Counter Argument for The Combination Problem for Panpsychism
Hello! I joined this forum to get opinions on some ideas I have had on certain theories.
My understanding of panpsychism is that consciousness is a fundamental quality of the universe. I am unsure on whether panpsychists believe that consciousness is the ONLY fundamental force of the universe, or if consciousness is fundamental alongside other commonly held fundamental forces, like energy, electromagnetism, etc.. If the second is true, and physical processes such as energy are also fundamental, it seems that the combination problem is trivial: we have observed that physical processes can form complex objects without human intervention, such as trees: if we assume that another quality is fundamental (ignoring consciousness), and this quality is used to make a complex system like a tree, which seems to have fundamental components working together to form a complex system, why cant the same be true of consciousness? My point is that we have observed other fundamental qualities working together to form a complex system, so it is not farfetched to conclude the same of consciousness.
Please let me know what you think! Any feedback / recommendations for further reading are greatly appreciated.
My understanding of panpsychism is that consciousness is a fundamental quality of the universe. I am unsure on whether panpsychists believe that consciousness is the ONLY fundamental force of the universe, or if consciousness is fundamental alongside other commonly held fundamental forces, like energy, electromagnetism, etc.. If the second is true, and physical processes such as energy are also fundamental, it seems that the combination problem is trivial: we have observed that physical processes can form complex objects without human intervention, such as trees: if we assume that another quality is fundamental (ignoring consciousness), and this quality is used to make a complex system like a tree, which seems to have fundamental components working together to form a complex system, why cant the same be true of consciousness? My point is that we have observed other fundamental qualities working together to form a complex system, so it is not farfetched to conclude the same of consciousness.
Please let me know what you think! Any feedback / recommendations for further reading are greatly appreciated.
Comments (56)
Regarding the combination problem, you make an interesting point. However I think the analogy with other properties may not work. The combination of entities with physical properties does not necessarily entail the creation of new wholes - one could be merelogical about it. However the merging of conscious entities is typically assumed to create new wholes, which raises difficult question: What happens to the individual consciousness of the parts? Does that remain, so we have a multiplicity of consciousnesses, perhaps in a hierarchical relationship? Or does the consciousness get 'pooled' somehow, and prior individuals are lost? How does that work exactly and why? What triggers the merging? Mere proximity? Functional relationships which entail new powers/abilities of the new entity? And so on.
I don't think the combination problem is a problem. No, I can't explain how it combines. But our not understanding very important things doesn't mean I don't accept them. How does mass warp spacetime? How do negative and positive charges attract each other?
There's "something it's like" to be a chair. A molecule. An atom. An electron. A quantum field.
You might find my contrarian view useful from a 2022 thread Question regarding panpsychism ...
Quoting 180 Proof
IMO, 'panpsychism' is metaphysically indistinguishable from Stone Age
animism¹ and therefore its so-called "combination problem" is solved by magic (e.g. Leibniz's "pre-established harmony"²).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism ¹
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/preestablished_harmony#English ²
The main problem with panpsychism is that all the non-living objects in the universe including the universe itself, refuse to respond in intelligible manner, when they were interrogated with the questions about them.
None of them are.
Quoting Patterner
Not scoffing, but would like to hear the more elaborated arguments on the idea why electron shell arrangement is solid.
First of all, what do you mean by "solid"? You need to define the term intelligibly and objectively. Then you need to explain all about the electrons, electron shells and their arrangement before concluding they are solid under the definition of 'solid".
Then we can progress into further considerations and discussions, if there appear any to be compelling reasons worthwhile doing so.
I also don't understand why people jump from "science doesn't have a complete picture of how the brain produces consciousness" to "science can't ever find answers, it must be that we have souls that aren't physical".
"We don't know" feels like a comfortable thing to say, I don't see why I would want to propose souls.
I didn't suggest magic. You did. And it applies as well to your position as mine.
It is an unfounded assumption that the only things that exist in our reality are things we can find with our physical senses and science. The only things we can find using Method X are things that can be found with Method X. That doesn't suggest there are no things that X can't find.
When we see something that doesn't seem, in principle, explainable by X, is makes sense to consider something that X cannot find does, indeed, exist.
Quoting flannel jesusNor do I.
This isn't even a question of insufficient data. Its not that consciousness is a physical stuff and we don't have enough data about it. That would be a categorical mistake.
