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Dominic John Repici
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Panpsychism

 
Panpsychism — has a few connotations, most notably that everything has consciousness. Within the context of machine based consciousness, it can be limited and turned around.

Here are some of the most common connotations. (A little messy here, for now):
  • Everything possesses consciousness (in the broadest sense of the word: everything) — This is the very high-level definition which is very well described (but not held) by David Chalmers. Everything here, includes things like "the number two."

  • Consciousness is a state of matter — Just like liquid, gas, solid, plasma, are states of matter. This would seem to imply (jmo) that matter may, or may not, take up a state of consciousness, and that it may be in a conscious state, and not be in any other states. I sometimes wonder if those who like this possibility like it because it might be a way to explain dark matter. That would be really cool if it turns out to be the case.

  • Consciousness is a fundamental property of matter — Specifically, this is referred to as panprotopsychism, and an even more specific connotation is referred to as Russellian panprotopsychism. This can be thought of (loosely) as property dualism. These include properties like gravity, charge, mass, locality, etc. These normally all exist simultaneously, as part of what makes matter, matter. For the record, this one seems most plausible to me. It comes from my own conjecture that learning —entities not merely interacting, but adapting to one another— is ubiquitous, and that such inter-adaptation can be observed, even between particles at the smallest scales. This is seen in entanglement, and in the observer effect, for example.

  • Consciousness is a mental state of matter — This is the thesis that fundamental particles, such as electrons, and quarks, might have a mental state, which is consciousness. This is called constitutive panpsychism.


As stated, I'm currently leaning to the camp that considers panpsychism's "fundamental property of matter" connotation to be the most consistent with current understanding. In this connotation, just as things like mass, gravity, and charge are fundamental properties of matter, so too is a very basic (and perhaps unrecognizable at lower-levels) form of consciousness (proto?).

-~=~-
“A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has
shown that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only
be understood as interconnections. . .”
— Erwin Schrödinger
-~=~-

I would personally add that it may be a characteristic of matter, as well as forces, or more succinctly, it may be a characteristic of volumetric phenomena (phenomena that take up, or exist in, multi-dimensional space).



. . . . . . .
Spit-balling

This is just my own opinion. There is also the possibility that learning (i.e., adaptation) may be a fundamental characteristic of consciousness. Learning, in this context, means an entity altering how it responds to a given stimulus in the future based on adaptive changes caused by current experiences (inter-adaptations). In this case, quantum interactions at the particle level, such as quantum entanglement, can be described as the lowest-level learning events, from which higher-level (macro) learning (adaptations) are all built. I would have referred to this as constitutive panspsychism if the name weren't already taken (perhaps "additive," or "cumulative"?). :-)



. . . . . . .
Learning's Relationship to Consciousness?
Learning, —that is, not merely reacting to stimuli, but adapting future responses to similar stimuli— seems to be intertwined with consciousness.

Many philosophers of mind, including the one I admire most, David Chalmers, eschew the use of reductionism to better understand consciousness. They claim that reductionism is not useful in this regard because consciousness is not reducible into constituent parts, or because it IS the agent that understands, and so can not be reduced to some other things capable of promoting understanding.

I can appreciate this argument, and can't really argue against it in any authoritative way. My armchair arguments, however, go something like this: Isn't insisting that reductionism not be used for analysis of a marginally understood entity, ITSELF a form of reductionism? — and also this: Nobody has ever seen the high-energy particles that fly through cloud chambers. In fact, we have not even seen their direct effects on other things. The observed effects are at least twice-removed from the unseeable particles and velocities that cause them.

Still, we are able to study those constituent causes and learn a great deal about them from observing the effects that ionized gas has on water vapor. Also, the eyes of the inventor/innovator in all of us will light-up any time people limit their own inquiries based on authority-driven rules-of-thumb, or "conventional wisdom." When things "like" this ("of this nature?") are evident, it is human-nature to want to explore the underlying assumptions for ourselves. Maybe it's not normal human-nature, but whatever the DSM might say it is, I'm certainly guilty of it.

