Quantum size, Quantum rules

Although I consider mind and experience to be ubiquitous in nature. I consider consciousness (self aware, self reflective) to be relatively limited, a special form of mind or experience if you will. Definitions are a problem in this area.

I am a panpsychist but I have trouble with using "consciousness" that way, as the term usually means self aware self reflective in a way that liver cells probably are not. If you want to claim other cells have experience or temporal or spatial relations we might find common ground. Consciousness as the term is typically used requires a brain and is inseparable from it although I don't think neuroanatomy or neurochemistry alone can explain "experience" or conscious content.

Control of a small number of neurons the thalmus can induce wakefulness versus sleep, so where is consciousness held ?
The researchers headed by Prof. Dr. Antoine Adamantidis discovered that a small population of these thalamic neurons have a dual control over sleep and wakefulness, by generating sleep slow waves but also waking up from sleep, depending on their electrical activity. The research group used a technique called optogenetics, with which they used light pulses to precisely control the activity of thalamic neurons of mice. When they activated thalamic neurons with regular long-lasting stimuli the animals woke up, but if they activated them in a slow rhythmical manner, the mice had a deeper, more restful sleep.

This is the first time that an area of the brain has been found to have both sleep and wake promoting functions. "Interestingly, we were also able to show that suppression of thalamic neuronal activity impaired the recovery from sleep loss, suggesting that these neurons are essential for a restful sleep after extended period of being awake," says Dr. Thomas Gent, lead author of the study. This shows that the thalamus is a key player in both sleep and wake. The study has now been published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Somewhere between the midbrain and the cortex.
Start removing or damaging parts and see when consciousness disappears or alters?
(See traumatic brain injury reports)
Do you distinguish between awareness and content?

I think "violence begets violence" and "an eye for an eye, leaves the world blind" but violence does beget change sometimes as well, although directed violence against the source of oppression seems more useful than random violence.

Do you think the nonviolence of MLK Jr. and Gandhi were the reason for their success or the violence that surrounded their efforts?

Police body cameras are another useful device and often helpful to the position of the police as well. Documentation is helpful to all the involved parties.

I don't know, tough topic.
For the most part maybe we should let individuals self identify their gender identity.
Unfortunately that does not work for sports, reproduction or public communal showers.
Biologically most are anatomically male or female with the exception of hermaphrodites and other experiments of nature.
Psychologically there is a great deal of gender identity fluidity and variety.
There are circumstances where biology dictates and others where psychology should dictate.

Or maybe like Nietzsche knowledge is "beyond good and evil"

He apparently had 18 previous complaints, the exact nature of which to my knowledge have not been yet revealed but I suspect at least some were excessive force. He probably should not have been on the force. One has to question the role or duty of the other officers present as well.

Perhaps even better:https://arxiv.org/abs/0912.0808Time and Spacetime: The Crystallizing Block Universe
George F. R. Ellis, Tony Rothman
The nature of the future is completely different from the nature of the past. When quantum effects are significant, the future shows all the signs of quantum weirdness, including duality, uncertainty, and entanglement. With the passage of time, after the time-irreversible process of state-vector reduction has taken place, the past emerges, with the previous quantum uncertainty replaced by the classical certainty of definite particle identities and states. The present time is where this transition largely takes place, but the process does not take place uniformly: Evidence from delayed choice and related experiments shows that isolated patches of quantum indeterminacy remain, and that their transition from probability to certainty only takes place later. Thus, when quantum effects are significant, the picture of a classical Evolving Block Universe (`EBU') cedes place to one of a Crystallizing Block Universe (`CBU'), which reflects this quantum transition from indeterminacy to certainty, while nevertheless resembling the EBU on large enough scales.

"Riots do not develop out of thin air" "Riots are the language of the unheard" MLK Jr.
The anger and frustration are the result of decades of inequality and injustice. Riots will recur until such inequities are addressed.
"Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention" MLK Jr.

One can alter consciousness with drugs.
One can lose consciousness with injury or drugs.
One can be rendered unconscious with anesthesia.
Injury to certain anatomic regions of the brain can cause permanent and irreversible loss of consciousness.
So where does consciousness reside?
What is the link between the human brain and human consciousness?

"Poverty is the worst form of violence" Gandhi I believe

I am not a hard determinist which I why I applaud his having trouble with the concept.

If you are truly a hard determinist, I do not see what the problem would be. Whatever happens was destined (determined), fated to happen you do not really have any real control anyway so why struggle with it. The fact that you are struggling implies you do not really believe it, and I applaud you for that. Hard determinism is a useless philosophy except as an excuse for accepting any and everything that happens.

