I find Roger Penrose and Hammeroff's ideas the most intriguing, it incorporates a bit of a panpsychism ideas in a sense but it is also rooted in neuroscience. Which is basically that the microtubules in neurons act as an on/off switch for consciousness and that the cytoskeleton plays some role in each living cell having "awareness". It's basically a hypothesis, but it is one that can easily be explored scientifically through testing, I would really like to see where research into this goes.
@Acceleration Quanta Nonesense. It comes from the brain,wich we know as a fact.Damage the brain, you damage the consciousness. Science can study the brain, and eventually unlock the mystery of consciousness. Many studies are underway as we speak that are learning the process that produces it.
Panpsychism is not a good hypothesis. It makes no predictions, it’s not falsifiable and it kicks the hard problem of consciousness down the road rather than explaining it. Positing that electrons have experience to explain how a dog can have experience is just restating the problem. The hard problem is that if the world is material than why is there experience at all? So why do electrons have experience? It’s just not useful at all.
That is still A problem, maybe even a deeper, more intractable problem, but that isn't the problem Chalmers formulated. He asked how minds can have qualia, not how electrons can.
The main strength of panpsychism is that it doesn't need to create extra laws for consciousness that can seem arbitrary. Any physicalist theory of consciousness must say that, at some level of physical complexity, consciousness emerges. Why was it right there? Well, because consciousness follows this law where xyz physical properties brought together makes consciousness. Why this law and not another? There can be no answer here, its just a brute fact based on physical matter which, by hypothesis, does not have the property of consciousness or anything resembling it. Panpsychism takes consciousness as a basic axiom instead, which is also a brute fact but not one that requires extra justification. From this, the panpsychist can build this basic consciousness up into the consciousness we understand. The main weakness of contemporary theories of panpsychism is that they have not yet gotten to the point where they can demonstrate this building of consciousness from electrons up to humans, which is why it can seem that the problem has been kicked down the road. But it seems more productive to me to start with the clay then mold it into the right form than to start with the form and hope the clay will just emerge. Due to this, it seems like a promising reframing of the hard problem in a more solvable form. Hope this helps to understand the motivation for panpsychism.
It would be wonderful to see Lex having Douglas Hofstadter/Daniel Dennett on. They are both such interesting thinkers. I think the multiple drafts model Dennett proposes is quite possible as well as being an attractive theory. Cheers 🍺
@@danielm5161 He is still around I think, right? Him and Hofstadter have very similar views of consciousness. Personally I would love to see Douglas Hofstadter in one of these long form interviews. That guy guy is extraordinarily gifted and seems like the best dinner guest one could possibly hope for. [edit:]I often find myself looking for new talks and interviews with both of them but the well seems to have dried up, they are both getting old. Cheers Daniel 🍺
@@stefanconradsson I am not familiar with Douglas. Sean Carroll and Closer To Truth have done recent interviews with Dennett that are really good. ruclips.net/video/8yZw4wxvnVQ/видео.html
@@danielm5161 Thanks Daniel, that looks very promising. I in return offer you to read at your own leisure, the book "I am a Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter. It explores somewhat similar territory, the two gentlemen are, after all, also friends in private. Cheers, and thanks, Daniel 🍺
Thank you for this recording! My questions are, did homunculi exist at the time of panspermia? Does the Cartesian theatre exist in some functionality in every possible Being? Are homunculi and Cartesian theaters ontologically indiscernible and inseparable? If qualia doesn't exist, what explains the bedrock of the Twin Earth problem? Why does atheism protrude through Dennett's work, and what is his most panpsychic work of philosophy? Is the Tetragrammaton a panpsychic Being and/or entity? Are Cartesian theaters discovered or invented? What does it mean for the homunculi to possess multiple ontic levels? Why does the qualia of every possible Being possess an indiscernible haecceity and/or quiddity? Finally, why does epiphenomenalism seem to depend on a panpsychic existential quantifier according to thinkers like Whitehead and Chalmers?
The view doesn't really aim to explain consciousness as such. It assumes the existence of consciousness as a brute fact. Or perhaps a fact to be explained by some psychophysical laws which will be brute. What it aims to explain is how we are consciouse.
Exactly, homunculi all the way down (and not even a characterization of their properties). Laziest conceptualization ever (perhaps only trumped by dualism)
Panpsychism is intriguing if you take your impressions of your own consciousness at face value, like that there is a self that experiences. Then, you’re committed to putting experience into reality at the base level of matter. Dennett’s illusionism just says concs. isn’t what we think it is, so the experiencing self isn’t quite real, but imagined.
