A universe without anything conscious or aware
Physics would suppose that the universe can and has indeed existed before consciousness arose. As common sense as this seems it sits so strangely to imagine an entire happening that is unaware of its happening. It is egocentric for sure.
Theres no reason to imagine that a tree doesnt fall unless we observe it. Ive no doubt it happens many a time around the world every second unknown to us. In much the same way theres no reason to imagine the universe unfolding in entirety without containing any observer to confirm it.
However, the universe clearly demonstrates that its chemistry and physical operations are ripe for the evolution of an observer (be it a part, a mere fraction of the universe, but part of the universe all the same) that does indeed observe, does appreciate and does apply meaning and comprehension to it all.
Why would a universe ever require that its properties just happen to lead to consciousness? Why does the universe unfold in such a way that brings about its own acknowledgment? I find this bizarre. But from the biased view of a sentient being - the sensual response is well - to know/ confirm that it has done so. A universe that has no conscious beings never knew it began, happened or ended, or repeated ... for eternity. And I dont know what could be said to be a better definition of absolutely pointless than that. (I know purpose and point is a construct of the aware).
The natural conclusion is that either universes cannot exist in any other way but one that leads to an observer, or the observer has always been there (enter theology and/or panpsychism), and that life is simply the most physical and particulate (individual) state to date through which said observer or observers exist.
Theres no reason to imagine that a tree doesnt fall unless we observe it. Ive no doubt it happens many a time around the world every second unknown to us. In much the same way theres no reason to imagine the universe unfolding in entirety without containing any observer to confirm it.
However, the universe clearly demonstrates that its chemistry and physical operations are ripe for the evolution of an observer (be it a part, a mere fraction of the universe, but part of the universe all the same) that does indeed observe, does appreciate and does apply meaning and comprehension to it all.
Why would a universe ever require that its properties just happen to lead to consciousness? Why does the universe unfold in such a way that brings about its own acknowledgment? I find this bizarre. But from the biased view of a sentient being - the sensual response is well - to know/ confirm that it has done so. A universe that has no conscious beings never knew it began, happened or ended, or repeated ... for eternity. And I dont know what could be said to be a better definition of absolutely pointless than that. (I know purpose and point is a construct of the aware).
The natural conclusion is that either universes cannot exist in any other way but one that leads to an observer, or the observer has always been there (enter theology and/or panpsychism), and that life is simply the most physical and particulate (individual) state to date through which said observer or observers exist.
Comments (108)
If the universe had intention to create humans it sure took a long time.
Very true. But perhaps time to a human and time to the universe are very different. We know its rate objectively depends on distance, gravity, relativity etc and also human time is somewhat arbitrary : assigned to relatively quick cycles that we can observe. But for something that exists as long as the universe could - perhaps life and humanity arose in reasonable haste. Alas we most likely cannot appreciate that in its entirety I suppose considering we are only here for an average of 70-80 years or so.
Okay. So I see the universe as intelligent, an intelligent system. Having consciousness is just one aspect of that consciousness. Though I subscribe to panpsychism, I do not think intelligence requires self consciousness.
Im inclined to agree. Having sense (sentience) of something can be very primitive/ basic and doesnt mean its intelligent. AI is intelligent because its intelligence is contextual. Its highly efficient at the tasks its programmed to do. But its not conscious.
And while intelligence is very broad and has multiple facets, consciousness must have a sense of being/ self- reference which intelligent mechanistic processes dont require.
From a scientific point of view, intelligence and consciousness are just things that work in the universe, like all other things, like our arms or legs, or nose.
Imagine to interpret the universe as a pan-leggism, or pan-armism, or pan-nosism. It would be ridiculous, of course, because we immediately realize that our legs or arms dont have such a great importance to make them a key to interpret the whole universe.
Well, is intelligence or consciousness more important than legs or arms? How can we trust any judgement, since it is intelligence evaluating itself? From this point of view, our arms and legs are really much more intelligent than our brain, because, at least, they do not cultivate the pretence to be the center of the world or the basic key to interpret the universe.
