Does Consciousness Lead to God? Are we Living in a Simulation? Is Consciousness Fundamental? Why is Consciousness so Mysterious? How Much More to Physical Reality? Does Physical Reality Go Beyond? What is Panpsychism? Does Information Create the Cosmos? What would Immortality Feel Like? Are There Things Not Material? Why is Emergence Significant? Can Brain Explain Mind?
TV Episode. Does Consciousness Require a Radical Explanation? Observing Quanta, Observing Nature. Can Brain Alone Explain Consciousness? Toward a Science of Consciousness? Information philosophy denies this, identifying mind-like behavior only with the information processing in the "subjective experiences" of living things.
Since information is a universal property of matter, it "goes all the way down," so in one sense, the basis of mentality - information - is present in the simplest physical structures. But information philosophy shows there is nothing like reflective awareness in the passive information structures like the galaxies.
It is only living things, that use information processing to manage the flow of matter and energy through this information structures, that have the awareness and reactions to their environments that can be called consciousness in higher beings. And there is nothing like the accumulated experiences recorded in the brains of higher animals that make their "conscious" reactions to similar events quite diverse.
This accounts for the first-person, "subjective" nature of experience that Chalmers calls the "hard problem" of consciousness. Material objects react "objectively" in their interactions with other objects. Living things, with their immaterial minds, react "subjectively" to events in the world. They have "behaviors," which are the products of their individual life experiences that have been acquired environmentally "nurture" as well as the past experiences of their species, which are transmitted genetically "nature".
Higher organisms with two stages of freedom and creativity also can create genuinely new behaviors and add to the increasing sum of human knowledge. Chalmers restates his view of the "hard problem" in a recent publication: "What it's like to be Humans beings have subjective experience: there is something it is like to be them.
We can say that a being is conscious in this sense — or is phenomenally conscious, as it is sometimes put—when there is something it is like to be that being. A mental state is conscious when there is something it is like to be in that state. Conscious states include states of perceptual experience, bodily sensation, mental imagery, emotional experience, occurrent thought, and more.
There is something it is like to see a vivid green, to feel a sharp pain, to visualize the Eiffel tower, to feel a deep regret, and to think that one is late. Each of these states has a phenomenal character, with phenomenal properties or qualia characterizing what it is like to be in the state. Notes 1. Bibliography Chapter 1.
Chapter 1. Part Two - Knowledge. According to panpsychism, consciousness may be a fundamental property of reality in the same way as space and time. In physics, we don't try and explain space and time in terms of more fundamental things.
We just find the laws that govern them. Professor Chalmers retains a love of science, despite the hostility sometimes shown by scientists towards his own discipline. In recent years, theoretical physicists have been especially critical of philosophy.
Lawrence Krauss is one. Stephen Hawking is another. Einstein was a great philosopher in his way, as well as people like Heisenberg and Schrodinger. Some of the best philosophical conversations I've had have been with scientists. Neuroscientist Giulio Tononi is among those to have piqued Professor Chalmers' interest. Dr Tononi has developed what has come to be known as Integrated Information Theory, which attempts to measure consciousness using maths.
Professor Chalmers does not believe Dr Tononi has solved the hard problem, but thinks he may be closing in on significant new insights about the connections between mind and matter. Lately, Professor Chalmers has been thinking about technology and virtual reality, and whether we are all living in some kind of simulation.
He is far from alone in flirting with the idea — technologist Elon Musk, nuclear physicist Zohreh Davoudi, philosopher Nick Bostrom, futurist Ray Kurzweil and cosmologist Alan Guth are all enthusiasts. Unsurprisingly, Professor Chalmers invokes The Matrix. But it is a train of thought that has taken him into the realm of current affairs. Professor Chalmers has speculated that recent seismic political events may be evidence of the mischief, or cruelty, of whoever has programmed our universe.
During my interview with Professor Chalmers, I suggested that incessantly thinking about the mind, the brain and the nature of reality was enough to drive anyone mad.
But as we were getting up to leave, I asked him more seriously whether there would come a point in his life when he would accept he would never answer the hard problem. It takes somehow all this activity in the brain or body and turns it into meaning, like water into wine. Dispatch from the Desert of Consciousness Research, Part 1. What Is Philosophy's Point?
The Rise of Neo-Geocentrism. Why information can't be the basis of reality. Is Consciousness Real? Are Brains Bayesian? The views expressed are those of the author s and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
For many years, he wrote the immensely popular blog Cross Check for Scientific American. Follow John Horgan on Twitter. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue.
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