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I totally agree with consciousness being an emergent property. But can a bigger system have consciousness when individual parts of it are already conscious? I
by Faark 7y ago
I totally agree with consciousness being an emergent property.
But can a bigger system have consciousness when individual parts of it are already conscious? I don't see why this should necessary follow. I'm sure there are somewhat similar and interesting emergent properties, but we'd probably call it something different. Probably closer to the kind of group identities we already have with lots of humans interacting. Though obviously we'll know what it feels like, just like none of my neurons will ever feel like i do.
- plutonorm 7y agoI think a better way of putting panpsychism is to say: what you are doing with your science is describing how consciousness behaves. So when you describe a simple system with maths, you are describing the consciousness of that simple system. Describe a complex system with mathematics and you are describing the consciousness of a complex system. You don't need to describe the transition from simple consciousness to complex consciousness with anything other than mathematics because mathematics already describes the transition that arises from the composition of simple objects. What it feels like to be a simple object vs a complex object is outside of the scope of science.