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> Conscious awareness appears to be a fundamental aspect of the universe -- as fundamental as the four known fundamental forces -- and physics is concerned with

> Conscious awareness appears to be a fundamental aspect of the universe -- as fundamental as the four known fundamental forces -- and physics is concerned with describing the laws of the universe. Why do you believe this to be true? If it's a self-evident observation, try explaining it to me like I'm 5.

crazygringo 3y ago
Sure, ELI5: the only things we actually know are from our conscious experience. Everything else we have to logically infer from those conscious experiences. Literally everything is built upon our conscious awareness. We have direct experience of our conscious awareness before we can even do physics to determine the four fundamental forces at all. To clarify, consciousness isn't just a fundamental aspect of the universe -- for our human minds, it's the most fundamental aspect. If you want to take this to an extreme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism
- some_furry 3y ago
  That's an interesting philosophy, but I don't see how consciousness is implied by the standard model or the current investigations into physics beyond the standard model.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    It isn't. It still has to be integrated with it, that's the whole point. We don't know how gravity is implied by the standard model either, but we still know it's there. The point is that, at the end of the day, it's still necessarily going to be physics.
    - some_furry 3y ago
      I'm not a philosopher. I did study physics in college. I do not see it necessary for consciousness to be as fundamental as electroweak interactions and so on. In my mind, it's perfectly possible for consciousness to be an emergent property of a complex system that itself is not conscious in any meaningful way. Look at other examples of this; i.e. tensegrity. To conclude that consciousness is as fundamental as bosons or gravity needs a lot of evidence. Since you said so definitively that you believe that conclusion is true, I was hoping you had specific evidence on hand.
      - mindok 3y ago
        How can you conceive of bosons or gravity without consciousness? How can you possibly prove objective reality through the filter of subjective consciousness?
        some_furry 3y ago
        It doesn't matter how I conceive of anything. They existed for billions of years before I came around. Even if, like, I take a solipsistic approach to life, objective reality has a sort of object permanence to it that's more stable than e.g. my dreams. So even if everything is a hallucination, the mechanism for preserving the information is the closest to "real" I can identify. And from studying the things we call real, we understand physics. And from physics, I see nowhere that necessitates consciousness at a super low level. Care to cite and explain the specific mechanisms that I'm not aware of that do necessitate it?
        2snakes 3y ago
        Just consider that everything you come in contact with, including the assertion of the sense-data that led you to the conclusion of "billions of years", is contaminated by the fact that is utterly impossible to disprove consciousness. Everything else that comes in through the senses can be doubted, but consciousness is the only thing you are in direct contact with. But I agree partially with you that there may be a form of consciousness that is more primary than our subjective consciousness (I think we agree that reality is a "real" logical system, probably infinite, and possibly intelligent itself). But we have a relationship with reality, in fact we may be a kind of accelerated rotation of it with reincarnative compartmentalization. I've only read the first couple of chapters, yet, but this book lay out the philosophical problems with physicalism: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CGNXWTBN https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CGNXWTBN
        tsimionescu 3y ago
        > Everything else that comes in through the senses can be doubted, but consciousness is the only thing you are in direct contact with. Every functioning human learns relatively early in life that certain experiences they have are simply fake - dreams, at the very least. Many people who suffer from hallucinations can also learn to trust that their own internal experiences are less valid than what others tell them is true. Just as much, we may one day come to learn that our internal experience of consciousness is an illusion and that reality is we are all p-zombies. Of course, a physical theory of consciousness has to explain why and how we have this false subjective experience, but it's certainly conceivable that this might happen one day.
- fatfingerd 3y ago
  You've just demonstrated the anthropic principle. Intelligent contemplation requires a lot of things so we will see them and can see them as fundamental, but they might be obscure in the universe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    No, you are misunderstanding the anthropic principle. That merely explains statistical things such as why it might be hard to find intelligent life elsewhere. The anthropic principle is a concept we've created out of our conscious observation of the universe. But take away our consciousness and you take away any and all of our knowledge of any universe whatsoever. Consciousness cannot be "obscure" when it is the basis for one's own experienced reality, the substrata underlying everything else. Consciousness experience is fact; our conceptual understanding of the universe is mere theory. Well-tested theory, but theory nonetheless.
    - fatfingerd 3y ago
      > Consciousness cannot be "obscure" when it is the basis for one's own experienced reality, the substrata underlying everything else. That you can do any of this has consciousness as a precondition, it is of significance to us but we are most likely a statistical anomaly in the Universe. It is statistically probable that we have this rather fragile viewpoint on the Universe, that's only available in small places for short times, because consciousness has preconditions. For people who work in or consume TV and film maybe the video camera seems fundamental to the nature of the world, but it wasn't very important before it was created.
amelius 3y ago
Not the parent commenter, but perhaps this helps: 1. Some people believe that conscious awareness exists on top of physics. I.e., something happens and conscious awareness notes that it happens. Here there is a flow of information going from physics to (our) conscious awareness. But not necessarily in the other direction. 2. The above (1) is not likely to be the true. We discuss conscious awareness in this physical world. Hence physics "knows" that conscious awareness exists, and thus there is at least also a flow of information in the other direction. One might go further, and start questioning whether it is physics that does not really exist, and only our conscious awareness exists ...
- some_furry 3y ago
  What about physics implies consciousness? I've often heard some hand-wavy remarks about quantum physics, but they're largely unconvincing. For example, a wavefunction will collapse because we use e.g. photons to measure a particle as it enters one of two slits. It's the act of measurement, not the introduction of a conscious mind, that causes the collapse. So that doesn't track.
jemmyw 3y ago
Funny because the whole argument does work better if you imagine the proponents are 5. "I'm special therefore the universe must care about me and my thoughts"