As for the combination problem, why is it so hard to understand the scientific method only works for physical stuff that can be measured and observed (directly or indirectly). Consciousness isn't anything like this. Its not that we are invoking magic, we are just saying science has its limitations. You can't appeal to science when our metaphysical theory tells you science won't help you out. You should first tell us how can science quantify and measure subjective phenomenonal experience.
The hard problem of consciousness won't be solved by more data and science.
Sure, it's just very common for people to go from "science hasn't figured it out" to "science can't figure it out", and then from there to souls.
The way you've phrased it sounds like you're going to "science can't figure it out", which is possibly a misreading.
Quoting Patterner
It sounds like you're extremely confident that it's JUST interactions of physical things, and thus CAN'T contain the explanation for consciousness. If that's not what you mean, I apologize.
I, for one, am not of the opinion that these physical interactions can't be the seat of consciousness.
Quoting 180 Proof
1. 2 entities or states can only be identical if they share all properties, including that of location in space and time. This isn't true for mental and physical states, since the physical state is just matter and the mental state has qualia.
So you can either assume the physical state does have mental properties (panpsychism) or you deny the existence of mental states.
2. Here is another problem. You don't and can never have a single law in physics which deals with mental states. Why ? Because laws in physics only deal with entities and states that can be measured and quantified. So physics doesn't help you here.
Quoting flannel jesusWhat that's not physical do you suspect?
I think there is a mental property to all things. So, while we can currently perceive, directly or indirectly, the physical interactions, we cannot perceive what the mental aspects are up to.
That's just innacurate. Most academic panpsychists I am aware of are a mile away from animism. My own views are somewhat closer to animism, but they're not captured by the wiki article either. You don't have to educate yourself on what panpsychism is if you don't want to of course.
The way I understand combinatorial objections to panpsychism, the issue isn't that fundemental forces cannot combine to form complex systems. Rather, it is that the boundaries that delineate "things" are arbitrary from the standpoint of physics. Information, causality, mass, and energy flow across all such "boundaries" as if they didn't exist. This means you can draw arbitrary lines around different physical ensembles and claim an almost infinite number of distinct consciousness.
So the issue isn't that fundemental forces cannot combine to create human level intellect, but that it seems all sorts of systems can do this.
Another problem is that the Earth's core, clouds, the sun, etc. all also in involve a ton of information transfer. So too, a room with 10 people having a conversation can be thought of as a physical system, and this system has even more complexity than a single human body.
Why then does it not appear that the sun has a mind like a human? Why don't rooms of people produce self-aware group minds? If you cut my arm off, my conciousness stays mostly the same, but presumably my arm's level of conciousness deteriorates to some sort of basic, fundemental level. Why is this?
To explain this, we need to explain what it is about human beings and animal life that works differently to make conciousness become "more full" in them. But then this problem turns out to look a lot like the "Hard Problem of Conciousness" that we had before we invoked panpsychism, so we end up in the same spot.
That, or we have to suppose that the sun might have an awareness similar to ours, but be unable to act due to its composition, which seems strange. A problem for this avenue is what happens with brain injuries, where people lose whole chunks of their conciousness. If brain injuries, Alzheimer's, certain drugs, etc. that disrupt the brain cause such profound shifts in experience, then it seems like we still need to explain many of the same things that the Hard Problem asks us to, even with panpsychism.
I suspect that the internal workings of a computer are physical events, but they're not JUST physical events, they're physical events that do abstract things. They take inputs, run them through algorithms, and figure things out. They do work.
Someone 100 years ago looking at a lightbulb would think that a bit of electricity and a metal filament was making light, sure, but it's JUST a physical thing, it can't, like, make calculations or, you know, beat us at chess. 100 years later, we've got a bunch of stuff that's JUST physical things, that can make calculations, beat us at chess, and pass the turing test better than some people can.
I think it makes more sense to be open minded about what things that are "just physical things" are capable of. A lot can emerge out of something that is "just a physical thing".
Do we suspect any of those physical things are conscious? I guess we're becoming less certain all the time that they are not. But if we think they are not, why not? What about them is different from us that makes them not? If we think they are, why? What about them is the same as us that makes them so?
Maybe physicalism isn't the case, but the reason nonphysicalism doesn't have traction is *we don't have a single model of anything that might compose a non-physical mind*. There's no model. There's no way of poking and prodding this soul-realm in the way we have ways of poking and prodding physical things, and there isn't a single model. Physicalism is the general take because *there isn't another serious competitor*. There isn't a model.
