Sean Carroll - Physics of Consciousness
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
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How to explain our inner awareness that is at once most common and most mysterious? Traditional explanations focus at the level of neuron and neuronal circuits in the brain. But little real progress has motivated some to look much deeper, into the laws of physics - information theory, quantum mechanics, even postulating new laws of physics.
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Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. His research focuses on fundamental physics and cosmology.
Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
Don't you enjoy listening to these guy's verbally thrash out their differences,so much passion!!
😂
not in this case mister closer to doesn't seem to grok that there are two people having new experiences. it's not even neuroscience.
And respect this is how politics should sound like
This was brilliant. I've not heard someone talk so well about a physicalist position on consciousness. It was kind of funny watching Robert Kuhn respond from an irresistible dualist position, although Carroll perhaps set him up for that by agreeing with the idea of being able to "upload yourself". His explanation of the detail refutes that, at least as it relates to how that expression is usually thought of (because it is inherently dualistic, suggesting that there's an entity, "your self", that is put somewhere else). With that bubbling around in Kuhn's unconscious, he can then start imagining that the new copy being "identical" must mean it has Carroll's unique personhood, hence he's confused because then he thinks there are two Sean Carrolls. If he just thought about disassembling an apple molecule by molecule, yet copying each into a new apple, he'd not argue that the two apples being "identical" are therefore just one apple in two places. They're necessarily made of different actual atoms; only their type and arrangement are identical.
So really, you can't "upload yourself" because you have no "self", but you can copy the physical state to create a facsimile. Actually, all the neurons isn't enough, since a brain unsupported by a body will die immediately, and one without any senses won't have a similar conscious experience, so the whole body would need to be copied. And immediately, it would begin having different experiences.
Nothing new! See Star Trek The Next Generation season 6 episode 24 Second Chances. I'm wondering where was so cold to be so dressed up 2 weeks ago? I'm dying of heat indoors.
As I understand physiology, neurons are dynamic in the sense of forming new structures. Without this dynamic process there could be no “perception” and no memory. As soon as the copy is made, and given that it must exist is a different physical location from the copied being, then it would evolve differently. The time taken to duplicate aside, there would be two beings with different perspectives that share much memory. They would be different, though, because of the difference in perception which in turn would invoke different memories.
This was actually pretty comprehensive and one of the better and simpler conversations about consciousness.
Why is science ignoring Dr. Terrance Howard?
@@michael-4k4000 I imagine because he's just a guy and at least one thing he says sounds bonkers. 1 times 1 equals 2? That seems obviously wrong.
Yes, if you buy the idea that you can make consciousness by putting cells together in a particular orientation, after presumably making them in a lab, good luck with that, it might be easier to create a time machine and hope that they got this figured out a billion years from now.
But then the question arises "why is this orientation so specific and important?" And "would the created brain lose its consciousness if you interchanged the positions of two neurons? Why?" Not to mention how fraught the idea of a person losing his or her consciousness with a brain injury, as if there can be no internal experience or voice.
@@jeffreyanderson6021 our inability to create consciousness only points to our limitations, not necessarily our explanation of how consciousness is being produced.
If there are biological factors (brain damage, anesthesia…) that impact the state of our conscious experience, to me that only reaffirms the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of brain processes.
@@edwardprokopchuk3264 Seems obvious to many.
In Robert’s neuron copy scenario: by what Robert means by “you”, the original dies. By what Sean means by “you”, it lives on in the copy. I’m a physicalist, and it’s hard even for me to not talk dualistically about “self”. Sean seems to have mastered it.
Kuhn made some very strong points. Sean was way more relaxed in his responses, Kuhn seemed a bit rattled and shaky with his questions and points, but still posed very cogent challenges to the "absoluteness" of Sean's position. Bottom line for me in all of the discussion of consciousness is that we'll probably not figure it out any time soon. By far the most animated CTT I've ever seen.
I think that Kuhn has been sufficiently convinced by non-physicalists after all these years and, like me, can’t believe that someone as smart as Sean would be such a fundamentalist in this regard.
@@cloud1stclass372 Non-physicalism is incoherent. It begins with Kant's mind-body problem and argues the "solution" is to throw out the existence of the physical "body." The direct result of this is that we would all be trapped "in our own minds," i.e. solipsism (subjective idealism). This view is incoherent because you cannot even define the concept of "I" without a reference to "Thou," in the same way darkness makes no sense without light. The word "I" would also become meaningless in a truly solipsistic framework, which then _should_ lead you to also abandon this as an _a priori_ concept, and just treat experience as not a property of "I" or "Thou" but just _reality itself,_ and then you can easily recover materialism and realism consistently. Yet, what happens in practice is that subjective idealists either spin themselves into logical pretzels trying to explain how it makes sense to argue "I" is _a priori_ but somehow "Thou" is not, or they devolve into the even worse _objective_ idealism, where they propose we are all part of an "objective mind," but this mind has precisely the same properties as Kant's own _noumenon,_ i.e. all objective idealist philosophies always reproduce the mind-body problem in its precise logical form.
Sean is a dedicated physicalist and an accomplished physicist. I believe that the concept of 'consciousness' may not be within his area of expertise. It's similar to hearing a cardiologist discuss sports nutrition. Consciousness is a profoundly intricate phenomenon that surpasses simplistic explanations. Moreover, the central question remains: what triggers the onset of consciousness, by what mechanism? As of now, science has not provided a definitive explanation for this. Hence, this conversation delves into the realm of the unknowable.
There are two separate questions about consciousness:
1. Who is the thinker, and who is the observer? The thinker is purely physical, while the observer is consciousness, a phenomenon that remains enigmatic and beyond full explanation. This enigma may stem from its inherent connection to questions about the nature of divinity. Consulting a physicist on this subject is akin to seeking insights from a plumber; while either may offer valuable perspectives, the definitive answers are elusive.
@@marcusantebi4896 I'm with you almost all the way minus the analogy to God. Consciousness is truly the only self-evident fact in the Universe. It's obvious we have some inner subjectivity. But to ask Physicist how it arises or how to distinguish a philosophical zombie from a conscious entity is about as fruitful as asking a Physicist about God. If that's what you meant I agree.
@@mountainair
But we have a lot of physical evidence of what "triggers the onset of" consciousness. We know particular bits of the brain that are required to be active. We have all manner of evidence about different states and contents of consciousness that can be elicited by physical means, from drugs to electrical and magnetic stimulation, to damage and disease.
Furthermore, as a physicist, he is an expert on the fair assessment (not absolute fact) that it's unlikely there's any missing ingredient in the physical models. Even if there was something missing to explain consciousness outside of normal physics, it's well understood from philosophy that if we invoke some other mental stuff that isn't physical, we've an additional problem of how two entirely different substrates could influence each other. A simple way to understand "physicalism" is that it just describes the stuff we've evidence of. If we find "mind stuff" it's part of physics. If it's not part of physics, we haven't measured it, and hence have no evidence it exists.
The thing we struggle with - in my view - is comprehending that physical things can be conscious. We have an unexamined assumption that consciousness has to be non-physical, which is called "begging the question". All the evidence (and there's a lot) is that physical things (brains, or brains-in-bodies in particular states) ARE conscious, they don't create "mind".
Duh
Sooo much fun. Put a smile on my face, literally and figuratively.
The fallacy of studying consciousness via the modalities of reductionist scientism was made immediately apparent to me when, post-LSD trip, I was asked by a reputable psychedelic scientist, "On a scale of 1-10, how ephemeral was your experience?". At that point, I realised it was pure folly to keep probing consciousness through the narrow lens of modern materialist dogmatism.
I think I can elaborate a bit on Sean's position. Each moment in time is another you, having a different "now" experience.
All "now" moments have state (i.e the configuration of the universe in that moment) that is consistent with that moments "now" state being related to a prior moments "now" state, as described by a transformation permitted by the laws of physics.
You could imagine that like a jigsaw puzzle, all these moments, like puzzle pieces, were all cut together in one stroke. Therefore one did not derive from another, they were all derived together to be consistent with the laws of physics.
You are experiencing one "now" moment. The order thing called time you are experiencing is just that this is the only thing we can derive from any given now moment that we find ourselves experiencing. If the universe jumped between states of you being a baby, and then you being an adult, you would know nothing of this jump; in both instances you would be aware of being a baby with complete set of memories and state consistent with that experience; and likewise for the instant where you are an adult yod have the memories of a lifetime consistent with that experience.
So what does it mean if your brain was uploaded into a computer?
