I didn't mean to suggest we understand every interaction from molecular to organism scales, but there's no reason to think that that stack of unfathomably complex and highly chaotic interactions is anything but chemical/electrical/thermal interactions.
I know that's not what you meant, but consider that there may be no feasible way to map those interactions onto a theory of chemical/electrical/thermal interactions even in principle. Scientifically speaking, in this case it's meaningless to say that those interactions "are nothing but chemical/electrical/thermal interactions", because you have no predictive power at that level whatsoever! This can true even though the constituents of any organism must obey the laws of physics at a microscopic scale.
edit: Anyway, we probably don't disagree about much here, I just think that this appeal to reductionism is a common fallacy.
It's not really true that we have "no" predictive power. Everywhere we've ever looked in any system anywhere in the universe, we've found nothing except the reactions that I've described. Even in biological systems.
We use this knowledge every day to predict and produce new drugs (though again, we are not very good at it).
We have found plenty besides those fundamental reactions - sticking to the theme of evolution, take the concept of the gene in natural selection. In that context, genes and their interactions have enormous predictive power. Fundamental interactions between particles do not.
Genes may be made up of such particles but they are their own concept, with their own interactions, which cannot be reduced to that of their constituents. You could argue that in theory you can measure the state of each particle in all of an organism's genes and simulate them according to the laws of particle physics, but that's not actually possible even in principle, for the simple reason that measuring a system to that degree would destroy it (the uncertainty principle).
There are lots of these "causal blankets" in the world, and I think they're a real challenge to the idea that everything is reducible to particle physics.
Yes I’ve done psychedelics, though I don’t really trace my (reluctant) belief in panpsychism to that.
Psychedelics are really great at showing you just how much “work” consciousness is doing, and just how fungible all of its contents are. And the most important insight, which is that everything “out there” in the world — everything you experience — is actually an internal, subjective representation.
The way I’ve described it is that we’re all in our own sensoriums, but that is generally totally opaque to us. Psychedelics can temporarily knock that sensorium askew — enough to notice that it’s there all the time and doesn’t have to be configured the way that it happens to be.
The reason I have reluctantly come to believe in panpsychism is because I haven’t heard anything close to a better explanation of when, where, and why “the lights are on.” There’s no reason to think there’s something special about brain matter in particular. There’s probably something special about information processing, but then: what is information processing? Information is just a local reduction in entropy, and all sorts of things are doing that in all sorts of ways all over the universe.
> Psychedelics are really great at showing you just how much “work” consciousness is doing, and just how fungible all of its contents are. And the most important insight, which is that everything “out there” in the world — everything you experience — is actually an internal, subjective representation.
> The way I’ve described it is that we’re all in our own sensoriums, but that is generally totally opaque to us. Psychedelics can temporarily knock that sensorium askew — enough to notice that it’s there all the time and doesn’t have to be configured the way that it happens to be.
Considering this: do you find it a bit strange that ~all people (including yourself above) write as if the opposite of this is true? I mean sure, "people are imperfect" and "everyone is just expressing their opinion" are attractive memes (cultural "truths" that emerge from the very same simulation), but is there not perhaps something important going on that might be worth paying at least a little attention to?
> there's no reason to think that that stack of unfathomably complex and highly chaotic interactions is anything but chemical/electrical/thermal interactions.
Did the psychedelics not teach you that knowledge of all like this may not be genuine? And never even mind that, is there good reason to trust what consciousness tells us in the first place? Sure, people have matching stories so that's a good sign, except the stories don't match over time.
Well what do you mean by "genuine?" Any scientific theorist would tell you that there's not really a claim as to the actual factuality of a scientific claim, only that it's the best known explanation. "Best known explanation" is inherently socially constructed, as it requires consensus. So these beliefs are genuine insofar as any belief whatsoever can be genuine.
I super, super highly recommend reading William James' work on this topic. I unfortunately can't remember which essay went into it in detail...
Replace "genuine" with true or accurate...accurate enough that nothing important is left out.
