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July 2009 
Experience, Information, Panpsychism
Posted on May 13th, 2008
by 
Anand
Anand
At the recently concluded Toward a Science of Consciousness conference, I presented a poster on a new physicalism that can accommodate experience. The reception was fast and furious from some and wacky and weird from others. I'll summarize after explaining what the poster was about.
Following Chalmers, Rosenberg, Stoljar and Nietzsche (via Hales and Wilber), I've been wondering for a while regarding a non-reductive physicalism that can accommodate experience. Since physicalism is still up for grabs (so to speak), the plan of action is simple: Expand physicalism so that experience is a natural by product. In particular, avoid assuming that experience is fundamental as the panpsychist, neutral monist or dual-aspect theorist typically does. if the result is panpsychism, at least it is a posteriori and not a priori.
You would think that this essentially simple idea would find plenty of supporters. Instead, it simply raised controversy among the attendees who came by the posters and others to whom I explained the basic idea. Below, I'll do a caricature and response to the questions:
1. Physicalism is really materialism and experience is a result of neural firings in the brain.
Response: There's an explanatory gap between neural firings and experience. Also, the brain is not a fundamental physical object. Furthermore, you're being Cartesian in correlating one subject to one brain.
2. Strawson has shown that physicalism entails panpsychism and if I had time I would destroy your position.
Response: This is an almost exact quote. It is extremely disturbing that some people are already driven to panpsychism as the one and only way out. In any case, the whole problem with panpsychism is that it posits intrinsic properties like experience as basic and doesn't tell us where the boundary came from to demarcate intrinsic from extrinsic. In other words, panpsychism takes objects in the world as unproblematic and this is precisely the problem in basic physics where there are currently no such boundaries. Unfortunately, Strawson's clout is such that it is quite likely that we'll start seeing panpsychism bigots and it's not a bad idea to start watching out for them from the start.
3. The universe is really quantum information processing and there are no such things as selves (subjects).
Response: Not sure what you're really trying to say. If the universe is really information, then information is physical (by my definition of physicalism). There will then be an explanatory gap between information and experience. In addition, information can be parsed as in-formation (as opposed to out-formation) and this implies a boundary of some sort with in-formation being contextualized relative to the boundary. In that case experience is information in-formation :-) [Sorry, but that's actually pretty cute. Perhaps, I'll make that the title of my next paper.]
4. The universe is really One without a second - a perfect unity in diversity with Love holding it all together.
Response: Mysticism is not a scientific option for me (despite its many benefits including love and compassion). If that statement is unpacked as idealist, then the burden of proof is on you to show why this particular opening in awareness with experiential content that exists right here and right now is actually Oneness of some kind.
5. Your approach of focusing on a momentary physical boundary that separates one "portion" of the universe from the rest can explain why experiences are private. It doesn't explain why experiences are qualitative.
Response: Kudos to the best question so far. It is quite likely that there are overlapping boundaries like the traditional Venn diagrams. Imagine that the overlapping aspect creates a shared language and this explains our verbalized thoughts which are usually expressed in some language. When there is no overlap, then there is no language of any kind and from this you can get the qualitative aspect of experience. This has to be carefully worked out obviously.
Overall, I was both elated and crushed. Elated that there were many people who saw the value in what was being presented, crushed that there weren't more in depth questions except from a small minority.
Following Chalmers, Rosenberg, Stoljar and Nietzsche (via Hales and Wilber), I've been wondering for a while regarding a non-reductive physicalism that can accommodate experience. Since physicalism is still up for grabs (so to speak), the plan of action is simple: Expand physicalism so that experience is a natural by product. In particular, avoid assuming that experience is fundamental as the panpsychist, neutral monist or dual-aspect theorist typically does. if the result is panpsychism, at least it is a posteriori and not a priori.
You would think that this essentially simple idea would find plenty of supporters. Instead, it simply raised controversy among the attendees who came by the posters and others to whom I explained the basic idea. Below, I'll do a caricature and response to the questions:
1. Physicalism is really materialism and experience is a result of neural firings in the brain.
Response: There's an explanatory gap between neural firings and experience. Also, the brain is not a fundamental physical object. Furthermore, you're being Cartesian in correlating one subject to one brain.
