Why the Universe might be conscious.

https://grin.news/why-the-universe-might...f8c4f6432e

I had seen near-deathnews on Twitter post some articles about this as well in early May. Looks like more mathematicians are warming up to the idea as well.

I had seen near-deathnews on Twitter post some articles about this as well in early May. Looks like more mathematicians are warming up to the idea as well.

Explain why a conscious universe it such an attractive idea?

Explain why a conscious universe it such an attractive idea?

A rather vapid question Steve.  Any scientific proof starts as an idea; one that may be attractive solely due to its novelty or the thinker's curiosity.  Was there a point to your question?

A rather vapid question Steve.  Any scientific proof starts as an idea; one that may be attractive solely due to its novelty or the thinker's curiosity.  Was there a point to your question?

Vapid really?  Are you telling me such an intriguing idea fails an explanation why it is intriguing?

https://grin.news/why-the-universe-might...f8c4f6432e

Trying to sort this out:

The small part of the the universe we inhabit exhibits conscious behavior.  It appears more so in humans, but consciousness is to be understood as thriving in many other species.

How can anyone deny that the universe exhibits consciousness?  Are there other earths in the universe?  -- is a logical idea to verify or refute.  But why is the initial general opinion that mind in the universe is an "accident".  

The reason seems to be the implicit meaning, that there is more and better consciousness than what we can observe and measure?  This becomes an emotional issue.   What's wrong with the experiential and perceptual abilities of living things, as we learn more and more about their amazing range.  Natural mind  is a more scientific stand than the metaphysicis of "Naturalism".

As science abandons causal closure of the physical, the new (but ancient) wrinkle, is to move to panpsychism.  In this way, there is some "substance" to measure mental outcomes, but still can be metaphysically conceived as physical.

 And while a final verdict is still pending of which model of consciousness describes reality correctly, it is a possibility that the universe as a whole has some conscious experience. - ibid

not so pragmatic - in my opinion - to imagine materials with a non-biological "life" as a root concept for a science based world-view  (no evidence)

 Over the last decade, Koch has worked closely with the psychiatrist and neuroscientist Giulio Tononi. Koch advocates for a modern variant of panpsychism, the ancient philosophical belief that some form of consciousness can be found in all things. Tononi's Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness differs from classical panpsychism in that it only ascribes consciousness to things with some degree of irreducible cause-effect power -Wiki

All this, just to avoid saying that the minds of living things are the source of causality at a separate level from physical processes.  This leaves mind to be discovered as a natural activity in the universe. (and not some magic property of matter)

Explain why a conscious universe it such an attractive idea?

The idea has "gravity" because it opens the imagination to deeper experience.  Those who look to a spiritual reality are drawn by the context of higher mind and deeper connection.  Nature lovers can claim they get influx from a walk outside or a tv program about living things.  On the personal side of things, my guess is that mystery and deep meaning are built-in emotional capabilities.

In the framework of information science, there is an ice cold worldview.  Living things learn and adapt their behavior to meet environmental changes using a vast array of information processing tools.  Researchers look for areas to to gather computable data!  The purposeful activities of individuals and societies is fertile and objective ground.  IS (information science) is too busy to be distracted (or should be).

Studying bioinformatics has become a huge part of employable professionals.

Steve, do you see a reason against any reasonable thinker considering what is mind - in a science -based context?  Does nature have a "mind of its own?  Is there life on other earths?  Can people use their minds to reach another level of consciousness?

The idea has "gravity" because it opens the imagination to deeper experience.  Those who look to a spiritual reality are drawn by the context of higher mind and deeper connection.  Nature lovers can claim they get influx from a walk outside or a tv program about living things.  On the personal side of things, my guess is that mystery and deep meaning are built-in emotional capabilities.

In the framework of information science, there is an ice cold worldview.  Living things learn and adapt their behavior to meet environmental changes using a vast array of information processing tools.  Researchers look for areas to to gather computable data!  The purposeful activities of individuals and societies is fertile and objective ground.  IS (information science) is too busy to be distracted (or should be).

Studying bioinformatics has become a huge part of employable professionals.

Steve, do you see a reason against any reasonable thinker considering what is mind - in a science -based context?  Does nature have a "mind of its own?  Is there life on other earths?  Can people use their minds to reach another level of consciousness?

A excellent reply Stephen. There are two things I've noticed.(1) People love to  describe how the believe these wild ideas. (2) They spend little to no time expressing why the need to. I find the latter an intriguing question. I find nothing wrong with a reasonable thinker considering what mind is as long as it is not the in the vacuum of philosophy. Such a thinker must incorporate and keep abreast in neuroscience.

From the article, giving a good sample of the thinking involved:

"The crucial ingredient in constructing and studying mathematical models of consciousness is to represent conscious experience in mathematical terms. This is what makes mathematical models of consciousness so powerful. One can use what is called a ‘mathematical space’ to represents the content of conscious experience. Once provided with some mathematical description of the physical domain (e.g. of the neural network in the brain), on can then apply a model of consciousness to calculate which conscious experience it would have.

Now the crucial ingredient here is that any physical system that can be represented mathematically (in principle) can be ‘plugged into’ a model of consciousness to calculate the conscious experience of that system according to that model. Next to brains, this could be a mathematical description of a computer, a large network or even a approximate mathematical description of the universe.
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....the key intuition behind Integrated Information Theory (is): This theory is built up in such a way that systems which are doing a lot of recurrent processing — i.e. whose information processing is strongly integrated — exhibit a larger degree of consciousness than systems who are not doing any significant recurrent processing.
To spell this out in detail, and to explain how the theory defines the content of consciousness in terms of integrated information requires a lot of mathematical tools. But the above is the fundamental intuition: The more integrated a system’s information processing is, the more consciousness it has.
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If there were an explanatory gap, IIT in its current form would not be solving the hard problem. It is a scientific theory similar to many other theories in other fields and does make use of the usual way of explaining things in more mathematical sciences. But its mathematical structure could possibly be adapted to more advanced modes of explanation. So there certainly is hope!"

I'm not impressed. A lot of hopeful word soup. The old idea that information processing can somehow be conscious (poof- here's the solution to the Hard Problem, by proclamation or assertion) That ends with tacit admission that this is just a kind of vague idea that just might possibly lead to some sort of penetration of the "hard problem". Just possibly.

I fail to see how mathematical equations and models can even in principle come anywhere near to really understanding what is the essence of conscious experience, which is what it is like to experience, will and intend, from the inside.

The essence of such equations and models begins with concepts and abstractions (immaterial aspects of consciousness and thought) and is implemented with numbers (immaterial and abstractions). A new theory that starts with its basic components totally mysterious and unexplained, part of the mystery the new concept is supposed to explain. This is circular and gets nowhere. And since it involves models, the new theoretical idea must be implemented with externally observed phenomena not the subjective internally experienced immaterial qualia and abstractions of consciousness which even in principle can't be objectively observed and quantified.

So the "hard problem" remains unchallenged.

Aside from this, panpsychism is a poor fit to a whole world of psychic phenomena that are conveniently (and typically) dismissed and ignored by most theorists including this one, presumably as a priori impossible therefore of necessity just unscientific anecdotes. Phenomena for which there is a large body of empirical, veridical evidence. Such as NDEs, past life memories of small children, death bed visions, mediumistic communications. These phenomena and others fit much more easily into interactive dualism which is of course derided and totally politically incorrect in academia.