Panpsychism from a materialist perspective is absurd, unless you consider an amputated thumb to be as human as the rest of the body. I — Gregory

If you find bones in the forest you might ask if they are "human". Same for any isolated body part. No one however is claiming an amputated thumb has "consciousness" of the same order, degree, intensity, unified, self aware as that of the intact human organism (society if you will).

If it might elicit a vote from you (because you weren't a panpsychist) I might ask you whether a snail poked with a sharp stick (and hardly lacking in responses quite rightly earning our sympathy) feels consciously. — bongo fury

And this is why using "consciousness" (self knowledge, self reference, self awareness) as a synonym for "experience" creates a problem. You can read about unconscious ontology (whiteheads) or non conscious experience but no one is asserting that the experience of a flower, tree, snail is of the same degree or intensity or self knowledge as that of a human. Consciousness is a special kind of experience but without the lower orders of experience there would be no consciousness.

My vote, FWIW... where human infants acquire competence in pointing symbols (including samples) at things, so that a red thing is perceived as an example of red things. — bongo fury

What Whitehead would call perception in the mode of symbolic reference which comes after causal efficacy and immediate presentation.

Got it. People just don't like the idea of "drops" or "occassions" of experience. To them, brains are either online or offline. No brain, no online. No certain parts of the brain, no online. This raises a whole bunch of other problems, but they rather those problems than experience being primal. The main interesting point of Whitehead was the idea of "corpuscular societies" vs. "compound individuals. — schopenhauer1

When I refer to "consciousness" as unified integrated experience with self knowledge it is to this kind of "society" I refer. It takes a certain kind of organizational structure to have such forms of experience. There are many different ways to describe the concept in language, I just prefer Whitehead because of some passing familiarity with his terminology and that because he creates his own terms they do not carry all the alternative meanings of some other descriptive terms. We have trouble defining mind, psyche, experience, awareness, consciousness, etc. much less indicating how we feel they differ from each other.

In scientific terms I think "actual occasions" are best understood as space time events of duration or quantum events with relations as opposed to quantum particles with inherent properties. Traditionally in language we describe a world of independent objects with properties but that is actually not correct. We describe a wall as "solid" which it is to our bodies but to xrays, neutrons and many other entities the wall is mostly empty space, so "solid" is a relationship not a property. Those objects that appear stationary and inert are really activities (quantum events, whirling atoms, etc.)) so again those "properties" are relationships not inherent to the object alone. In fact there are no independent objects or inherent properties. All properties are relationships. All objects are becoming (repetitive events) dependent on the world in which they exist and to which they relate.

In a temporal world what is responsible for continuity?. Where does novelty and creativity and intensity of experience come from?. These are metaphysical not scientific questions. So the fundamental question is the role of mind in nature. For a panpsychist experience is ubiquitous in nature (not consciousness like we humans possess, a special kind of experience or mind) but relations to other events, to the future and novelty (creativity) and to continuity with the past.

Can you describe an act of introspection that is not accompanied by "sensations"? — Graeme M

This can get pretty far afield of the subject at hand. Are you aware of what happens to the human mind under conditions of "sensory deprivation"?
I don't think it helps to confuse panpsychism with qualia, perception, sensation or functionalism.
Consciousness is the unified integrated presentation of sense data. Perception is a process (causal efficacy, presentational immediacy and symbolic reference). Introspection (self knowledge) is more than sense data.

Basically what this is amounts to is that science must posit some kind of monistic physicalism (there should not be any "spooky" things "emerging" that is not physical itself). However, experience itself, though completely correlated with physical processes, itself cannot be explained as to how it is one and the same as the physical, other than being correlated with it. It becomes an epiphenomena of magical dualistic "foam" that is called an "illusion" that appears on the scene (which itself cannot be accounted for). This explanatory gap that is committed to "illusion" status or have its premises assumed in the consequent and becomes something of a thorny issue. The only thing the scientist can do, is keep solving the easy problems. — schopenhauer1

Science deals with the empirical, the quantitative, the measurable, the observable, the physical. Believing in science does not entail accepting the metaphysical view of mechanistic determinism or eliminative materialism. A scientist can be religious, can be a neutral monist or even a panpsychist. Doing science does not entail a strictly materialist worldview. Science tells us important things about the world but not everything.

Try imagining something. Remember an event that happened. Feel sad. Feel joy. These are things that are mental states. P-Zombies presumably don't do that but somehow act as they do. — schopenhauer1

This is the problem with “functionalism”. We can design computer programs (counselors, psychiatrists, etc.) that cannot be distinguished from conversing with a human under controlled conditions but do we think these systems are “conscious, intelligent, experiential”? We can only infer the consciousness of “others” based on similarity, observation and projection. We can reasonably infer some kind of “mind” or “experience” in at least some other creatures as well but why stop there?

