my consciousness was elevated from commonplace matter — Dogbert

Most people generally don't believe 'commonplace matter' is conscious of itself. It responds to other matter, like any other matter does. But I would wait just a minute before we go around making friends with the magnets on our refrigerator and pondering what rights they should or should not have.

There is a point at which someone must consider if their luck can be more rationally explained by something other than coincidence, and I think becoming human far exceeds it. — Dogbert

I'm happy you consider yourself living a fortunate, privileged life. However, one nitpick. If that's alright. Isn't your argument better phrased as "what are the odds of human life developing from non-life" or perhaps something along the lines of how Earth seems to be perfectly suited for life and such seems to be something of a rarity as far as the known observable universe is concerned? :chin:

A lot seems to hinge on what is "you". I'm not sure I could have been anybody else. For instance, I think I only came into existence somewhere during a certain biological organisms fetal period. Or if I'm essentially a particular organism of the species Homo sapiens, as some say, then I couldn't have been a shark. Who we are might be highly contingent, yet, could not have been different without changing identity. If something like this is true, it is not really luck that I exist as a Homo sapiens at a particular time.

Still, there being conscious beings that can reflect on the world is a genuinely puzzling thing. I'm not what best makes sense of it. I'm quite skeptical that I will ever find an answer that satisfies me.

I've tried to "solve" this problem, and the idea I've come up with is that each stream of consciousness perceives the world branch in which they reach a "highest" state of being. — Dogbert

Sounds interesting and to concern things I know very little about. Could you expand on this point?

Most people generally don't believe 'commonplace matter' is conscious of itself. It responds to other matter, like any other matter does. But I would wait just a minute before we go around making friends with the magnets on our refrigerator and pondering what rights they should or should not have.

Learn the difference between contemporary panpsychism and animism.

I'm happy you consider yourself living a fortunate, privileged life. However, one nitpick. If that's alright. Isn't your argument better phrased as "what are the odds of human life developing from non-life" or perhaps something along the lines of how Earth seems to be perfectly suited for life and such seems to be something of a rarity as far as the known observable universe is concerned? :chin:

By privileged I simply mean that I exist as a human being, rather than a shrimp or a spec of dust.

Your first rephrasing simply asks how common it is for complex life to develop in our universe, and your second rephrasing isn't even a question. These are unrelated to my question.

Likelihood, in its usual sense, is the probability of something being the case given a theory of how things work. So, for instance, the likelihood of a winning bet on a coin flip, given the assumption that the coin has equal chances of landing heads or tails, is 1/2. This part after "given..." is key here, as you rightly intuit in your first paragraph. There is no free lunch here, no stone soup: whatever you assume at the outset will determine your answer.

So, it is crucial to critically examine your assumptions. What exactly are you assuming? What does it mean for your consciousness to be "elevated from commonplace matter into sapience"?

If you make very general assumptions about the world, or even no assumptions at all - just that something exists - then it is hard to assign any likelihood to any particular event. The best you can do is to try to avoid bias by making it even odds for anything that can happen under these assumptions, and that of course will give you a likelihood of any particular outcome as "practically zero." But that's no revelation - it is just a straightforward consequence of your ignorance. And besides, the conclusion holds for anything, not just the one question that you are asking here.

Sounds interesting and to concern things I know very little about. Could you expand on this point?

As a panpsychist, I believe that existence comprises "streams of consciousness". For instance, my nervous system is one stream, and so is yours. On the other end of the spectrum, a lone atom would be a stream as well, albeit with vastly simpler experiential complexity.

I exist as a human because my stream of consciousness was elevated from commonplace matter into sapience (I became a fetus and then a baby and then a man). For a given stream, this is an extraordinarily unlikely event, given the low percentage of intelligent matter in our universe.

I can either believe I'm super duper lucky, or I can come up with a theory that renders my humanity ordinary, unprivileged, or otherwise expected. To do this, I'm basically invoking the multiverse, and saying that each stream of consciousness subjectively perceives the timeline in which they reach some highest state of being, hence why I find myself as a human despite their rarity.

Trying to define the highest state of being is a whole other can of worms. I can give you my thoughts if you want.

I'm a panpsychist, so I think that everything possesses some degree of experience. When I say that my consciousness was elevated from commonplace matter into sapience, I literally mean that.