Contra your OP: avoid Anthropomorphic fallacy × apply Mediocrity Principle × remember 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, etc > Shit Happens (i.e. structures, systems, agents just appear-disappear down the entropic slope like 'virtual particles in the vacuum') is the reasonable supposition.
Well I would argue that the scope of what it is to be intelligent is vastly larger than what it is to have arms and legs - as intelligence in the loosest sense is the workability or logic and pragmatism of a system - being organised, consistent and with the capacity to enable new and ever more diverse phenomena - more complex than those it is based on. Evolution or trial and error .. i would say could be thought of as a logical/ reasonable and intelligent means by which to find a path towards improvement. Stephen Hawkins said intelligence is the ability to adapt.
I dont think intelligence is mutually exclusive to Brains Simply that brains are an exemplary demo of intelligence at work. However arms and legs are more restricted in that they only function for a specific body type in a specific environment. Intelligence should be applicable across the board
Agree totally. So often we seem unaware that we contrive the definitions and rules and what's important to us and we assume this has cosmic ramifications.
How does saying the universe has intelligence as a property make humans the center of the universe?
I would think just the opposite.
It is because, by saying it, we put us as a reference point to understand the universe: by saying that the universe has intelligence, the reference point to understand what intelligence is is human intelligence, even if we think that the intelligence of the universe is superior to us. It is the same mechanism of imagining God with anthropomorphic attributes: the reference point is human, even if we think that God is infinitely superior to us.
No. Not at least as I would say it.
Maybe you and he do. Nothing in the idea of intelligence implies that.
Separate topic. But either God is like humans or I have no idea why people talk about God.
Quoting bert1
Category mistake.
Incoherent (re: relativity of simultaneity).
:lol:
It's not about having an absolute now. A relative now would do. Consciousness is sufficient for a now - I am never conscious in the past or the future. But is there being a now sufficient for consciousness? I don't know. I'm not sure what that would mean. And is there being a now necessary for something to happen? Can an event happen at a time that is never now?
I don't know the answers to these questions. No doubt you do, of course.
Thats a good question. For me I find it hard to imagine a linear chronology of time without the capacity to remember (a feature of conscious things).
Im not sure if the passage of time is just a neat trick of being aware - part of what makes consciousness - having memory and therefore a past and also the ability to anticipate the future by consequence. Both of which give sense to a present moment that is finite.
Without it I dont see how any moment from the creation to the extinction of the universe (assuming it does so) can be distinguished from another. And in that case all moments are one moment and all things would happen and end simultaneously. Theres nothing to experience time - no one who is a stable system at a set rate (ageing) that can experience rates both slower and faster than their own.
Consciousness is basically electricity or electrons in motion (brains are - bottomline - electrochemistry). Can another kinda particle take the place of the humble electron?
I dont see how there is any other way of appreciating or understanding reality. Of course the universe as we understand it is in reference to how we understand things.
The conscious being is self referential in all they experience.
Its just absurdity to expect a Rock to understand and behave as a bird does just as it is absurd to expect humans to interpret the universe from any other method of intelligence (be it inferior or superior) than our own.
However that said, I feel we may undersell ourselves here a little bit on our abilities. Sure its possible we may be grossly ill equipped to understand the universe at large. But there is also the chance that - considering we evolved from its very properties and mechanics - we may be perfectly equipped. Perhaps our intelligence and scientific endeavours and advancing technology are a demonstration that we are at a level of complexity required to understand not only ourselves but nature itself. We cannot completely rule out this possibility.
I believe a positron can take the place of an electron assuming it evolved in a universe made completely of antimatter. Physics should work the exact same as long as all charges are reversed.
Interestingly if these two identical and opposite universes came together they would cancel eachother out. I hope I never meet anti-matter me haha
Positronic brains, stuff of sci-fi!
Ol' Sparky, Dr. Frankenstein's monster, Luigi Galvani & amputated frog legs experiment, Cardioversion (defibrillators).
I wonder why EMP doesn't fry our brains like they do electronics. Lunacy, lycans, etc.? :chin:
Its because we use ions (sodium, chlorine and potassium) as the carrier of charge and unlike electrons these are huge - if an electron was a football the ion would be a mass about 20,000 times larger - about the weight of a six tonne truck.
