Here's a hypothesis: Most conscious beings who have ever existed have not seen this video. But wait -- there is spectacular evidence against this hypothesis: You have seen this video.
That doesn't seem to me to be analogous. Surely, the probability of you being one of the few people to watch this video so far shouldn't be super low given background considerations.
My understanding is that you are presenting a reductio: if my argument is to be accepted, I should also accept your argument that I have never watched my video. My response to your argument is that I think that hypotheses with very low priors can have high posteriors due to our a posteriori evidence. Watching my specific video has a low prior, but I have the direct experience of watching it, so I can be very confident I watched it. I’m not sure how this parallels the logic of my argument, so I don’t understand the reductio.
But the alternative hypotheses - that a sizeable proportion of all the conscious beings who have ever existed have indeed seen this video - is even more spectacularly low.
@@ApologeticsSquared That's not quite it. The argument isn't defending the claim that you've never watched this video. The argument is defending a hypothesis: Namely, the hypothesis that most conscious beings who've ever existed haven't seen this video. You should be surprised to find yourself watching this video, just like you should be surprised to be an organism if panpsychism is true. But is the fact that you're watching this video evidence against my (obviously true) hypothesis? If it is, it's so weak that it shouldn't really alter your overall assessment of the hypothesis' probability.
Thank you for clarifying! I'm going to first spell out your objection in my own words to ensure that I'm understanding you. Let's call the hypothesis that most conscious beings who've ever existed haven't seen this video "H." P1) H is obviously true. P2) If my argument against Panpsychism succeeds, then we have strong evidence against H. P3) If we have strong evidence against H, H is not obviously true. C4) Therefore, my argument against Panpsychism does not succeed. Now, I would contest (P3). Basically, I would bite the bullet and accept that we do indeed have "strong" evidence against H. But, we have super duper strong evidence *for* H as well, so that's why H turns out to have a super duper high posterior probability and is super obvious. In this case, the evidence for H is your sense data about the way the world works. It turns out that even though the argument I gave was super strong, sense data turns out being even stronger. For an illustration, the argument in this video argued that the prior probability of Panpsychism was about 10^-30. Now, imagine that you're at a party and three new people you meet want to give you their phone numbers (which I am told is a thing that can happen at parties). The prior probability of any particular string of 30 digits being told to you is 10^-30. But, obviously it would be quite reasonable to believe that such and such string of digits was actually the phone numbers of those individuals based solely on the sense data of you hearing them report their phone numbers. Therefore, sense data can easily overcome priors tiny priors like the one attributed to Panpsychism in this video. In conclusion, we have strong evidence against H, and super duper strong evidence for H. We likewise have strong evidence against Panpsychism, but to my knowledge, we do not have super duper strong evidence for Panpsychism.
I am not a panpsychist and I do think this argument (and other similar arguments) fail. What you’re doing is focusing on one specific class of observers and comparing it to the whole population, which will always give you a low prior regardless of what you started with. Think of the probability of you being born *you* rather than someone else. That’s roughly 1 in a 100 billion. That that probability is low should not count as evidence for solipsism.
I think that these sorts of arguments are generally allowable. Yes, my existence has a low prior on all views, but on which view is it the *least* low? That's the view which is most probable! I think Solipsism can be viewed as a "family" of views. If only Jim existed, that would be Solipsism. If only I existed, then that would be Solipsism. Now, the fact that I exist is evidence for "Squared-Solipsism," and disproves "Jim-Solipsism," but it doesn't increase the probability of Solipsism overall. So, I don't think your reductio succeeds.
@@ApologeticsSquared I think that’s besides the point, so I’ll reformulate my objection and try to link it more to your argument. My objection can be formulated without reference to who *I am*. If there’s only 1 person in existence, the probability that I would find myself to be that observer, given I am indeed an observer, is 1. If there’s 100 billion observers, the probability that I would find my being that specific observer is 1 in 100 billion. I do find myself to be that specific observer. Therefore, that’s strong confirmation for there only being that specific observer in existence, presumably. The analogy here is that, in your argument, you use the fact that we do find ourselves to be biological organisms rather than subatomic particles (that is, a specific observer) to say that it’s strong evidence for there only being that specific (class of) observer(s) in existence. I would say these sorts of arguments are not sound. My issue with them is that they give us too much more information than we have the right to have access to. What we’re essentially wanting to do here is wanting to make it so that most observers are just like us. But we wouldn’t care about this minute class of observers if it weren’t us to begin with, so the fact that only observers of a specific class exist shouldn’t really count as a prediction. We are only taking seriously the hypothesis after observing the supposed evidence for it, that we are indeed of this specific class. Nobody would care about the hypothesis that all conscious creatures are biological organisms if we were conscious subatomic particles! EDIT: I would say that there are other absurd (in that they lead to results we do not have the right to get to by this sort of reasoning) results that this sort of reasoning may lead to like that we should conditionalize on the universe being incredibly small. To clarify, the probability that I do think matters is that of our specific class of observers to exist at all. I do not think it matters what proportion of the population of observers that constitutes. We do not have the right to demand that that proportion be high. That would be equivalent to demanding that all observers must be just like us.
