perhaps fall on panpsychism as the default explanation.

These folks^0 put money on it, and panpsychism is winning so far.

0: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/07/12/a-25-year-old-bet-on...

We've been doing fine with not proving that God exists.

Edit: scratch that, I'm not sure if we're doing fine :)

I just read Nimbus by Peter Watts. The sky is alive and it doesn't look good for us.

The novel from the web site of the author https://rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Nimbus.pdf

I think it's probably something less than "conscious" but more than "dead matter". I like the ideas of Michael Levin and basal cognition. It avoids metaphysical woo and just empirically demonstrates how certain types of cognition exist in biological organisms at multiple scales and in different problem spaces than we're used to. It doesn't get down to the atomic scale, but it's a step or two down in granularity from brains and nervous systems, so at least it's a start.

Thats just solipsism.

Imagine what will happen when it realizes we're like it's lice infestation. It's gonna freak out.

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