And electromagnetic field can easily perturb electrons in a circuit but an ion which moves much slower and requires more energy to disturb it is relatively fine in an EMP.
:up: Danke!
Nature prepared itself to do battle with silicon-based AI then! :snicker:
That's exactly the reason why we cannot trust our understanding. The very concept of "understanding" is undermined by the fact that we try to understand what we are part of. Every aspect and element of the action of "understanding" falls into the influence of our subjectivity, so that there is no reason why anything in our understanding should be reliable.
The scientific point of view assumes, but then forget that it assumes, an intelligent observer, so as to arrive at the contrivance of a universe devoid of intelligence.
I've been reading a very interesting book, Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles Pinter, who's a maths emeritus. The very first paragraph says this:
Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 1). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.
He goes on to develop his argument, based on neuroscience, evolutionary and cognitive science, that we (and other animals) see gestalts, meaningful wholes, as a matter of adaptive necessity. But the crucial point is that there are no such meaningful wholes in the absence of an observer.
Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 3). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.
This book has made a lot of things I've been mulling over clear to me. In relation to your OP, what I'd say is that nothing exists outside a perspective or point-of-view. That doesn't mean that, sans an observer, everything vanishes, but that any conception of what exists always contains an implicit point-of-view or perspective. Imagining the early universe prior to h. sapiens having evolved is a valid thought-experiment, but again the observing mind provides the framework within which the concept is meaningful. You can't get outside or escape from that, although we imagine we can.
Oh, that's a shame. Anyone else know what I'm talking about? Or is it too opaque for everyone?
EDIT: Whenever you are conscious, it's now isn't it? Is that how it is for you? That's how it is for me.
Oh, OK, so there is no now. Are the past and future imaginary?
Psychologically, not thermodynamically.
What, thermodynamically, separates the past from the future?
Lower (past / before) and higher (future / after) entropy state (e.g. a hot cup of coffee is the past / before entropy state of a cold cup of coffee).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Which ones are in the past and which ones are in the future?
But by that logic we can never understand society - because we a part of it. We cant understand natural selection because we arent removed from it. Nor could we understand genetics, medicine, psychology etc because it all applies intrinsically to our being.
Yet we do have a good understanding of these things as they have lead to a knowledge database that reflects what seems to occur in each case.
I think its a fallacy to assume we cannot trust our comprehension of something simply because we are a part of its system.
Agree. What else is the understanding than trying to make sense of the world.
Of course.
So we have to specify a reference point, then, no? Without that there is no past or future as 6 is in the past of 7 but the future of 5. So we need to set a reference point of 5 or 7 before we can tell what 6 is. We need a now before the concept of past and future make sense, even thermodynamically, no?
Quoting Benj96
Recent approaches in cognitive psychology base knowledge on biological models of niche construction. According to this thinking, scientific and other kinds of knowledge are not representations of the world, they are constructed interactions. To know is to change ones schematized interactions with ones environment in accord with ones needs and purposes. What we call
consciousness is merely a more complexly integrated form of organism-environment interactions that enact biological niches. So in knowing the world we are not capturing or mirroring something pre-existing, we are changing it in complex ways. The role of memory in human conceptualization is not that of access to an unaltered past. Memory is always a reconstruction of the past.
Memory doest retrieve a pristine past , but it reveals a continuity between the past. and the present. My larger point is that the general functions of human conscious knowledge creation are only elaborations of the normative sense-making that all organisms achieve in the form of niche construction. Even for the simplest creatures , the world appears and matters to
them in a certain way relative to their needs and aims. The fact that cosmological history evinces a development from simple particles and interactions to more andmore complex relationships allows us to link human cogntive and organismic niche construction back to self-organizing processes characterizing pre-life history also. The evolution of the inorganic realm thus presupposes a kind of memory. In order to speak of regions of a universe that become more complex over time, we have to assume that something remains to be referred back to as development takes place.