We have models of chemistry, we have relativity, we have quantum physics - we have various actual useful models of physical stuff, models complete enough that we can make a simulation of them. That's the sign of a well-defined model - a simulation. If you can simulate something, you know your model is getting somewhere. There's no simulations of the non physical soul realm, because there's no model.
And if you wanted to imagine a model of how soul-stuff operates, consider this - our physical reality is turing-complete, which means whatever your model is of how the mind might work in the soul-realm - you can just imagine that model is implemented here, in physics, in brains. Anything that is implementable is in principle implemetable here. If it's possible to implement consciousness, it's possible to implement it in our physical world, because our physical world is turing complete.
I don't know anything about, or have any thoughts about, your soul realm. I'm probably not too interested in discussing it, but, if you can gives me any specifics about it (which seems unlikely, considering how many times you said we have no model of it), we'll see.
Some think that relations don't exist outside the human mind, in which case there cannot be complex objects outside the mind.
From Wikipedia Relations (Philosophy) -
Do we observe a complex object because the object is complex or because we think the object is complex.
How to avoid the circularity of a human observing something that is independent of being observed?
You're right, there isn't a whole lot to say about the soul realm. There's no model, so there's not a lot to talk about. It's a god-of-the-gaps type situation - humans are ignorant of how consciousness works, so while we're ignorant of it, we can just naysay physical ideas of the mind and we get to posit a soul-realm without really saying a whole lot about it. It doesn't seem like it's doing any work as an idea, to me, and that's probably why physicalism is the normal position among experts.
I do believe the brain is the seat of consciousness and minds. I do not believe physical properties and physical processes can account for it. I try to explain myself here. In short, the physical processes being described as doing x, y, and z are already doing something. That is, x, y, and z. Yet we are told they are also doing this other thing - producing consciousness. But there is no explanation for how they accomplish consciousness. Point to this or that category of events, and we can see how it leads to our ability to detect a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, or discriminate wavelengths within that portion, or whatever. But we cannot see how those same events produce this other thing at the same time. It's especially vexing because that other thing is of a different nature. It cannot be measured, or even detected with the same science that we are told can answer all questions. We're told it's just how things are. I find that entirely unsatisfactory.
So how about consider that something exists which we cannot detect with our senses or science? We don't seem to have a problem accepting the existence of dark matter, even though we have no ability whatsoever to detect it. We know it must be there, because we see it's effects. SOMEthing has to explain certain phenomena.
We are told the physical processes in a computer are doing x, y, z. Yet we are told they are also doing this other thing - beating us at chess.
Things can do multiple things.
Quoting Patterner
That's totally possible. Once there's an *actual model*, there'll be something to consider. Right now, there's not enough substance to the idea to begin to consider it.
We have a problem - a hard problem! - and that problem is, we want to understand consciousness. We currently *literally only have one avenue of investigation available*, and that is to try to understand the physical brain more. We don't have any way of investigating souls. We don't have a single model about how souls are supposed to work. Souls so far offer no promise in terms of explantaory power, they offer nothing progressive towards our goal of understanding consciousness. That doesn't mean souls don't exist, but it does mean that there's not a whole lot to chew on when we try to take seriously the idea that they do. All you've got is that sentence: "Maybe the mind isn't produced by physical stuff, maybe souls exist", and then there's nowhere to go from there.
So do we continue to follow the one single avenue of investigation for consciousness, as being the result of physical brains following physical processes, or... do something else? What would the 'something else' be? And, knowing about the massive achievement of AI from neural nets, why even consider giving up on the physical idea? We can literally *talk to a simulation of physical neurons*, for free right now.
it's possible minds are not the result of physical things. I don't think it's probable, but I can't deny it's possible. BUT when it comes to the goal of understanding consciousness, understanding minds, if it is the case that minds are not the result of physical things, then... the project of understanding minds is fucked. We can't do it.
We can either understand minds as resulting from physical things, -or- we can't understand minds.
Maybe that's a bit too strong, maybe there's some way to understand souls somehow, but we don't have a single model for it yet, no way to poke and prod a soul, so if that's really reality, it's looking pretty hopeless for the project of understanding.
In some circles, Panpsychism has recently become a popular philosophical worldview, due in part to suggestive but questionable interpretations of Quantum Mechanics : observation collapses superposition. Even neuroscientist Christof Koch finds the notion of atomic awareness congenial to his scientific worldview. But computer scientist Bernardo Kastrup prefers a slightly different interpretation of the QM/observer concept*1.