Qualia is brute sensation (e.g. seeing green, hearing noise, etc.). Although imagination, and memories probably rely on qualia, etc. they are not the same as qualia. My point was there are other internal states besides just qualia that one can have. And I don't understand why you would be deflating the issue. The very question regarding the Hard Question is to understand how/why internal states are equivalent to brain processes. Anything else is not the world we live in, but P-Zombie world. That is not ours though, so it is a big deal. — schopenhauer1

There is a one to one correspondence between certain “brain states” and certain “experiences”. There is IMHO no free floating “consciousness”, experience or mind, they are all bound to the physical even while being more than just physical or completely or satisfactorily described by their physical manifestations or counterparts. Human experience, human “consciousness” requires a human brain. It is the complex unified integrated structure of the brain which correlates with the unified integrated complex nature of human mind. Human experience is just one form of mind in nature perhaps the most self-reflective and self-aware but nature is never entirely reducible to its scientific description at any level.

It wouldn't be describable or measurable. It would only be inferred, like with other people's minds. The hard problem is one of subjectivity, which can' be scientifically measured or described. Panpsychism is trying to solve the irreducibility of conscious experience by spreading it out through everything so that it's a building block instead of just mysteriously emerging. — Marchesk

Panpsychism is said to have a “combination problem”. The combination problem does not require the mental to emerge from the physical. Nor does the combination problem require inert, passive, non-experiential matter to at some point become “experiential”. It is a proposed metaphysical (not scientific) solution to dualism or to emergence. It could be termed a dual aspect form of neutral monism. “The emergence of experience from the non-experiential would be sheer magic”

There are plenty of arguments for the hard problem. Basically, no amount of objective explanation gets you to subjectivity. They're incompatible. — Marchesk

Yes, “mary’s room” no familiarity with the scientific description of “red” (wavelengths, optics, neural paths, etc.) is a substitute for the actual experience “seeing red”. Scientific descriptions (verbal descriptions) are always incomplete in some sense and unsatisfactory substitutes for “the experience itself”. We can describe what happens in the “quantum world” we can even “predict in a stochastic probabilistic way” what is possible but we can’t explain it in any way that fits our “commonsense” notions of the world and reality.

Possibly, but the thing emerging is not complex and novel. The thing emerging is conciousness. The whole point of the hard problem is that conciousness itself is taken to be a familiar, obvious fact (otherwise we'd just be rid of the whole thing). It's the mechanism that's mysterious, and we're quite used to mysterious mechanisms. The whole history of science has been the gradual revelation of previously mysterious mechanisms. — Isaac

Allright, let’s approach the problem from the other end. We have “consciousness” this integrated, unified, self-aware, self-reflective form of “experience” or “mind”. We could not do science or philosophy otherwise. At what point in the chain of being “existence” or “life” do you think this ability disappears working your way down. Do higher animals have experience? Ants? Bees? Flowers? And how would you or do you know? What physical test or quantitative measure do you have?

Well, if the world contains both physical stuff and consciousness, but there doesn't seem to be a way for the physical stuff to produce consciousness, then an alternative would be that all physical stuff is conscious. — Marchesk

or the basic “stuff” or units of nature are both physical and experiential (neutral monism).
 

First, the argument goes that all objects, presumably down to very small scales (atoms?) must have some kind of mind. . — Graeme M

In the form of panpsychism I defend the fundamental units of nature are “quantum events occurring in space-time”. In Whitehead’s form of process philosophy “Process and Reality” the most fundamental units are “actual occasions” which invariably have both a mental aspect and physical aspect or pole. The mental or experiential pole has to do with incorporation of elements of the past and possibilities of the future as well as relations to other events (what Whitehead calls prehension). I have a read a lot of presentations of panpsychism and this is the form which I defend.

Second, minds are expressed to varying degrees of sophistication according to the sophistication of the system (object), perhaps to the greatest sophistication in humans (in our experience, at least). . — Graeme M

Yes there are many different forms and kinds of mind but they are all of the same ontologic nature. There are many different forms of physicality but they are all the same ontologic nature. In fact the physical and the mental are dual aspects of the same fundamental unit of nature (neutral monism). I won’t defend any form of panpsychism other than a monistic variety. The kind of unified, integrated experience that we call “human consciousness” can only be present in a unified integrated structure like the brain. Physically damage the brain and you damage or lose “consciousness”. I won’t defend the statement “rocks are conscious”. I won’t defend the statement “electrons are conscious”. Consciousness in my mind is a relatively rare form of mind or experience
.