My intuition is that you are motivated to not understand. I have no particular problem with this, provided you acknowledge it explicitly. Watch this:
I am being "pedantic"[1]. This is an explicit acknowledgement of it. I am seeking ever more accurate descriptions of what is going on.
I will be even more brutal:
> there's no reason to think that that stack of unfathomably complex and highly chaotic interactions is anything but chemical/electrical/thermal interactions.
"Reasons" exist in the minds of all people. It seems to you (it is your experience) that you possess knowledge of the contents of all minds, but you do not actually. It seems like you know what any scientific theorist would tell you, but you do not really. You query your mind on the subject, it gives you an answer. If you are not omniscient (I believe you are not), and an accurate study has not been done (at most, a half-assed survey has been done, of a small portion of the whole), then the result must be(!) simulated, at least by my thinking.
Here are some articles on the phenomenon in play here (full disclosure: we both suffer from it):
> "Best known explanation" is inherently socially constructed, as it requires consensus
For Allistic people (Normies), yes. But I suffer from autism, and I have weaponized it: I have chosen "Defect"[2] in this little game you people are playing. I see you (but only to the degree that I can, "pedantically"/tautologically), but you cannot see me (in the same way). I can intercept and attach a debugger "to a substantial degree" to my thinking, you do not have this ability. You are bound by culture.
Bold claims, eh! Watch this, I will now make a bold prediction of the future: you will[3] ~declare (implicitly or explicitly) yourself to be correct, and me incorrect, and as proof you will present a narrative based story. What you will not do: acknowledge what is going on here (you are expressing your opinion at best, etc), and what the true epistemic status(es) of this situation is: unknown[4].
There seems to be this weird phenomenon whereby when you point consciousness at itself, it starts behaving strangely. I have very little evidence of this other than large quantities of observation, but I have developed a strong intuition that there is something hardcoded in us that disallows that. This is obviously a "way out there, woo woo level" belief, and it is seems inconsistent with the theory of evolution (at least in the way it manifests), so I am not sure what to make of it. I can see why the ability (for conscious reflection) is uncommon, but I cannot see why a hardwired inability is ~ubiquitous. I wonder if it is somehow similar to how incest is repulsive...except that is taught to us quite explicitly, whereas if anything the opposite seems to be true of self-reflection (which is why it seems ~supernatural to me).
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[1] I use quotation marks because I am using the word colloquially (how Allistic people experience the word), not technically (consistent with the actual definition).
[3] This is one option, there seem to be about 4 choices (that are accessible) when a Human is put into this setting; doubling down with more story telling tends to be most common
[4] Full disclosure: this (the entire sentence) is (partially) a trick - I am testing if an explicit, unmistakable challenge to (at least attempt) ~transcendence might work. At the very least, it creates a fun elephant in the room situation. See also: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourthWall
The stories do match over time in some domains though. Notably many (but not all) scientific domains, but also in a lot of day-to-day interactions. That's arguably what makes scientific theories so useful.
Not the person you're responding to but for me that's compelling evidence that there is something like an objective reality out there (even if apes can't perceive it clearly).
They do not match over time (or geography) at the societal/cultural level is what I was getting at - the dominant metaphysical framework of the time/location determines what is "true", and often even what "is".
Also: science can change its story whenever it likes[1], and this is to its benefit (of reputation) rather than its detriment.
Science has the best rhetoric/marketing game in existence imho. Whether it is the best possible remains to be seen.
[1] Christianity did this too with The New Testament, which satisfies those who subscribe to that framework, but it is highly vulnerable to an attack from other ideologies with better game (currently: only science).
Yeah, I agree with you on the truth front. It's a pretty slippery concept, and indeed our best "model" of truth has changed many times, even in realms like mathematics where you'd think that stuff would have been nailed down by now.
But I also think you're making a bit of a map/territory conflation. I think what "is" has nothing to do with human culture - you drop a rock from head height, it's going to hit your foot, and this is "true" (observable maybe a better word) regardless of who you are (and more importantly, regardless of what you claim!). This is what I meant by the stories matching over time in some domains.