// If there’s 100 billion observers, the probability that I would find my being that specific observer is 1 in 100 billion. // I'm sorry, I don't know who is being referred to by the term "that specific observer" in this sentence. In the preceding sentence it was the only person in existence, but now it's unclear who it is. // The analogy here is that, in your argument, you use the fact that we do find ourselves to be biological organisms rather than subatomic particles (that is, a specific observer) to say that it’s strong evidence for there only being that specific (class of) observer(s) in existence. // Where I would contest the analogy is that I am asking in particular what *experiences* a given theory predicts. Say that there are 100 billion people in existence, each with their own set of experiences. There is a 1 in 100 billion chance I would experience my specific set of experiences. Now, let's say that there is only 1 person. What does he experience? Well, there's a 100 billion different possibilities! So, there's still a 1 in 100 billion chance I would experience my specific set of experiences. So, when I update on my specific set of experiences, this provides no evidence for solipsism. // We are only taking seriously the hypothesis after observing the supposed evidence for it, that we are indeed of this specific class. // I think this is valid reasoning! If we see a black raven, this is evidence for the hypothesis that all ravens are black. If we see that we have such and such properties, this is evidence that all observers have such and such properties!
@@ApologeticsSquared The analogy is having it so that the same specific person is in existence alone. Once again, there really is no prediction being made. The hypothesis is only formed after looking at the data. It is valid as per induction, but induction is just packed with issues, as scientists and philosophers of science have recognized for some time now. Regardless, one can still issue the same objection (concerning the probability of the person who exists being the specific person in question) towards your argument. Sure, they say, the prior probability of that specific observe’s being myself is not very high, but the probability of conscious observers being biological organisms (rather than any class of observers) is also not very high for exactly the same reason. You would respond to this by saying that your hypothesis claims that only the class of observers that we find ourselves to be exists (roughly speaking) and so that probability is simply 1 under my hypothesis. But MY hypothesis only claims that the person who I indeed find myself to be, is the only person in existence, and so that probability of my observing that data is still 1. The two scenarios are completely analogous, and neither hypothesis is actually predictive, because both are created to *accommodate* the empirical fact that we find ourselves to be of a specific class (or that I find myself to be a specific observer).
I haven't finished the video yet, but I think you're trying a sort of anthropic argument to disprove panpsychism. That's misunderstanding panpsychiam. We're not saying elementary particles have the capacity to observe reality. Just that they're endowed with consciousness, in the sense of the so-called hard problem of consciousness. The anthropic argument works in cases where, as an observer of reality, you'd be more likely to be such and such. Of course you're more likely to be an elementary particle, but then you wouldn't even be able to formulate the thought that you are a particle.
I think this video made me finally understand the problem of credences, at least the way you are using them. Essentially, your selection criteria isn't plausibillity, but self-centeredness. The more a worldview puts your own experience in the center, the more you are in a mayority position, the higher your credence. On the contrary the more you are a "special case", an outlier or simply in the minority, the lower your credence in that particular worldview. This isn't a particularly good way to come to a true conclusion in my opinion. A better way might be to look at something i will call "global credence", which would be the normalized sum of all projected credences over all entities. That way you do not favor a worldview just because it puts you in the center.
Doesn't this argument work as well for the property of being a particle? There are more particles than humans, so you should expect to be a particle instead of a human. Hence, the view that particles exist is highly improbable.
@@ApologeticsSquared That seems rather sketchy. Did your confidence that particles exist really go down upon coming up with this argument? Mine certainly didn't. Furthermore, let's go back a few hundred years to where the evidence for particles wasn't "extremely good" but merely "good enough to be the scientific consensus", which is certainly not enough to outweigh the argument presented in this video. It seems odd to suggest that those scientists should have rejected their theories about particles if presented with this argument.
