Is Matter Conscious?

tags

Panpsychism

Notes

What is physical matter in and of itself, behind the mathematical structure described by physics?

NOTER_PAGE: (1 0.4247135842880524 . 0.2319915254237288)

all we can observe is what matter does, not what it is in itself—the “software” of the universe but not its ultimate “hardware.”

NOTER_PAGE: (1 0.472176759410802 . 0.13453389830508475)

neuroscience is giving us better and better maps of what kinds of conscious experiences depend on what kinds of physical brain states.

NOTER_PAGE: (2 0.9288052373158756 . 0.1652542372881356)

in all these theories, the hard problem remains. How and why does a system that integrates information, broadcasts a message, or oscillates at 40 hertz feel pain or delight?

NOTER_PAGE: (3 0.1497545008183306 . 0.5010593220338984)

Why is this process accompanied by the subjective experience of red, or any experience at all? Why couldn’t we have just the physical process, but no consciousness?

NOTER_PAGE: (3 0.3109656301145663 . 0.3898305084745763)

the hard problem of consciousness would seem to persist even given knowledge of every imaginable kind of physical detail. In this way, the deep nature of consciousness appears to lie beyond scientific reach.

NOTER_PAGE: (3 0.5376432078559739 . 0.3633474576271186)

there must be more to matter than what physics tells us. Broadly speaking, physics tells us what fundamental particles do or how they relate to other things, but nothing about how they are in themselves, independently of other things.

NOTER_PAGE: (3 0.7307692307692308 . 0.3548728813559322)

Some have argued that there is nothing more to particles than their relations, but intuition rebels at this claim. For there to be a relation, there must be two things being related.

NOTER_PAGE: (4 0.3199672667757774 . 0.4798728813559322)

there would be no clear difference between physical and mere mathematical structure, or between the concrete universe and a mere abstraction.

NOTER_PAGE: (4 0.43535188216039283 . 0.17372881355932204)

what could this stuff that realizes or implements physical structure be, and what are the intrinsic, non-structural properties that characterize it? This problem is a close descendant of Kant’s classic problem of knowledge of things- in-themselves. The philosopher Galen Strawson has called it the hard problem of matter.

NOTER_PAGE: (4 0.46153846153846156 . 0.5752118644067796)

The hard problem of matter calls for non-structural properties, and consciousness is the one phenomenon we know that might meet this need.

NOTER_PAGE: (5 0.546644844517185 . 0.0625)

We know something about what conscious experiences are like in and of themselves, not just how they function and relate to other properties.

NOTER_PAGE: (5 0.6211129296235679 . 0.2658898305084746)

What performs this behavior, we might think, is simply a stream of tiny electron experiences.

NOTER_PAGE: (6 0.10638297872340426 . 0.7447033898305084)

Philosophers and neuroscientists often assume that consciousness is like software, whereas the brain is like hardware. This suggestion turns this completely around. When we look at what physics tells us about the brain, we actually just find software—purely a set of relations—all the way down. And consciousness is in fact more like hardware, because of its distinctly qualitative, non-structural properties. For this reason, conscious experiences are just the kind of things that physical structure could be the structure of.

NOTER_PAGE: (7 0.22013093289689034 . 0.3336864406779661)

according to the hard problem of consciousness, any purely physical description of a conscious system such as the brain at least appears to leave something out: It could never fully capture what it is like to be that system.

NOTER_PAGE: (7 0.9369885433715222 . 0.586864406779661)