Sapient life is incredibly rare, so naturally, me becoming human is an unlikely event. It is true that all events are unlikely (in the sense of my holding water example), but this particular event holds extreme existential significance. It's a value judgement really. At what point do you ask whether your luck is something other than coincidence?

Why do you think that you, a human, could have become something else? Do you think that you existed before you became a human, and that the Universe or someone or something made you a human instead of, e.g, a bunny?

I'm a panpsychist, so I think that everything possesses some degree of experience. When I say that my consciousness was elevated from commonplace matter into sapience, I literally mean that. — Dogbert

OK, but I don't see how this follows:

Sapient life is incredibly rare, so naturally, me becoming human is an unlikely event. — Dogbert

What do you mean by "me becoming human"? Before you were born, was there Dogbert protoconsciousness inhabiting non-Dogbert matter? And then somehow it was transferred into your Dogbert body? I don't think panpsychists conceive of personal identity like that - this smacks more of theological dualism (but I am by no means an expert). Even still, there is not enough to go on here to conclude anything about likelihood. We haven't been told anything about how or why this embodiment occurs.

Given that you are holding a glass, is it an amazing coincidence that the glass is filled with water and not, say, burning lava? As I said before, the key to any likelihood question is what we take as given, and the answer will be nothing more than what you have already assumed.

Panpsychists believe that existence comprises discrete streams of consciousness. These streams are usually very basic, like a hydrogen ion, but occasionally they merge into something larger, like a nervous system. I existed, experientially, as commonplace matter, and then turned into a human being. I am like a wave moving across the water, slowly changing form and exchanging molecules yet retaining my identity.

All I'm trying to point out is the amazing coincidence that I was the matter that gained sapience, considering intelligent life makes up an infinitesimal fraction of matter in the universe. This intuition is so clearly formed in my mind that l struggle to see how I'm alone in thinking this.

Being human is an essential property of you. There aren't any possible worlds in which you're something else, so you had a 100% chance of being human.

There are possible worlds where my stream of consciousness remained at the level of commonplace matter. In fact, there are possible worlds where Earth didn't even form at all. I don't know what you're on about.

There are possible worlds where my stream of consciousness remained at the level of commonplace matter. — Dogbert

What unique properties do you have such that it makes sense to distinguish you from the rest of the universe? In other words, what makes it your stream of consciousness?

Streams are discrete, meaning that they aren't all experiencing one another at the same time. They have a subjective point of view, hence they have an identity. At one point I was an atom, experiencing the world as an atom, and then I was merged with other atoms to form a nervous system.

Streams are discrete, meaning that they aren't all experiencing one another at the same time. They have a subjective point of view, hence they have an identity. At one point I was an atom, experiencing the world as an atom, and then I was merged with other atoms to form a nervous system. — Dogbert

This is a non-answer. Once again, the question, and your lucky this is even being remotely humored, is as follows:

What unique properties do you have such that it makes sense to distinguish you from the rest of the universe? In other words, what makes it your stream of consciousness? — frank

If you don't know something just say you don't know it. Honesty is the only option at this point to save face.

Streams are discrete, meaning that they aren't all experiencing one another at the same time. They have a subjective point of view, hence they have an identity. At one point I was an atom, experiencing the world as an atom, and then I was merged with other atoms to form a nervous system. — Dogbert

Sounds like you have boundary issues. :smile:

If you think about all the ways in which the universe could have unfolded, the percentage of those timelines in which my consciousness was elevated from commonplace matter into sapience is practically zero. — Dogbert

How do you know this is true? It doesn’t seem obvious to me at all. That doesn’t mean I think you’re wrong, just that it seems like an unsupported statement.

Assuming you "became a human" in the normal way, then the chances that you wouldn't be a human are "vanishing small."

Why not just say that, based on the evidence we have, humans are rare?

The randomness introduced by quantum mechanical processes means that the Earth itself didn't even form in the vast majority of hypothetical timelines, nevermind all the variables and choices that led to my specific birth, or the coincidence that I was among the matter that formed a rare habitable planet in the first place.

The randomness introduced by quantum mechanical processes means that the Earth itself didn't even form in the vast majority of hypothetical timelines, nevermind all the variables and choices that led to my specific birth, or the coincidence that I was among the matter that formed a rare habitable planet in the first place. — Dogbert

Quantum mechanics doesn’t have anything to do with it. It also doesn’t matter whether or not there is an Earth. There are possibly sextillions of other planets in the known universe. It strikes me, with no specific evidence, life might be very common.

