Psience Quest

The idea that everything from spoons to stones is conscious is gaining academic credibility

Quote: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.

“Why should we think common sense is a good guide to what the universe is like?” says Philip Goff, a philosophy professor at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. “Einstein tells us weird things about the nature of time that counters common sense; quantum mechanics runs counter to common sense. Our intuitive reaction isn’t necessarily a good guide to the nature of reality.”

I thought that Koch wasn't suggesting that everything is conscious, but rather that consciousness is a property (the degree of information integration) which doesn't depend upon the substrate (i.e. any substrate may potentially do the trick)?

Linda

(2018-04-03, 06:22 PM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]I thought that Koch wasn't suggesting that everything is conscious, but rather that consciousness is a property (the degree of information integration) which doesn't depend upon the substrate (i.e. any substrate may potentially do the trick)?

Linda

They mention IIT later in the article, though there they specifically mention Tononi rather than Koch. I'm not sure I agree IIT is inherently panpsychic, though part of this is b/c I'm not sure the authors of IIT really explain "information" sufficiently.

Here's Koch on Closer to Truth, videos give his views on consciousness among other things. I used to have the links to his specific videos but they changes the URLs so mine are all invalid now sadly.