Once we abandon the idea that knowledge is a representing or capturing of the world , we can begin to dissolve the gap we have created between what a natural world does and what human conceptualization does.
Humans are part of nature. Never understood why this was disputed. Goes back to the Christian mistake of privileging subjectivity.
I never said nor implied there was an absolute reference point
Entropy doesn't care about the direction of time. That's a misconception. See here:
Yoi may not have intended this but it is an implication
Quoting bert1
in the context of my post about relative states (which are used as "reference points" to one another). You're asking for a "reference point" other than the relative reference points (entropic states).
Oh, no doubt. I have no idea. 180 was the one saying that future is more entropy and past is less entropy.
No I'm not
O'Dowd says physics just describes entropy fluctuations, so 180 is incorrect.
So, without further heating, a hot cup of coffee does not become a cold cup of coffee?
Okay. I misunderstood. You already had the answer before you asked.
Watch the video.
The coffee gets cold. Physics only describes entropy fluctuations. It does not dictate an arrow of time. So my perception grounds my answer, not science.
Nay, I wasn't sufficiently clear. We do have to specify a reference point, but one of the entropic states will do as a reference. I guess the question then becomes, if everything after that state is the future, and everything before it is the past, then is not the entropic state itself the present state?
You are mixing scientific understanding and philosophical understanding. Science is based on experimental evidence and is never ultimate, philosophical understanding is based on systems of ideas and is aimed at ultimate understanding and, in this sense, coincides with metaphysics. The philosophical one is impossible for the reasons you said: we are immersed and involved in whatever we try to know. A philosophical understanding is possible if we try to conceive it as provisional, limited, conditioned, imperfect, rather than ultimate.
I think most philosophers believe that.
Quoting Jackson
Yep.
Quoting Tate
Yes ("gets" = becomes), the state after the coffee was hot (i.e. the future state of the hot coffee). You've misread my posts, Tate. Just as a clock does not determine that "afternoon follows morning", I''ve not claimed that entropy determines "the arrow of time" because entropy is a physical measure of the (from minimum disorder to maximum disorder) development of a dynamic system the fundamental metric of irreversible complexity in nature.
Whatever the reason may be for our seeing the coffee get colder instead of hotter, it's not physics. It's pretty astonishing.
So it's magic, huh? :sparkle: :lol:
Unsolved problem.
I think the problem starts with the first paragraph. It says
The concept of a chair is a concept. It does not follow that a chair is a concept. And in fact a chair is not a concept. We can do things with chairs that we cannot do with concepts. We can't sit on a concept, for example. That is a crucial difference between chairs and concepts.
The concept of existence is a concept. It does not follow that existence is a concept. We can say things about concepts that we may not be able to say about existence. For example, without conceivers there are no concepts. It does not follow that without conceivers there is no existence.
I think this is true. There's an almost identical thread already on this topic, they should be merged. See this comment. I refer to a book I've just been reading on it, which you can find here.
Perception is conceptually saturated. So doing things with chairs is informed by this tacit background intelligibility. We throw chairs, or sit on them , or move them around. These performances presuppose an interpretation of what we are doing.
Can we deduce the answer i.e. can we formulate an a priori argument to prove whether or not existence requires consciousness?
We can try something smaller: There are many deaths daily (google) but existence doesn't seem to be affected by these deaths in any way at all. They should, if existence depended on consciousness, oui (concomitant variation, vide Mill's Methods).
Then there's evolution: Consciousness is the new kid on the block and if existence depended on it, evolution would be false. There's strong evidence that evolution happened!
To get to what a thing is non-conceptually , we would have to remove all words that conceptually determine what it is that is being done or seen ( and not just words. Conceptually is richer than just linguistic expression). So we cant use sitting, throwing, a spatial somewhere or temporal some thing, words like hamster and earthquake. So what is left?
:fire: :up:
No, we can not use the word sit to refer to a doing without concepts, or without some other organized framework of interrelationality ( sensori-motor schemas of movement and perception). All we can legitimately say is that we are always exposed to an outside that provides affordances and constraints relative to the direction of our functioning. Yes, there is an outside , but we cannot associate any intrinsic features with it , because what these features are is always relative to some other features , which are always in a state of reciprocal transformation, independent of our subjectivity. I dont agree with Quine that the relativist entanglement of fact and value finally reaches bedrock with physics.