Even if every planet in the universe harbored intelligent life, the percentage of matter in the universe which was sapient would still be effectively zero percent. Think about the mass of animals compared to the total mass of the earth. Think of suns, moons, gas clouds, and black holes.

If I understand you, @Dogbert, you're saying something like:

Because the universe is composed of an enormous amount of matter that all have "streams of consciousness", it is a miracle that a particular stream of consciousness is currently intelligently reflecting on the question and that that particular stream is you. And to explain why this is not miraculous luck, you are proposing that one only has something like subjective awareness during the time and in the world in which one reaches a "highest state of being".

Correct me if I've misunderstood.

My idea of the multiverse stems from pop-culture rather than quantum physics, so I have very little to say on that front. However, there is a possibly strange implication. I find it easy to imagine that there are many very similar worlds in which a stream of consciousness could reach this higher state of being. For example, there could be a world in which you had light mode rather than dark mode active on your browser. Does this not imply that a particular stream of consciousness can be several split streams: one subjectively perceiving dark mode and one light mode? Is it really subjective perspective and 'you' if it identifies a multitude of beings with differing experiences, bodies and location in a branching multiverse?

Perhaps you could explain what you mean by "higher state of being", as you suggested, if that helps clarify what you mean. Is there some filter that prevents there from being a plurality of worlds in which this "highest state of being" is achieved?

Still, I'm skeptical, even if one grants your flavor of panpsychism as true about reality, that 'you' and 'me' identify these streams of consciousness. I'm for instance not sure there even was a 'you' or 'me' before a subjective perspective, even if these underlying streams of consciousness exist at the level of matter. If that is correct, the odds of you being something else becomes incoherent. 'You' could not have remained an atom, because 'you' never were one.

That is, if 'you' only come into existence when a subjective perspective is present, then the probability of 'you' having a subjective perspective isn't a matter of miraculous luck. Instead, having a subjective perspective is a necessary condition for 'your' existence in the first place.

I suppose the underlying question I'm pressing is why believe that 'you' and 'me' could have been atoms?

I imagine myself like a wave moving across the water. Over time I may change shape or exchange molecules, yet I retain my identity. I started out as a small ripple (an atom) that merged with other ripples to form a big wave (a nervous system). Since that doesn't happen to the vast majority of ripples, I consider myself lucky. However, the luck is so insane that it would make more sense to explain it as something other than coincidence. For example, if you won the lottery 10 times in a row, you probably arent lucky, somethings up. My theory is that each ripple subjectively perceives a timeline (world branch) in which they reach a "highest" state of being, as that would explain why I find myself as a human despite the overwhelming odds. The idea of timelines comes from the MWI, which is a real and respected theory in physics. They don't explicitly say whether or not the timeline you're perceiving right now is random, but my idea is that it isnt, and your very humanity is evidence of that.

As far as what is meant by the highest state of being, that is a much more complicated question. It requires a holistic approach to the entire problem--more metaphysical assumptions, ethics, etc. If you want I can share with you what I think that is.

Likelihood, in its usual sense, is the probability of something being the case given a theory of how things work. So, for instance, the likelihood of a winning bet on a coin flip, given the assumption that the coin has equal chances of landing heads or tails, is 1/2. This part after "given..." is key here, as you rightly intuit in your first paragraph. There is no free lunch here, no stone soup: whatever you assume at the outset will determine your answer. — SophistiCat

As I said before, the key to any likelihood question is what we take as given, and the answer will be nothing more than what you have already assumed. — SophistiCat

I'd like to know more about this.

I used to be involved with Buddhism. One of the important points there is that human life is rare and hard to attain, a standard scriptural reference is this:

"Monks, suppose that this great earth were totally covered with water, and a man were to toss a yoke with a single hole there. A wind from the east would push it west, a wind from the west would push it east. A wind from the north would push it south, a wind from the south would push it north. And suppose a blind sea-turtle were there. It would come to the surface once every one hundred years. Now what do you think: would that blind sea-turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole?"

"It would be a sheer coincidence, lord, that the blind sea-turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, would stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole."

"It's likewise a sheer coincidence that one obtains the human state.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.048.than.html

This has always irked me, but I've never been able to put my finger on it somehow. What is the given in this case? What is being assumed here, in this notion that human life is rare and hard to attain?