Stuart Hameroff - What is Panpsychism?

Panpsychism is the extreme claim that everything in the physical world—all subatomic particles-are in some sense ‘conscious’ or have a basic kind of ‘proto-consciousness’. Why are an increasing number of leading philosophers taking panpsychism seriously? Something must be up. Could it be doubt that the scientific project to explain consciousness has failed?

Stuart Hameroff, MD, is a physician and researcher at the University Medical Center at the University of Arizona.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[LeftBoot]

Wish you would share the original recorded date in the comments. I thought this was going to be new information

[davidm]

I would like to see Dr. Kuhn interview Bernardo Kastrup about his perspective on panpsychism and consciousness. 🤔

[konberner]

From article in IEP that is pretty good on this, "Whitehead’s panpsychism is relatively well known. It is based in his view of an “occasion of experience” as the ultimate particle of reality, and as possessing both a physical pole and a mental pole. If things are nothing but occasions, and occasions are in part mental, then all things have a mental dimension. In Modes of Thought (1938), in the chapter titled “Nature Alive, ” he observed, “this [traditional] sharp division between mentality and nature has no ground in our fundamental observation. […] I conclude that we should conceive mental operations as among the factors which make up the constitution of nature” (p. 156)."

[allwheeldrive]

And another issue: Consciousness must be OF panpsychism, not the other way around. It is a relatively distinct form of the products of an all-driving system that informs literally everything we can see and measure, and everything we cannot. It is necessarily operating far above what drives our rather inconsequential existential needs.

[AAA-ww]

Everything is alive, even stone.

Yet not everything is conscious.

Consciousness is a ... and not
©


Metaphysician philosopher

[PetraKann]

Utterly baseless nonsense.
Love it - I want more!

[nyworker]

3:40 The "hard problem" of gamma synchrony may be the easiest thing for an engineer to explain.
Let me explain....: If every cell in nature has protoconsciousness wrt interacting with its environment, then neurons are special because they synchronize a metabolic process wrt to how perhaps the dna or mitochondreal dna metabolically controls all cells. In terms of planck scales, the synchrony produces extremely long planck times accompanied by emergence into biological scaled environments. Nature pulls no mysterious punches but follows the logical path of biological evolution starting with the smallest particle to the smallest cell and how each interacts with a local environment. We can certainly humble ourselves to the simplest forms and what we hold in common. I refer to my theory as Supercell Theory and how it is in line with the other theories like IIT, Panaychism, Idealism, Materialism, Physicalism etc. We can explain all of the "word salad" once we get a full handle on neocortical evolution and nature's design.

[newdawnrising]

Panpsychism is a secular way around Panentheism which is what reality actually is.
The ground of Being is a Divine Mind. This is how our minds / consciousness participates and we are co-creators in that God creates reality through us. This is not some daydream imagined explanation. This can be experienced directly and known without a doubt. This understanding goes back thousands of years. It’s amazing ppl have not figured this out yet.

[acarbonunit]

Good questions Robert, but you are trying to get logic from another Deepak quantum

[MikeWiest]

“Binding” is the critical thing. A classical panpsychism has an insoluble Binding aka Combination Problem because there ARE NO IRREDUCIBLE CAUSALLY EFFICACIOUS WHOLES IN ANY CLASSICAL MODEL! Quantum theory, on the other hand, is a theory of irreducible wholes, because that’s what quantum states are.

[jmanj]

0:06 OK, Doc, I'll bite...lol

Off the top of my head, I'll say that panpsychism is just another way to pry some scraps of cash from certain people late at night, long after they have relinquished the bulk of their critical thinking abilities...if these abilities were ever available in the first place.

How'd I do?

🤣

Go Bluejays!

[jean-pierredevent]

If consciousness is somehow waiting in matter as a possibility to happen as process, it's strange it would only go on in brains. Other processes might lead to it too. So that's why I wonder if it leads anywhere to see stars, galaxies (black holes?) as possessing such "processes" too, leading to a very different form of consciousness. Could what is now called dark matter be explained by assuming a galaxy has social stars, choosing to stay closely together?? There could be a very slow way of moving by using the uncertainty principle in position in a deliberate way.

[allwheeldrive]

Hameroff's equating and his definition of consciousness really has nothing to do with the idea that there is some kind of rules-based "intelligence" that informs - literally - everything. He is not going far enough, still using our meagre understanding of consciousness as the backdrop for a constant, not the people who he thinks aren't going far enough. The table form absolutely must follow inherent rules in order to render as that kind of object: it won't turn into a dog, for example, or transform into floating donuts. Same with galaxies, same with subatomic particles. Otherwise, how would order and outcomes that DON'T constantly crossover into completely new and chaotic structures and processes not ALWAYS be the norm? It is, in fact - at least as our little human brains can discern - quite the opposite. We can absolutely predict millions of things through our tools of observation and measurement because of this order, these rules. That would not be possible if there wasn't an underlying set of rules "guiding" movement and change - in and of itself having some kind of uber-cosmically-based impetus? Yeah, it hurts to start thinking that deeply, but it is exactly where our "understanding" must head.

[unknowntexan]

I'd wonder what yall think about "The Idealist Inference Argument for Immaterialism"? There is a video on YT about it.❤

[jamesstraub]

Lawrence's unprofessional treatment of Hameroff was hard to watch. A new study just came out that gives credence to this theory! Ha! Eat it!

[ModernAdventures-wu]

The ONLY thing that matters is that we exist inside of a simulation. Signs and symbols rule the world, not word or law.
Confucius.

[Westrwjr]

I agree. “Consciousness is a PROCESS, it’s not a property of matter. It’s an event.”

[jamesruscheinski]

does all matter have collapse of quantum wave function within?

[konberner]

Funny how this gentleman seems to like Whitehead, but then focuses on an argument that I would see as misplaced concreteness. Among the benefits of process philosophy is that it tries to transcend the flowing/stable perspectives rather than fighting about how one or the other is absolutely primary.

[follettjerry]

This video should have been 10 sec long. What is panpsychism? Gibberish.