David Wallace - Physics of Consciousness

Transcript

David as a philosopher of physics what do you think of the efforts of recent times particularly here at the fpxr conference to elicit advanced ideas and physics particularly quantum physics and different structures to explain consciousness as being something other than just a simple biological emergence of what happens macroscopically among neurons in the brain it's always kind of difficult because um some of the smartest people I know and some pretty good friends take these approaches very seriously I find it very difficult to take it seriously at all it seems that we don't think we need a fundamental physics of digestion or a fundamental physics of respiration even though these are difficult biological processes that right we're really lacking a root for this consciousness people seem to think is different and the reasons they think it's different I think our intuitions and hunches which can feel very plausible but when you really interrogate them a hard system I mean the thing is obvious that there's one famous philosopher said the consciousness is an output of the brain as urine as an output of the kidney now the difference is and and it is very complicated how the kidney filters and all of that and the other organs as well the difference is the phenomenological inner movie the inner subjectivity that we all know that I have as an individual and I infer that you do but you know I can't never know that you could be everybody else in this world could be a inner zombie as we say and I could be the only one conscious will never know that but that phenomena is a radical difference isn't it well you say that you've passionately made that case but assuming that this consciousness is not actually kicking the electrons and atoms around your brain and almost no one thinks it is then you'd have made just as passionate the case just as convincing if you're one of these zombies know for certain that's absolutely true but that argument can be utilized that because I'm knowing it myself therefore and and anybody else and and you could envision a zombie doing that for exactly the reason that you said therefore there has to be something else an argument is used exactly the reverse I didn't believe you can envisage it I mean what you're doing when you're in visiting it is you've got a sort of picture in your mind of a person or a robot or whatever and then you're just thinking to yourself well that's not conscious but you didn't know that I mean I mean by analogy and that this is a this is an analogy this is a analogy of Dan Dennett but I could imagine a cell that wasn't alive and here's me doing it now I'm imagining a cell vivid detail then I'm thinking this cell isn't alive but that doesn't really mean that I've imagined another life cell I just have thought how it turns out it turns out if you think really hard about how living how that cell works its living you made you made a point that and seemed to think it was self-evident which to me it's not that consciousness can't interact though that's one of a whole series of theories of consciousness and philosophy of mine that consciousness is an epic phenomena that it's sort of it is the foam on the wave and doesn't cause anything but it just rides along the surface that's just one theory maybe right but but you can't dismiss all the let's try it let's suppose that there really was a new substance a consciousness it-- which is not described at all by any physical you have so far but actually we look really hard at the brain we find that our we get a much better theory if we recognize that the electrons are being pushed around by the consciousness site and we do lots of experiments and support this ok fine now somebody comes along and says I can imagine somebody whose brain is just the same and had and had all the same consciousness site but wasn't conscious and then the question just goes to one regress further and anything that we're describing in the language of internet interactions and dynamics is equally open to this objection that says well I can imagine all that going on without consciousness so if you think that objection works you don't really improve things by supposing there's an interaction okay but you I think you're still left with the primary problem which is the phenomenal phenomenology of what we feel insane being a step function different being a radical difference from everything else we know in the universe has a different it's different because if I if I stubbed my toe and and we see a lots of spikes along the see fibers a certain part of my brain that's one thing and my intense feeling of pain and knowing what it's like to feel that is is a radically different thing now you can correlate them perfectly and that's why many people have come up with an identity theory which in a sense is is is is a perfect scientific answer but it's it seems conceptually absurd let's say that my pain is this night that they're correlated but the feeling of the pain of verses and just seeing the sodium ions and potassium Clinton's going through membranes and all of that I mean so radically we have doors we have a really deep intuition that these are radically different and I share that intuition what I don't think we have is anything that goes beyond an intuition we don't have an argument we don't we don't have a deduction that says these are not the same things and attempts to get it just mean more intuitions come up and I just don't think intuitions or a grid route to truth in science lots of things are really counterintuitive it's really really counterintuitive that your pain literally is a whole bunch of the electrical structural and functional goings on in the brain but and the fact it's not counterintuitive that is counterintuitive doesn't make it better so what what the conclusion of what you would say is is that that we live in a universe in a structure of existence where it is possible for electrical activities to literally be the feeling of consciousness okay think we live in a universe where it's possible I think we live in a universe where it's actual