  • Determining Similarity — Associating

    The process of Grouping similar (like) things together may seem fairly simple at a glance, but it is actually quite complex and nuanced. Much like consciousness itself, one of the reasons similarity is hard to understand is because the concepts and mechanisms at the heart of similarity are elusive. That is, they often can't be rigorously expressed. Determining what constitutes "similarity" in an implementable way, is where this hard-problem is exposed. (e.g., rhyming words). This is also embodied in "discrimination" and "discernment." While it can be relatively simple (grouping by visual morphology such as shape and color), it can also quickly go from simple to hard at more abstract levels. Consider things such as rhythm/duration-patterns which are often easily discernable algorithmically. Now consider things like rhyming, similar movements and behaviors, historic comparisons which are often said to rhyme rather than repeat, etc., That said, explaining things like rhyming and things like the sentiment in the phrase "something in the way she moves" in an implementable way, it turns out, may not be as simple as it sounds.

    To recap: The determination of what constitutes similarity is where the rubber meets the road. That is, it is the "hard problem" part of grouping similar things. It can be extremely complex and nuanced. It is an elusive problem, in that sometimes we recognize similarities without even being able to consciously perceive or explain how the things are similar.

    Consider how we are able to construct and understand metaphors, as one (relatively easy to grasp) example. The similarity between, say, "sharpness" and a particular cheese-taste experience is a similarity that might be completely inexpressible in words, but for the metaphor of using "sharp" to describe a flavor and mouth feel. Rhyming, also, is clearly something we experience as a similarity, as are genres of music and other art forms. We sometimes relate things that can't be concisely described by using metaphors or analogies (e.g., coffee smells a little like how chocolate tastes). The point here is that the key to understanding this, and to how group alike things (experiences? sensations? concepts? relationships? interactions?) together is in understanding the complexity of determining what constitutes likeness or similarity.

    There is even a meta-level to this. Strategies for determining how like things are grouped together can, themselves, be grouped based on their (often hard to fully grasp) similarities and differences. In this first-order grouping, the concept of "similar" itself, can be grouped with other, "similar" concepts, such as: tangential, related, class, phylum, division, etc.

    Less obvious might be contextual opposite, in which pairs such as: prince-pauper, prince-tyrant, prince-princess, and, to make the point, cynicism-optimism are all similar relationships in that they are logical opposites. Interestingly, cynicism-optimism can also be grouped with similar things where both assume a given outcome before having evidence to support it (in this case, one assumes a positive outcome, and one assumes a negative outcome). That can also be grouped into a set of "things that are opposites that are also the same." Not sure if this meta-layering ever reaches a terminal (top-most order) state, but it seems like the brain's incessant and unyielding drive to find each next-level state may have something to do with consciousness.


  • Determining Difference — The ability to perceive differences between things and situations.

    A ping-pong ball and the moon are both spheres. That's one way in which they are similar. The differences between them include size, location, and even purpose, as well as many subtle differences. That we are able to discern, say, the difference between a sardonic smile and a sarcastic smile is a testament to the power of a system that is able to adapt it's future responses based on current experiences. Like the ability to perceive sameness, the ability to perceive difference includes some very subtle and nuanced underlying connotations. The hard problem here, is in determining just what it is that constitutes a "difference." What is it about the sardonic smile that makes it different from the sarcastic smile. What makes an open, unassuming smile different from these two types of smiles. In this context, what is meant by type? It is, perhaps, a dichotomy that discernment is an underlying mechanism in both determining similarity, and determining difference.


  • Adapting — The process of Learning

    Inter-adaptation. That is, not simply responding in a preprogrammed way to a given stimulation (interacting), but altering future responses to the same (or similar) stimulation. The changes in future responses are based on, and generated here by dissonance detected in current experience/stimulus or by similarities and difference determined/detected, in part, by the above discussed functionality. Future, in this case, may be measured in fractions of a second, to years, or even centuries.

    Inter-adaptation of this nature occurs, and is observable —obviously— between humans and other animals, but there is also very strong evidence that this inter-adaptation occurs, even at a sub-atomic level. The double-slit experiment seems to demonstrate inter-adaptation, even between high-level animals such as human observers, and sub-atomic particles. Though in the world of thought-experiments, perhaps not cats.

    Dissonance — randomness, confusion, chaos, fast oscillation, lack of balance, inconsistency (can you see the similarity?) seem to be triggering factors in adaptation as well as in determining similarities and differences (i.e., determining ways in which things can be considered similar or different to each other and to things in our experience). When there is dissonance, there seems (at all levels) to be a need to make things more balanced, to make the sensory information being experienced more consistent, less confusing, more explainable in light of previous experiences. Offhandedly, there is a desire to make the experienced sensory input make sense.






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Sources & Resources


Also: Phenomenal Consciousness     Anoesis    

 
 


































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