On naturalism and consciousness

[bennyboy]

I want to ask, assuming that we don't see this, why we don't see consciousness or mind on display everywhere we look?

Who says we don't? How would you know whether every subatomic particle is bursting with mind, or whether the universe is a giant mind, or whether in all reality, it is only a few specially-evolved entities on a little blue dot which are imbued with the special privilege of not only existing but knowing what it's like to exist? What exactly would mind "on display" look like? Would it walk and talk? Show motivated behaviors that we can relate to as human beings? Frankly, if we're talking about observation, I don't even know that other people have minds-- ultimately, I must make philosophical assumptions to arrive even at that seemingly obvious conclusion.

When I say that all interchanges might involve mind, I'm not talking about QM particles having memories, and missing their kids, and appreciating Mozart. I'm talking about building blocks, upon which a more complex mind, like a human mind, could supervene, if those energetic interchanges are brought together in the right ways. Why not? This is how things like a desk supervene on atoms which consist of 99.9999999% space. So the problem with sand wouldn't be that there's no mind. It would be that all those gazillion little sparks of mind add up to nothing, much as they don't spontaneously form into a giant cathedral. The human mind-- now THAT is a great cathedral, an it requires those gazillion little sparks to be brought into a very special relationship.

Here's my problem with looking for the fundaments of consciousness in anything larger than the most fundamental particles: how do flowing electrons "know" as they flow through a transistor that they are representing data? Would you say that every eddy and whirl of river water represents a "gate" condition right at that point where a single current splits? How about a crack in a rock which splits one way or the other depending on slight variations in temperature? Is it doing a super-advanced environmental calculation, or is it just random stuff that happened?

It seems to me that data is only data if there is someone there to call it so. But that would mean that mind exists only where an existing mind sees meaning-- something akin to the Biblical God breathing life into man.

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We just don;t seem to be capable of the sorts of things a QM system would be capable of, if it underpinned our logical architecture directly.

If you maximized the physical potential of a ton of rock, who knows what wondrous things could be created? And yet, we usually just pile rocks together. There's no law that says evolution would maximize a given material's potential-- which in a simple way can be seen by the fact that there are idiots and geniuses with exactly identical brain chemistry.

If we consider the evolution of computers, we have smaller and smaller gates packed onto a chip. What does this mean? It means that on the older chips, much of the electric flow was wasted-- it was not organized into its maximal representation of data, and the greatest number of possible logical decisions. But let's say we continue reducing the size of systems until we get to 100% efficiency. What would that mean? I think it would mean we were working at the finest level of matter known to us: subatomic particles.


The last question is whether ALL actions at the QM level are logical decisions, or just "stuff happening." And I think this brings us back to a philosophical decision-- is something data only if we call it so?