Its not clear how Panpsychsim has made a failed prediction here. For any given experience on Panpsychsim, its only more likely by relative frequency for that experience to be of a minimal form. As long as Panpsychism predicts some relative frequency of (complex experiences/simple particle experiences) and that frequency obtains, then, if anything, Panpsychism has made a correct prediction. The fact that my individual conscious experience is unlikely by relative frequency just seems irrelevant as Panpsychism may just predict that frequency.
Never build an argument around statistics. Like it doesn't hold at all. Assuming the distributions conciousness to object is i.i.d then the probability of being one specific particle would be equally as probable than being a specific organism. Just statistically you'd be more of a particle, but it'd still be 1/total population what you ended upon. And even if 10^-30 % of a population are a type, 10^-30% of the population have to be that type no matter how unlikely, because if they weren't the probability would be 0 and not 10^-30%. I think the whole panpsychism is dumb don't get me wrong, but you're missing a few things. Like for example you can't interact with the particles conciousness, so wheter it exists or not is not relevant to your subjective experience as an organism. So if you were a concious particle, you wouldn't have the means to communicate that. Maybe my point gets clearer if i make an analogy. So all the physical constants seem to be fine tuned because if they were slightly different, the universe wouldn't exist in the way we percieve it. Some people take this as an argument for creation. But the argument is flawed because it's not what are the chances of the constants being so perfect, it's that in all the other places(whatever that means) where they aren't "perfect", we couldn't be there to experience it. So just because it's unprobable it doesn't say anything about the situation, since if the other situation were you wouldn't be able to judge it from your current point of view. Also an arrow hitting a target. What are the chances? They're allways zero since there are infinitely many places on the target where the arrow could land. Yet the arrow allways lands somewhere. So 1/ infinitly many places=0 but it still hits. Low probability is never an argument
If you were discovered on a beach as a baby, we could take it that you must have emerged from the sea foam somehow. The probability of this is very low but you are here so it must have happened. Well, no because we have an alternative hypothesis which is much more likely. We would only be forced to make the above inference if we could a priori rule out competing hypotheses.
No different than dividing the human population into subsets of "me" and "not me" and concluding the prior for your life is 1 in 8 bil. Besides, arent all appeals to our own unlikeleness defeated by the anthropic principle? That the only entities that could reflect and ask such questions about their complexity are the complex ones
I don’t see how this prediction failing means that panpsychism is less likely true. It’s astonishingly unlikely that I would be born with exactly the dna, mental disorders, and personality I have and yet I AM born. Unlikely events occur all the time.
Good question! Probability theory tells us that if one theory has a failed prediction, but a second theory doesn't make a failed prediction, then this raises the probability of the second theory relative to the first. The reason some unlikely events don't impact the probabilities of our theories at all is because those unlikely events (e.g. the details of your birth) were *not* better predicted by any particular theory! Panpsychism and functionalism do an equally good job of predicting your sequence of DNA. But functionalism does a better job of predicting that you're not a particle than panpsychism.
I feel like this attitude would mean that Solipsism beats all other models on prior probability of me having my experience, because with Solipsism it is 1.
I think Solipsism can be viewed as a "family" of views. If only Jim existed, that would be Solipsism. If only I existed, then that would be Solipsism. Now, the fact that I exist is evidence for "Squared-Solipsism," and disproves "Jim-Solipsism," but it doesn't increase the probability of Solipsism overall. Another point is that Solipsism is disconfirmed by the Population Principle which I explored in my last non-PHA video.
There seem to be many problems with this. First and foremost, organisms are not comprised of a static set of particles. If I'm not comprised of static components, than my consciousness doesn't have a one to one relationship with me, even it you consider my lifetime of consciousness monolithic. So me and my consciousness are really complex systems, derived from the interplay of innumerable sets that make up me and my consciousness in any given moment. In fact, you could most likely swap any random particle in me at any moment for any other random particle and the concepts of me and my consciousness would be unaffected. Does every particle then have a consciousness that connects into mine? Or does every particle merely have the potential to be part of a consciousness? Is this a meaningful distinction? Are any of these sets meaningful distinctions?
