Sure. You mentioned in your post that it's possible to imagine a world where humans are just meat bags devoid of any qualia but still act like they usually would. You solved it by introducing panpsychism, but what I'm saying is it doesn't really solve the problem. You still essentially have only matter and nothing else interacting with itself and qualia are just a byproduct of that. You could still conceivably have just meat sacks talking to each other but not feeling anything. The qualia themselves don't have any causal efficacy in panpsychism, they are still just a byproduct of matter interacting. Saying that consciousness lives inside the atom doesn't really say much at all.
This is where the article I linked comes into play: if qualia have no causal efficacy they couldn't have evolved in the way they did unless you assume a miraculous coincidence.
The problem as I understand it, and as stated in the article, is that there can be no quantitative description of qualia, and as a result they have no causal efficacy. This rules out consciousness being a result of evolution, and therefore strictly materialist explanations of why we do, in fact, have a subjective experience fail.
The article states:
Phenomenal consciousness cannot have evolved. It can only have been there from the beginning as an intrinsic, irreducible fact of nature
Is this not what I was saying?
Also, I wasn't saying that consciousness is stored in the balls atom. I was just using it as an example to show that in panpsychism everything experiences qualia, including wacky things like atoms because consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe.
Alright I guess I misunderstood you, panpsycism isn't a well defined term. Usually when people talk about panpsychism they're talking about materialism but with consciousness stored in the balls matter but yeah Kastrup's idealism is also technically panpsychism.
I figured there was a misunderstanding because everything in the article seemed to line up with what I was trying to convey earlier.
But I'm still confused on one point, what is the difference between saying qualia is a fundamental property of matter, and saying qualia is a fundamental property of the universe? I noticed I was saying the former earlier, and that is probably the source of the confusion here. When I talk about this subject, I tend to use the two interchangeably, but it seems you would say that those are two different statements.
The difference is causal efficacy. If you say consciousness is a property of matter you're not allowing qualia in of themselves any causal efficacy because (presumably) you don't conceive of qualia manipulating matter in any way because there's no such thing in our current understanding of physics. On the other hand when you say it's a property of the universe you open up to the possibility of consciousness existing independently of matter and possibly exerting some kind of influence on the material world, probably through some quantum effects.
If they have no causal efficacy why have we evolved them in the exact way we did? Why does my body do the things I tell it to do? Why do orgasms feel really good instead of really bad? It doesn't make any sense for qualia to correspond to the body and the brain in any way if the body and the brain doesn't need them to exist at all. For qualia to be included in the natural selection process (and it seems that they indeed were inluded in the process) they need to have causal efficacy.
The only way for it to make sense from a physicalist perspective is to assume it's just a huge coincidence or that there are infinite other universes where billions of consciousnesses scream internally in terror while their bodies do whatever they want. Or assume some sort of intelligent design, but that by default doesn't sit well with science.
I think I see what you're getting at now. I wasn't sure how something non quantitative could have a causal effect on the natural world, but then you questioned why shooting fat ropes feels great.
I started with the assumption that every system of particles has its own qualia. There is then a qualia for each possible configuration of matter in the universe.
If humans evolved without the causal efficacy of qualia, then why is the sensation of cumming a good one? Why would that exact configuration of matter in the exact moment you happen to bust be the one to produce a qualia you would describe as a pleasant sensation?
This would be a rather large coincidence that evolution, completely randomly, stumbled upon a configuration of matter with qualia that matches the result the selection pressures tended towards.
Is this why you say there must be causal efficacy, and why you say qualia seem to be included in the process of natural selection?
This would be a rather large coincidence that evolution, completely randomly, stumbled upon a configuration of matter with qualia that matches the result the selection pressures tended towards.
Is this why you say there must be causal efficacy, and why you say qualia seem to be included in the process of natural selection?
Exactly this yeah. It seems like the most parsimonious explanation to me, all other explanations require quite a bit of weird assumptions and logical leaps that you don't usually do when doing science.
Now I'm not sure I buy into all the conjectures of Kastrup's idealism (life after death, all of existence being solely mental states etc..) but it's more and more clear to me that consciousness cannot be tied to matter alone but is a thing with a life of its own. Personally some sort of neutral monism makes the most sense to me, but I'm still reading up on all of this stuff.
Sure. You mentioned in your post that it's possible to imagine a world where humans are just meat bags devoid of any qualia but still act like they usually would. You solved it by introducing panpsychism, but what I'm saying is it doesn't really solve the problem. You still essentially have only matter and nothing else interacting with itself and qualia are just a byproduct of that. You could still conceivably have just meat sacks talking to each other but not feeling anything. The qualia themselves don't have any causal efficacy in panpsychism, they are still just a byproduct of matter interacting. Saying that consciousness lives inside the atom doesn't really say much at all.
This is where the article I linked comes into play: if qualia have no causal efficacy they couldn't have evolved in the way they did unless you assume a miraculous coincidence.
The problem as I understand it, and as stated in the article, is that there can be no quantitative description of qualia, and as a result they have no causal efficacy. This rules out consciousness being a result of evolution, and therefore strictly materialist explanations of why we do, in fact, have a subjective experience fail.
The article states:
Is this not what I was saying?
Also, I wasn't saying that consciousness is stored in the
ballsatom. I was just using it as an example to show that in panpsychism everything experiences qualia, including wacky things like atoms because consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe.Alright I guess I misunderstood you, panpsycism isn't a well defined term. Usually when people talk about panpsychism they're talking about materialism but with consciousness stored in
the ballsmatter but yeah Kastrup's idealism is also technically panpsychism.I figured there was a misunderstanding because everything in the article seemed to line up with what I was trying to convey earlier.
But I'm still confused on one point, what is the difference between saying qualia is a fundamental property of matter, and saying qualia is a fundamental property of the universe? I noticed I was saying the former earlier, and that is probably the source of the confusion here. When I talk about this subject, I tend to use the two interchangeably, but it seems you would say that those are two different statements.
The difference is causal efficacy. If you say consciousness is a property of matter you're not allowing qualia in of themselves any causal efficacy because (presumably) you don't conceive of qualia manipulating matter in any way because there's no such thing in our current understanding of physics. On the other hand when you say it's a property of the universe you open up to the possibility of consciousness existing independently of matter and possibly exerting some kind of influence on the material world, probably through some quantum effects.
What is the problem with qualia having no causal efficacy?
If they have no causal efficacy why have we evolved them in the exact way we did? Why does my body do the things I tell it to do? Why do orgasms feel really good instead of really bad? It doesn't make any sense for qualia to correspond to the body and the brain in any way if the body and the brain doesn't need them to exist at all. For qualia to be included in the natural selection process (and it seems that they indeed were inluded in the process) they need to have causal efficacy.
The only way for it to make sense from a physicalist perspective is to assume it's just a huge coincidence or that there are infinite other universes where billions of consciousnesses scream internally in terror while their bodies do whatever they want. Or assume some sort of intelligent design, but that by default doesn't sit well with science.
I think I see what you're getting at now. I wasn't sure how something non quantitative could have a causal effect on the natural world, but then you questioned why shooting fat ropes feels great.
I started with the assumption that every system of particles has its own qualia. There is then a qualia for each possible configuration of matter in the universe.
If humans evolved without the causal efficacy of qualia, then why is the sensation of cumming a good one? Why would that exact configuration of matter in the exact moment you happen to bust be the one to produce a qualia you would describe as a pleasant sensation?
This would be a rather large coincidence that evolution, completely randomly, stumbled upon a configuration of matter with qualia that matches the result the selection pressures tended towards.
Is this why you say there must be causal efficacy, and why you say qualia seem to be included in the process of natural selection?
Exactly this yeah. It seems like the most parsimonious explanation to me, all other explanations require quite a bit of weird assumptions and logical leaps that you don't usually do when doing science.
Now I'm not sure I buy into all the conjectures of Kastrup's idealism (life after death, all of existence being solely mental states etc..) but it's more and more clear to me that consciousness cannot be tied to matter alone but is a thing with a life of its own. Personally some sort of neutral monism makes the most sense to me, but I'm still reading up on all of this stuff.
Alright great! Thanks for the help in understanding that concept.
It seems that, after all, consciousness is not stored in the balls.
Kastrup's work looks pretty interesting, and I think I'll be reading more into it.