Post #14: David Pearce’s consciousness proposal

I received a direct message from David explaining his consciousness theory. I’ve explored a couple links beyond that and might now have gained a reasonable understanding of his position. I’m going to try describing the proposal in my own words to display the extent to which I do and don’t understand it. From there he can correct me about anything that seems off. I’ll also go through some points he’s presented regarding valid consciousness proposals in general. This should further demonstrate my understanding or lack thereof. I’ll leave Johnjoe’s proposal alone for now, that is except for a couple specific questions David left at the end. In the grand scheme of things I don’t think we’re truly that far apart, and even though the theory’s themselves are certainly different. They each seek a prize where the winner should earn eternal fame, though all else should become irrelevant footnotes at the long overdue closing of a very sad chapter.

In general I’m going to use the word “sentience” rather than “consciousness” here.  In modern English I think he’ll appreciate this term to be a bit more fundamental and not quite as bastardized.  I haven’t yet gotten into the “innocent/wonderful” consciousness definition in my blog that I prefer from Eric Schwitzgebel.  But maybe going with “sentience” for now will at least help?  Furthermore David’s ethics movement is directly about the sentience of our planet’s life, which is to say the unique element of value regarding all existence.  We’re quite aligned on that point. 

From what I can tell his position begins with the micro sentience of all elements of reality individually, though in an irrelevant way since any given example will be incredibly minuscule.  Here we might as well consider things in general to not be sentient even if they technically are.  What this effectively does is give him an ability to exchange a “hard” problem for a “combination” problem. 

Regardless he proposes that quantum coherence lets brain based dynamics bind countless otherwise individual sentiences, and even though each one will merely exist for sub-femtoseconds.  Thus with such binding even human level sentience may be possible.  Theoretically here the brain has evolved instruments to punish and reward this quantum bound experiencer so that the brain can follow that experiencer’s desires and thus promote genetic proliferation. 

Even though quick decoherence in a given instance will end any specific “sentience frame”, I presume that sentience must effectively continue by means of massive replacement sub-femtosecond quantum coherences.  Together they should constitute a given macro sentience. 

One question would be how might brains do so while presumably the quantum function of a standard rock does not?  Is a specific brain mechanism proposed (like neurons doing quantum stuff) or is one simply presumed?  I do see something about the equations of quantum field theory being the means of brain to quantum field interaction.  Also when scientists create quantum coherence in substantial ways, should associated binding/sentience occur here?  In that case I suppose it would be “locked in” sentience without a means to act. 

The following would be what David mentioned as five components for more solid sentience theories: 

The first is to answer the hard problem of sentience.  As mentioned earlier he gets past this by positing that everything has minuscule sentence that doesn’t really matter, though once combined by means of sub-femtosecond quantum coherence in the brain, macro sentience can exist. 

I propose an amendment to the standard “hard problem of sentience” perspective however.  Observe that there once was a hard problem of gravity, and it hasn’t entirely been solved.  This is to say that Newton admittedly couldn’t tell us why mass would attract mass.  Nevertheless he did contribute tremendously to physics by positing the nature of the attraction.  Later Einstein helped a bit more by observing that mass bends spacetime.  My point is that neither of them needed to directly tell us why physics function as it functions, but rather needed to effectively model how it functions.  So maybe we should attempt to do the same for the hard problem of sentience?  As David mentioned in his original video here, “Philosophy’s cheap”.  Thus each of us I are interested in falsifiable descriptions. 

His second observation was the phenomenal binding problem of sentience.  Yes it does make sense to me that quantum “coherence” might bind individual sentiences into a singular macro sentience.  Furthermore quantum decoherence should thus explain unbinding. 

For the third condition, instead of base sentience I’ll step up to the full “consciousness” term. This would be the problem of its causal functional efficiency. I presume consciousness came to work as well as it has by means of evolution. Whatever constitutes consciousness, it’s become an effective sort of tool. Such binding brings the potential for more than just “bits”, but rather “understandings”. Is David’s proposal appropriate for the engineering of evolution? Apparently he proposes brain dynamics that sequentially interact with sub-femtosecond quantum dynamics given the equations of quantum field theory. So when things don’t work as well as they might, here it ought to be possible for evolution to find workarounds. If things were to go well for his proposal then details should be discovered.