Apologetics, while I do enjoy the concept behind the argument here, I think that it is based on faulty logic. The panpsychist view does not generally take the conscious experience of each conscious thing (particles potentially included) to be even remotely similar, and there is no saying that a given consciousness simply 'takes the form of' an entity. It may well be (and seems not only more likely but more convincing) that the conscious experience as described by a panpsychist model is created with/by the associated physical thing. In this way, the 'me' that is not a particle never could have been a particle, nor could I have been any other human being, animal, or organised system. The argument here requires a very specific metaphysics to function, (that consciousnesses exist before they are associated with a physical entity) which is one that is not remotely held in common panpsychist thought. With this in mind, the argument, while statistically pleasing, fails to actually address panpsychism.
There might be another way to consider this. Let's imagine consciousness as being something like sunlight. When the sun is shining, it's shining everywhere all at once. Take the view of a mountain. Sunlight is shining on that mountain. It is also shining on a particular tree on that mountain. It is also shining on a particular branch on that tree. The fact that the entire mountain is illuminated is nothing other than the fact that individual leaves, branches, trees, stones, foot-paths, rivers, waterfalls, boulders, and the like, are illuminated. Many structures arise in, are illuminated by, sunlight. Many structures arise in, or are illumined by, consciousness. Thoughts, feelings, perceptions, concepts, are not raw awareness, they are psychological structures, comparable to the physical structures associated with the mountain. There is not "Mountain sunlight" and "tree-branch sunlight", there is only sunlight permeating all scales of the scene. Not "human awareness" or "cell awareness", only awareness at all scales. Nor is the "self" "aware" any more than the mountain produces sunlight, rather the self is a structure that arises within and is illumined by awareness, as the mountain is a structure that exists in and is illuminated by sunlight. You could say "trees should not exist, a tree is composed of billions of cells, statistically cells should exist but there should never be a tree". Could say "Cells should not exist, a single cell is composed of innumerable atoms, the likelihood of atoms existing is great, but of cells, almost unreasonably small", or you could say "structure exists at all scale, a large structure being parsed down to smaller structure being parsed down to smaller structure, a large structure itself a parasol of a greater structure which is a parasol of a greater structure. Structure exists invariant of scale, awareness permeates or shines upon the whole things, a perfectly smooth (non-quantized) continua"
Here's where that difference becomes important. If you are standing in the sunlight and you die, and begin to rot, there is no less sunlight than there was before. It is just sunlight shining on a corpse. If you are thinking in terms of "my consciousness", "my awareness", you are missing the point that when you die, the awareness carries on without any substantial change, except that, for a time, it is no longer illuminating a psychological structure that reflexively identifies itself as the source of the illumination. This is where making distinction between "my consciousness" and "the consciousness of one of my atoms" comes into play, as if when an atom finally disintegrates or you finally die one unit of consciousness has disappeared, or when a new structure arises a new consciousness has appeared, and that therefor there is not "consciousness", like there is a gravitational field, but "consciousnesses", like innumerable quantized particulates, which leads to the notion of separation, which leads to the attempt to apply statistical argumentation.
If I understand the reason panpsychism is a thing, it's only as a caveat/refutation/implementation (I'm not sure which) for people who absolutely postulate the impossibility of getting conscious things from strictly physical things. So if you've refuted panpsychism (though Emerson Green's reductio does work for me), all you've done is raised the a posteriori probability of the counter postulate -- conscious things can arise out of strictly physical things. As a physicalist I'm fine with that, although the reason I would refute a particle being (proto) conscious is not statistical, it's that particles (simply) lack a needed organization or architecture that (is hypothesized to) make physical things entail consciousness.
This doesn't make any sense. There's also a tiny chance of me being born, yet I was born. The chances of something being an organism is super tiny, so what? guess that's why there's more particles than organisms. Whether they are conscious or not seems to be beside the point.
Probability theory tells us that if one theory has a failed prediction, but a second theory doesn't make a failed prediction, then this raises the probability of the second theory relative to the first. The reason some unlikely events don't impact the probabilities of our theories at all is because those unlikely events (e.g. the details of your birth) were not better predicted by any particular theory! Panpsychism and functionalism do an equally good (or bad!) job of predicting, say, your specific sequence of DNA. But functionalism does a better job of predicting that you're not a particle than panpsychism.
The easier argument seems to be: what is the evidence that tables or rocks have consciousness? I'm curious if panpsychism only makes sense if you have a complex, robust understanding of consciousness. Clarifying what consciousness is in this case is critical to understand it and it's implications. Just saying consciousness is awareness (presumably sensing or feeling) seems a very low level. In what sense do tables and rocks have this capability and how do we know? What's the evidence? I guess at least panpsychics realize we don't like in a material-only universe.
I don't understand your argument, the statement "you have a vanishingly low probability of coming to exist as a human" means just that. It doesn't mean "you cant be a human". Also the whole argument assumes that everyone kindof "exist before existing" and we have to roll a huge dice that will decide which form we'll take. If instead it turns out we just start existing as ourselves then the probability of anyone being anyone else is exaclty 0 because you started existing already as yourself so there was no point at which "who you are" was in doubt.
You could just say "lack of evidence" and be done. I don't think anyone actually believes panpsychism as described in this video either, the (very) few I've talked with would say the particle argument is a strawman, and that of course they don't believe small units like particles are conscience. If they just move that goalpost this video becomes irrelevant. Would be interesting for you to address some spiritual beliefs with other topics though, or even panpsychism of objects or something.
@blankspace2891 I've yet to meet a single person who believes in particle consciousness. There might be one, but it's not a major belief within the group that believes it so they would most likely say it's a strawman.
The probability for me to exist in this location is very small given the vastness of space as proposed by science => space does not exist So yeah I don't think the argument works
I think a panpsychist would disagree with the way you oppose the consciousness of fundamental particles versus the consciousness of organisms. After all, organisms are just special arrangements of fundamental particles. So the unlikely event is not that your consciousness was zapped into an organism rather than an electron (which seemingly presupposes dualism btw), but that your conscious experience is that of a particularly complex arrangement of particles. It’s unlikely in the sense that “most” conscious experiences (if they can even be quantified) come from less particular configurations, but inevitable in the sense that something had to experience the consciousness of your body. I think where your argument fails is that all of these other conscious exists but are simply unable to comment on youtube videos
3:55 Is the concept of me having a first-person experience of reality other than my own even coherent? Could it be the case that I have to have my own first-person experience of reality and couldn't have the experience of any other mind? Plus, it seems like the lottery. Someone has to have the experience of being a human, so I'm not sure if should I be surprised that it's me.
// Is the concept of me having a first-person experience of reality other than my own even coherent? // I just mean "experiencing something else." It's totally coherent to talk about what one would have experienced if the world was different (e.g. if you were hit on the head, it would hurt). Panpsychism predicts that the experience you would have would be whatever particles experience. // Someone has to have the experience of being a human, so I'm not sure if should I be surprised that it's me. // Say I had a theory that there was a huge multiverse, but tomorrow every universe would be destroyed except one random one. Tomorrow, we find our universe not destroyed. Okay, fine, *some* universe had to survive. But still, it seems that if my theory was true, we got really lucky! So, if we reason probabilistically, we reject my theory, because no other theory needs this sort of luck. Same goes for Panpsychism. It needs a lot of luck, and other theories don't. So, I'm going with other theories.
@@ApologeticsSquared That's a good point about the multiverse, I didn't think of it like that, but something still seems wrong with the idea that I could have the conscious experience of a different mind. It seems to me that each mind can only have one first-person experience, and my mind is necessarily linked to my personal experience, so I couldn't be a different mind and still have a first-person experience as I wouldn't exist at all then (most of the essential properties of what it means to be me would be gone). If I were hit on the head, I'd still be be me, and my mind and personal experience would still continue, but I couldn't become a different mind, like that of a subatomic particle. Maybe I'm way off base, but that's just the way it seems to me. I'll have to think about this more.
0:56 1. It (A random person) is most probable to be born in India (as opposed to some other nation. It's technically more probable for a random person not to have been born in India when only accounting for population though.) 2. It's (Identitying a random individual is) just as probable to been born male or female. (I've heard that this isn't quite true, but the ratio is almost 1:1). 3:22 I don't anything about panpsychics, but I doubt that they claim that particles experience complex humanlike consciousness. Lastly, the calculation 1/(10^30) could be simplified for your future videos. Just use the exponent and the exponent would indicate how much information one would gain if this turned out to be true. So if panpsychism were true, then you would have gained 30 units of information (base 10).
@@ApologeticsSquared I put 5 blue marbles and 3 red ones in a bag. I draw a random marble from a bag. There is a 5/8 probability that I drew a blue marble. I put the world population in an abstract set. I pick a random individual from that set. There is about 50% probability of a male individual. I put myself in an abstract set and then draw a random member? If so, then I will always pick myself because I am an the only element in that set.