Sorry I'm just trying to wrap my head around your point.
I think it is. Anything that we deem to exist, does so by virtue of its identity - it is something (or some being) which 'stands apart' - which is what 'exist' means. This doesn't mean that absent the observer, the universe is non-existent, as non-existence is also a concept. You can imagine a universe devoid of observers, but even there the imagination provides a framework. You can't imagine a universe from no perspective.
@Darkneos did mention somewhere that this is 're-hashed Buddhist philosophy'. Whilst that is rather a condescending expression, there is some truth in it. Buddhist Madhyamaka philosophy says that nothing possesses 'own-being' (svabhava) or intrinsic existence (reference.) This is the well-known 'doctrine of ??nyat? ('emptiness') associated with Mah?y?na Buddhism.
Existence is a concept whose meaning is opposed to absence. Ultimately, the absence of anything is a void.
A world that contains nothing, is a void. How can this be when a world that contains nothing, does not have the concept of a void?
It's because we're talking about that world from the comfort of our world, where there is an abundance of concepts.
In the same way, I can imagine a world that contains no conscious entities.
Right. Now try not imagining anything whatever. That would be closer to the mark.
Closer to what mark?
Think possible worlds. There are possible worlds that don't contain me. I have no problem imagining them.
Likewise, there are possible worlds that contain no conscious entities.
That's not the point. It's not necessarily about you in particular. The subject is implicit in every such imagined world.
I'm thinking it was for aliens in the Andromeda galaxy 10 billion years ago.
No, the subject is in this world, imagining things. The object of imagination, in this case, is a world that contains no conscious entities.
Correct. We cannot refer to anything without concepts. And also, hamsters can sit. And they have no concepts. That is because sitting is one thing; and referring is another.
(I have no idea why I chose hamsters. They are not even well know for their ability to sit. I think they might just be able to lie down. If anyone comes here to claim that hamsters cannot sit, I'm fine with that. It someone claims that the reason they cannot sit is because they lack the concept of sitting then I might pop up again. Possibly.)
Yes, you are right. We cannot use the word 'sit' to refer to anything without concepts and some framework that is organised enough to generate meanings. And also I am right. Pot plants can sit on window-sills and can use no words at all. Both, and.
Further heating of the coffee cup still leads to increased entropy. The point is entropy is why the coffee cools in the first place. Energy doesnt like to be close to itself it prefers to spread out evenly and as far from itself as possible
To heat the cup of coffee further - you still require all the processes to make the fuel, or electricity, the appliance for heating it, and the heat itself which 80% or more is lost to heating the air or environment that isnt the coffee. In simple terms more work is always put in than that which is gotten out of the system.
In any aspect of that process more energy is lost than that needed to heat the coffee. Therefore entropy always rises.
Isnt scientific understanding also provisional, limited, conditioned, imperfect and ofc not ultimate?
On the contrary, this is exactly what science is and what makes it different from philosophy.
When, for example, science says that the earth is a planet turning around the sun, this means that a lot of experiments and evidence make us possible to synthesize their result with these words. But nothing in science prevents that tomorrow something different may be discovered. Science doesnt establish any limit to what future discoveries might reveal, even about things that today seem 100% sure and certain.
Philosophy, instead, or, at least, a certain kind of philosophy, looks for things that should be guaranteed for ever, indipendently from new discoveries. I disagree with this kind of philosophy, but this is what some philosopher have been looking for.
Do you damn that they can experience themselves
performing this action, or that this is something they do whether they are aware of it or not? If the latter, were back to the original problem, which is that it is we who are conceptually defining what the anima is doing. If the former, hamsters have no linguistic concepts, but they have sensori-motor pattens that make up body schemas. These body schemas act like concepts in the sense that they produce a perceived world for the animal which is defined by the animals particular needs. Actions ( like sitting) and objects may take on very different meaning to a hamster than to a human.
