I agree that it's hard to understand what people mean by panpsychism, and I probably count as one myself. to the extent that I understand it, my favorite analogy is to the property of mass. Mass is a property of reality that depends on the structure of *stuff* and changing the arrangement of the stuff can change the mass (e.g., bond structure, etc). I suspect consciousness is similar. It is a fundamental property of *stuff* that can change based on how it's arranged.
But this doesn't specify what the actual relationship btw the structure and the consciousness is. so I also agree that panpsychism by itself is too broad or vague to have many implications for whether neural networks are/can be conscious entities.
I recently watched the documentary “All that breathes” and couldn’t help but notice the theme of panpsychism. What would you say from an ecological perspective?
It seems that contemporary panpsychists have diluted or violated the "pan" part to such an extent that it has only added to panpsychism's seemingly insurmountable problems, from being unfalsifiable to the combination problem. It's unclear what panpsychism's value is at all, besides the vague appeal to elegance and it being an answer to some problems of (naive?) physicalism. And the "elegance" notion is highly dubious, as once you attempt to produce a full picture of what we do know and have empirically verified w.r.t. our universe, it's unclear whether the supposed "consolidation" of consciousness is elegant or actually bewilderingly complex and inelegant, given that it's hard to understand how its homogeneity fits with the heterogeneity of physics, chemistry, etc. Like illusionism, I think panpsychism seems to come from a sort of bias to make things simpler, deflate, and constitute an answer to issues that emerged from other philosophical positions or concepts. And both suffer from themselves being vague and unclear, in fact, w.r.t. to how exactly they deflate/consolidate things and why that makes sense. We can perfectly fine state that some combinations of matter and energy have the capacity to be vehicles for consciousness, or even embed it - whatever the wording - without having to go "pan"... in any case, I think we should be looking for theories with more explanatory power than aesthetic appeal. We should care about what is the case. Elegant or not elegant.
I like to split the responses to the hard problem into three groups, depending on how they view the mapping between physical states and mental states.
* Physicalists--it's a many-to-one mapping. I.e. many physical states correspond to the same mental state (specifically, most physical states correspond to the zero mental state); physical states are more abundant than mental states
* Idealists--it's a one-to-many mapping. I.e. a given physical state can be accompanied by many different mental states; mental states are more abundant than physical states.
* Panpsychists--it's a one-to-one mapping. I.e. each unique physical state gives rise to a unique mental state, and every unique mental state maps back to a unique physical state
But to be specific, if we start from the premise that there’s something in the human brain/body that allows us to be aware of what we’re learning and doing ... and not just be aware, because everyone is aware in some sense of what they’re doing, but to be aware that we’re aware, as it’s famously said, then I think we could discover ways to create AIs that are aware that they’re conscious, too.
Reality is one and is the source of consciousness.
The bridge between consciousness and reality is that any object that makes up our conscious experience (taste or touch or sight) is borrowing from pure awareness.
So you can have awareness without consciousness but not consciousness without awareness.
Or to say it slightly differently, consciousness is any form in the field of awareness, which always, already exists.
And this is why, I think, these teachers and insights may be hidden, in a sense from scientists, and the AI community, because awareness as something distinct and prior to consciousness just isn’t on their radar.
(You may know all of the above from your own practice and, if so, I’m just stating the obvious. 😊)
Important topic and panpsychism may have something to contribute, but I often wonder why we all veer away from the great spiritual masters of the ages, Ramana, Nisargadatta, Bankei, Meister Eckhart, and so on.
These teachers and a thousand more, some living today, knew more about consciousness, awareness, and witnessing, and the perceptions and experiences that arise within that witnessing, than what modern science and philosophy can even approach.
An open question: why don’t we take advantage of this treasure trove of insights?
I agree that it's hard to understand what people mean by panpsychism, and I probably count as one myself. to the extent that I understand it, my favorite analogy is to the property of mass. Mass is a property of reality that depends on the structure of *stuff* and changing the arrangement of the stuff can change the mass (e.g., bond structure, etc). I suspect consciousness is similar. It is a fundamental property of *stuff* that can change based on how it's arranged.
But this doesn't specify what the actual relationship btw the structure and the consciousness is. so I also agree that panpsychism by itself is too broad or vague to have many implications for whether neural networks are/can be conscious entities.
I recently watched the documentary “All that breathes” and couldn’t help but notice the theme of panpsychism. What would you say from an ecological perspective?
It seems that contemporary panpsychists have diluted or violated the "pan" part to such an extent that it has only added to panpsychism's seemingly insurmountable problems, from being unfalsifiable to the combination problem. It's unclear what panpsychism's value is at all, besides the vague appeal to elegance and it being an answer to some problems of (naive?) physicalism. And the "elegance" notion is highly dubious, as once you attempt to produce a full picture of what we do know and have empirically verified w.r.t. our universe, it's unclear whether the supposed "consolidation" of consciousness is elegant or actually bewilderingly complex and inelegant, given that it's hard to understand how its homogeneity fits with the heterogeneity of physics, chemistry, etc. Like illusionism, I think panpsychism seems to come from a sort of bias to make things simpler, deflate, and constitute an answer to issues that emerged from other philosophical positions or concepts. And both suffer from themselves being vague and unclear, in fact, w.r.t. to how exactly they deflate/consolidate things and why that makes sense. We can perfectly fine state that some combinations of matter and energy have the capacity to be vehicles for consciousness, or even embed it - whatever the wording - without having to go "pan"... in any case, I think we should be looking for theories with more explanatory power than aesthetic appeal. We should care about what is the case. Elegant or not elegant.
I like to split the responses to the hard problem into three groups, depending on how they view the mapping between physical states and mental states.
* Physicalists--it's a many-to-one mapping. I.e. many physical states correspond to the same mental state (specifically, most physical states correspond to the zero mental state); physical states are more abundant than mental states
* Idealists--it's a one-to-many mapping. I.e. a given physical state can be accompanied by many different mental states; mental states are more abundant than physical states.
* Panpsychists--it's a one-to-one mapping. I.e. each unique physical state gives rise to a unique mental state, and every unique mental state maps back to a unique physical state
But to be specific, if we start from the premise that there’s something in the human brain/body that allows us to be aware of what we’re learning and doing ... and not just be aware, because everyone is aware in some sense of what they’re doing, but to be aware that we’re aware, as it’s famously said, then I think we could discover ways to create AIs that are aware that they’re conscious, too.
100%
Reality is one and is the source of consciousness.
The bridge between consciousness and reality is that any object that makes up our conscious experience (taste or touch or sight) is borrowing from pure awareness.
So you can have awareness without consciousness but not consciousness without awareness.
Or to say it slightly differently, consciousness is any form in the field of awareness, which always, already exists.
And this is why, I think, these teachers and insights may be hidden, in a sense from scientists, and the AI community, because awareness as something distinct and prior to consciousness just isn’t on their radar.
(You may know all of the above from your own practice and, if so, I’m just stating the obvious. 😊)
Important topic and panpsychism may have something to contribute, but I often wonder why we all veer away from the great spiritual masters of the ages, Ramana, Nisargadatta, Bankei, Meister Eckhart, and so on.
These teachers and a thousand more, some living today, knew more about consciousness, awareness, and witnessing, and the perceptions and experiences that arise within that witnessing, than what modern science and philosophy can even approach.
An open question: why don’t we take advantage of this treasure trove of insights?