Third, mind is not an actual physical substance (I use the term loosely and am aware it probably means something in philosophy different from my usage). That is, it isn't like say gravity or the electromagnetic force which can be measured and which have a direct causal relationship to the world. . — Graeme M

Our “experience”, our “mind”, our “consciousness” cannot be adequately or satisfactorily explained in purely physical terms. No description of neural pathways, metabolic activity, neurotransmitters or brain waves entails the actual “experience” of the subject. This is sort of Mary’s and red, the scientific description versus the first person experience. One should also asks who or what is conducting science, asking the questions, doing the experiments, interpreting the results, you can not take the observer out of the science completely.

Fourth, matter isn't a manifestation of mind but rather mind is a manifestation of matter. Minds emerge from, are caused by, or are separate from, matter, nonetheless minds are directly attributable to material events. — Graeme M

Mind (experience) and Matter (the physical) are inseparable aspects of the same fundamental basic neutral monistic ontology (events, occasions). Reality is a process not a “thing”, a becoming not a “being”. When we talk about particles with properties we are really talking about events with relations (to other events, to the past and to the future).

No, I just think the idea illustrates the fact that the concept of time depends on change, not vice versa. I am a process reality advocate not a frozen universe fan (becoming not being).

Different forms of the same stuff, but somehow we consider energy to be more basic than matter.
Fission (fusing two lighter nucleii also releases energy (the source of energy in stars) and also the source of the creation of heavier elements (hydrogen to helium).
Werner Heisenberg — 'Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.'

Where is time in a changless world?

atomic bombs convert mass to energy, atomic power plants do the same so mass can be destroyed it can also be created but that is a different "matter".

I don't think that is true. In that matter at the smallest structure appear to be quantum (non infinitely divisible) and it is suggested in quantum loop gravity that space-time also has a quantum structure. It only appears continuous just like the computer screen you are looking at actually is composed of small points. This controversial but it is certainly not outside the realm of rational speculation. Points with no dimension can not make a physical actual real structure..

Models are just models. Most of science is just conceptual modeling, it is when we mistake our models for "reality" itself, that we engage in the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness", a common error in science and philosophy.

Thank you, your writing is unusually clear and vivid. I hope you write professionally somewhere because many formal sources lack those qualities.

I thought e=mc2 settled the basic relationship between matter and energy. Matter is just concentrations or configurations of energy in space time? (standing waves)
Materialism has given way to physicalism.
Matter is solid enough to our bodies but mostly empty to a passing neutron, "misplaced concreteness".

Time and math are arbitrary abstracts that humans discovered, and also helped develop. Both of which are discoveries and uncoveries of existence, as it were. The only assignment we can make to those is the 'subordination' of the two. — 3017amen

Time is an abstract concept based on change.
Math is an abstract concept based the order found in the universe.
The concept of time is meaningless, useless without change as is math without order..
Maths would likely never have been developed without the regularity and order found in nature.

What is certain in any field?
A justified belief in some facts of the science of the 18th century might not be a justified belief in the 21st century. Knowledge they say is "justified true belief" but I not sure we can know what is "true" perhaps the best we can do in look at the facts and our experience and formulate "justified belief" for own time and circumstances. From the professionals see below.

https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/RussellValuePhilosophy1912.pdf
Betrand Russell
HAVING now come to the end of our brief and very incomplete review of the problems
of philosophy, it will be well to consider, in conclusion, what is the value of philosophy
and why it ought to be studied. It is the more necessary to consider this question, in view
of the fact that many men, under the influence of science or of practical affairs, are
inclined to doubt whether philosophy is anything better than innocent but useless trifling,
hair-splitting distinctions, and controversies on matters concerning which knowledge is
impossible..........................
.Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy; Philosophy is to be studied,
not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions since no definite answers can, as a
rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because
these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual
imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against
speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which
philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that
union with the universe which constitutes its highest good END


“Speculative Philosophy is the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. By this notion of interpretation’ I mean that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme. Thus the philosophical scheme should be coherent, logical, and, in respect to its interpretation, applicable and adequate. Here ‘applicable’ means that some items of experience are thus interpretable, and ‘adequate’ means that there are no items incapable of such interpretation.”

– Alfred North Whitehead, In Defense of Speculative Philosophy

Whitehead's stronger claim; namely that "In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly."