Yes. Science is not in the truth proclamation business (unlike, say religion) it holds tentative models based on the best available evidence at the time.
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/2268080/fpart/1/vc/1
No, I don't damn. It would be rather extreme. I'm more inclined to bless. But I don't think either is particularly called for.
"The existence of a thing implies the existence of the concept of a thing. If the concept of a thing does not exist, we cannot refer to it in any way and thus its existence becomes a null concept. Thus, the concept of a thing and by consequence the thing, is a mere state of a hypothetical system that is responsible for consciousness or is conscious. I will refer to it as the conscious system."
Is it possible then, that consciousness and existence are ontologically reducible to each other?
Oh shit.. I meant deny
Maybe not reducible, but rather the same exact thing? It's just that we have two different words making us think that these are actually two different things.
I'll try and explain very briefly what I mean here. It has already been touched on in this thread, but that line of thought seemed to trail off.
There can be no consciousness without existence. That much can be agreed upon by everyone. That one is quite simple. If there is consciousness, then it implies that consciousness exist.
There seems to be at first blush a primacy of existence, but is there really?
We can't imagine there being a consciousness without existence.
Flip the coin now : Can we imagine there being existence with consciousness?
This is where it gets a little tricky:
You might say " I can imagine a possible world where a chair exists, yet there is no consciousness in any form". Basically, this is saying that in this possible world, the only thing in existence is this self existent and eternal chair. Nothing is in this world that could perceive the chair. It's only the chair.
But is it a violation here to to suggest this, since I am using my consciousness to even ask the question? Are there any implications that it's a universal that chairs are made by people who have consciousness?
The chair implies consciousness. Who made the chair? Someone at some point was conscious and they made a chair.
You see, we can't escape using consciousness to fill in every single conceptual gap in this thought experiment. From the chair, to the act of imagining this possible world where the chair exists all implies consciousness existing. If no consciousness ever existed, then that chair would not be there.
Maybe the two are the same in the same sense that space and time are said to be space/time.
So basically, i'm suggesting that you cannot suggest existence if your are not suggesting consciousness existing as well.
If you want to suggest existence without consciousness, you would have to suggest an object that possesses existence. In this example, we used a chair. But you can't do that. You have to use something that did not require consciousness at some point for that thing to exist. It's stalemate the other way as well, because you could suggest something like "A Rock". This rock is the sole existent in this possible world. That might work, but when we turn around , we're faced with the fact that we just used our consciousness to imagine this possible world where only a rock existed.
Just to let you know, I'm the type that likes throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. I think there could be some sticky stuff in this one though, and it could shine some light on the subject for me. There may be some sticky shiny stuff in here.
Thanks for your replies!
Quoting Watchmaker
This doesn't follow. You don't need any other parameters to suggest an existence without consciousness, it would just be the same as the current one without people there to experience it. Everything would go on.
People keep trying to attach some kind of importance or magic to consciousness when it's nothing more than just taking in information.
It is more than that though.
It comes down to even, "What is an event?".. Whitehead had a lot to say on that, as you probably know.
If we assert the primacy of existence, then we are asserting that something exists, and that whatever that thing is, it's existence is non-contingent. We are talking about this non-contingent chair...what would be the difference between the chair existing and the chair not existing in this non-conscious possible world?
As someone said the chair would still exist, but our concept of it won't. Without the concept of the chair it's not as though it will just evaporate, not literally though the guy I quoted might say so.
It doesn't really make sense to say there was nothing because nothing is an abstraction that depends on existence to mean anything. When we say something doesn't exist we are referring to it's absence from a given set that does exist. It is "not" by being the opposite of what "is". So for someone to say a world without concepts nothing would exist would be an illogical statement. Nonexistence would be negated as soon as you take away existence.
It seems like a very small percentage of existence is actually aware or "conscious" as they say
As for why? I'm not sure but I'm dieing to know.
Just to mention that some philosophers believe the opposite: that it is consciousness that has created the universe. I personally have no cognition or enough data or logical reason why and how this could be the case.
Anyway, these things are like sailing in uncharted waters. And I have better and more useful things to do! :smile: