Category: Sentience in Physics
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Consciousness baffles me, but not the Hard Problem
Simply put, the Hard Problem asks the following question: how can the machinery of the brain (the neurons and synapses) produce consciousness — the colours that we see, for example, or the sounds that we hear? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-07/david-chalmers-and-the-puzzle-of-consciousness/8679884 “Consciousness baffles me, but not the Hard Problem. The Hard Problem arises only if one makes a metaphysical…
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The world as a neural network
We discuss a possibility that the entire universe on its most fundamental level is a neural network. We identify two different types of dynamical degrees of freedom: “trainable” variables (e.g. bias vector or weight matrix) and “hidden” variables (e.g. state vector of neurons). Source
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Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism
“—we need both the science and the philosophy to get a theory of consciousness. The science gives us correlations between brain activity and experience. We then have to work out the best philosophical theory that explains those correlations. In my view, the only theory that holds up to scrutiny is panpsychism. When I studied philosophy,…
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Is There Suffering in Fundamental Physics?
Any sufficiently advanced consequentialism is indistinguishable from its own parody. The present article is sincere, though it might come across as absurd depending on one’s perspective. In order to reduce suffering, we have to decide which things can suffer and how much. Suffering by humans and animals tugs our heartstrings and is morally urgent, but…
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A biomaterial that arrange itself
“Using DASH, the Cornell engineers created a biomaterial that can autonomously emerge from its nanoscale building blocks and arrange itself – first into polymers and eventually mesoscale shapes. Starting from a 55-nucleotide base seed sequence, the DNA molecules were multiplied hundreds of thousands times, creating chains of repeating DNA a few millimeters in size. The…
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God or consciousness?
A quote from Max Planck: “All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix…
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Opportunities for an astronomical reduction of suffering
This is a list of situations, projects or initiatives in which there could be an “astronomical” (huge) reduction in the amount of suffering compared to what currently exists or is expected. Many of these situations (but not necessarily all of them) involve a high risk in the sense that they are difficult projects whose probability…
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Consciousness and the binding-problem
While panpsychism sounds crazy, it is actually a highly viable theory of consciousness, as long as it is distinguished from animism: the view that everything is alive and therefore possesses agency, intentionality, thoughts, emotions, etc. Elementary particles almost certainly are not endowed any of these attributes, but according to (my take on) panpsychism, they have…