Your set of "now" moments where you were a human are all possible experiences. Another set of "now" moments for the conciousness happening in the computer is abother set. In fact in anything where conciousness arises - this adds to the set of "now" moments that can be experienced. This set now includes me, and you and everyone we have ever met.
So why am I feeling like I am me right "now" and not "you" or my brain uploaded into the "computer"?
Well.. how can we be so sure we are not also those things - we can only ever experience a "now" moment, I have no idea who I was experiencing a moment ago. According to this "now" moment I am presently writing a youtube comment. I have memories consistent with this. I feel like I have been sat here 10 minutes.. but so would you if you were experiencing this "now" moment. Who is to say you are not? Language lets me down here because terms like "you" and "I' are ambiguous. The total set of all "now" moments for concious being will be experienced, and when they are, that experience will result in something that thinks its an entity with an identity that is flowing in time.
Robert: “What happens to you??”
Sean: “You becomes us.”
Robert: 🤯
The question as to whether if you could make an identical duplicate of a person and whether they would (a) share a single consciousness, or (2) each have their own, is easy to resolve. Consider first that we are not “conscious” 100% of the time, even when we are awake. Sometimes you have a train of thought and you follow that thought, but you are are not conscious in the usual sense, as when someone asks you a question and you have to think about it very carefully. Sometimes you are just on autopilot until you realize you are not really aware of what you were doing. Then you are conscious. But you are still the same “person” in both cases. The difference is self-reflection - using your short-term memory to remember what you were just doing. So in a sense, there are two yous, one that is “not” conscious, and one that is, but they are the same person. So if consciousness can come and go, is it something that would be transferred when you duplicate someone? No! It’s a function of the brain. When you are in deep sleep, or anesthetized, you are clearly not conscious, and furthermore can’t remember anything. When asleep you can only remember your dream because that is a different state of sleep and your short-term memory is working, which is why you can remember a dream right when you wake up. If you don’t remember it right away, it will disappear. So consciousness is not a constant state of being. It comes and goes, and is only the same in terms of the person who is conscious. We all relate to consciousness the same way, because it is the same process in all of us. It doesn’t depend on the contents of our thoughts, but rather in fact that if you reflect on what is in your mind, you realize you were thinking or feeling or sensing something different a few moments ago, yet YOU are still “here”, so that thread of brain activity seems to provide a sense of constancy, which you intrpret as your “self”. Clearly this is quite paradoxical, yet it makes sense - upon reflection!
Doesn’t this thought experiment beg the question by presupposing some kind of dualism?
If they are physically identical to humans in every way, then they will necessarily have the same physical properties such as consciousness.
If you have two identical people separated by spacetime, they will necessarily have different conscious experiences. If they are not separated by spacetime, then they’re indistinguishable from a single person.
What am I missing?
You are correct that the experiment begs the question. By postulating the existence of philosophical zombies, they are essentially saying "given that dualism is true, then...". But that's really the interesting question - is dualism true. Note that you can't assume functionalism either, which you did when you used the word "necessarily" 😊
@@degigi2003I cannot tell if that last bit is intended to be passive aggressive or not. It could go either way with the smiley lol
@@brandon1357 it was an honest comment. I put the smiley because the functionalist position makes sense to me, but this doesn't make it true. We have yet to demonstrate some form of artificial consciousness and some rigorous theory behind it.
@@degigi2003 Fair. I just strongly oppose dualism and think it's an antiquated way of thinking. It may have worked when people didn't know about germs and thought epileptic seizures were demonic possessions, but to be a dualist in 2024 is a position I cannot take seriously. I could be wrong, but logically and empirically, I see no reason why we need to invoke supernatural explanations here any more than we have for other things in the past. Those kinds of explanations have historically never been a good place to hang your hat and I see no reason this should be any different, nor have I heard any good arguments beyond "But I FEEL special."
@@brandon1357 Agreed 👍
I am not going to accuse Carroll of incoherence for equating the continuity of consciousness over time with the continuity of identity between spatially separated clones because I think he was pressured into this position without fully thinking it through. He was pushing back against Kuhn's framework and ended up saying things he didn't entirely mean. He could have done better, given enough time.
Instead, I accuse him of being intellectually dishonest, by pretending the intuition that consciousness has a certain irreducibility to every other known thing, process, or property is not the natural default position. He framed it as Kuhn's metaphysically magical view, when in fact, it IS the default view of basically all humans (including Carroll himself when not philosophizing), and the only people who claim otherwise are a few radical, out of touch physicalists who earn respect by having the audacity to claim the most ridiculous things.
Dishonesty is perhaps too strong of an accusation. At most you can accuse him of laziness. Instead of hand waving the default position as magic, he could have brought more evidence for his own position, e.g. from neuroscience, split brain research, or computer science.
I'll accuse Sean of dishonesty. I think it's a deliberate schtick and he doesn't believe a word of it.
That or he's a philosophical zombie 😂
If you have a copy of the same program on two devices, which one is the "real one"? Consciousness is just sort of a program. If there are identical copies of the same consciousness they would be working independently from each other but in similar way until they diverge over time.
Exactly. The two independent consciousnesses would only be momentarily identical. The more time passes the more they would diverge.
Exactly. This sense of identity carried on over time is just that, a sense, and is just a useful high-level construct. But if feels so real most people can't make that leap, apparently.
@@marceltorretta Well each normal individual consciousness it real to the person experiencing it. But it's objectively special or special to anyone else.
I think the movie “The Prestige” gives an interesting take on this. The surviving clone always is the one who never experienced their own death. It doesn’t matter if consciousness does not “jump”, it doesn’t need to- as the survivor will have the continuous subjective experience that includes everything up to the branch.
predestination comes at it from the opposite direction, someone who is their own mother and father in a time loop.
i forget the title but there is a sci fi story about a guy who jumps into the future and he finds that every time he jumped a duplicate appears, he eventually finds himself in a time that is entirely populated by himselfs, all claiming to be the original.
Carroll is great at explaining everything with pure materialism without actually explaining how it works. (He does the same in cosmology in pushing multiple universes, a theory that most physicists believe is non-provable.) No one has a clue how the color red is experienced, yet here he basically says it's "materialism" as he sails right by it. He takes the easy way out so does not have to do the hard work to prove his beliefs.
Limitations of language that don't allow us to describe experiences from other senses accurately or without metaphor doesn't mean we don't know the experience of seeing red. Our optic nerve is a pathway to information being communicated just as language is (for humans). And we use them both, not independently (if we are normal sighted and non-mute people). The philosophical (not scientific) example of the experience of seeing red not being communicable says something about limitations of language and nothing else.
@@eximusic What we want to do is explain how we experience the color red, but what we are lacking is not the language to do this but the actual concept of how this process works. Without the concept, language, which is only descriptive, cannot help. The fact remains that the "actual experience of redness" is currently beyond our ability to conceptualize. The word "Redness" is no more than vibrations in the air or, in this case, strange squiggles on a computer monitor that we call "letters". The actual experience of redness is beyond all words and language. Without a conceptual framework language is useless.
just because you don't know, doesn't make it "magical", there is no God of the gaps.
Carroll does this with his belief that he has free will, too. He believes in the laws of physics, he believes in special relativity, he believes in determinism, and he believes that his conscious experience of the world is generated purely by his brain, and yet he also clearly believes that his thoughts are in some magical way not subject to these things. Carroll believes in the laws of physics, he just doesn't believe that they apply to _him._
@@joedoe3688 We’re not talking “God” or “Magic”. There are many things about the world we do not understand. I have always loved the quote “The world is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we CAN imagine”. It allows for the fact that we are perhaps not as intelligent as we believe, and that there is much more to learn than we think.
I really enjoy listening to Sean Carroll. He can take a seemingly complex subject and relate it to the viewer in simple understandable terms.
There is no single stream of unbroken universal metaphysical consciousness anyway. It gets shutdown whenever we sleep and aren’t in a REM state, or when we’re put under for an operation.
If I fell asleep, and some duplication machine made a copy of me, swapped the “original” for the “copy” in bed, and then humanely destroyed the original. Then the copy would just wake up as I normally do without any knowledge of it ever happening, just as I do every day. Going on thinking of itself as “I” or “me”.
For all I know it could already have happened, and “I” would feel or notice no different, and will think of myself as always being here.
