Sean Carroll & Philip Goff Debate 'Is Consciousness Fundamental?'

Filmed and edited by Jay Shapiro.

[peterpodgorski]

53:19 I find it interesting that Philip call panpsychism a "theory". I wonder what by definition...

[mastersili]

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:

05:16 🧠 Consciousness and physical reality present the ancient challenge of how to unify scientific data (public data) and our private experiences (private data). Private data includes feelings, experiences, and sensory perceptions like color and taste.
07:36 🧪 The Mind-Body problem explores how Consciousness and the physical world connect. There are three main solutions: physicalism (physical world is fundamental), panpsychism (Consciousness is fundamental), and dualism (both are fundamental).
09:56 🧠 Scientific experiments can't distinguish between these options, leaving it as a philosophical challenge. Panpsychism asserts that Consciousness is fundamental, with the physical world emerging from underlying Consciousness.
13:54 🧪 Physicalism faces a conceptual mismatch between the quantitative language of physics and the qualitative aspects of Consciousness, making it difficult to explain experiences in purely physical terms.
18:47 🔄 Russell-inspired panpsychism posits that Conscious entities interact, giving rise to mathematical structures, which are what we observe as physics. Panpsychism successfully explains the physical world in terms of Consciousness.
22:51 🌌 Physicalism remains a strong approach, considering our excellent understanding of the physical world. Altering our fundamental understanding of physical reality due to challenges in understanding Consciousness might not be the best approach.
26:45 🧠 Sean Carroll discusses levels of explanation in Consciousness, ranging from fundamental quantum fields to human experiences and behaviors.
27:27 🧪 Different levels of vocabulary (physical, biological, and human-scale) describing Consciousness are compatible and do not conflict with each other.
28:23 🌌 While Sean Carroll admits not fully understanding Consciousness, he is confident that any explanation will fit within the framework of physicalism, emphasizing the importance of mapping Consciousness in physical terms.
29:33 🧠 Sean Carroll illustrates the relationship between thoughts and brain activity, emphasizing the ongoing research efforts to describe Consciousness in physical terms.
30:29 🤔 Sean Carroll addresses the "satisfaction gap, " highlighting the dissatisfaction some have with physicalist explanations of Consciousness. He contrasts this with the panpsychist approach.
31:55 🔴 Carroll critiques the "knowledge argument, " challenging the idea that the qualitative experience of Consciousness cannot be explained within physicalism. He asserts that the argument does not undermine physicalism.
33:19 🌐 Sean Carroll outlines the core Theory in physics, emphasizing our deep understanding of fundamental particles and forces. He explains the limits of potential new particles' relevance to Consciousness and biological processes.
36:44 ❓ Carroll presents the "satisfaction gap" dilemma for panpsychists, highlighting the challenge of reconciling their views with the well-established core Theory of physics.
37:24 ❓ Sean Carroll challenges panpsychists to either modify the core Theory of physics to fit their views or accept that Consciousness does not require such modification.
42:55 🌌 Carroll emphasizes that Consciousness is intricately tied to behavior. He asserts that any theory of Consciousness must account for its impact on human behavior and experiences.
43:21 🧠 Sean Carroll believes Consciousness is complex and challenging to understand but contends that changing the entire universe's framework is unnecessary. He advocates for working within the physicalist paradigm while exploring Consciousness further.
50:25 🧠 Panpsychism views physics as a computational structure (software) realized in Consciousness (hardware), akin to how software can run on different devices like iPhone and laptop.
51:06 🤔 Panpsychism posits Consciousness as a fundamental layer underlying physics, not necessarily changing physics but offering a deeper understanding of reality.
53:55 🔬 Panpsychism does not alter physics; it proposes a more fundamental layer beneath physics, challenging the scientistic view that only experimentally provable aspects matter.
56:28 🌌 Panpsychism provides a coherent explanation linking physical reality to underlying facts about Consciousness, presenting a viable solution to the Mind-Body problem.
59:01 🧐 Panpsychism argues for the importance of integrating our immediate awareness of Consciousness with scientific knowledge, emphasizing the need for philosophical exploration beyond experiments.
01:00:12 🧠 Panpsychism challenges the fundamental dilemma: Does it change core physics? The debate hinges on whether panpsychist views necessitate altering the core Theory of physics.
01:05:14 🌈 Panpsychism asserts that explaining Consciousness involves understanding both qualitative experiences and their neural correlates, highlighting the challenge of defining what constitutes an explanation.
01:11:12 🤷 Panpsychism questions the notion of the "hard problem of Consciousness, " suggesting that as scientific understanding advances, the hard problem might dissolve without a distinct solution.
01:13:18 🧠 The knowledge argument is about the incompleteness of materialism. Mary, a neuroscientist, learns new information about experiencing red, indicating materialism's limitations.
01:14:47 🌌 Panpsychism aims to explain physical reality in terms of consciousness, not just explain consciousness itself. It offers an alternative to materialism in understanding reality.
01:17:39 💡 Consciousness is a unique case; it's privately known, not publicly observable. The challenge is to integrate the reality of consciousness with the reality of the physical world.
01:20:43 🌟 The debate highlights implicit assumptions in understanding the fundamental nature of reality. Different views exist due to the complexity of the problem; there's room for differing interpretations.
01:31:15 🧐 The introspective data on consciousness, although subject to interpretation, provides a real, rich understanding of subjective experiences, challenging the notion of Consciousness as purely inferential.
01:36:19 🎨 Philip introduces the example of Fred, a character who sees two distinct colors despite others seeing one, highlighting a gap in our understanding of consciousness and physicalism.
01:37:31 🦐 The existence of creatures like the mantis shrimp challenges our understanding of consciousness, indicating something missing in the current neurological explanations.
01:38:48 🎨 Descriptions of experiences such as seeing red are relational and subjective, making it difficult to provide objective answers within panpsychism or physicalism.
01:41:57 💭 The zombie argument challenges the concept of consciousness by proposing beings that behave identically to humans but lack subjective experience, raising questions about the nature of consciousness.
01:45:55 🌍 Panpsychism emphasizes continuity in nature, suggesting that consciousness evolves from simpler forms, offering a Copernican view of consciousness in the universe.
01:47:11 🧩 The combination problem in panpsychism explores how smaller conscious entities combine to form complex consciousness, a challenge that researchers are actively engaging with.
01:52:29 🤔 Sean asserts that he feels physicalism is true, aligning his inner experiences with his understanding of the physical world, highlighting the complexity of consciousness as a key challenge.
01:54:48 🧠 Philip discusses the limits of physicalism, emphasizing the need for an intelligible story explaining the emergence of subjective qualities from quantitative physical processes. The debate extends to other non-scientific data like value and mathematics.

