Is a rock conscious?

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Swami
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Is a rock conscious?

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Post by Swami »

Contrary to popular belief, I view consciousness as being a simple phenomena rather than arising from a complex system. Here are my reasons:

1. Consciousness can exist as pure awareness state (without thought, emotions, forms, etc.) which is a state I reach during meditation. You can have one without the other!
2. Simple forms of life (no complex brain needed), e.g. plants and fish, possess consciousness.
3. Experience. This goes back to point 1 and how I perceived reality while in a pure conscious state. All matter is simply a manifestation of an indivisible field of Consciousness. Read more: Using field research (Meditation) to discover Consciousness.

When Danmark asks how a rock is conscious I think that he's supposing that it could only be conscious if it has feelings, processes information from sensory receptors, etc. But again, consciousness does not have to exist with all of these things. It comes in degrees; its most basic form is pure awareness. Consciousness exists and is expressed differently between awake humans and those in vegetative state or between fish and plants or computers and rocks. It seems scientists do not know where to draw the line when it comes to where consciousness exists.

One label for my view is "panpsychism". Here's a good article explains it:
Consciousness permeates reality. Rather than being just a unique feature of human subjective experience, it’s the foundation of the universe, present in every particle and all physical matter.

This sounds like easily-dismissible bunkum, but as traditional attempts to explain consciousness continue to fail, the “panpsychist� view is increasingly being taken seriously by credible philosophers, neuroscientists, and physicists, including figures such as neuroscientist Christof Koch and physicist Roger Penrose.

The materialist viewpoint states that consciousness is derived entirely from physical matter. It’s unclear, though, exactly how this could work.

Dualism holds that consciousness is separate and distinct from physical matter

Panpsychism offers an attractive alternative solution: Consciousness is a fundamental feature of physical matter; every single particle in existence has an “unimaginably simple� form of consciousness, says Goff. These particles then come together to form more complex forms of consciousness, such as humans’ subjective experiences. This isn’t meant to imply that particles have a coherent worldview or actively think, merely that there’s some inherent subjective experience of consciousness in even the tiniest particle.
Quartz article.

Given that consciousness can exist or function in a simple form, then what proof is there to show that consciousness is limited to mammals? Why not fish, plants, computers, and other inanimate matter? Perhaps you don't know?

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Re: Is a rock conscious?

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Post by Zzyzx »

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Re: Is a rock conscious?

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Post by Sergio »

[quote="Razorsedge"]

How do you prove panpsychism? Is there a way to test it?

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Post #53

Post by Swami »

Sergio wrote: How do you prove panpsychism? Is there a way to test it?
You have to first establish the nature of consciousness. This is a major problem in Western science not only because of the subjective nature of consciousness but also because of the limited data set that scientists allow. Western scientists tend to be ignorant of or simply ignore all of the Eastern findings on consciousness which involve experiencing levels of consciousness that go beyond just the normal waking state. So what's left is Western science trying to understand a very limited expression of consciousness.

So for now, the proof for panpsychism is mostly provided by the Eastern approach. This involves experiencing consciousness not just through the limited self but also experiencing it in everything else.

SkyChief wrote:
I have already debunked this with the radio receiver metaphor.

Just because you throw some glass, semi-conductors and carbon on the ground doesn't means you have made a radio.

Sorry.

You'll need to do better than that.
Zzyzx wrote: Without verification all is speculation.
I offered evidence for my view. If that wasn't enough, I also offered a way for you to verify my view for yourself. There's nothing to do beyond that point when someone is not willing to follow up on my offer.

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Post #54

Post by SkyChief »

Razorsedge wrote: You have to first establish the nature of consciousness.
We first must establish the definition of consciousness.

This seems to be the biggest hurdle at this point.

Clearly, one of us is unclear about the definition of the word.