But it would be a different subjective consciousness. That's Robert's point
Jean nailed the conscious wooo woo in my opinion and in the opinion.. it’s clearly an evolutionary advantage ( and as many evolutionary advantages also have not so good side effects) .. I have no portion thinking I’m different from yesterday and still a evolution of me
Would help to agree on a definition of consciousness before going into arguments
Correct the definition is survival of consciousness not soul or spirit of survival.
may be there is no such definition we are not rigid metal bodies.
The more evolved you are the more conscious you are.
fish--> dog--> elepant--> monkey --> chimp --> humans and even among humans different people with different levels of consciousness.
The world consciousness is vague and leads to lot of confusion
@@munish259272 There is no such thing as "more evolved," everything is equally "evolved."
@@amihartz Correct.
When you talk about copying people they get confused about who they are, but the issue is confusion about Time, not Identity: people have no confusion when they think about TIME TRAVEL- If you travel back in time one hour and meet yourself, most people understand and accept that both people are you!
One thing we can see about consciousness through technology is a development... One upon a time the analog signal on your TV was blowing your minds when we were watching documentaries back in the '90s. Thin HD came along in 720p. Looked great. Then 2K came along and that made 720p look bad. Now we have TVs on the market that are 8K resolution and 4K is starting to look a bit average. This is an example of how technology is growing our consciousness and how now when you look back at analog signals or even 720p it's almost unrecognizable compared to what the brain used to comprehend it as before. It had been heightened by technology. So this might give us a clue on how consciousness works
One simple thought experiment that came to my mind years ago, which resulted in me giving up chasing consciousness within causal deterministic or computational systems was this… Let’s assume the brain is a causal, computational system. Now, let’s get a pen and paper and start computing exactly what the brain was executing at the time of me feeling great pain, happiness or anger. As I compute the algorithm execution with my pen and paper, is it the pen or the paper that “experiences” the emotion? The substrate of a computation that is causal and deterministic shouldn’t impact the outcome of the algorithm; as such the motions carried out during the algorithm shouldn’t have impact or results produced outside the material substrate either, so what’s going on? To elaborate, many say consciousness is an illusion; so going off this path, a causal deterministic algorithm is executed, yet something independent of that material substrate “experiences” the effects of that computation without being able to impact it. This assumes that this something is capable of “experiencing” to begin with, yet it has no place within the material substrate itself. Its existence is pointless within the framework of this line of thought and the only evidence we have of its existence is that we ourselves are not zombies or robots.
Kirk: “Beam me up Scotty!”
[molecular copy, delete, Kirk dies, molecular paste on the Enterprise]
Scotty: “Did it work?”
Kirk: “Yep!”
I think Sean made one mistake. He chose one of the copies to be "him". That implies there's something special about the him that's in his brain. If you're a pure materialist, the feeling of individuality is produced by the brain. Each copy would feel itself to be him, but it wouldn't be a shared feeling, and each copy (in a purely materialist viewpoint) would be correct. Our memories are key to who we feel we are. Any brain imbued with an exact copy (to date) of every memory we have stored in our brains would sidle those memories with the consciousness it produces, and in turn, believe themselves to be us, but that's purely an internal feeling held by every copy, as well as the original. All of them would be a separate "you".
One of them wouldn't be a copy, it would be the original him, though as you say they would be identical. I just watched it again, and he talks about all the same things you wrote about above. Two apples can be identical, but they are still different apples, if you cut one in half the other remains intact.
A massive non-sequitur: "if you choose something as a reference point, it must have a magical property to let you choose it!" No, things are chosen as reference points purely for utility. When I measure the velocity of an object, the entire concept of velocity does not make sense without something being chosen as the reference point, and I choose me purely for convenience. I could easily speak of the velocity of an object in relation to some inanimate object, such as a rock. Choosing a reference point is not something magical. The universe is inherently context-dependent and so nothing can be spoken of coherently without specifying its context, and we choose contexts based on convenience, not because there is some magical property that lets us choose one context over another, because we could speak of the world without our presence. The very concept of "I" is a convenient abstraction.
Does phisycs explain why matter believes in a purpose or questions it? That's what bloggles my mind.
A lot of things seem to have emerged on their own according to materialist understanding of our reality
@@MarkPatmos indeed. Our philosophical approach of life seems so unmaterialistic, though.
That is a key question. Why should matter matter to matter?
@@linardsjansons9875 I think Darwin answered that one a while ago.
Sean is insanely patient here. Holy crap
Hearing yourself saying nonsense all the time indeed needs a lot pf patience.
A zombie THINKS it is comscious....
I think the point he's making is "what's a zombie"? If I copy paste myself atom for atom, is the second one a zombie? What's your definition of a zombie here?
@@jean-philippegrenier120 no theres 2 different examples in this case, the zombie in general and the clone. Clone is impossible, and even if possible, it would be a different observer, say we dont kill the original, they both exist. They must have their own independent perspective not 1 consciousness in superposition .
Secondly, what nobody truly understands is zombies. It is supposedly absolutely the same in terms of physical but it has no awerness. I don't know if such zombie is possible but , possible or not, it doesn't change the fact that Consciousnes is something truly extra over the brain. Charmlers argument is why Consciousnes really exists, why aren't we just a brain without awerness and experience. It should make sense physically. Zombies and clones are mostly irrelevant in this case
Without consciousness nothing exists
simple because what you define as "exist" is just a human concept
If Sean had made his point about consciousness being an emergent physical property existing only in this MOMENT OF TIME they could have avoided 10 minutes of arguing. This issue of what actually makes me ME or you You has got to be the most perplexing and fundamental in philosophy or science. I know it's been argued for thousands of years, but if someone made an atom for atom copy of me and then destroyed the original no one would notice. But I would be dead, right? Or not?
Someone making the exact copy of you atom by atom, and YOU naturally changing moment to moment the same way, is the exact same thing. So, explain to us, how come when you naturally change, you continue to live in every instance of your body. You are different, but you still exist. While if someone make the exact copy of you artificially, then you don't exist in that body. You are dead if original is destroyed. It is the exact same thing. In natural copies, original of you gets destroyed, and the next moment new copy is made. But you are alive and exist. There is a sense of continuity, Carrol claims that artificially made copy is no longer yourself. It is contradicting because it is the exact same thing as naturally made copy
@@milannesic5718 Good point. And yet it seems that if the original is destroyed, that individual would be dead, even though an exact copy lives on. Carroll is saying that's what happens moment by moment as we change through time. (And I believe every 5 years or so all the material in our bodies DOES get replaced). But then, as you say, he contradicts himself with the artificial copy hypothetical. I want to believe "I" would live on in the copy of myself - but what if 5 copies were made? Mind-bending.
I think too many people got confused. The interviewer played the ignorant fool, and Sean tried his best to reply to sensibility. The biggest point Sean made was irregardless of the copies and the deletion of the original. There are two separate conscious's, and deleting the original does not matter to the copy after it is made. This is just a sifi movie. Sean starts with truth and works out a theory not the other way around.
@@runningwildttv3648 No, Sean was the one avoiding the question about how matter can have inner feelings, because it is very hard to answer. Kuhn tried to rephrase the question multiple times, but Sean played confident and dodged it. And our conversation here is about how come when we you make a copy artificially there are 2 consciousness, but when it happens naturally to you moment, by moment every day, the same consciousness persist? It is exactly the same thing. It does not matter if you artificially make another me. Same thing happens every moment according to Sean, yet, it is only one consciousness that persist
Sean's contention here is that the you that exists at any moment in time doesn't have any more inherent connection to the you that existed a moment ago than a copy would. Both experience a continuity and relationship to moment-ago-you by building on their memories and only being slightly different in their composition. But he doesn't buy that there's some sort of inherent continuity that the "original" maintains and that the "copy" doesn't.
That thinking likely comes easily to him because he's already used to thinking of the universe splitting into many worlds ad infinitum as the wave function evolves, and a bajillion Seans across the multiverse sharing the history of a precursor Sean.
The argument would be that even though we experience a persistence of identity, it's just an abstraction, not a fundamental aspect of reality.
So now-me and now-copy-me both get to claim before-me as our past self with the same validity. We're both entitled to work with the same abstraction.
Academics love intellectualism because no matter how wrong you’re, you will sound right
Many years ago I wrote down some thoughts whether or not there was a “purpose” to the existence of the Universe.The existence of consciouness is a puzzle, only if you ignore Emergence. The Emergence of consciousness, at its roots, may simply be the inevitable result of the evolution of complexity inherent to the interactions of the Fields within the Wave Function of the Universe as it travels, and evolves, through Time on the playing field of Spacetime. We exist as entities at some point on that evolutionary path set down at the BB.The creation of the Wave Function of the Universe which began its journey at the BB, now travels that path. Its journey will ultimately play out on playing field governed by rules we barely comprehend. But it should surprise no one that over some immense Time period the random complex interactions taking place gave rise to some complex result which we now define as consciousness. We, who carry this consciousness, now question the very notion of existence itself. We are not unlike some version of AI which now seeks to answer the question of “why” it exists.