The ontological claims (the "map") change all the time in science, as they must! But I don't think reality (the "territory") does, in the same way that the ocean doesn't manifest dragons if I draw one on a seafaring chart.
Completely agree that science may not be the best epistemic theory possible. In fact, I'd stick my neck out and say that the scientific habit of reductionism seems to be floundering for things like complex biological systems (brains/ecologies/controversially even consciousness?) and maybe even understanding machine learning models. Perhaps we'll see some interesting developments in the next few decades =)
> I think what "is" has nothing to do with human culture - you drop a rock from head height, it's going to hit your foot, and this is "true" (observable maybe a better word) regardless of who you are (and more importantly, regardless of what you claim!). This is what I meant by the stories matching over time in some domains.
Right....but:
- what is that has nothing to do with human culture (or consciousness, or the machines we build) is only a subset of the larger set of what is
- quite often, humans drop rocks and other things onto the heads of other humans - religion has always got a lot of blame for this phenomenon, but a lesser known fact is that science plays a massive role in it as well: giving us the technology to do it in ever more powerful and affordable ways
> This is what I meant by the stories matching over time in some domains.
Some stories match, some do not. Religion also has plenty of each.
> But I don't think reality (the "territory") does, in the same way that the ocean doesn't manifest dragons if I draw one on a seafaring chart.
Dragons may not exist in The Universe, but that doesn't mean they can't can exist in reality.
If you don't believe me, go do a survey of the general public about things that "don't exist" and see what kind of results you get. For bonus results, try disagreeing with some people and see how that goes over.
> Completely agree that science may not be the best epistemic theory possible.
You and I are members of an exclusive group!
> that the scientific habit of reductionism seems to be floundering for things like complex biological systems (brains/ecologies/controversially even consciousness?) and maybe even understanding machine learning models.
Also: Reality.
> Perhaps we'll see some interesting developments in the next few decades =)
Ah, I think I'm starting to see where you're coming from. I'm using "reality" in the pretty narrow sense of the physical universe (Popper's world 1?), which I guess is actually quite hypocritical given that I'm also attacking the common (semi-religious) belief that everything can be reduced scientifically to fundamental physical interactions.
Ideas seem to have a dynamics of their own, and I'm pretty open-minded to the possibility that things which exist in the collective human mental substrate (world 2?) can exert causal influence of their own, in a certain sense, on world 1. In a way that maybe can't be reduced to physical interaction in any kind of useful predictive fashion?
I don't have the language to think about those concepts clearly right now!
You've left me with lots to ponder, thanks =) it's actually very cool to see Popper himself talking about the metaphysics of this stuff. Some of my physics friends would probably be a bit shocked by that...
Popper's three worlds is one of my favorites to lay on science fans, because they typically love them some Popper, and an enemy in their own ranks is just too good to go to waste!! :)
Yeah this comment also points to William James and the rest of the Pragmatists. Something is true if and only if it is useful. Our good scientific theories are good specifically and solely because they're useful to us -- their actual underlying truth is not only indiscernible outside of the context of validating useful claims, but any such concept of "underlying truth" (below/separately from what's useful) doesn't even have meaning.
You know this already, I think, but a pretty widely-used metric of utility in science is whether or not:
a) a theory makes predictions that match the results of a set of prescribed experiments
b) those results are reproducible by unrelated third parties following the same experimental guidelines
For some theories like EM we're at the point where the body of known experiments and predictions is so vast, and so many edge-cases have been probed, that we basically expect the results to generalise to the known universe.
But yeah, there's a long tail of science with a much weaker claim to "truth" or utility than this. I agree with you (I think? might have misunderstood you) that it starts to become more of a cultural or social phenomenon in these cases.
> it starts to become more of a cultural or social phenomenon in these cases.
Very much part of my concern. And within that there is the phenomenon whereby the harm science causes (say, global warming") somehow doesn't count. Only the end users of the things science brought into existence bear any burden of responsibility.