2. Strawson has shown that physicalism entails panpsychism and if I had time I would destroy your position.
Response: This is an almost exact quote. It is extremely disturbing that some people are already driven to panpsychism as the one and only way out. In any case, the whole problem with panpsychism is that it posits intrinsic properties like experience as basic and doesn't tell us where the boundary came from to demarcate intrinsic from extrinsic. In other words, panpsychism takes objects in the world as unproblematic and this is precisely the problem in basic physics where there are currently no such boundaries. Unfortunately, Strawson's clout is such that it is quite likely that we'll start seeing panpsychism bigots and it's not a bad idea to start watching out for them from the start.
3. The universe is really quantum information processing and there are no such things as selves (subjects).
Response: Not sure what you're really trying to say. If the universe is really information, then information is physical (by my definition of physicalism). There will then be an explanatory gap between information and experience. In addition, information can be parsed as in-formation (as opposed to out-formation) and this implies a boundary of some sort with in-formation being contextualized relative to the boundary. In that case experience is information in-formation :-) [Sorry, but that's actually pretty cute. Perhaps, I'll make that the title of my next paper.]
4. The universe is really One without a second - a perfect unity in diversity with Love holding it all together.
Response: Mysticism is not a scientific option for me (despite its many benefits including love and compassion). If that statement is unpacked as idealist, then the burden of proof is on you to show why this particular opening in awareness with experiential content that exists right here and right now is actually Oneness of some kind.
5. Your approach of focusing on a momentary physical boundary that separates one "portion" of the universe from the rest can explain why experiences are private. It doesn't explain why experiences are qualitative.
Response: Kudos to the best question so far. It is quite likely that there are overlapping boundaries like the traditional Venn diagrams. Imagine that the overlapping aspect creates a shared language and this explains our verbalized thoughts which are usually expressed in some language. When there is no overlap, then there is no language of any kind and from this you can get the qualitative aspect of experience. This has to be carefully worked out obviously.
Overall, I was both elated and crushed. Elated that there were many people who saw the value in what was being presented, crushed that there weren't more in depth questions except from a small minority.
Access: PublicTagged with: Experience, Information, Panpsychism, Stoljar, Strawson, Hales, Wilber, boundary, intrinsic, extrinsic, Consciousness, quantum information
Hi Anand, I just today read this blog entry and appreciate that you summarized the responses you received at the conference.
No. 3 on your list is: “The universe is really quantum information processing and there are no such things as selves (subjects).”
Regarding the second half of this statement, “There are no such things as selves (subjects),” I am reminded of this from the opening passage of German philosopher of mind Thomas Metzinger's book Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity (MIT Press, 2003). I am going to paste in some passages from the book that I posted to another web forum a couple of years ago. It's lengthy and I don't expect that you should take the time to read it, but I will post it in case you or anyone else who reads here should find it of interest. For the record, I think Metzinger is onto something, but like everyone else in philosophy of mind he does not have any knock down arguments with which to support his position on the nature of selves (or subjects).
All best,
Jim
This is a book about consciousness, the phenomenal self, and the first-person perspective. Its main thesis is that no such things as selves exist in the world: Nobody ever was or had a self. All that ever existed were conscious self-models that could not be recognized as models. The phenomenal self is not a thing, but a process—and the subjective experience of being someone emerges if a conscious information-processing system operates under a transparent self-model. You are such a system right now, as you read these sentences. Because you cannot recognize your self-model as a model, it is transparent: you look right through it. You don’t see it. But you see with it. In other, more metaphorical, words, the central claim of this book is that as you read these lines you constantly confuse yourself with the content of the self-model currently activated by your brain.
This is not your fault. Evolution has made you this way. In the final chapter of this technical 700-page book Metzinger begins by using Plato's cave as a metaphor for the SMT (self-model theory of subjectivity).
The cave “is simply the physical organism as a whole, including, in particular, its brain.”
The shadows on the wall are “phenomenal mental models.” Phenomenal shadows are low-dimensional projections of internal or external objects in the conscious state space opened within the central nervous system of a biological organism. The book you are holding in your hands, as consciously experienced by you in this moment, is a dynamic, low-dimensional shadow of the actual physical object in your hand, a dancing shadow in your central nervous system.