Definitions typically dont help in these discussions. We are trying to find explanatory power. For example : q) how did this TV come into being? A) I define TV as the pressing of buttons. Did that fucking explain anything? Q) How is it that human conciseness came into being? A) I define consciousness as the firing of neurons. WHAT! That’s as arbitrary as saying I define conciseness as the wiggling of my left big toe. That has no explanatory power. Im not saying Searles arguments are right, but they certainly show we can define consciousness how we’d like, but I need a way to explain how I achieve understanding or intentionality. I also think Searle has a knockdown argument against formal systems being conscience.
8:00 is great stuff too. Wanted to take a second and say thank you for all of your videos I really enjoy listening your outlooks your guests your approach you have created an amazing channel good job and thank you for the multiple videos a day it gives a guy time to digest what's going on
Consciousness is, we have consciousness, we are not consciousness. Each mind has: participates in consciousness. Matter, elements, creating consciousness is a stretch.
Intelligence is the ability to learn without trial, and error. A ribosome is not intelligent. Nor are plants. And definitely not electrons/quarks/etc. To understand what consciousness is you have to go back to where it started. Like Theseus's ship paradox, you have to understand if the threshold from unconscious to conscious was a moment in time (thus having three parts; before, moment, after), or if there is an "essence" that proceeds an object/person, and comes after the object is gone, something unalienable. Or the third option, every thing is alienable, at any time.
@@richiekaylor5004 The strain is Weapons Grade Theoretics. Their tagline is "We blow a lot of smoke." As you can see from my comment above, their product does what it says.
Continental philosophy is certainly important, check out the existentialists such as Sartre and Nietzsche. Even if you don't buy their metaphysics, which I find interesting in their own right, their observations of the human condition are startlingly relevant to modern society.
Panpsychism is useless because all it does is force us to create a new word. If everything is a little "conscious" then we have to call what humans have "Super Conscious" to distinguish it from the minute consciousness that atoms supposedly have. So Panschism gives us no clarity on the human feeling of consciousness it just renames "Interaction" to "Conscious" and "Conscious" to "Super Conscious". We are in the exact same place with different words.
This guy is not a great philosopher. Dennett is a living legend and can justify his positions way better. The multiple drafts model is way deeper than panpsychism in its description and explanatory power.
I think this guy hits it on the nose that multiple drafts theory is a great theory of the self but not a great theory of consciousness. Dennett is indeed brilliant, but he js missing the mark on consciousness.
@@theotormon i agree it is a good model for the self too. Still i think it works for consciousness. I still have to read this guy's academic book but the justification and the notion of consciousness in his view seems shallow and obscure.
In which papers or books? For all we know, Searle’s arguments have also been debunked (e.g., in his Chinese room argument, he expects to see a homunculus that knows Chinese for him to grant that there is understanding going on there, and he refuses to accept the idea that understanding can be deconstructed any other way, so he’s really providing nothing useful to further our comprehension of what it means for a human, a dog, etc, to understand)
Yeah, Dennett has been dismissed long ago, but funny how his name comes up so often amongst people trying to figure out consciousness. Your statement is obviously wrong.
@@johnhausmann2391and? Michio Kaku is one of the most renowned physicists in the world and works on string theory stubbornly when it has yet to ever yield anything. To be renowned by the not knowers is some merit, ad populum?
@@HurricaneOG Michio Kaku will say anything he finds appealing. he's the most unscientific scientists I think I've ever heard speak. -Very rhetorically contrived to use him as an example.
Panpsychism is useless because all it does is force us to create a new word. If everything is a little "conscious" then we have to call what humans have "Super Conscious" to distinguish it from the minute consciousness that atoms supposedly have. So Panschism gives us no clarity on the human feeling of consciousness it just renames "Interaction" to "Conscious" and "Conscious" to "Super Conscious". We are in the exact same place with different words.
To be conscious is to hold an idea in a space within your mind. It’s not merely responding to stimuli or being entangled by another particle in the universe. You were not conscious when you’re on autopilot and arrive at a destination and don’t remember any of the events of the drive. You were responding appropriately to stimuli and navigating your environment the same way bacteria or other simple organisms do…impulsively and reactively without consciousness of the events. It’s only in the moment that you activate your mind’s eye to consider something…an object, a memory, a potential future given various decision…only in those moments are you “conscious.” And so consciousness is a trick our mind does when we consider something in mind space. Automatic reactions or impulsive behaviors are not consciousness. These are Julian jaynes’ ideas, not mine. But I think they are correct.