@@mesplin3 Well, let's change the thought experiment. I put 5 blue marbles and 3 red ones in a bag. One of those eight is my favorite marble, named Marby. Marby the marble. What color is Marby? I don't tell you. Now, Marby isn't random. It's a very specific marble! What's the probability that Marby is blue, until you get new information? It's still 5/8. The only thing required for this probabilistic assessment is that we have *no reason* within our background knowledge to expect that the individual is any particular member of the set.
I was about to make an objection but maybe I realized I misunderstand probabilities. You seem to have a great understanding of the subject, so suppose that males had 100 times the lifespan of women, but that each birth is still equiprobable to be a male or a female. In that case, which of these statements is falsified and why? "it is equally likely to be born male as female" "it is equally likely *you* were born male as female" "it is equally likely to be a man as to be a woman" I was thinking of messing with the hypothetical lifetime of either particle consciousness or organism consciousness, but I'm too uncertain of my statistical intuition to make the objection flow
I don't think that affecting the lifespans would change the first two probabilities. Whether or not the third changes depends on how you answer the super controversial "Sleeping Beauty" paradox. "Thirders" will say the probability changes, "halfers" will say it doesn't.
@@ApologeticsSquared So maybe there's a way for thirder panpsychiatrist to get out of the picke. Let's say for example that a particle's consciousness lasts an infinite amount of time, while an organism's consciousness ends on average 10^80 times per day, but the new one inherits the memories and the train of thought of the previous one. In that case, thirders would say it's more probable to be organisms than to be particles.
@@tafazzi-on-discord If we're updating on what we're experiencing at a given moment, most experiences at a given moment are particle-experiences. However, if I understand you right, you're suggesting we update on what being we are identical to, and "I" am actually upwards of 10^80 beings, each lasting a moment. This might be work, but the panpsychist would need to thread the needle of providing a theory of personal identity on which an organism's identity cannot persist, but particles can somehow retain it.
@@ApologeticsSquared Quantum decoherence seems possible only at the level of two or more entangled particles, that could be seen as a "death", so if every instance of decoherence (which we have difficulty estimating) may possibly be a death in an organism. Still though, 10^80 is a big number, maybe this isn't good enough to solve this.
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Here's a hypothesis: Most conscious beings who have ever existed have not seen this video. But wait -- there is spectacular evidence against this hypothesis: You have seen this video.
That doesn't seem to me to be analogous. Surely, the probability of you being one of the few people to watch this video so far shouldn't be super low given background considerations.
My understanding is that you are presenting a reductio: if my argument is to be accepted, I should also accept your argument that I have never watched my video. My response to your argument is that I think that hypotheses with very low priors can have high posteriors due to our a posteriori evidence. Watching my specific video has a low prior, but I have the direct experience of watching it, so I can be very confident I watched it.
I’m not sure how this parallels the logic of my argument, so I don’t understand the reductio.
But the alternative hypotheses - that a sizeable proportion of all the conscious beings who have ever existed have indeed seen this video - is even more spectacularly low.
@@ApologeticsSquared That's not quite it. The argument isn't defending the claim that you've never watched this video. The argument is defending a hypothesis: Namely, the hypothesis that most conscious beings who've ever existed haven't seen this video. You should be surprised to find yourself watching this video, just like you should be surprised to be an organism if panpsychism is true. But is the fact that you're watching this video evidence against my (obviously true) hypothesis? If it is, it's so weak that it shouldn't really alter your overall assessment of the hypothesis' probability.
Thank you for clarifying! I'm going to first spell out your objection in my own words to ensure that I'm understanding you. Let's call the hypothesis that most conscious beings who've ever existed haven't seen this video "H."
P1) H is obviously true.
P2) If my argument against Panpsychism succeeds, then we have strong evidence against H.
P3) If we have strong evidence against H, H is not obviously true.
C4) Therefore, my argument against Panpsychism does not succeed.
Now, I would contest (P3). Basically, I would bite the bullet and accept that we do indeed have "strong" evidence against H. But, we have super duper strong evidence *for* H as well, so that's why H turns out to have a super duper high posterior probability and is super obvious. In this case, the evidence for H is your sense data about the way the world works. It turns out that even though the argument I gave was super strong, sense data turns out being even stronger.
For an illustration, the argument in this video argued that the prior probability of Panpsychism was about 10^-30. Now, imagine that you're at a party and three new people you meet want to give you their phone numbers (which I am told is a thing that can happen at parties). The prior probability of any particular string of 30 digits being told to you is 10^-30. But, obviously it would be quite reasonable to believe that such and such string of digits was actually the phone numbers of those individuals based solely on the sense data of you hearing them report their phone numbers. Therefore, sense data can easily overcome priors tiny priors like the one attributed to Panpsychism in this video.