Pretty bloody good, by all accounts. And to drill it into you again: the point is not to get rid of work. It is to ensure fairly compensated work. — StreetlightX

"But who decides and how do they decide what fair compensation is? I mean I agree the differentials in compensation present today in no way are fair; nor are they really necessary to reward industry and innovation. People would work harder for much less of a differential.

Can you elaborate on this please? I'm pretty sure I agree with you but I can't know for sure. — Justin Peterson

I think you have to ask questions.
Without change (becoming) there would be no time. We measure time by change (rising setting sun, seasons, swinging pendulum, oscillations crystal, cesium atom emissions). Time is an abstraction from change. Time cannot exist without change. Change is fundamental to reality and time is just a convenient abstracted concept depend on change for any "meaning". Would would time be in a changeless world? The relativity of time (the time dilitation form) comes from the fact that the rate of the processes(and all other physical, chemical and biological processes) we use to measure time are altered by gravity or acceleration.

I am going to refer you to two fairly famous papers on the issue which may help
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F
https://www.newdualism.org/papers/G.Strawson/strawson_on_panpsychism.pdf
The most elementary units of nature were originally conceived to be inert, passive, entities (objects with fixed properties) moved about by external,eternal, mechanistic and deterministic laws of nature.

Given this conception of the building blocks of the universe it was hard to see how "consciousness", awareness, perception, experience, mentality, psyche (use whatever word you want) could come about as the result of any combination of such objects.

The default positions were "consciousness" somehow mysteriously emerged and the non experiential become experiential (emergence) or that mind and matter were two separate but interacting substances (dualism).

Modern physics which thinks of the fundamental units of nature as quantum events (concentrations of energy) with duration occurring within the field of space-time (quantum field theory) gives us a much different picture of the fundamental units of nature (hence physicalism is the preferred term over materialism). Modern physics I would say thinks of the fundamental units of nature as active, energetic, units with properties which are determined by their relationship or interactions to the larger universe.
There is also a relationship to the events of the past (memory) and the possibilities of the future (lure or anticipation). These relationships are much more akin to experience and this is a form of panpsychism.

In modern physics at the quantum level we can predict the results of experiments (in a non deterministic, stochastic probability way) but we really can't explain them in any purely mechanistic deterministic way as the action of inert, independent, passive entities..

I am basically asserting that the relationship of the events of nature which have duration and their relationship to the past and the future is a form of experience (non conscious and non physical (unable to be eternally observed or empirically measured) is the basis of all higher forms of experience, mind and consciousness.

Here is Schopenhauer's wider description of "will"
http://philosophycourse.info/lecsite/lec-schop-will.html
Schopenhauer requires that we not limit our understanding of the term "will" to only the notion of consciously willed choices that lead to human acts. We must instead have a much broader understanding of the concept of will.

But anyone who is incapable of carrying out the required extension of the concept will remain involved in a permanent misunderstanding. For by the word will, he will always understand only that species of it hitherto exclusively described by the term, that is to say, the will guided by knowledge, strictly according to motives, indeed only to abstract motives. This, as we have said, is only the most distinct phenomenon or appearance of the will. (p 111)

If a person is able to carry out the required extension of the concept of will,

He will recognize that same will not only in those phenomena that are quite similar to his own, in men and animals, as their innermost nature, but continued reflection will lead him to recognize the force that shoots and vegetates in the plant, indeed the force by which the crystal is formed, the force that turns the magnet to the North Pole, the force whose shock he encounters from the contact of metals of different kinds, the force that appears in the elective affinities of matter as repulsion and attraction, separation and union, and finally even gravitation [and now the strong force and the weak force which both operate at subatomic levels], which acts so powerfully in all matter, pulling the stone to the earth and the earth to the sun; all these he will recognize as different only in the phenomenon, but the same according to their inner nature. He will recognize them all as that which is immediately known to him so intimately and better than everything else, and where it appears most distinctly is called will. It is the innermost essence, the kernel, of every particular thing and also of the whole. It appears in every blindly acting force of nature, and also in the deliberate condu8ct of man, and the great difference between the two concerns only the degree of the manifestation, not the inner nature of what is manifested. (pp 109-110)

Thus, the inner nature of every thing, the thing-in-itself of each individual thing as well as of the whole, is will. END

It has the ring of a certain form of panpsychism to it but then I have those inclinations

Funny, because around 90% of human history was cooperative hunter-gatherer societies, so I wonder what nature we are actually denying. — praxis

Ah, the "myth of the noble savage" was not the kind of pastoral peace and cooperation you envisage, I think. There was plenty of trouble within groups and between groups just not the kind of weaponry and resources found in modern times. IMHO