Considering the
Unfolding Conscious Actuality of ...Phenomenology, Metaphysics and Conscience.... coming forth and going forward.
Two cloned brains' states of consciousness would not be the same a day after they were set apart. After a month, even their initially identical memories would be different.
That's true, but they would still claim to be the same person who existed before the cloning. And they would be both right 😅
Correct
Yeah, they would branch off from the moment the exact copy would be finished, and differences would grow. But both would say "it's me" and both would be, equally, right.
He’s reasonable regarding the philosophical identical copy questions. But the eliminativism regarding consciousness is incoherent.
Why should it be incoherent? What's your argument?
@@obiwanduglobi6359 It’s denying the problem as the way to pretend to solve it. Saying the earth is flat is silly-this is like saying the earth doesn’t have a shape at all. It’s denying our very existence, which is nonsensical. IMO!
Because if consciousness is weakly emergent then it has no causal power independent of the laws of physics as we currently understand them (deterministic and probabilistic). I.e. no free-will.
This would mean that we're not actually rational beings able to construct logical arguments and create mental models then go out and freely choose experiments to test them.
That means we have no reason to trust any of the scientific models we've created/discovered, because we didn't create/discover them: they're just the direct result of unthinking, unconscious, irrational deterministic/probabilistic fundamental forces.
They might be right, they might be wrong but we have no way to test them to decide because "we" are not free to intervene in the universe to do so.
But, if that's the case, then we just lost any reason to question the "reality" of conscious free will. We're back to square one and can build up our knowledge again, until we end up back where we are in Sean's metaphysics as described above.
I.e. Sean's metaphysics creates a paradox. The paradox means his metaphysics is wrong. Its akin to the maths of GR blowing up into infinities indicating that something is wrong with the model.
If Sean were better at philosophy (or, more likely if he were honest about his real opinions) he would admit that his metaphysics must be incorrect.
But Sean can't do that. Sean has research programs to bid for funding for and books to sell and the intellectual structure behind both endeavours requires this metaphysics to remain internally consistent and convincing enough to persuade customers.
It's a sad thing to watch very intelligent and capable people (much more so than I) waste their gifts on nonsense like this because they can't admit that they just can't imagine any satisfying alternatives.
It's even sadder to see such intellectuals cynically try to persuade colleagues and the public of such ideas simply to keep their careers and social status intact.
But unfortunately that's the world we live in. Perverse incentives drive perverse activities.
What goes around comes around.
@@MikeWiest There is no "eliminativism" Carol is simply pointing out that consciousness comes from matter, that its more than the sum of the parts of neurons in the brain. How that eliminates consciousness I have no clue. No one is arguing that
@@radscorpion8 Hm. That's how it seemed to me...maybe I'll rewatch...
I think Sean makes a strong argument that it's not somehow special to "you." But does that negate the value and remarkableness of this weird emergent property? Even if it doesn't have an impact on the wave function, it's still a crazy amazing phenomena. I, for one, would love to be able to create consciousness in a non-biological structure.
Why do you want to create new conscious entities?
I think we've all learned from Dennett that if a person *really* wants to dig in and deny qualia, there's not really any further, uncomfortable consequence of that they have to accept. Once you've 'bitten the bullet' on denying qualia (and the possibility of 'zombies'), everything else is quite easy. Indeed, that's (in a sense) at the core of the mystery (and frustration) of the 'Hard Problem' for those of us who do accept the existence of qualia: they add absolutely nothing to a complete 3rd-person description of the world.
It just might be because we are both the user of the computer and the computer itself, a magical sense of self is born from the duality of it.
there are 5 formless ACTIONS(VERBS) in the universe like light, sound, smell, taste etc. They can be only detected based on their interaction with perceivable entities(nouns).
Similary there are 8 unobservable or formless entities(nouns) like space, time, actions, matter, machinaries, ignorance, soul, GOD... etc and can be only itemized with their perceivable ACTIONS (verbs)
1- While I agree that the hard problem of consciousness ought to be solved by purely materialistic means, I think the hard problem of consciousness is very much a thing.. and after years I still find the philosophical zombie argument very compelling.. Today we have LLMs.. If it starts talking _exactly_ like a human would, does that equate to consciousness? No!
On the issuenof identity that they got tangled, I think Sean is spot on. I find it interesting that even intelligent thinkers like Kuhn cannot see identity for what it is, a higher level concept, extremely useful for humans, yes, but nowhere to be found on fundamental reality.. We have no problem thinking of a duplicated river, or cloud, also higher level constructs, but then most people can't make the leap and see that what you call "you" is not fundamental, but rather just as much as a higher level useful construct. As Sam Harris puts it, there is no thinker of thoughts, experiencer of experiences, there are just the thoughts and the experiences.
Robert should have asked Sean "Why are you so confident that consciousness is just a physical property of brains, if you don't have a clue how the brain produces the first-person experience of qualia?"
The answer to that is: Because the brain explanation is the best game in town.
We don't know of anything that can't be described in physical terms ... and what would it mean if we did? As long as something has some sort of qualities, is defined by some sort of structure, can interact with the world, then it's still definitionally physical and subject to laws of physics. It just may be that our concept of "physical" needs to expand to incorporate and account for it (wouldn't be the first time!).
Someone being open-minded enough could concede that it's possible consciousness something other than the brain, or something in addition to the brain -- that it could be best thought of as the result of the brain's interaction with all sorts of other internal and external systems, that it could have significant components in other part of the body, that it could even be the product of something being beamed into us from elsewhere.
But we sure do have a lot of science saying most or all of the activity that seems important to mind and consciousness is based in the brain, and our best understanding is that's where the action is.
I think it's also probably unfair to say we, collectively, don't have a CLUE how the brain produces a first-person experience. I think we have lots of clues. We don't have a definitive understanding, but we have lots of fruitful ideas about it based on interesting and good indications in neuroscience and biology.
>LouisHochmanTheJourno : It's a fallacious form of "induction" to say that since everything _else_ appears to be physical, we can be very confident that consciousness is too. Like the chicken that's carefully tended each day by the farmer, which has no reason to expect the farmer will one day bring an axe instead of food.
You may be right that that's the explanation of Sean's confidence. The video fails by not eliciting his reasoning... just like so many "Closer to Truth" videos fail.
There's a little-known variant of Dualism in which consciousness is a passive experiencer of (some of) the brain's activity, and it doesn't affect the brain's activity. You're only making an assumption where you wrote that it "can interact with the world."
It's fair to say "no one has a clue" how the brain produces qualia (David Chalmers' "hard problem") due to the explanatory gap that no one has been able to bridge (yet). I acknowledge that neuroscience is still a young science, so I'm not claiming the hard problem will _never_ be solved. But my understanding is that currently there aren't any hypotheses for how the gap could be filled. It's still like the comic that shows a scientist at a chalkboard containing complex diagrams & equations, saying "and then a miracle happens."
I don’t always agree with Sean, but he really is a great physicist and a fabulous speaker.
Here is MY Mathamatical formula for consciousness:
C= A(i 5f+O5f)c2
I= inside output electrical pattern
f= feeling
O =outside input electrical pattern
A= awareness
5= senses
C2= speed of light squared
Here is my take on mysterious consciousness:
Physical body and Brain is like a TV 📺 and Consciousness is the electrons flowing through wires creating images and voices on TV. Without flow of electrons TV is like a dead person. With web cam it can analyze the surroundings. Consciousness is little more than electrons. Chain of mitochondria arranged in brain 🧠 nerves that have ATP and phosphorous of ATP is similar to phosphorous of TV screen. When the TV is turned on, the phosphor coating absorbs high-energy electrons that are directed at them by a device inside of the TV.
Some day, Consciousness could very well be 5th dimension. Just for fun 🤩
It is too disconcerting to think deep about it and so I stopped analyzing it.
What are the units of all these variables, and particularly consciousness?
@@simonhibbs887 In case you are unaware, he made this up!
@@thomabow8949 Sure, but then all ideas are made up.
I love listening to Sean. I don't always agree but he seems so sure.
That's not a positive.