In conclusion, we have strong evidence against H, and super duper strong evidence for H. We likewise have strong evidence against Panpsychism, but to my knowledge, we do not have super duper strong evidence for Panpsychism.
I am not a panpsychist and I do think this argument (and other similar arguments) fail. What you’re doing is focusing on one specific class of observers and comparing it to the whole population, which will always give you a low prior regardless of what you started with. Think of the probability of you being born *you* rather than someone else. That’s roughly 1 in a 100 billion. That that probability is low should not count as evidence for solipsism.
I think that these sorts of arguments are generally allowable. Yes, my existence has a low prior on all views, but on which view is it the *least* low? That's the view which is most probable! I think Solipsism can be viewed as a "family" of views. If only Jim existed, that would be Solipsism. If only I existed, then that would be Solipsism. Now, the fact that I exist is evidence for "Squared-Solipsism," and disproves "Jim-Solipsism," but it doesn't increase the probability of Solipsism overall. So, I don't think your reductio succeeds.
@@ApologeticsSquared I think that’s besides the point, so I’ll reformulate my objection and try to link it more to your argument.
My objection can be formulated without reference to who *I am*. If there’s only 1 person in existence, the probability that I would find myself to be that observer, given I am indeed an observer, is 1. If there’s 100 billion observers, the probability that I would find my being that specific observer is 1 in 100 billion. I do find myself to be that specific observer. Therefore, that’s strong confirmation for there only being that specific observer in existence, presumably. The analogy here is that, in your argument, you use the fact that we do find ourselves to be biological organisms rather than subatomic particles (that is, a specific observer) to say that it’s strong evidence for there only being that specific (class of) observer(s) in existence.
I would say these sorts of arguments are not sound. My issue with them is that they give us too much more information than we have the right to have access to. What we’re essentially wanting to do here is wanting to make it so that most observers are just like us. But we wouldn’t care about this minute class of observers if it weren’t us to begin with, so the fact that only observers of a specific class exist shouldn’t really count as a prediction. We are only taking seriously the hypothesis after observing the supposed evidence for it, that we are indeed of this specific class. Nobody would care about the hypothesis that all conscious creatures are biological organisms if we were conscious subatomic particles!
EDIT: I would say that there are other absurd (in that they lead to results we do not have the right to get to by this sort of reasoning) results that this sort of reasoning may lead to like that we should conditionalize on the universe being incredibly small. To clarify, the probability that I do think matters is that of our specific class of observers to exist at all. I do not think it matters what proportion of the population of observers that constitutes. We do not have the right to demand that that proportion be high. That would be equivalent to demanding that all observers must be just like us.
// If there’s 100 billion observers, the probability that I would find my being that specific observer is 1 in 100 billion. //
I'm sorry, I don't know who is being referred to by the term "that specific observer" in this sentence. In the preceding sentence it was the only person in existence, but now it's unclear who it is.
// The analogy here is that, in your argument, you use the fact that we do find ourselves to be biological organisms rather than subatomic particles (that is, a specific observer) to say that it’s strong evidence for there only being that specific (class of) observer(s) in existence. //
Where I would contest the analogy is that I am asking in particular what *experiences* a given theory predicts. Say that there are 100 billion people in existence, each with their own set of experiences. There is a 1 in 100 billion chance I would experience my specific set of experiences. Now, let's say that there is only 1 person. What does he experience? Well, there's a 100 billion different possibilities! So, there's still a 1 in 100 billion chance I would experience my specific set of experiences. So, when I update on my specific set of experiences, this provides no evidence for solipsism.
// We are only taking seriously the hypothesis after observing the supposed evidence for it, that we are indeed of this specific class. //
I think this is valid reasoning! If we see a black raven, this is evidence for the hypothesis that all ravens are black. If we see that we have such and such properties, this is evidence that all observers have such and such properties!
@@ApologeticsSquared The analogy is having it so that the same specific person is in existence alone.