crazygringo 3y ago

Sure, ELI5: the only things we actually know are from our conscious experience. Everything else we have to logically infer from those conscious experiences. Literally everything is built upon our conscious awareness. We have direct experience of our conscious awareness before we can even do physics to determine the four fundamental forces at all. To clarify, consciousness isn't just a fundamental aspect of the universe -- for our human minds, it's the most fundamental aspect. If you want to take this to an extreme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism

some_furry 3y ago
That's an interesting philosophy, but I don't see how consciousness is implied by the standard model or the current investigations into physics beyond the standard model.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  It isn't. It still has to be integrated with it, that's the whole point. We don't know how gravity is implied by the standard model either, but we still know it's there. The point is that, at the end of the day, it's still necessarily going to be physics.
  - some_furry 3y ago
    I'm not a philosopher. I did study physics in college. I do not see it necessary for consciousness to be as fundamental as electroweak interactions and so on. In my mind, it's perfectly possible for consciousness to be an emergent property of a complex system that itself is not conscious in any meaningful way. Look at other examples of this; i.e. tensegrity. To conclude that consciousness is as fundamental as bosons or gravity needs a lot of evidence. Since you said so definitively that you believe that conclusion is true, I was hoping you had specific evidence on hand.
    - mindok 3y ago
      How can you conceive of bosons or gravity without consciousness? How can you possibly prove objective reality through the filter of subjective consciousness?
      - some_furry 3y ago
        It doesn't matter how I conceive of anything. They existed for billions of years before I came around. Even if, like, I take a solipsistic approach to life, objective reality has a sort of object permanence to it that's more stable than e.g. my dreams. So even if everything is a hallucination, the mechanism for preserving the information is the closest to "real" I can identify. And from studying the things we call real, we understand physics. And from physics, I see nowhere that necessitates consciousness at a super low level. Care to cite and explain the specific mechanisms that I'm not aware of that do necessitate it?
        2snakes 3y ago
        Just consider that everything you come in contact with, including the assertion of the sense-data that led you to the conclusion of "billions of years", is contaminated by the fact that is utterly impossible to disprove consciousness. Everything else that comes in through the senses can be doubted, but consciousness is the only thing you are in direct contact with. But I agree partially with you that there may be a form of consciousness that is more primary than our subjective consciousness (I think we agree that reality is a "real" logical system, probably infinite, and possibly intelligent itself). But we have a relationship with reality, in fact we may be a kind of accelerated rotation of it with reincarnative compartmentalization. I've only read the first couple of chapters, yet, but this book lay out the philosophical problems with physicalism: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CGNXWTBN https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CGNXWTBN
        tsimionescu 3y ago
        > Everything else that comes in through the senses can be doubted, but consciousness is the only thing you are in direct contact with. Every functioning human learns relatively early in life that certain experiences they have are simply fake - dreams, at the very least. Many people who suffer from hallucinations can also learn to trust that their own internal experiences are less valid than what others tell them is true. Just as much, we may one day come to learn that our internal experience of consciousness is an illusion and that reality is we are all p-zombies. Of course, a physical theory of consciousness has to explain why and how we have this false subjective experience, but it's certainly conceivable that this might happen one day.
fatfingerd 3y ago
You've just demonstrated the anthropic principle. Intelligent contemplation requires a lot of things so we will see them and can see them as fundamental, but they might be obscure in the universe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
- crazygringo 3y ago
  No, you are misunderstanding the anthropic principle. That merely explains statistical things such as why it might be hard to find intelligent life elsewhere. The anthropic principle is a concept we've created out of our conscious observation of the universe. But take away our consciousness and you take away any and all of our knowledge of any universe whatsoever. Consciousness cannot be "obscure" when it is the basis for one's own experienced reality, the substrata underlying everything else. Consciousness experience is fact; our conceptual understanding of the universe is mere theory. Well-tested theory, but theory nonetheless.
  - fatfingerd 3y ago
    > Consciousness cannot be "obscure" when it is the basis for one's own experienced reality, the substrata underlying everything else. That you can do any of this has consciousness as a precondition, it is of significance to us but we are most likely a statistical anomaly in the Universe. It is statistically probable that we have this rather fragile viewpoint on the Universe, that's only available in small places for short times, because consciousness has preconditions. For people who work in or consume TV and film maybe the video camera seems fundamental to the nature of the world, but it wasn't very important before it was created.

amelius 3y ago

Not the parent commenter, but perhaps this helps: 1. Some people believe that conscious awareness exists on top of physics. I.e., something happens and conscious awareness notes that it happens. Here there is a flow of information going from physics to (our) conscious awareness. But not necessarily in the other direction. 2. The above (1) is not likely to be the true. We discuss conscious awareness in this physical world. Hence physics "knows" that conscious awareness exists, and thus there is at least also a flow of information in the other direction. One might go further, and start questioning whether it is physics that does not really exist, and only our conscious awareness exists ...

some_furry 3y ago
What about physics implies consciousness? I've often heard some hand-wavy remarks about quantum physics, but they're largely unconvincing. For example, a wavefunction will collapse because we use e.g. photons to measure a particle as it enters one of two slits. It's the act of measurement, not the introduction of a conscious mind, that causes the collapse. So that doesn't track.

jemmyw 3y ago

Funny because the whole argument does work better if you imagine the proponents are 5. "I'm special therefore the universe must care about me and my thoughts"