@@Jacob-Vivimord Poorly worded on my part.
I like the way he tries to find the simplest explanation, even if it doesn't make sense to us. I like the way he speaks confidently about his views but he's far from dogmatic.
@@monty3854 I'm not so sure about that. He equated physicists who think consciousness may be more fundamental than quantum stuff with climate change deniers.
@@Jacob-Vivimord Could you point me to where he said that? I must have missed it.
@@monty3854 2:57
I love Sean Carroll. He looks you in the eye and says what you refuse to believe is true. Aliens? ‘No’, Copenhagen? ‘No’, Consciousness? ‘Look at me… NO’
Why is it so important that consciousness is non physical? I still am conscious of pain if it (consciousness) is non physical. I guess the thought of non-physicality of consciousness is a form of magical thinking. Maybe the term informationprocessing is more accurate when talking about the brain.
Well that was frustrating.
It's frustrating how very few people seem to ever read books on philosophy who get engaged in this discussion. Kuhn literally references Kant and his notion of the thing-in-itself in some of his discussions, and here he talks about consciousness as "a person looking at a screen," things which are multiple century old conceptions which have been heavily criticized and largely moved beyond in a lot of contemporary realist philosophy.
@@amihartz Robert is a man who is wishing and hoping to find dualism true and a supernatural deity true.
The Buddha figured all of this out 2500 years ago. Form is emptiness is form.
This was one of my favorite conversations. The question I wish had been asked to Sean was : if we uploaded your consciousness, would the location of the upload house the phenomenal experience you are having in your current physical state? Or would it be another consciousness, as in the clone thought experiment? A separate "thing" experiencing its own consciousness.
What you are describing is all biologicals life ability to survive historically, present and future. You cannot survive without being aware or conscious that's just a pure fact of bio logical life.
No need for spirits, souls, or consciousness what you need is survival of conscious awareness.
His answer would be "yes" to your question.
Why is science ignoring Dr. Terrance Howard?
Tat Tvam Asi.
In order to really understand if “consciousness” is solely a subjective phenomena experienced at separate and distinct points in time vs. being an objective phenomena shared by all all beings who have attained consciousness, we must do scientific experiments to determine where ideas come from. When an idea or thought enters your conscious mind, is it solely the culmination of biology, chemistry and physics or is there some type of external input. Maybe we haven’t invented the technology to measure consciousness yet….just like we needed to invent electron microscopes to see molecules.
A question I've been wrangling with:
Does MYCELIA have its own consciousness???
Might it provide a sounding board for the evolution of biological life?
Thank you for the inspirational education!!! ;-)
Of course it does. What it doesn't have is the capacity to experience consciousness.
I don’t think there is a threshold for consciousness, as exemplified by the current American condition.
Yes... we are aiming to excel.
@@Ekam-Sat Making American great again! A bad joke and cannot happen. On the retrograde.
Thank you for finally interving someone with a different viewpoint.
interesting conversation that truly exposes our limitations to knowing consciousness.
Curious, if you were to then interview the exact copy of Sean, would he remark that his POV remains intact and unbroken? In other words, would the exact copy of Sean just assume he was now sitting to the side of you, unbeknownst of the Sean sitting across from you? In this thought experiment, each Sean would then diverge as individuals but I would ask them, “which one of you is…you?”
They are each them.
@@simonhibbs887Gotcha! I’m probably overthinking it. Totally get they would be the same. Guess I’m wondering about the continuity of ‘self’ through the many copies of ourselves we traverse (past, present and potential future). We retain our identity somehow. So in the thought experiment, re: the POV of the copy of Sean now sitting next to the interviewer, would he remark “i remember I was sitting across from you and now I find myself sitting next to you”?
@@davekochanski Yep, petty much. Bear in mind we're not always conscious. It's an activity, something we sometimes do, and sometimes we don't do it. If we're moved when we fall asleep we wake up somewhere different. What links episodes of consciousness is memory.
Per his way of thinking (and mine) both Seans would have equal claim to being Sean.
His position is that Sean at 1:00 p.m. and Sean at 1:01 p.m. aren't really exactly the same individual in any absolute sense. Over that minute, lots of cells and neurons and whatnot have been shed or moved around or are in different configurations or have died off. And even the constituent parts of those cells and neurons may have changed some, with atoms and molecules being traded around. 1:00 Sean and 1:01 Sean are very similar, and 1:01 Sean has memories built upon those of 1:00 Sean. It's a useful abstraction to think of them as one identity with a continuity, with a persistence through time. But if you compare them carefully, you find they aren't exactly the same thing.
If you create a perfect duplicate of Sean at 1:02, for a very brief moment, they're identical to either other. But neither of them are identical to Sean from 1:00 or 1:01.
They both have the same right to consider themselves as continuity of Sean 1:00/1:01's identity -- the same right to employ that abstraction. It's no more or less true for one or the other. It's as useful for each to think of themselves as continuations of the OG Sean.
Similarly (and he mentions this briefly), Sean believes in a many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, which has reality branching off to all sorts of variations in every moment. and all the variations being equally true but cut off from one another (well, in a sense, that's an abstraction, too, but a very useful way to think about it). And in all those realities, there are Seans who share a common history from before any given branching, who all justifiably think of themselves as Sean --- and who all are, but none of whom are identical to the Seans that existed in any moment of their past.
@@LouisHochmanTheJourno A very thoughtful reply and I agree - I think at the moment mentioned in the interview, 't-zero', the copies would be identical but would immediately begin to diverge as separate individuals. As you stated, his position was that our bodies are essentially completely different moment-to-moment anyway...the hiccup with this thought experiment is that Sean in this case isn't replaced (or continues onward in a forked parallel universe) but continues to exist in the same universe in the seat across from himself.
Each copy, I assume, would then see each other as a separate individual? Eventually, I'd imagine that'd be the case, but during the 1st minute I wonder if it'd be like experiencing a 3D sentient reflection of yourself...recognizing your 'you' identity as you would when looking into mirror, but seeing yourself stare back at you from behind someone else's eyes. Mind bending!
Difference between the experience, and a description of the experience
Consciousness: important and useful, and Not fundamental (necessarily), (perhaps) emergent
No its fundamental to survival especially humans or more complete structures. A need not want or requirement for real life survival you cant survive without it or it is what it is.
Wow. My head is spinning. A simpler explanation please.
I stopped watching these videos because the host doesn’t seem to make any progress, he just likes talking about the few big questions that he likes the best (which isn’t to say he doesn’t have some good points, it’s just repetitive). Big fan of Dr Carroll. Today our host seems hung up on the definitional claim that in so far as you can define two things as separate, they are not the same thing.
I agree to an extent. My issue is that a number of the interviewees are not good at explaining their thoughts on the subject at hand, or talk around it without enlightening us in any way.
He is just trying to make money of his videos like everybody else on youpupe
@@woofie8647 Maybe on purpose. They could simple say these three words. God. One. Love.
@@woofie8647 Or that they are just wrong.
One of the epistemological limits of many physicists is the incommensurability of first-person experience, that is, of consciousness. However, an absolute description of reality needs to be able to account for first-person experience because, in fact, it exists, that is, it occupies a "space" within reality. What many physicists find difficult to accept, however, is that such "space" is not, in itself, physical. Maybe Kabbalah could help.
Ironically, these guys actually assume the physical, whatever that is
Of course consciousness is not physical. It's a coarse grained description of an emerging phenomenon, like a storm, or a stock market, or money. For example money is not physical, yet it is not something supernatural.
@@degigi2003 emergence is an arbitrary value judgment. It’s not reality.
@@deanodebowhat do you mean that emergence is not reality, and what follows from that?
@@degigi2003 it’s a concept loaded with assumptions in order to avoid admitting that a phenomenon is beyond the scope of science
Usually there’s some ambiguous idea of “complexity”
So at some undefined threshold is surpassed, oh well now this magic thing happens and this phenomenon emerges from that complexity
That sort of thing.
I think we need to change some of the language we use in QM that are not quite appropriate to what is going on or at least distinguish between different processes.
One of those Terms is measurement. If you could make measurement without interfering with the system than that could indeed be called measurement but if the act of measurement involves purturbing the state then that is not just measurement.
Then we can quantify how much puturbation a specifics state can tolerate before it is affect the state.
This will involve some real quatification and then extrapolation.
What happens when a wave turn Ms into a particle. Do they really exist concurrently or simultaneously, or oscilating between one and the other.
The whole language needs to be reviewed.
The language is not concise enough and leads to unnecessary misunderstanding.
You often find philosophical inconsitancies that are risen linguistically.
A lot physicists are blasai about the language they use.
Natural language are notoriously fluid.
Words change meanings from place to place, time to time and in translation.
The people who have been most aware of that Included the German philosopher Heidigger and the French psychologist Lacan.
Of course there was a time when linguistic was part of psychology.
Maybe there was a reason for using Latin in science.
If the exact meaning can not be translated then it shouldn't be or a whole new term needs to be used with a scientific dictionary kept rigourously Update.
Public lectures are often Places where lazy terminology takes root and before you know it it has crept into the classrooms and the scientific papers.
The flaw I see in Western thinking re consciousness is locating consciousness and awareness of self in the physical brain.
When someone is severely traumatized and dissociates such that they have no recall of awareness of the traumatizing event, what happens to self and consciousness?
Does an end-stage Alzheimer’s patient have consciousness?
How about split-brain studies?
The LONG digression into the persistence of personal identity in Parfit-like “upload” cases was tedious and really kind of a diversion from the central topic.
I think this guest pretty much nailed it...good explanation. Why cant people realise that consciousness is simply an emergent property of brain biology. I wish this wasnt true but I think it is!
No empirical evidence of consciousness being an emergent property of brain biology. Subsequently, you could infer that consciousness interacts with the brain similar to WiFi interacting with the memory of a computer.
He did quite a good job. Sometimes I think the essence of experience seems too profound to emerge from matter. But having given the "why is there is something and not nothing" question some thought lately, the very existence of something is incomprehensible in and of itself, so why should an emergent phenomenon within that reality be a certain way.
yes, it is, but this conversation, just as your and my key strokes exist only in our conscious experience of it. there is no way for us to know reality other than through our consciousness. may be ai will know reality differently, but it too would be in its own artificial consciousness. thus one cannot make definitive conclusions which Sean is making. frankly, this is poor science and promoting such deterministic views is not beneficial in teaching public.
@@edwardtutman196 Yes but why should our key strokes have any other existence? You and I make the key strokes independently and experience them in a personal way. The way I experience them is simply a biological response to the mechanical process of the act of making key strokes.
It may be an emergent property of physical brain functions, but what we want to know is how it works. His beliefs explain nothing. He simply believes everything is material or physical. How do physical processes allow us to see the color red? Now that is science, and he seems to want to ignore that question.
Sean Carroll is presenting a version of reality that I feel is closest to truth because it doesn't fall victim to a subjectivity bias.
Our brain is a computer that composes what we call consciousness by way of the totality of the electric impulses transmitted every moment.
Thinking that consciousness is some magical property of the universe is in my opinion quite arrogant considering how complex we know the brain is. Why should we need anything else to explain experience than such an enormously vast network of interconnected neurons?
subjectivity bias is not necessarily false bias, just because something is subjective doesn't mean its less real, imagine a case of a man with eyes living among the blind, more real things are experienced by the man with eyes but all his experience are subjective among the blind. Consciousness isn't even truly subjective atleast for human beings as all human beings agree to experiencing it and most likely are saying the truth, the problem with it is its difficult to demonstrate outside of your body. Lets assume that sean carroll is right that consciousness is just an emergent phenomena which occurs from connection of neurons, then the question comes up how does this network of neuron experience things as one entity, when by themselves individually they have no clue of anything other than signals from their neighboring neurons, what should happen is each neuron should be experiencing itself as separate entity, its almost impossible to describe this oneness by breaking it down into sequence of computations done by individual neurons another reason why we assume a computer chip isn't conscious though we would never know if it was, its not as easy as sean carroll is trying to make it look, its a very hard problem which probably is unsolvable, certainly not as simple as saying its all computation of brain.
Thanks! This hard struggling between you and your opponent about cloned person, boils down to the fact that person and his body is not the same thing. See, the tree has visible part and invisible, which holds the visible. I'm talking about the root. No one is impressed by it (no one sees it), but it is the most important part. When the tree is chopped down, everyone forgets about it, until.. grows a new body from the same spirit
I never expected Sean Carroll to be so clear-headed. Kuhn seems to be a bit defensive that his beliefs can be so simply challenged with an alternative explanation.
2:12 Show me one single example of a conscious experience you can map out in a very direct way in physical terms. Hard to take the conversation seriously after this point.
That's just an argument from complexity. It's too complex to figure out therefore magic. No, it's just complex, sophisticated and currently beyond our ability to physically model. The brain is still a physical system though.
@@simonhibbs887 You have to understand what the brains primary function is and extrapolate from this premise. Which is a structure or evolution of structure or brain material exhibiting an ability to survive in environment by being in time or aware or conscious. All extensions, structures or physical phenomena is connected to survival of material structure within any given composition or structure. What consciousness defines is 'Behaviour' of that structure not in spirit or souls but as a conscious aware agent whose structure is built entirely for survival of self. Any later acquisition, attribute manifesting from bio life
is survival in nature, character, or disposition from hearts, lungs, eyes, teeth brains, or human hair which are constituted of smaller bits or pieces which form or create larger copies of self over time.
Conscious awareness of environment is no different except that it expresses survival from within the structure to couple it with environment. You need environment, behaviour and survival or without being conscious or aware you will not survive or exist or be able to function or participate in the survival process.
This is why conscious awareness is millions of years old and was around before humans existed even before dinosouls roamed the earth which were also conscious along with other water creatures that existed before man existed. This is why heaven existed before man, or the after life because it is eternal so that means the dinosouls and biosouls will be waiting for you in heaven based obviously on the 'Behaviour' of these entities.
They were good souls.
@@simonhibbs887 Its actually very easy to extrapolate what consciousness is because you cannot survive without it. Think of souls, spirits and asteroids and dinosouls or eternal heaven before man existed.
The process of survival or survival of structure. If you are not conscious you wont survive.
If I activate just the right neurons in your brain, you will experience redness.
From the moment the new Sean is activated, it becomes a completely separate conscious entity. Initially, its responses may closely mirror those of the original Sean, but over time, their experiences will diverge, leading to distinct consciousnesses. This is because consciousness is shaped by individual experiences and interactions, which cannot be identically replicated. Understanding that each consciousness is unique, even if they share an origin, is key to grasping this concept. The divergence is inevitable as each entity encounters different stimuli and processes them independently.
The first one would have continuous experience, supported by the remaining set of biological neurons at a given point in time, and the replicant wouldn't. That is, the transistors that are in place in the original during transition are being updated while the ones in the replicant aren't? So memories (conscious or otherwise) wouldn't be the same and that might define identity.
I love watching materialists explain consciousness. I wonder what molecule of water is experiencing its wetness on my tongue the most and which electron in which atom of 1 nanomole of serotonin in one of my synapses is laughing loudest?
If the consciousness of a person is "a person looking at a screen," then what is the consciousness of the person looking at the screen? You could say their consciousness is "a person looking at a screen," but then what is that person's consciousness? It is an infinite regress.
Consciousness is just what the nervous system does-all of it, including the automatic. What they’re arguing about is the self, which is an amorphous executive function created by the brain which responds to the map of the environment created by the nervous system using different languages and baggage stored in the brain. Make a copy and that copy simply has its own operating self in a separate space and time. You’ve got two boats in an ocean but twenty feet apart they are hitting different waves, etc.. They have become immediately different selves.
I've never seen someone's brain melt in real time as they learn about the concept of making a copy of a thing. Hilarious.
It is a physical copy. What about qualia? He says that would be completely different person, and avoids talking about what gives him his own qualia. If it is a purely physical thing, then exact copy should reproduce his own consciousness, no? That should also be him, but he denies it. You can't compare making a copy of a cup. This is your own consciousness we are talking about here
@@milannesic5718 the difference between a cup and consciousness is that a cup is in a fixed state while consciousness is ever changing.
The copy would be different in the same way as your own consciousness is different today than it was yesterday (or even a moment ago).
That is why a copy will not remain the same as the original.
@@edwardprokopchuk3264 There is a big difference there. I can still feel and experience. I am still alive, even if I am completely different person. While if you copy me, I would not be alive in that other body. That will be someone else. This time for real someone else. Now you can remove original ME, and I don't exist anymore. It is contradicting
@@milannesic5718 physical copies are impossible due to the no cloning theorem. Qualia cannot be perfectly cloned thus
@@milannesic5718 I believe that was the point that was made. The copy (that was YOU) will go on becoming someone else by gaining different experiences than “you”. But you will also be becoming someone else than you are now. “You” tomorrow will be a different “you” from today, therefore it is not really “you” (from today) anymore in the same way as the copy that really was you at the moment, but is not you anymore.