Personally, I go one step deeper than material atoms --- "another quality" --- to locate the "fundamental force" in the world : Information --- the power to transform. I won't go into that hypothesis in this post, but the notion of Information=Energy/Force*2 is also becoming acceptable for scientists studying complex systems of the world, even though the word Information originally referred to the meaningful contents of a human mind. Those holistic properties of a complex system are described as "emergent", because they are only potential until actualized by the interactions (forces?) between individual parts.
To address your question, David Chalmers wondered "how do the experiences of fundamental physical entities such as quarks and photons combine to yield the familiar sort of human conscious experience that we know and love" {my bold}. And my answer is Holism*3 : a combination of separate things may add-up to more than the sum of its parts. In 21st century science, Holism is now labeled Systems Theory. And, in combination with Information Theory, is being used to study Complex Systems*4.
You may be more interested in the Psychological or Philosophical implications of Panpsychism than its Physical properties. But most of our philosophical postulations on this forum are expected to be grounded in hard science. And Holism is beginning to emerge from the shadow of spooky New Age notions, to play a role in the "hard" science of physical complexity*5. Where "an unfathomable combination of parts" display novel physical properties ( and mental qualities? ) as a whole System. :smile:
*1. How Does the Brain Create Mind? :
Kastrup says that reductionist neuroscientist Christof Koch has come to believe in a form of Panpsychism : that our complex conscious inner life is constituted by an unfathomable combination of the experiential states of myriad particles forming our brain.
http://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page16.html
*2. Information is Energy :
Definition of a physically based concept of information
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-40862-6
*3. Holism :
Philosophically, a whole system is a collection of parts (holons) that possesses properties not found in the parts. That something extra is an emergent quality that was latent (unmanifest) in the parts. For example, when atoms of hydrogen & oxygen gases combine in a specific ratio, the molecule has properties of water, such as wetness, that are not found in the gases. A Holon is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part A system of entangled things that has a function in a hierarchy of systems.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
*4. Complex Systems Theory :
When a whole is greater than the sum of its parts, it is considered a complex system. Traditional thinking would analyze each individual component, but this method also includes the relationships between all components. This gives us insight into emergent behaviors that wouldn't normally be expected from the parts.
https://now.northropgrumman.com/complex-systems-theory-how-science-solves-social-problems
*5. What is complex systems science? :
But the way in which complex phenomena are hidden, beyond masking by space and time, is through nonlinearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence a deck of attributes that have proved ill-suited to our intuitive and augmented abilities to grasp and to comprehend.
https://www.santafe.edu/what-is-complex-systems-science
All that is what we do. But we also have a subjective experience of playing the game. That's what there computer lacks. Which wire needs to be soldered where to make it conscious? Quoting flannel jesusI have never even hinted that we should give up on what's been done that has accomplished so much. We should certainly continue all of that. I think there is room for discussion of all manner of approaches.
Calling what I'm talking about as "magic," and referring of the "soul realm," otoh, smacks of ridicule. What is the goal?
I didn't say magic. "Soul realm" isn't ridicule, it's just my word for the category of ideas that say the mind isn't the result of physical processes. If the processes of the mind aren't happening here in this physical realm, then they must be happening in some other realm - I give that broad class of ideas the name of "soul realm", and I would call it that *even if it were discovered tomorrow that it really exists*. It's not meant to be ridicule, or a value judgement, or even imply it's not true.
If our minds aren't physical, I call the alternative "souls".
180 says magic.
You mean "soul realm" the way you mean it. I know that now, but only because you told me. Other readers won't necessarily know that. Particularly people who are new here. Bert isn't new, and he didn't understand.
A lot of people in a FB consciousness group like to call it "woo woo." People can easily see such terms, and read it as ridicule and dismissiveness. In most cases other than you, it is meant that way. Either way, it establishes an atmosphere.
But I'm done with that part of the conversation. I'll just take it the way you intend it from now on.
Regarding models, we don't have any for physical processes any more than we do for panpsychist processes. We can duplicate, in a different medium, a lot of the physical processes. But are we endowing it with subjective experience? Is there something it is like to be a computer? Or ChatGPT? Something that we cannot understand by knowing all therr is too know about its construction and programming? Something more than what it is like to be a can opener?
Frankly, I suspect we will achieve it the way you expect we will. Because I think we'll eventually stumble upon what's needed for the proto-consciousness to get what it gets from the configuration/arrangement of our brains. IOW, freakin' huge complexity and number of systems. But we won't get it by figuring out which circuits, or wiring, or whatever, will do the trick. We can't spot it in our brains, after all. So how can we duplicate it?