But what is the fire, causing the projection of flickering shadows of consciousness, ever changing, dancing away as activation patterns on the surface of your neural cave? The fire is neural dynamics. The fire is the incessant, self-regulating flow of neural information processing, constantly perturbed and modulated by sensory and cognitive input. The wall is not a two-dimension surface. It is a space, namely, the high-dimensional phenomenal state space of human technicolor phenomenology… Please note that, in a conscious human being, the wall and the fire are not separate entities: they are two aspects of one and the same process. Metzinger asks if we can free ourselves from the cave. He asks if we could stop confusing ourselves with the phenomenal shadows which we take to be our selves, “and leave Plato's cave altogether?”
“Here is where we have to depart from the classical metaphor,” he says. “I claim that there is no one in the cave. There is no one who - in Socrates' words - could 'stand up suddenly and turn his head around and walk, and…lift up his eyes to the light.'”
I claim that the conscious self is not a thing, but a shaded surface. It is not an individual object, but a process: the ongoing process of shading. The beauty of the shadow metaphor for self-consciousness consists partly in the fact that it is not only a classical but also a global metaphor - one to be found at the origin of many of mankind's great philosophical traditions. To name a prominent non-Western example, Samkara…in his Vivekacudamani, or Crest-Jewel of Wisdom…argued that just as we don't confuse ourselves with the shadow cast by our own body, or with a reflection of it, or with the body as it appears in a dream or in imagination, we should not identify with what appears to be our bodily self right now. Samkara said: Just as you have no self-identification with your shadow-body, reflection-body, dream-body, or imagination-body, so should you not have with the living body. The SMT offers a deeper understanding of why, in standard situations, the system as a whole inevitably does identify itself with its own neurodynamical shadow, with its inner computational reflection of itself, with its continuous online dream about, and internal emulation of, itself. It is the transparency of the human self-model which causes this effect. He says, “The neurophenomenological caveman's situation is deplorable. It must be changed. However, it cannot be changed by freeing ourselves and leaving the cave altogether, searching for the true light of the sun. We have never been in the cave. The cave is empty.”
He asks, “Is selfless consciousness possible? All consciousness is selfless, in that a self is not represented in it, but only a physical, representational system - but transparently, in the mode of naive realism. …the system constantly operates under the condition of what I have called a naive-realistic self-misunderstanding. Metaphorically speaking, it confuses itself with the content of its own PSM [phenomenal self-model].”
He then discusses the possibility of a system which “would not have a self, but only a system-model.”It would not instantiate selfhood. Functionally, it would still possess all the computational and informational advantages associated with having a coherent self-model, at the price, however, of a somewhat higher computational load. In addition, it would have to find a new solution to the problem of not getting paralyzed by an infinite loop of self-representation, to the problem of avoiding an infinite regression in the absence of transparent primitives. But possibly it could still operate under a centered model of reality, even if this model were not phenomenologically centered anymore. What the neurobiological characteristics of such a system would be is presently unclear. However, it might be interesting to note a specific phenomenological analogy. There is one type of global opacity that we discussed in our last neurophenomenological case study, namely, the lucid dream. In the lucid dream the dreamer is fully aware that whatever she experiences is just the content of a global simulation, a representational construct. It is also plausible to assume that there are state classes in the phenomenology of spiritual or religious experience resembling this configuration… Now imagine a situation in which the lucid dreamer would also phenomenally recognize herself as being a dream character, a simulated self, a representational fiction, a situation in which the dreaming system, as it were, became lucid to itself. … I am, of course, well aware that this…conception of selflessness directly corresponds to a classical philosophical notion, well-developed in Asian philosophy at least 2500 years ago, namely, the Buddhist conception of “enlightenment.” However, let us adopt a metaphysically neutral terminology here and call this phenomenological state class “system consciousness.” A representational system has system consciousness if and only if it operates under an opaque system-model, but not under a self-model. Being No One includes sections on intersubjectivity, lucid dreams, OBEs, and much more.
The first chapter is online here (in PDF format): http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262134179chap1.pdf