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Post #55

Post by Diagoras »

Swami, I wanted to ask about a couple of things you posted earlier in the thread:
There are several ways to show that a rock is conscious. You wanted to focus on "responses" so I explained how to get a rock to respond to you. Under my approach, you can tell it exactly what you want it to do, and it does it.
Can you provide some examples of what you have asked a rock to do? I wouldn’t expect a rock to be capable of independent physical movement, for instance.
By the way, this tool can also be used to probe the nature of anything in the Universe (rocks included) even beyond where science can go.
To the first part, does this mean the tool could be used to probe dark matter, for instance? And to the second part, are you talking about a ‘metaphysical’ state?

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Post #56

Post by Swami »

Diagoras wrote:
There are several ways to show that a rock is conscious. You wanted to focus on "responses" so I explained how to get a rock to respond to you. Under my approach, you can tell it exactly what you want it to do, and it does it.
Can you provide some examples of what you have asked a rock to do? I wouldn’t expect a rock to be capable of independent physical movement, for instance.
I have not experienced any rock consciousness specifically. If you want to experience a rock as a rock, then its response would be limited since it has no legs, no mouth, and no mind. You can get it to respond in any way that's physically possible for it to respond which includes moving. You would be in control of the physical laws that govern the rock.
Diagoras wrote:
By the way, this tool can also be used to probe the nature of anything in the Universe (rocks included) even beyond where science can go.
To the first part, does this mean the tool could be used to probe dark matter, for instance? And to the second part, are you talking about a ‘metaphysical’ state?
To explain this would take starting another discussion which I will start later today. It will provide context to my response for your first question.

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Post #57

Post by Swami »

Diagoras wrote: To the first part, does this mean the tool could be used to probe dark matter, for instance? And to the second part, are you talking about a ‘metaphysical’ state?
I answer your question in this discussion...
Using meditation for knowledge

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Post #58

Post by Swami »

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Post #59

Post by William »

An interesting video regarding Consciousness and the experience of the Physical Universe.

[yt]K1qx_jgFZhc[/yt]

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Post #60

Post by PeterPan »

I believe in Integrated Information Theory, or IIT. Tononi's papers explain IIT better than I can, but here is a rough introduction...

In IIT there is a quantity phi describing the level of consciousness of a system. Any system with a phi value greater than zero is conscious.
Calculating phi is generally very difficult for all but the simplest of systems.

Phi basically quantifies the extent to which a system contains more information than its component parts.

High phi values are quite uncommon in nature - a rock might contain some systems with non-zero phi values (there was an even example of a conscious photodiode in the paper) but none with anywhere near the phi values achieved by the brains of higher animals.

More on IIT

It has been proved that any feedforward neural network has a phi value of zero, whereas recurrent neural networks can have non-zero phi values.
As it turns out, the cerebellum is basically a feedforward neural network, whereas the rest of the brain is a recurrent neural network.
This fits with the general opinion among neuroscientists that the cerebellum is mainly used for unconscious motor functions.
The cerebellum also has a few other functions e.g. in implicit theory of mind, all of which appear to be unconscious.

It has also been shown that any system built out of electronic logic gates has a phi value of zero. In particular, if the human brain is simulated of a computer then the simulation will not be conscious unless the computer uses hardware that is radically different from that of any computer that is around today.

Certain neural networks with a grid-based structure have been found to have high phi values.
Such grid-like layouts turn out to be extremely common in the human brain.
The most obvious example is in the visual cortex, where images get mapped onto a grid of neurons, but there are grids of neurons in the motor sensory cortex, in the hippocampus, pretty much anywhere.
In fact, how many things can you think of that you don't imagine as having some kind of spatial 2D layout? If you're like me, not many.

In one study, researchers came up with a way of estimating phi from transcranial magnetic stimulation evoked potentials, which they call the
perturbational complexity index. Using data from subjects who were awake, in various stages of sleep, under the influence of various sedating drugs or emerging from coma, the perturbational complexity index correctly predicted which of these subjects would show signs of consciousness. It is now used to assess levels of consciousness in coma patients.

Further reading on IIT

Tononi's main paper on IIT:
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/ ... bi.1003588

Website containing papers on IIT and Python software for calculating phi values and concept structures:
http://integratedinformationtheory.org/

Perturbational complexity index study:
https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/5/198/198ra105

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