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[MichaelDembinski]

Can't find the comment now, but whoever suggested watching Sean Carroll vs Alan Wallace at ICE Dartmouth (MANY thanks!) will watch a far more even battle of brains.

[rooruffneck]

Wish Philip had really taken on Sean's claim, "Doesn't matter if it doesn't change physics."

The real problem with that statement is that it reveals Sean's conflation of scientific methodology with metaphysical materialism.

Sean is unaware of this conflation so he REALLY means it when he says that. He honestly believes that the regularities in nature's behavior that all scientists study prove physicalism. Many physicalist scientists and philosophers do not conflate them. Sean does. Not sure why.

In other words, there is a simple reason why there are great physicalist, dualist, idealist, and panpsychist scientists all over the world: because studying and thinking about the regularities in nature's behavior does not push against any ontological position.

If Sean recognized his conflation of scientific method with scientific materialism, he could still take the "I don't 'care" attitude. It would just mean that he would be agnostic ontologically, simply interested in the patterns for themselves with no commitment to what nature actually is.

Yes, some people say, "Nature IS the patterns." Fine, then that person is an idealist because the patterns themselves are abstract cognitions (mental) and direct perceptions (mental).

[richardhosch]

I think Philip doesn't actually understand the knowledge problem!

When Mary sees red for the first time, retinal photoreceptors, optic pathways, and neuonal networks are engaged for the first time. She learns something new, which is encoded as a change in the neurophysicalchemical structure of her brain.

And, it does seem impossible to learn that information from reading ("learning") about the physical facts of seeing red. But that does not mean it takes something nonphysical to obtain that knowledge, which is Sean's point.

In principal, if the knowledge gained from seeing red equates to a change in her brain structure, then with sufficient technology able to adjust brain structure on a neuron and neurochemical level (nanobots or whatever, doesn't matter), then it is in theory possible for her to absolutely learn about the quality of seeing red without actually seeing red. Think of it as a scifi memory transplant.

If a purely physical process can produce the brain structure that equates to the knowledge (memory) of what the experience of "seeing red" feels like, without the conscious process of actually seeing red, then there is nothing about the conscious experience not fully explained by physicalism.

It is the philosophers' insistence that the possible ways Mary can interact with the physical world to learn about what seeing red would be like be limited to ingestion of facts through traditional currently possible methods. This is just a failure of imagination. And unnecessary limitation that makes the thought experiment invalid, and not an argument in favor of what they believe it is. Philip doesn't actually understand the knowledge argument.

[pbradgarrison]

I don't understand why Philip keeps saying panpsychism is the way to explain everything and then never explains anything. It's like a promise that never delivers. I just don't understand consciousness any better by hearing that it is fundamental. It sounds an awful like the enchanted world of the pre-scientific days.

[kaidenschmidt]

I enjoyed watching, but I don't think it made many new contributions to Carroll and Goff's brief history of debating one another. I felt I heard essentially the same points as usual, with seemingly the same misunderstandings of one another. Or at least, talking past one another at the same junctions--I'm not sure whether to attribute this to neither participant willing to engage directly with one another or willfully misunderstanding the others argument to make them seem the better. I thought Sean came ahead in several respects; I admired his intellectual honesty and willingness to be undogmatic, I thought he made contact with Goff's arguments better, and I felt he structured his argument more clearly. On the other hand, Goff felt mostly empty because he made claims without defending them and reiterated points without responding in a way that satisfied me. He declares several times that science has fallen short and physicalism needs to be discarded, but I didn't feel he argued for this strongly. Conversely, Carroll admits readily why he has a high credence in the scientific methodology to answer these difficult problems. Also the point that we haven't finished the project of fundamental physics and we should expect consciousness, a complex phenomenon, to be much harder to crack: in this light it isn't surprising we haven't solved it yet and it's too early to throw up our hands. Admittedly, I'm amenable to these arguments already, but I would have loved to see Goff be a bit more articulate.

In the end, I found it enlightening to show that Goff's standards for what a theory should be able to explain are nonspecific, wooey, and may not be fair to expect. No one ever promised you a rose garden, there just may not be more to explain over and above the complete physical mechanism of consciousness. Needing something more reeks of essentialism, looking for the essence of consciousness, when there may not be such a thing! Sort of a Wittgensteinian unasking of the question.

I have a question for those familiar with the Mary's room thought experiment and those who felt that Carroll's response fell short--why is admitting that the brain state of seeing red is different from the brain state of knowing physical facts about red not a satisfactory answer? It seems true to me that the brain state associated to experiencing red is simply different from anything you read in a book and there's nothing nonphysical about that.

[Nword]

Why Russell and not Whitehead?? @philipgoff

[pbradgarrison]

Philip, could you go over again how panpsychism explains how what we call physical reality comes out of or from consciousness?

[ivanvnucko]

I dream of one of these debates where Phillip will finally say something substantial about the explanatory power of panpsychism, so far just hot air, I'm afraid. And I would so much like to know...

[KDawg]

Panpsychism, just another god of the gaps argument. What a waste of time and oxygen.

[fs]

I love witnessing two very different & intelligent minds contemplate the very same thing from drastically different perspectives... and get totally frustrated with the opposing viewpoint which they find incomprehensible 😂It was a lot of fun to listen to, thanks!

[kaidenschmidt]

22:15 Just finished Phillip Goff’s intro… woefully unconvincing as of yet

[aall]

Near the end, Sean Caroll states / agrees that there are things in the world - he mentions aesthetics and morals - that are, in his view, in priniciple beyond the scope of science (and hence beyond physicalism). However, such examples are clearly not beyond the scope of, well, consciousness. Oops, talk about giving up the game. If science cannot, even in principle, deal with these things (which must be considered real), then it does not offer any prospective theory of reality that could be considered complete. Which was quite simply the central argument of Philip Goff.

[istuff]

I don't think the consciousness is special people explain themselves very well and they could do with going back and rephrasining their arguments with different words.

To me, they basically say that the subjective experience of qualia for a given individual gives us objective data about reality, but this is a weird argument given that, for one thing, there's no way (at least currently, or even conceivably?) to know whether someones qualia is the same as someone else's qualia, given the same input.

We'd have to literally output someone's qualia into someone's else's brain and make them experience the incoming qualia directly, rather than their own qualia of that input to see if they matched up. If they don't then 'the redness of red' is meaningless as far as objective reality goes.

[bobkat]

“How do you add up little conscious things to make big conscious things.”

Current state of panpsychism theory.

[michaeltraynor]

I wonder about claims like "your pain is not a scientific datum". Why not? If someone tells me they're in pain, i generally take their word for it. If this happens every time I twist their arm (or see c fibers firing, or whatever), I count this as a correlation. There is science to be done with this type of thing. It could turn out I'm being lied to (or only dreamt about twisting their arm... they shouldn't have lied to me about that pain thing), which means it is defeasible, but still evidence in the meantime.

[evcoproductions]

This Goff guy is seriously talking absolute fantasy

[spacer]

Instead of spending so much time arguing physics is not fundamental, Philip would be more convincing if he elaborated more on how panpsychism gives rise to mathematical structures of physics and how exactly does physics emerges from consciousness. To me, physicalism is simpler than panpsychism, so really, the only criteria to judge panpsychism is its own explanatory power, but he never actually presents it in any depth in this video.

[DrewTrox]

31:06 The information gained when she sees red is not a quality of red it is a quality of her. She learns her experience of red. That is not something about red that is something about her. She didn't learn anything new about red. She learned what happens to herself in the pressence of red.