If, while driving, I had a brief spell of self-reflection and imagination and observation of my own thought process -- and then forgot about it by the time I arrived, was I conscious? If I saw a street sign that said "No St." and that touched off a chain of thoughts about names vs. things, and the meaning of "nowhere", and analogous confusions in mathematics and computer programming, was that consciousness? Beware of conflations and false dichotomies.
A beaver is unique, in that it builds dams with its tail. What’s your point? Humans are nothing special, and really no different than any other animal on the planet. We just think we are special and unique, but really the universe could care less about us.
Consciousness is aware that you are aware while it silently just observes. Consciousness is therefore the very sole of the universe just as gravity is.
@@Krod4321 how do you know other people are self aware? What is the difference between that and what you observe in dogs that makes you believe they are not self aware?
Where did you get the idea that language is required to have experiences? Do you experience the warmth and peacefulness of a sunset because you speak English, Chinese or whatever?
You have no idea whether the hamster has any idea (however simple) about itself. You take the easy route of believing that just because an animal doesn’t have articulated language to communicate with you, it must mean it’s a thoughtless machine lacking experiences.
“It depends what the meaning of the word “is” is.”
I find Roger Penrose and Hammeroff's ideas the most intriguing, it incorporates a bit of a panpsychism ideas in a sense but it is also rooted in neuroscience. Which is basically that the microtubules in neurons act as an on/off switch for consciousness and that the cytoskeleton plays some role in each living cell having "awareness". It's basically a hypothesis, but it is one that can easily be explored scientifically through testing, I would really like to see where research into this goes.
To my knowledge hammeroff had funding for running experiments this year 2022. Too curious where to find updates and how those are going to pan out.
@Acceleration Quanta
Nonesense. It comes from the brain,wich we know as a fact.Damage the brain, you damage the consciousness. Science can study the brain, and eventually unlock the mystery of consciousness. Many studies are underway as we speak that are learning the process that produces it.
Bernardo Kastrup, for me. Mind is ground-zero.
@accelerationquanta5816 and we should believe that just because you say so?
Panpsychism is not a good hypothesis. It makes no predictions, it’s not falsifiable and it kicks the hard problem of consciousness down the road rather than explaining it. Positing that electrons have experience to explain how a dog can have experience is just restating the problem. The hard problem is that if the world is material than why is there experience at all? So why do electrons have experience? It’s just not useful at all.
That is still A problem, maybe even a deeper, more intractable problem, but that isn't the problem Chalmers formulated. He asked how minds can have qualia, not how electrons can.
The main strength of panpsychism is that it doesn't need to create extra laws for consciousness that can seem arbitrary. Any physicalist theory of consciousness must say that, at some level of physical complexity, consciousness emerges. Why was it right there? Well, because consciousness follows this law where xyz physical properties brought together makes consciousness. Why this law and not another? There can be no answer here, its just a brute fact based on physical matter which, by hypothesis, does not have the property of consciousness or anything resembling it.
Panpsychism takes consciousness as a basic axiom instead, which is also a brute fact but not one that requires extra justification. From this, the panpsychist can build this basic consciousness up into the consciousness we understand.
The main weakness of contemporary theories of panpsychism is that they have not yet gotten to the point where they can demonstrate this building of consciousness from electrons up to humans, which is why it can seem that the problem has been kicked down the road. But it seems more productive to me to start with the clay then mold it into the right form than to start with the form and hope the clay will just emerge. Due to this, it seems like a promising reframing of the hard problem in a more solvable form. Hope this helps to understand the motivation for panpsychism.
It would be wonderful to see Lex having Douglas Hofstadter/Daniel Dennett on. They are both such interesting thinkers. I think the multiple drafts model Dennett proposes is quite possible as well as being an attractive theory.
Cheers 🍺
Yeah Dennett is way underrated. One of the best philosopher of our time in my view.
@@danielm5161 He is still around I think, right? Him and Hofstadter have very similar views of consciousness. Personally I would love to see Douglas Hofstadter in one of these long form interviews. That guy guy is extraordinarily gifted and seems like the best dinner guest one could possibly hope for.
[edit:]I often find myself looking for new talks and interviews with both of them but the well seems to have dried up, they are both getting old.
