Consciousness: a universal mind? (General)

by David Turell , Monday, September 13, 2021, 21:52 (954 days ago) @ David Turell

Related to panpsychism as described and advocated:

https://mindmatters.ai/2020/08/bernardo-kastrup-argues-for-a-universal-mind-as-a-reason...

"Bernardo Kastrup: Panpsychism, well, to be more accurately called constitutive panpsychism, it’s the notion that at least some of the elementary particles that constitutes the universe, at least some of them, are fundamentally conscious. In other words, they have experiential states, fundamental experiential states, next to having fundamental physical properties, like mass, charge, spin, momentum, spacetime position, and so on. So, next to all of those physical properties, there is a fundamental experiential property to at least some of the elementary building blocks of the physical universe.

***

"Bernardo Kastrup: I would say, elementary subatomic particles don’t exist. They are an epistemic tool, and physicists know this. An elementary subatomic particle is a particular pattern of excitation of a quantum field. That quantum field, that thing, although it’s entirely abstract, it exists. And to use an analogy to explain this, if you see a ripple moving on the surface of an otherwise very calm lake, you can point to the ripple and say, “It’s here. Now it’s here. And now it’s there.” Presumably, you can measure it. You can say it’s this high, it’s this long, it’s this large, it’s moving with that speed. You can characterize that ripple with all kinds of physical constants, or not constants, but physical quantities that characterize the ripple as a physical entity. Yet, there is nothing to the ripple but the water of the lake. The ripple is just a pattern of excitation of the water. The water isn’t even moving from left to right, it’s moving only up and down. But the ripple moves from left to right.

"So, a subatomic particle is just like the ripple. It is a ripple in the quantum field and as such, it doesn’t really exist. It’s just a way of talking about the pattern of excitation of the quantum field. But if the panpsychists bite this bullet, then you would have to concede that the consciousness that they want to put in at that level of nature, as a fundamental aspect of nature, would be spatially unbound, because the quantum field is spatially unbound. You cannot say that the ripple is conscious because the ripple doesn’t exist. There is only the quantum field. So, you have to say the quantum field is conscious.

"But now, you end up with universal consciousness because the quantum field, this is spatially unbound. It exists everywhere at the same time. And that makes it impossible for panpsychists to explain why you and I seem to have separate conscious in their lives. I can’t read your thoughts. Presumably, you can’t read mine. I do not know what’s happening in the galaxy of Andromeda. So, I think that’s a very strong argument against panpsychism.

"But the problem that separate consciousnesses creates for panpsychism (even elementary particles are conscious) does not, he says, exist in the same way for cosmopsychism (there is one universal consciousness), the view he holds:

"So, to avoid this combination problem, some philosophers have moved to the exact opposite end of the scale. They say, “Well, you know what? There is only one universal consciousness.” And by the way, that’s much more consistent with physics as we know. It’s much more consistent with quantum field theory, quantum electrodynamics and… Well, quantum field theory is the broader theory. But then, that’s called cosmopsychism. There is only one universal consciousness.

***

"Bernardo Kastrup: And the challenge that you have to face then, as a cosmopsychist, is to say, how does this one mind seemingly break up or decomposes into a number of individual subjectivities? Like you, me, my cats, the bacteria swimming on the lake. How does the one ground the many? This is called then the decomposition problem.

"In Kastrup’s view, we all have separate consciousnesses because we are dissociated from the universal consciousness, in a way that a person with multiple personality disorder might have separate consciousnesses all in one mind:

"Bernardo Kastrup: My claim is, at least on empirical grounds, disassociation provides us a very good analogy, a very good metaphor for what might be happening at a universal level. Leading this one universal consciousness that we hypothesize to becoming many, to becoming you, me, and my girlfriend downstairs, and my cats, and so on."

Comment: And my approach is we receive the mechanism of consciousness from the universal consciousness for our brains to use. There is an article that the brain does this as a transducer, an interesting comment.