Whatever it was that was you at that particular moment would be another you at that moment and experience the exact you (however you define yourself).
Sean Carroll, always the voice of reason
It has been said that science exists because of one’s awareness. Absent the awareness of science, it wouldn’t exist or maybe wouldn’t be important is a better way to say this. Awareness of consciousness supersedes scientific explanation. Nonetheless, the study of science produces understanding that can result in invention through manipulation of matter and energy to produce useful objects. Science is useful because of one’s awareness of this.
You could argue that without a quantitative complement * , there's no either emergent, nor not emergent, consciousness.
* The complement of one in list one two is two.
Carroll as always making sense and others … playing games with assumptions just because they physically can’t understand. Thank you as always Sean.
On point.
Robert seems pretty thick, slow, in his understandings here. He's still seeking a magical, dualist, description of the world and humans. Nevertheless, we owe him a great deal in making his wonderful series of interviews possible for all of us to hear. Albeit he also gives time today to theologians (sober-seeming quacks who are nothing more than fictional storytellers), but that is expected when you look into his background.
What is missing from most all discussions of consciousness are two essential things. Much like free will discussions. Define your words. Such as free will means "One could have done otherwise, at that micromoment of decision, in that place and at that time." Now go on with your discussion without falling into the swamps.
Do the same here:
1. Give clear definitions of what you mean by consciousness. Consciousness is X. Consciousness is not Y. List these in two columns, then begin your discussions. It is an honest necessity if one is sincere.
2. It is patent that dogs and cats and other primates are conscious, so do not ever leave this out of discussions of the subject, or you will move into dualism and other sillies or worse.
I think one must define “world” first. What is existence and what created the first laws of motion kind of questions
2:10 they are talking about 2 different things, Sean Carroll talks about the physical way consciousness works, while the interviewer talks about why we feel those molecules the way we do, which is yet not explainable and is somekind a "soul of the universe"
I disagree with Sean's take on the uploaded copy of his neurons. If you think of the neurons as the data on a computer, and you copy that to something else, all you would have is a record of your experiences, but there's something missing. It's missing the production of thoughts, feelings, hopes and forward thinking. Those things may be what gives you consciousness and a soul.
Obviously, once you "upload" the neurons to a computer, you will also have to give them input (sight, touch, smell, etc) and some output (a body to control), and let them do their thing by running the simulation.
No soul or spirit chief that's survival only and my territory. The disposition is survival of self or structure and is automatically attached to life and probable other entities smaller objects. Otherwise your going to have tom postulate souls or spirits to all complex biological life historically, present and future including first consciousness creatures and make room for them in the after life based on behaviour. It is not man oriented but all biolife which must be considered. This means that because the after life is eternal and humans are later editions to evolution we would also be later editions to the after life but you would still need to rely on old lingo of souls and spirits which Im afraid Ive already owned.
Survival is missing from consciousness that's why you go missing once you don't have it.
Consciousness is the substance of the world!
I have a problem with equating the brain cells with the person’s consciousness.
My analogy is the whole library of the congress (representing consciousness) and the 26 letters alphabet (representing the brain cells)
Saying that the whole library of the is nothing but 26 letters repeated a lot of times is unacceptable. The same applies to saying that 200 billion brain cells represent the consciousness.
I am just a medical doctor with no background of physics
In this view consciousness isn't just the brain cells, it's what the brain cells are doing. It's not the substance, it's an activity of the substance.
Today a lot of heavy metal from sir Carroll.
There are some people, no matter how educated, no matter how many phds in science, they will NEVER get the hard problem of consciousness. Its like they are these psychological zombies we talk about. They can just spit out definitions and thats it. They never get it. Never will
`Consciousness is every(where)ness, expressed locally´, in: IPI Letters, Feb. 2024, downloadable
Sean seems to understand this quite well.
I think a good opportunity was missed here to discuss "the observer". Consciousness is just a physical process until you factor in awareness. Worrying about copying a consciousness process onto a hard drive or the like is a bit arbitrary
that was good 20 years ago at the apex of new materialism ... Now is an obsolete conversation.
Oh the hard problem of consciousness was solved, I missed that!
@@paulrussell1207 exactly, pretending to explain consciousness as "neurons firing" today is, at least, pretentious. 20 years ago was mainstream.
@@francesco5581 It still holds true. Only the details have not been worked out.
@@rckflmg94 no, there is not ONE model about the production of consciousness from neurons. We dont even know where to start.
@@francesco5581 who is "we"? Neuroscientists all over the world are researching it as we type.
I still don't know which camp I belong to, although I'm slightly leaning to metaphysical. That said, I think you missed an opportunity to argument Sean when he was talking about the "redness of red", it's not about the color as a physical interpretation in our brain, it's the fact that I and anyone else can like or dislike the color red. If i had to draw the line I'd say that that's where consciousness starts.
Sean's mission in this world is to advance nihilism to the max. Just like Marx successfully did.
Believing in solipsism is one thing but believing you yourself don’t exist is something else entirely. Are you not experiencing yourself right now? Sean is saying you don’t, it’s just an illusion. But you would need an observer in the first place for the illusion to take place, it’s complete nonsense! It seems like psychopathy to me, the unwillingness to believe conscious being exist, it is not science , maybe he had a bad shrom trip lol
I liked Carroll's 2016 book The Big Picture. It thourougly and clearly contrxtualizes the poetic naturalist position on metaphysics, time, space, minds, and morality.
The chapters on the origins of the universe, the arrow of time, quantum mech, evolution, and consciousness gave good insight into a physicalists use of the term emergence for explaining many of our philosophical troubles.
For Carroll, consciousness emerges weakly out of a phase transition that results due to increasing entropy in the universe. In other words, conscious experiences are a product of the right kind of structural organizations that arise in proportion to the increase in universal complexity.
His example for entropy is that of a cup of black coffee with cream. At t=0, the cream sits as an undisturbed layer on top of the coffee. As time passes, the cream begins to seep into the coffee, thus producing different patterns, until it seeps completely into the coffee, thus becoming one homogeneous solution. This is his analogy for entropy in the universe.
How does that relate to consciousness? In the book, Carroll answers by laying the foundations of how organic molecules can be formed out of inorganic molecules. It has something to do with thermal vents producing the right kind of compartments for metabolism like reactions to take place(I can not remember the exact explanation, but go look it up in a bio textbook😅). The argument goes:
As the entropy of the universe increases, the complexity increases.
If the complexity reaches a certain point, then a phase transition occurs.
Conclusion: As entropy increases, phase transitions occur.
Next:
Phase transitions give rise to different macroscopic descriptions of the same microscopic phenomena.
Evolution is a series of phase transitions.
Consciousness is related to the brain.
Conclusion: consciousness is a phase transition, macro level description of evolved organic complexity.
Please excuse my argumentation. I hope that made sense.
My question to Carroll would be:
Are we even talking about the same thing anymore? I understand talking about a box, or the moon, or water in terms of elementary particles or chemicals, and forces. I find that the same reasoning is difficult to apply to consciousness. To me, there is deep sense in which the materialist position just boils things down too much. Not in a reductionist way, but in a personal way. From a medical perspective, I deeply admire the transition from the biomedical model to the biopsychosocial model of medicine - or at least the attempt to transition - because it treats people like their subjective experience matters. Given this context, should we take the pragmatic memo and stop trying to ground everything in metaphysics, or should we keep trying? I have no idea.
Finally, an omage -paraphrased- to Alex O'Connor in relation to truths that are very difficult to propositionalize; try to put a Dostoyevski novel into a syllogism. In my view, i just dont think it's possible.
That was useful. Carroll blew me away in this with how well he put the physicalist position (and how hard it is for someone who hasn't grokked it to make sense of it), so I'll put that book on my reading list. I think there's another simple explanation of why we keep going round in circles on consciousness, and it's just the privacy thing. We want an objective explanation (which means one we can generalize to "persons") but of something only one particular person can ever have (at least unless we invent some pretty impressive mind-melding technology and can tap into someone else's).
Robert fired up. Sean expressed a view and articulated. Not sure why Robert was so personally (ha) invested in the challenge.
Because all views should be hard challenged. It is all speculation. You can't just agree. You need to shake everything
Sean saying a separate consciousness by copying his neurons is just like the branching of a wavefunction was completely wrong. I'm surprised he said that because he knows the many-worlds theory is not actually physical at all.