Cheers Daniel 🍺
@@stefanconradsson I am not familiar with Douglas. Sean Carroll and Closer To Truth have done recent interviews with Dennett that are really good. ruclips.net/video/8yZw4wxvnVQ/видео.html
@@danielm5161 Thanks Daniel, that looks very promising. I in return offer you to read at your own leisure, the book "I am a Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter. It explores somewhat similar territory, the two gentlemen are, after all, also friends in private.
Cheers, and thanks, Daniel 🍺
@@stefanconradsson Ah I've heard of "I am a Strange Loop". Haven't read it but i've heard it mentioned. I will check it out.
If you’ve never heard Dan Dennett describe consciousness, do yourself a favor and search for it. It’s extremely convincing.
It gives reasons to how consciousness arrises and adapts also, rather than it just exists within us.
Thank you for this recording! My questions are, did homunculi exist at the time of panspermia? Does the Cartesian theatre exist in some functionality in every possible Being? Are homunculi and Cartesian theaters ontologically indiscernible and inseparable? If qualia doesn't exist, what explains the bedrock of the Twin Earth problem? Why does atheism protrude through Dennett's work, and what is his most panpsychic work of philosophy? Is the Tetragrammaton a panpsychic Being and/or entity? Are Cartesian theaters discovered or invented? What does it mean for the homunculi to possess multiple ontic levels? Why does the qualia of every possible Being possess an indiscernible haecceity and/or quiddity? Finally, why does epiphenomenalism seem to depend on a panpsychic existential quantifier according to thinkers like Whitehead and Chalmers?
How can an "explanation" of consciousness just assume it at a lower level? There's 0 explanatory power in that.
The view doesn't really aim to explain consciousness as such. It assumes the existence of consciousness as a brute fact. Or perhaps a fact to be explained by some psychophysical laws which will be brute. What it aims to explain is how we are consciouse.
Exactly, homunculi all the way down (and not even a characterization of their properties). Laziest conceptualization ever (perhaps only trumped by dualism)
Panpsychism is intriguing if you take your impressions of your own consciousness at face value, like that there is a self that experiences. Then, you’re committed to putting experience into reality at the base level of matter. Dennett’s illusionism just says concs. isn’t what we think it is, so the experiencing self isn’t quite real, but imagined.
Definitions typically dont help in these discussions. We are trying to find explanatory power. For example : q) how did this TV come into being? A) I define TV as the pressing of buttons. Did that fucking explain anything? Q) How is it that human conciseness came into being? A) I define consciousness as the firing of neurons. WHAT! That’s as arbitrary as saying I define conciseness as the wiggling of my left big toe. That has no explanatory power. Im not saying Searles arguments are right, but they certainly show we can define consciousness how we’d like, but I need a way to explain how I achieve understanding or intentionality. I also think Searle has a knockdown argument against formal systems being conscience.
8:00 is great stuff too. Wanted to take a second and say thank you for all of your videos I really enjoy listening your outlooks your guests your approach you have created an amazing channel good job and thank you for the multiple videos a day it gives a guy time to digest what's going on
Consciousness is, we have consciousness, we are not consciousness. Each mind has: participates in consciousness. Matter, elements, creating consciousness is a stretch.
Cats are not soul-less robots. Cats are Gods.
Intelligence is the ability to learn without trial, and error. A ribosome is not intelligent. Nor are plants. And definitely not electrons/quarks/etc. To understand what consciousness is you have to go back to where it started. Like Theseus's ship paradox, you have to understand if the threshold from unconscious to conscious was a moment in time (thus having three parts; before, moment, after), or if there is an "essence" that proceeds an object/person, and comes after the object is gone, something unalienable. Or the third option, every thing is alienable, at any time.
Yo what strain did you smoke before this I wanna get some
@@richiekaylor5004 The strain is Weapons Grade Theoretics. Their tagline is "We blow a lot of smoke." As you can see from my comment above, their product does what it says.
No one who studies intelligence seriously has ever even proposed that intelligence is learning without trial and error. Where did you get that from?
Reaches for Intuition Pumps
Is there any kind of philosophy that matters besides analytic philosophy?
Continental philosophy is certainly important, check out the existentialists such as Sartre and Nietzsche. Even if you don't buy their metaphysics, which I find interesting in their own right, their observations of the human condition are startlingly relevant to modern society.
Oralytic
Ahhh. The quest to put names to things that cannot be named.
Panpsychism is useless because all it does is force us to create a new word. If everything is a little "conscious" then we have to call what humans have "Super Conscious" to distinguish it from the minute consciousness that atoms supposedly have. So Panschism gives us no clarity on the human feeling of consciousness it just renames "Interaction" to "Conscious" and "Conscious" to "Super Conscious". We are in the exact same place with different words.