Fourth is the pallet problem.  Could quantum fields have enough diversity to account for the diversity of consciousness itself?  I don’t know what could be more diverse than that, so no worries there. 

Fifth is to have novel and precise experimental predictions that sensible people agree would validate or refute a theory.  Does he have this?  He’s certainly trying.  David’s proposal is found here.  https://www.physicalism.com/abstract.html

What it’s set up to counter is the reductio ad absurdum stigma of quantum mind on the basis of the great heat and mass of standard brain function. Apparently phenomenal binding is thought to consist of quantum-coherent superpositions of neurons at sub-femtosecond timescales. So he says it’s like a movie at 10¹⁵ quantum-coherent frames per second. But if we were to hook up an in vitro neural network (repurposed brain stuff I suppose) to appropriate input and output devices, then we’d monitor this sort of function to see if there were any non-classical interference patterns set up. He predicts that if done well enough then we’d find non-noise sub-femtosecond macro superpositions that suggest perceptual object recognition.

I’ll leave things here for questions and comments. We’ll see what corrections he has when he lets me know. Furthermore if/when this gets settled then I’d like him to try describing Johnjoe’s consciousness model. I may need to do more explaining though. As a preview for what’s hopefully to come, here are some questions of his that I’ll provide short answers to:

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EM theories?

It’s not clear to me how they solve or dissolve the Hard Problem. How and why do supposedly non-experiential fermionic fields generate a particular bosonic field of experience? Are all electromagnetic fields experiential – including e.g. low-level microwave radiation permeates space? Or just some of them?

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Johnjoe approaches this problem just as Newton approached non-explained gravity. Perhaps the physics of an EM field around the parameters of standard synchronous neuron firing, exists as sentience in itself. So here the light that enters the eye goes on to cause an EM field which itself constitutes an experiencer of all elements of what’s seen. Of course this is all open to empirical testing, though I suspect it to be found that sentience doesn’t stray too far from the sorts of EM field parameters produced by the synchronous neuron firing of life on Earth.

Cheers David, and readers in general!

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Update 7:13 am December 5, 2023

For some reason David’s message on from Twitter wouldn’t paste last night, but here it is:

Thanks again
ah….no, not _non-existent, rather phenomenally unbound. When you are anaesthetised or dreamlessly asleep, is your consciousness extinguished as we commonly suppose? Or merely phenomenally unbound?
Anyhow…..

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Any adequate theory of consciousness must – at a minimum – solve the (1) the Hard Problem AND (2) the phenomenal binding problem AND (3) the problem of the causal-functional efficacy of consciousness AND (4) the palette problem (i.e. how can the extraordinarily rich diversity of conscious experience be derived from the relatively homogeneous neuronal constituents of the brain?). AND, at a minimum, the theory must generate novel, precise, experimentally falsifiable predictions that proponents AND critics alike agree will (dis)confirm the theory.
These requirements are fairly non-trivial.

By transposing the entire mathematical apparatus of modern physics onto an experiential ontology, non-materialist physicalism (cf. https:///www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#nonmat)
offers answers to 1 to 4 above.
Thus there is no “Hard Problem” because only the physical is real: the intrinsic nature of the world’s fundamental quantum fields – the essence of the physical – is experiential. And the phenomenally-bound macroscopic worlds of everyday experience (“perception”) characteristic of animal minds are underpinned by individual “cat states” / superpositions of neuronal feature processors; the medium or vehicle of representation is quantum; their subjective content is classical. Only the physical has causal efficacy; thus physical consciousness can talk and think about its own existence. And the solutions to the equations of QFT encode the precise textures and interrelationships of qualia.

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The distinction between (constitutive) panpsychism and non-materialist physicalism may sound pedantic. The two frameworks have obvious affinities. But panpsychism is a form of property dualism – with all the challenges that any kind of dualism involves. By contrast, non-materialist physicalism is monist to the core. Only physical properties are real; and they are encoded in the mathematical formalism of QFT.

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EM theories?
It’s not clear to me how they solve or dissolve the Hard Problem. How and why do supposedly non-experiential fermionic fields generate a particular bosonic field of experience? Are all electromagnetic fields experiential – including e.g. low-level microwave radiation permeates space? Or just some of them?