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> Because I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone call a virus conscious Panpsychism posits that all matter is conscious, and perhaps consciousness is more funda

> Because I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone call a virus conscious Panpsychism posits that all matter is conscious, and perhaps consciousness is more fundamental than matter. I don't find it particularly persuasive, but it's a real philosophical position: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
Panpsychist here, much of the time at least. It sort of sneaked up on me. It was initially a physics inquiry. I was playing with the idea that there is not "the" arrow of time, but instead "my" arrow of time, something arising from my biochemistry maybe. Under this lens, the obvious candidates for consciousness are the ones whose arrows of time are all pointing in the same direction--because I can communicate with them (this is why most humans believe that humans are conscious). The things that seem not to be conscious: lightning strikes, rocks, etc. these may just be the machinations of someone whose arrow of time is orthogonal to my own. Their future is my... left, or whatever (btw if you think this is a fun concept, you might enjoy the book "A Clockwork Rocket," which is about time and space, not consciousness). I have no evidence that these things in fact are conscious, but I also have no evidence that they are not. But it's not just academic, I'll behave differently depending on how I chose: - On the one hand you've got kooky behavior like listening to a waterfall and wondering what it's thinking. - On the other hand you've got this loneliness and the idea that it can be solved with rocket ships or telescopes and the possibility that you'll overlook life right under your nose because you're too busy looking for something that looks like yourself. Me? I'll take the waterfall.
- DEADMINCE 3y ago
  > I was playing with the idea that there is not "the" arrow of time, but instead "my" arrow of time, something arising from my biochemistry maybe. > Under this lens, the obvious candidates for consciousness are the ones whose arrows of time are all pointing in the same direction--because I can communicate with them (this is why most humans believe that humans are conscious). None of this follows for me. If a being has its own arrow of time surely it would be based on decisions it would make, and conscious beings would not all have their time arrows pointed in the same direction simply because they were conscious.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    Sorry, what I mean is that if you and some other being happen to have parallel time arrows, then it's possible that you'll recognize them as conscious. They might have similar thermodynamic properties to yourself, for instance. If you prod at them, they squeal afterwards. That sort of thing. If you encounter one with an orthogonal time arrow, you're not going to be able to communicate with them. You're not going to have evidence that can identify them as separate from any other phenomena. This unknowability turns it into a choice, not a deduction. From there you've got to decide whether you'd rather assume something is conscious when it's not, or whether you'd rather assume something's not when it is. I find the latter more troubling.
    - Vecr 3y ago
      That's not what an arrow of time is, are you sure you're not thinking more about counterfactuals?
      - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
        I only took one semester of thermodynamics, but I think what I'm after is indeed an arrow of time. I experience reality in such a way that certain processes are irreversible. Eggs do not uncook, they only cook, that sort of thing. That's my arrow of time. Conventional physics calls it "the" arrow of time. Much like how we used to call Earth "the" center of the universe. It feels like the kind of thing that we've gotten wrong before. Like maybe it says more about us than it says about eggs. Could there be a process that is heading the opposite direction? A perspective for which eggs uncooking is the normal state of affairs? Who am I to shut the door on a possibility like that? It's the kind of thought experiment that leads to theory creation: What if all events, and not just the small ones of particle physics, are symmetry-preserving? What might we have to change about our concept of energy to make that fit?
        Vecr 3y ago
        I really don't think so, getting the arrow of time to go a different way requires more than entropy locally decreasing, despite various popular descriptions. In most current theories of cosmology it should only go one way. Obviously there's general and special relativity, but they still have time going in the same direction, just at "different speeds", if you want to call it that. Edit: remember, we don't live in "The Clockwork Rocket", our GR uses the Lorentzian manifold, not a Riemannian manifold.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago

Panpsychist here, much of the time at least. It sort of sneaked up on me. It was initially a physics inquiry. I was playing with the idea that there is not "the" arrow of time, but instead "my" arrow of time, something arising from my biochemistry maybe. Under this lens, the obvious candidates for consciousness are the ones whose arrows of time are all pointing in the same direction--because I can communicate with them (this is why most humans believe that humans are conscious). The things that seem not to be conscious: lightning strikes, rocks, etc. these may just be the machinations of someone whose arrow of time is orthogonal to my own. Their future is my... left, or whatever (btw if you think this is a fun concept, you might enjoy the book "A Clockwork Rocket," which is about time and space, not consciousness). I have no evidence that these things in fact are conscious, but I also have no evidence that they are not. But it's not just academic, I'll behave differently depending on how I chose: - On the one hand you've got kooky behavior like listening to a waterfall and wondering what it's thinking. - On the other hand you've got this loneliness and the idea that it can be solved with rocket ships or telescopes and the possibility that you'll overlook life right under your nose because you're too busy looking for something that looks like yourself. Me? I'll take the waterfall.

DEADMINCE 3y ago
> I was playing with the idea that there is not "the" arrow of time, but instead "my" arrow of time, something arising from my biochemistry maybe. > Under this lens, the obvious candidates for consciousness are the ones whose arrows of time are all pointing in the same direction--because I can communicate with them (this is why most humans believe that humans are conscious). None of this follows for me. If a being has its own arrow of time surely it would be based on decisions it would make, and conscious beings would not all have their time arrows pointed in the same direction simply because they were conscious.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  Sorry, what I mean is that if you and some other being happen to have parallel time arrows, then it's possible that you'll recognize them as conscious. They might have similar thermodynamic properties to yourself, for instance. If you prod at them, they squeal afterwards. That sort of thing. If you encounter one with an orthogonal time arrow, you're not going to be able to communicate with them. You're not going to have evidence that can identify them as separate from any other phenomena. This unknowability turns it into a choice, not a deduction. From there you've got to decide whether you'd rather assume something is conscious when it's not, or whether you'd rather assume something's not when it is. I find the latter more troubling.
  - Vecr 3y ago
    That's not what an arrow of time is, are you sure you're not thinking more about counterfactuals?
    - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
      I only took one semester of thermodynamics, but I think what I'm after is indeed an arrow of time. I experience reality in such a way that certain processes are irreversible. Eggs do not uncook, they only cook, that sort of thing. That's my arrow of time. Conventional physics calls it "the" arrow of time. Much like how we used to call Earth "the" center of the universe. It feels like the kind of thing that we've gotten wrong before. Like maybe it says more about us than it says about eggs. Could there be a process that is heading the opposite direction? A perspective for which eggs uncooking is the normal state of affairs? Who am I to shut the door on a possibility like that? It's the kind of thought experiment that leads to theory creation: What if all events, and not just the small ones of particle physics, are symmetry-preserving? What might we have to change about our concept of energy to make that fit?
      - Vecr 3y ago
        I really don't think so, getting the arrow of time to go a different way requires more than entropy locally decreasing, despite various popular descriptions. In most current theories of cosmology it should only go one way. Obviously there's general and special relativity, but they still have time going in the same direction, just at "different speeds", if you want to call it that. Edit: remember, we don't live in "The Clockwork Rocket", our GR uses the Lorentzian manifold, not a Riemannian manifold.