@@danielm5161 🤘
This guy is not a great philosopher. Dennett is a living legend and can justify his positions way better. The multiple drafts model is way deeper than panpsychism in its description and explanatory power.
I think this guy hits it on the nose that multiple drafts theory is a great theory of the self but not a great theory of consciousness. Dennett is indeed brilliant, but he js missing the mark on consciousness.
@@theotormon i agree it is a good model for the self too. Still i think it works for consciousness. I still have to read this guy's academic book but the justification and the notion of consciousness in his view seems shallow and obscure.
Dennett has been dismissed a long time ago, he still salty Searle has laid out thoroughly how silly Dennett's views on consciousness are.
Why wasn’t that Goff’s answer?
In which papers or books? For all we know, Searle’s arguments have also been debunked (e.g., in his Chinese room argument, he expects to see a homunculus that knows Chinese for him to grant that there is understanding going on there, and he refuses to accept the idea that understanding can be deconstructed any other way, so he’s really providing nothing useful to further our comprehension of what it means for a human, a dog, etc, to understand)
Yeah, Dennett has been dismissed long ago, but funny how his name comes up so often amongst people trying to figure out consciousness. Your statement is obviously wrong.
@@johnhausmann2391and? Michio Kaku is one of the most renowned physicists in the world and works on string theory stubbornly when it has yet to ever yield anything.
To be renowned by the not knowers is some merit, ad populum?
@@HurricaneOG Michio Kaku will say anything he finds appealing. he's the most unscientific scientists I think I've ever heard speak. -Very rhetorically contrived to use him as an example.
0:50 isn’t there a famous talk between Dawkins and Depak Chopra where chopra says that electrons have consciousness???
Panpsychism is useless because all it does is force us to create a new word. If everything is a little "conscious" then we have to call what humans have "Super Conscious" to distinguish it from the minute consciousness that atoms supposedly have. So Panschism gives us no clarity on the human feeling of consciousness it just renames "Interaction" to "Conscious" and "Conscious" to "Super Conscious". We are in the exact same place with different words.
Lex should interview Paul or Patricia Churchland if he wants a closer idea of consciousness.
He's talking about pan-PROTO-psychism. That's different.
To be conscious is to hold an idea in a space within your mind. It’s not merely responding to stimuli or being entangled by another particle in the universe.
You were not conscious when you’re on autopilot and arrive at a destination and don’t remember any of the events of the drive. You were responding appropriately to stimuli and navigating your environment the same way bacteria or other simple organisms do…impulsively and reactively without consciousness of the events.
It’s only in the moment that you activate your mind’s eye to consider something…an object, a memory, a potential future given various decision…only in those moments are you “conscious.”
And so consciousness is a trick our mind does when we consider something in mind space. Automatic reactions or impulsive behaviors are not consciousness.
These are Julian jaynes’ ideas, not mine. But I think they are correct.
If, while driving, I had a brief spell of self-reflection and imagination and observation of my own thought process -- and then forgot about it by the time I arrived, was I conscious?
If I saw a street sign that said "No St." and that touched off a chain of thoughts about names vs. things, and the meaning of "nowhere", and analogous confusions in mathematics and computer programming, was that consciousness?
Beware of conflations and false dichotomies.
What makes a human being unique is that we have a story to tell in memory inside our brain.
A beaver is unique, in that it builds dams with its tail. What’s your point? Humans are nothing special, and really no different than any other animal on the planet. We just think we are special and unique, but really the universe could care less about us.
This clip makes my head go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr🤔😵
Radical and interesting guest.
Consciousness is aware that you are aware while it silently just observes. Consciousness is therefore the very sole of the universe just as gravity is.
How would a hamster have a subjective experience? You only have subjective experience because of language. A hamster has no idea it even exists!
What about a dog?
@numericalcode I don't think dogs are self aware.
@@Krod4321 how do you know other people are self aware? What is the difference between that and what you observe in dogs that makes you believe they are not self aware?
Where did you get the idea that language is required to have experiences? Do you experience the warmth and peacefulness of a sunset because you speak English, Chinese or whatever?
You have no idea whether the hamster has any idea (however simple) about itself. You take the easy route of believing that just because an animal doesn’t have articulated language to communicate with you, it must mean it’s a thoughtless machine lacking experiences.
🙄
1:10 +1:10 that was powerful
panpsychism is so silly
Like some monkey theories
Humans : suited up monkeys 😂