Is the universe conscious?

[Narz]

Do you believe you are part of the universe?

Yeah of course. And vice versa.

The universe is a simulation.

Could be. What makes you think so?

"The universe" will be defined (by me) as "everything that exists".

In people. 'consciousness' is caused by the over-laying of prediction analysis of the outside environment on top of internal motivation. My hand is going to catch the ball and my eyes track where the ball is going to be. I'm a strong believer in the theory that consciousness requires multi-modal sensory input, but honestly cannot unpack that from the fact that we use language to describe our consciousness.

Why does consciousness need input necessarily?

Maybe to rephrase "consciousness is an internal model of something external, as it relates to you", but the universe has nothing 'external' to it. Internal regions of the universe can become conscious, obviously.

Interesting. Reminds me of the theory that "we are all one thing" often paired with something along the lines of "God was bored so He/She/It created multiplicity so it could experience different parts of Itself from different vantage points".

Well, two separate problems here. First, humans are not "objects" under the gravitational domination of the Sun and thus are not "technically speaking" part of the solar system.

How are we not physical objects in the solar system?

However, to my mind it is impossible to make the philosophical or scientific leap from nonsentient, non-conscious rocks to the human brain writing poems and stuff, so I think the easiest explanation for the presence of consciousness in humans is the presence of consciousness in everything else down to subatomic particles.

Do particles feel things?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Could be. What makes you think so?

Don't you see the giant green diamond floating over your head?

 

[Estebonrober]

Do particles feel things?

Particles certainly feel all sorts of fields and react accordingly. Its the fields that fascinate me intensely.

 

[El_Machinae]

Why does consciousness need input necessarily?

Input is the mirror aspect of prediction. Consciousness requires that something be observed, but we observe in order to predict what a change to the 'self' will cause in the 'outside'.

We think we can have consciousness without outside stimulus, because we're able to arrange such experiments for ourselves (i.e., daydreaming while in a sensory deprivation tank). But this is an artifact of having a consciousness that's already built. Over time, this consciousness would erode as you stay in the bath. It's why people can't figure out if they fell asleep or not while in them.

By analogy, it's like noticing that the water is still boiling after you turn off the burner, and then assuming you can boil water without the burner.

 

[Narz]

Input is the mirror aspect of prediction. Consciousness requires that something be observed, but we observe in order to predict what a change to the 'self' will cause in the 'outside'.

We think we can have consciousness without outside stimulus, because we're able to arrange such experiments for ourselves (i.e., daydreaming while in a sensory deprivation tank). But this is an artifact of having a consciousness that's already built. Over time, this consciousness would erode as you stay in the bath. It's why people can't figure out if they fell asleep or not while in them.

By analogy, it's like noticing that the water is still boiling after you turn off the burner, and then assuming you can boil water without the burner.

Could consciousness theoretically exist in a vacuum? What if you gave it a really interesting puzzle before it had to live in the vacuum?

 

[El_Machinae]

Could consciousness theoretically exist in a vacuum? What if you gave it a really interesting puzzle before it had to live in the vacuum?

With the full understanding that we don't know what 'consciousness' IS, and we're only scraping into the biological correlates and causes of consciousness, I cannot definitively say one way or the other.

But 'giving consciousness an external puzzle before it's isolated' is something that consciousness can handle. It's what we do when we imagine our lottery winnings while in the isolation tank. Your example still requires 'an external' to create the consciousness into.

I just don't see how a universe can be 'conscious of' something. It's not reacting to anything. There's nothing to predict.

 

[Narz]

It's an interesting point that consciousness seems to require duality (subject & object)

 

[bernie14]

and time, prediction/reaction

 

[Lexicus]

How are we not physical objects in the solar system?

Cause we're subjects, not objects!

Do particles feel things?

I'm not sure I can answer that.

I should probably say that my thinking on consciousness has been heavily influenced by the paper "What Is It Like To Be A Bat?"
A key passage is here:

Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. It occurs at many levels of animal life, though we cannot be sure of its presence in the simpler organisms, and it is very difficult to say in general what provides evidence of it. (Some extremists have been prepared to deny it even of mammals other than man.) No doubt it occurs in countless forms totally unimaginable to us, on other planets in other solar systems throughout the universe. But no matter how the form may vary, the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism. There may be further implications about the form of the experience; there may even (though I doubt it) be implications about the behavior of the organism. But fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism - something it is like for the organism.

All I've done is take the last sentence there and applied it to everything, not merely living organisms. I cannot say what it is "like" to be a proton, but I cannot say definitively that 'there is nothing that it is like to be a proton.' What it is like to be a proton is quite entirely beyond my ken.

Here is another key part of the paper:

I assume we all believe that bats have experience. After all, they are mammals, and there is no more doubt that they have experience than that mice or pigeons or whales have experience. I have chosen bats instead of wasps or flounders because if one travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed their faith that there is experience there at all. Bats, although more closely related to us than those other species, nevertheless present a range of activity and a sensory apparatus so different from ours that the problem I want to pose is exceptionally vivid (though it certainly could be raised with other species). Even without the benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone who has spent some time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally alien form of life.

I have said that the essence of the belief that bats have experience is that there is something that it is like to be a bat. Now we know that most bats (the microchiroptera, to be precise) perceive the external world primarily by sonar, or echolocation, detecting the reflections, from objects within range, of their own rapid, subtly modulated, high-frequency shrieks. Their brains are designed to correlate the outgoing impulses with the subsequent echoes, and the information thus acquired enables bats to make precise discriminations of distance, size, shape, motion, and texture comparable to those we make by vision. But bat sonar, though clearly a form of perception, is not similar in its operation to any sense that we possess, and there is no reason to suppose that it is subjectively like anything we can experience or imagine. This appears to create difficulties for the notion of what it is like to be a bat. We must consider whether any method will permit us to extrapolate to the inner life of the bat from our own case,5 and if not, what alternative methods there may be for understanding the notion.

As we can see, a bat is obviously far more closely related to a human than a proton is, and so the problem seems exponentially more difficult in the case of the proton than in the case of the bat.

 

[Narz]

Cause we're subjects, not objects!

We may be subjects but we're still phsyical objects (not to mention cultural objects, sexual objects, etc).

 

[Narz]

I cannot say what it is "like" to be a proton, but I cannot say definitively that 'there is nothing that it is like to be a proton.' What it is like to be a proton is quite entirely beyond

I came up with a model of what it might be like to be a proton... lets call it a proto-type

 

[Thorgalaeg]

The universe is an amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity, gnawing hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.

 

[Lexicus]

The universe is an amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity, gnawing hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.

QUEST STARTED
BLACK BOOK: THORGALAEG

1. LEARN THE BLACK BOOK'S HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE