- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/1293808
Archived version: https://archive.ph/fHjNq
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20230810182753/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66407099
Why would you assume consciousness is a fundamental force rather than an emergent property of complex systems built on the forces?
Why would you assume it’s an emergent property and thus should be dismissed as not being a force of nature? I’m making fewer assumptions than you are by wanting to list it alongside the other forces until we can determine if it is emergent or not, and the implications of such emergence. It’s kind of a big deal that we can sit here and ponder the forces of nature with some degree of control over our little sack of atoms.
It’s safe to say that this list is going to change over time and represents a current snapshot of humanity’s limited understanding. Under the current snapshot of human understanding, leaving it off of the list seems to me to indicate an ironic bias on the behalf of researchers who must use the very force in question to do anything. By necessity, it is the overarching phenomenon surrounding all other forces since the only place we can definitively know these forces even exist is within our own mind. To say anything more is to make assumptions.
While I agree that a certain level of assumptions are necessary if we’re going to get anywhere, I’m also acutely aware that they’re still assumptions and that assumptions are not scientific. If we’re going to be scientific about this, we need to make as few assumptions as possible.
At a sketch:
We know that when the brain chemistry is disrupted, our consciousness is disrupted
You can test this yourself. Drink some alcohol and your consciousness will be disrupted. Similarly I am on Gabapentin for nerve pain, which works by inhibiting the electrical signals my nerves use to fire, and in turn makes me groggy.
While we don’t know exactly how consciousness works, we have a VERY good understanding of chemistry, which is to say, the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism (fundamental forces). Literally millions of repeatable experiments that have validated these forces exist and we understand the way they behave.
Drugs like Gabapentin and Alcohol interact with our brain using these forces.
If the interaction of these forces being disrupted disrupts our consciousness, it’s reasonable to conclude that our consciousness is built on top of, or is an emergent property of, these forces’ interactions.
If our consciousness is made up of these forces, then it cannot be a fundamental force as, by definition, fundamental forces must be the basic building blocks of physics and not derived from other forces.
There are no real assumptions here. It’s all a line of logical reasoning based on observations you can do yourself.
I find emergence to be the least reasonable of the 3 main hypotheses I consider, but I still accept that it’s possible since I can’t disprove it. However, it is illogical to conclude your hypothesis must be true at this stage.
Your comparison proves nothing. It is no different than insisting a radio must be creating the signal it’s picking up, because if you poured alcohol or liquid gabapentin all over it, it will no longer be able to play music. I’m sure you realize that if your radio breaks, that doesn’t mean the radio signal has disappeared. It is possible our brains are simply interfacing with consciousness rather than inexplicably fabricating it from more than the sum of its parts.
Based on everything science has taught me, it seems far more likely to me that consciousness is not magically created by my brain, but rather one of two things are happening:
My brain is able to interface with a conscious field
Consciousness is a force inherent within the universe, and our brains are able to make use of the force
I actually think the radio signal is an apt comparison. Let’s say someone was trying to argue that the signal itself was a fundamental force.
Well then you could make the argument that if you pour a drink into it, the water shorts the electronics and the signal stops playing as the electromagnetic force stops working on the pieces of the radio. This would lead you to believe, through the same logic in my post, that the signal itself is not a fundamental force, but is somehow created through the electromagnetic force interacting with the components, which… It is! The observer might not understand how the signal worked, but they could rule it out as being its own discreet thing.
In the same way, we might not know exactly how our brain produces consciousness, but because the components we can see must be involved, it isn’t a discreet phenomenon. Fundamental forces can’t have parts or components, they must be completely discreet.
Your example is a really really good one.
This statement begins with the assumption that the brain produces consciousness, then says that because the thing that produces consciousness has components, that it can’t be fundamental. This is a really really good example of circular logic.
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Something becoming more than the sum of its parts to such a degree would indeed be magic. Are you claiming we’re AI computer programs and that real life is analogous to ChatGPT? Are information and consciousness synonymous? I would say that one of us indeed doesn’t understand the complexity of the situation.
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Consciousness is relevant, and your point should not be dismissed. But it is difficult to measure, so science is not able to comment on it yet, rightfully so.
Force of nature or not, some abstract philosophical conceps will have to wait to be tested experimentally or better described empirically in order to be applied the same way.
The fundamental forces are physical forces. Consciousness is not a force, as far as we know.
Your comment doesn’t make any sense.
It is feasible for consciousness to be something like a force (more accurately, perhaps, a field) and as such it would be by definition a “physical” force. The use of the modifier “physical” on force doesn’t make much sense here: all forces are physical, as are all things that actually exist. It could be useful to consider the objects of consciousness as emergent, and the force of consciousness as fundamental; I don’t know enough about this line of thought to say much on that.
That’s literally what the comment you’re replying to says. Emphasis on “as far as we know”. There’s no obvious way to dismiss it outright as not being a force, it’s just that as far as we know currently, it isn’t a force.
I don’t personally have a well thought out stance on the matter.