That's what a model is. Or rather, you need a model to be able to do that
:100: :up:
Just based on a mainstream scientific picture, (for example the perspective presented by Sean Carroll in The Big Picture without any added panpsychism sauce) there is reason to expect a comprehensive explanation of the nature of consciousness to be beyond the cognitive grasp of humans (at least without a lot of help from AI).
There is no good reason to look at it in a black or white way though. It's not a matter of "it just does". There are a lot of parts of the physical underpinnings of consciousness that can be understood if one spends time developing a broadly informed perspective on scientific findings relevant to the subject.
BTW amber, welcome to the forum. You've brought up topics I'm quite interested in. (One might say autistically obsessed with. :wink:)
As I said, I expect we'll stumble onto consciousness eventually. If proto-conaciousness exists, it's also in the particles the computer is made of. When we get the right configuration, well get consciousness. Obviously, that will happen if there isn't proto-consciousness, as well.
But if there is proto-consciousness, might we approach things differently? What if some parts of the brain, or some processes, aren't important, and that idea only came along while considering proto-consciousness? Maybe we're wasting time on things that don't matter. Or maybe what seems to be a good pro-proto-consciousness approach doesn't seem as likely in electronics as in biological, and we think we should try to accomplish the same thing with a very different method, rather than trying to make an electronic brain as much like ours as possible.
Beats me. Just considering possibilities. I don't think it's the best idea to rule out entire fields of thought when we can't find any evidence that it's purely physical. Consciousness is the most unique, mysterious thing there is, and we shouldn't be surprised if it comes about for a unique, mysterious reason.
Yes, I agree, they aren't yet. You said
"Regarding models, we don't have any for physical processes"
You didn't specify if you meant specifically the full model about how physical stuff produces consciousness, it sounded like you were talking about models of physical processes *at all*.
Ah. Yeah, I'm only taking about consciousness.
Yeah, you're right, we shouldn't, and I'm sure when someone finally develops the very first ever model of how a soul might work, cognitive scientists will pay attention. But for now, there's nothing to pay attention to. The world is absolutely full of people saying matter can't explain consciousness, but who aren't producing any better explanations.
It'll have a seat at the table when it has a model.
The cardinal difference is the subjective unity of consciousness: we experience ourselves as a single entity, not a combination of micro-processes. When we drop a rock on our toe, we don't hear about it second-hand, as if the message is transmitted through a series of separate sub-consciousness units.
Quoting flannel jesus
Interesting that one of the Greek words for soul was 'psyche' (not spelled exactly like that) but it's also the root of 'mind', as in 'psychology'. So I wonder if 'soul' and 'mind' might be synonyms, to all intents. With the caveat that I think 'soul' or 'psyche' conveys the idea of the totality of mind, including the unconscious and subconscious, not simply the 'conscious mind' or what one is consciously aware of.
As to which aspect of the mind (or soul) might not be physical, there is an account of that in medieval philosophy that I find, at least, suggestive. The physical or appetitive aspects of the psyche are what 'receives the sensations' e.g. the senses of sight, touch, hearing etc. The immaterial aspect is what recognises the form of the object. That is an intellectual judgement, which is the aspect of the psyche that is associated with 'the rational soul'. And I can think of an argument in support of that idea, but I'll leave it at that for now.
Explain how you/we know, or have compelling reasons to assume, that "consciousness is not physical" (or consistent with subject to physical laws).
You quote me but do not address the points I raise and yet expect me to reply to your non sequiturs. :roll:
Quoting Patterner
Agreed, but that's not my assumption. That's a strawman.
Fair enough.
I believe pansychism would say that the fundamental laws are both material and conscious. If multiverses exist in reality then maybe part of us is in one of those. It seems our bodies are whatever is enclosed in our skin. But hypothetically there could be another body that mirrors ours and is us except they are in another place. Or say soul. Or one can dropped the materialist paradigm and believe the human body is mystical and consciousness, although coming from the brain, dies only to go into a quantum reality, or call it a mutiverse (who's to say where is where). These theories loop around together, but seriously you would have to have a true satori to know what it's like to be a brick. You don't in order to know that consciousness can't cease
This is insane. You provided the wikipedia link as part of your post! You invited people to read it!
EDIT: But never mind. We don't have to rely on wikipedia. Perhaps you could offer your own conceptions of animism and panpsychism so we can see if we we are talking about the same ideas. For example, you said that panpsychism is reductionist. I am interested in what you mean. What x does it assert is nothing other than what y?