Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

   Post 104.  October 28, 2019 continued . . .

  The Feeling of Consciousness

   The Experience of Social Life  

 An even more comprehensive question is whether Consciousness is everywhere, as in the ancient notion of Panpsychism. Most scientists tend to be dubious of the idea that “some level of experience can be found in all organisms” But, some philosophers, such as A. N. Whitehead, have reasoned that fundamental experience is universal, even in inorganic matter. Although Hoffman is a scientist, who was trained to avoid such far-out speculations, he has been convinced by Integrated Information Theory that something like Panpsychism is a reasonable conclusion. “Intrinsic causal power does away with the challenge of how mind emerges from matter. IIT stipulates that it is there all along”.  And he even admits to cautiously crossing over from the Materialism and Physicalism of Science into the forbidden territory of Idealism and Mentalism. But, he stops short of taking Panpsychism literally. That’s probably for the same reason I avoid the misleading anthro-morphic terms “consciousness” and “experience”, in favor of non-specific generic “information”, to describe the fundamental elements of the world.    

Although Hoffman thinks that IIT “shares many insights with panpsychism”, he has concluded that it “has an Achilles heel — the combination problem, a problem that IIT has squarely solved.”  The weak point of universal mind theories is that “experiences do not aggregate into larger superordinate experiences”. As philosopher John Searle opined, “there has to be a point where my consciousness ends and yours begins”. That’s obvious from the fact that, despite fantasies of mind-reading, I can’t directly experience your experiences. The “secret sauce” of IIT is holism, which means that Conscious-ness is not the arithmetic sum of neuronal experiences, but the algebraic integration (inter-connection) of them. That distinction is denoted in the Exclusion principle of IIT : the isolation of holons6. “Two or more Wholes can fuse to give rise to a larger Whole, but at the cost of losing their previous identity”. Nevertheless, Hoffman thinks that the universe “is far more enminded than modernity, blinded by its technological supremacy over the natural world, takes it to be”.

In his concluding chapter, Hoffman discusses why this enminded worldview is important. For him, that’s primarily due to ethical considerations. Specifically, he thinks “we must abandon the idea that humans are the center of the ethical universe”. I agree with that sentiment, up to a point. But still, humans are, for all practical purposes, the only moral agents in the world. Dolphins and Elephants and Ravens are clearly intelligent creatures, but for the same reason he denies Consciousness to computers and robots, I must deny moral agency to non-human animals7. Until they can engage in ethical dialog, we humans will still have to speak for them on moral matters. Since we can’t share our ethical abstractions with animals via language, we are limited to communicating emotionally via actions. Which leaves a lot of room for misunderstanding. Philosophers have spilled a lot of ink on ethical topics for millennia, but they still can’t agree life or death questions, such as whether Vegetarianism is a moral necessity for humans.                                

                                End of Post 104

EnFormAction = Intrinsic Causal Power
   Koch makes one especially controversial assertion as a necessary implication of Integrated Information Theory. He says that Information is not just dumb data, but it has the power to cause change in the real world.    Mathematically, that power is measured in terms of Phi (ɸ) values.
“If something has no causal power, its ɸ is zero; it does not feel anything”  Moreover, “intrinsic causal power is not some airy-fairy ethereal notion, but can be precisely evaluated for any system. The more its current state specifies its cause (its input) and its effect (its output), the more causal power it has.”
   In the Enformationism thesis that causal power is referred to as “En-Form-Action”. It causes both physical things and metaphysical ideas.

Christoph Koch, Scientific American 12/2019

6. Holon :
   A holon  is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part. The word was used by Arthur Koestler in his book The Ghost in the Machine

7. Animal Ethics :
   Ethical Vegetarians seem to view all conscious creatures as moral agents worthy of the same respect we show to humans. But the animals don’t always reciprocate in their respect for life, or for consciousness.
   For example, even highly intelligent dolphins shed no tears over the fish they eagerly consume. And wild orcas will sometimes kill and eat their bottlenose cousins. So abstract ethical considerations and universal moral values seem to be limited to the descendants of Adam & Eve.

The Feeling of
Life Itself

Why Consciousness Is Widespread but Can’t Be Computed

Christof Koch

Neuro-scientist

“Conscousness is the experience of living”

Panpsychism
versus
Enformationism