Interesting discussion. Lawrence might want to follow up with a discussion with Antonio Damasio. Perhaps we have put to much emphasis on higher order brain functions which can lead to grandiose delusions. Maybe consciousness is just an evolutionary strategy to survive, and perhaps it evolved much earlier than what most people think. Damasio believes that the most rudimentary form of consciousness occurs in very old brain structures (in and around the brain stem) which implies many creatures have sense of self being different others. I am I, and you are you.
They actually both argued the same point from different perspectives tbh. Both seem to agree that fundamentally conscious experience is unique. Sean says it emerges Robert may be incline to argue that it has a role beyond emergence and is more vital in formulating reality.
its funny that Carol advocates his view so strongly since this discussion is in the realm of possible/not possible, and science has been left long behind where experiments can prove or disprove theories. now they speculating and Carol defends his possible theory as if that was Newton's laws
experiments so far have been futile and nothing in the lab have started talking and being conscious etc. I think now all eyes are on general AI AI,and whether it will perhaps be conscious biology free, hope not
@@tomtomy8702How do they test AI to know if it has first person consciousness? High level automation could seem like consciousness. Even ChatGPT has already managed to fool some people with regard to this.
A good philosopher of mind ought to take Sean under his or her wing and initiate him into the history of this conversation, as he's clearly motivated and making a good effort towards participating in the discussion.
I think for example he should be pressed on the differences between physicalism and functionalism, since e.g., he often takes the stance of a hard physicalist (which classically does not allow consciousness in non-neural media, since it's the exact identity physics of neurons or some processes that are necessary, depending if it's token or type) but actually talks as if he's a functionalist (which classically does allow it, and it's not an identity relation), and then he equivocates between them, which is what a good philosophical training helps one tease apart.
Kuhn actually does a good job trying to catch him. Not many are seriously denying that there's a physical substrate at the base of consciousness. Even property dualists and some panpsychists (if read the right way) don't deny that. If that's the only thing Sean is trying to say (sort of like Sapolsky on free will) then it's kind of a straw man argument. The argument is what's the nature of the relationship between the conscious and the physical substrate, identity, type, token, higher level organization but then what level and what organization, etc.? Classical physicalism is very strictly, it can only be neurons of brains, arguably only primate brains, and functionalism is a lot more nuanced about it (it's the information processing, not the physics primitives per se), but that also has a lot of things to explain. Sean (like Sapolsky) needs to bumped up to that higher-level discussion to actually be participating in the field.
I'm a big fan of his efforts to initiate non-specialists into the basics of theoretical physics, so that's what I'm thinking about would also be great to see in the other direction.
My guess is that Sean wouldn't say for sure consciousness can be reproduced in non-neural media, but that he just doesn't see anything so special about neural media that he'd assume it's the only way to get there, that it has some "other" property that makes it different from the ordinary organization of matter. And then he grants for the sake of a thought experiment the idea of being uploaded or duplicated in other media. I'd bet if pressed, he'd say he doesn't know enough (and supposes no one knows enough) about neurobiology to know if consciousness can only exist in vehicles like the ones we're aware of, or if it can be substrate independent so long as the higher-level organization is up to the job.
Kuhn gets pretty hung up on the idea that the upload isn't a transfer, but a duplication, and for a moment seems confused about whether Sean sees a distinction between the computer upload and the neuronal duplication. But ultimately Sean's argument is that any sense of continuity between self in any two moments is just a useful abstraction anyway,. Sean seems largely unconcerned, for the sake of the discussion, whether he's talking about being uploaded to a computer or reproduced neuron by neuron in some other process -- it just didn't seem like the point of focus. He seems to be granting that so long as it's an effective recreation of one's self, you can continue the discussion to ask if it's the same person or another ... but then also argues that's moot.
The relationship is survival of structure or material object by being in time or conscious
Behaviour of material in a survival disposition correlates to the need to be aware for participation in survival of self by interaction with environment which is behaviour compressed into evolution over time scales.
@@LouisHochmanTheJourno I more or less agree with your take. I'm just saying in the philosophical literature that's closer to functionalism, not what falls under the label "physicalism". He sounds agnostic on the actual physical mechanism, only that there's a physical base, so weak physicalism.
@@cademosley4886My (possibly wrong) perception is that he's just not all that concerned for the purpose of this discussion about whether it's very tied to a particular medium or whether it's more about higher-level organization. He seems to grant it at least could be the latter, for the purpose of the thought experiment, but I don't know whether he's making a claim that it probably is.
He seems much more interested in where Robert tries to take him, asking once you have a duplicate that we agree is a meaningfully real duplicate, where does the continuity of consciousness live. And Sean's answer to that is that continuity of consciously isn't what we usually think of it to be, but rather just us noticing the similarity to our past-selves' state of being. And from that perspective, both the duplicate and the "original" have equal claims on being a continuation of the past self.
With luck and more power to you.
Whatever gave Robert the notion that an "uploaded consciousness" is more than just a copy... a separate second mind? The copy might be effectively immortal (depending on the technology of its physical substrate), but the original consciousness would remain "trapped" in its mortal body.
Vanity would be the main incentive to have a copy created, not the desire to personally live forever. (Unless a person's mind is such a useful resource that society doesn't want to lose it.)
To personally live forever, one would need to be like the ship of Theseus... gradually replacing old neurons & neuronal connections with functionally identical copies (as discussed in the video).
The question is, once all of your neurons have been replaced, is it still you 😅 How is that different from copying and destroying the original?
>degigi2003 : The difference is the continuity. This was briefly mentioned during the video, but not adequately emphasized.
The Sean Carroll of the present would surely assert that the Sean Carroll who participated in this interview no longer exists. If Sean no longer thinks that person exists, perhaps I should move on and not think any longer about what that “non-existent” person no longer thinks.
The derogatory use of the word radical in front of physicalist shows Robert's prejudice. I am very happy to see Sean own it.
Let us hear Robert use the word radical in front of pan-psychist or theologian.
Good day.
Robert is trying to make the show more fun I think, bringing a little bit of contention between the differing parties, as he himself is more of a materialist. Calling out the religious side as radical might not be taken so easily by those believers.
@S3RAVA3LM Exactly. Why are the feelings of believers more important than truth seeking. Especially by definitions believers believe because of faith which by definition means without evidence. And this is on a channel named CTT.
In any case, Sean held up well, and as such it is not a worry for science as by definition it will revise its theories if sound counter arguments or data are presented so I guess bring it on.
Agreed! Thought that was weird.
So by ‘Radical Physicalist’, you mean physicalist.
I don’t think he was using the word radical in a derogatory manner.
@stellarwind1946 It is possible, but why did the other poster reply saying the believers will not like it. He took it the same way.
In any case, let us see Robert use radical for a theologian next time. It is just a benign word, right? And they call Richard Dawkins, a mild-mannered scientist, a shrill.
Some will take my comment as lacking sense of humor and drama, and this is a free world as Sean quipped in one of the videos, but we shall see the sense of humor of believers, when their believers are simply questioned.
I made the above comment because Robert has used similar aggressive language in another CTT clip, like calling Sean''s comment glib, when Sean was simply stating his position.
In almost all videos Sean says one way or the other that as a scientists he is never sure of any theory 100% - that is humility of science and many scientists. The confidence of scientists in their language (which is well justified IMO because technology - which is applied science - runs our modern societies) is taken as arrogance by the opponents. Science as a good track record.
Technically, we're all clones. They say every 7 years, you get an entirely new body. So, a simple way to look at it, is you're a clone from the you of 7 years ago. That you of 7 years ago is dead, and a clone is their place with the same memories and genetic code, but a different you. It's no different than if you're dying, and your brain is "uploaded" into a cloned brain in a jar. Well you die, but you'll still think you're alive as a brain in a jar. As if you fell asleep and woke up as a brain in a jar.
You're slowly being cloned, and so every 7 years, you've died while a new clone has materialized. Though maybe someone can tell me, does your brain neurons also get replaced over time, or do they remain unchanged? As I know there are some cells in your body that I believe never get replaced. Like I believe you hair cells in your inner ear never get replaced, which is why when they die, they never come back.
I tend to agree with this.
Not sure much was discussed on emergence from this discussion. A pump emerges from a specific structure of heart cells. Does consciousness emerge from simple Darwinian sub-directives? Why exist at all unless emergence is more in control than chaos? My interest "emerges" w these discussions. Thx.