Once again, there really is no prediction being made. The hypothesis is only formed after looking at the data. It is valid as per induction, but induction is just packed with issues, as scientists and philosophers of science have recognized for some time now. Regardless, one can still issue the same objection (concerning the probability of the person who exists being the specific person in question) towards your argument. Sure, they say, the prior probability of that specific observe’s being myself is not very high, but the probability of conscious observers being biological organisms (rather than any class of observers) is also not very high for exactly the same reason. You would respond to this by saying that your hypothesis claims that only the class of observers that we find ourselves to be exists (roughly speaking) and so that probability is simply 1 under my hypothesis. But MY hypothesis only claims that the person who I indeed find myself to be, is the only person in existence, and so that probability of my observing that data is still 1. The two scenarios are completely analogous, and neither hypothesis is actually predictive, because both are created to *accommodate* the empirical fact that we find ourselves to be of a specific class (or that I find myself to be a specific observer).
I haven't finished the video yet, but I think you're trying a sort of anthropic argument to disprove panpsychism. That's misunderstanding panpsychiam. We're not saying elementary particles have the capacity to observe reality. Just that they're endowed with consciousness, in the sense of the so-called hard problem of consciousness. The anthropic argument works in cases where, as an observer of reality, you'd be more likely to be such and such. Of course you're more likely to be an elementary particle, but then you wouldn't even be able to formulate the thought that you are a particle.
I think this video made me finally understand the problem of credences, at least the way you are using them. Essentially, your selection criteria isn't plausibillity, but self-centeredness. The more a worldview puts your own experience in the center, the more you are in a mayority position, the higher your credence. On the contrary the more you are a "special case", an outlier or simply in the minority, the lower your credence in that particular worldview. This isn't a particularly good way to come to a true conclusion in my opinion. A better way might be to look at something i will call "global credence", which would be the normalized sum of all projected credences over all entities. That way you do not favor a worldview just because it puts you in the center.
Doesn't this argument work as well for the property of being a particle? There are more particles than humans, so you should expect to be a particle instead of a human. Hence, the view that particles exist is highly improbable.
Maybe! But it seems that even if the existence of particles has an extremely low prior, we have extremely good evidence for their existence!
@@ApologeticsSquared That seems rather sketchy. Did your confidence that particles exist really go down upon coming up with this argument? Mine certainly didn't. Furthermore, let's go back a few hundred years to where the evidence for particles wasn't "extremely good" but merely "good enough to be the scientific consensus", which is certainly not enough to outweigh the argument presented in this video. It seems odd to suggest that those scientists should have rejected their theories about particles if presented with this argument.
Its not clear how Panpsychsim has made a failed prediction here. For any given experience on Panpsychsim, its only more likely by relative frequency for that experience to be of a minimal form.
As long as Panpsychism predicts some relative frequency of (complex experiences/simple particle experiences) and that frequency obtains, then, if anything, Panpsychism has made a correct prediction.
The fact that my individual conscious experience is unlikely by relative frequency just seems irrelevant as Panpsychism may just predict that frequency.
Never build an argument around statistics. Like it doesn't hold at all. Assuming the distributions conciousness to object is i.i.d then the probability of being one specific particle would be equally as probable than being a specific organism. Just statistically you'd be more of a particle, but it'd still be 1/total population what you ended upon. And even if 10^-30 % of a population are a type, 10^-30% of the population have to be that type no matter how unlikely, because if they weren't the probability would be 0 and not 10^-30%. I think the whole panpsychism is dumb don't get me wrong, but you're missing a few things. Like for example you can't interact with the particles conciousness, so wheter it exists or not is not relevant to your subjective experience as an organism. So if you were a concious particle, you wouldn't have the means to communicate that. Maybe my point gets clearer if i make an analogy. So all the physical constants seem to be fine tuned because if they were slightly different, the universe wouldn't exist in the way we percieve it. Some people take this as an argument for creation. But the argument is flawed because it's not what are the chances of the constants being so perfect, it's that in all the other places(whatever that means) where they aren't "perfect", we couldn't be there to experience it. So just because it's unprobable it doesn't say anything about the situation, since if the other situation were you wouldn't be able to judge it from your current point of view.
Also an arrow hitting a target. What are the chances? They're allways zero since there are infinitely many places on the target where the arrow could land. Yet the arrow allways lands somewhere. So 1/ infinitly many places=0 but it still hits. Low probability is never an argument
If you were discovered on a beach as a baby, we could take it that you must have emerged from the sea foam somehow. The probability of this is very low but you are here so it must have happened. Well, no because we have an alternative hypothesis which is much more likely. We would only be forced to make the above inference if we could a priori rule out competing hypotheses.
No different than dividing the human population into subsets of "me" and "not me" and concluding the prior for your life is 1 in 8 bil. Besides, arent all appeals to our own unlikeleness defeated by the anthropic principle? That the only entities that could reflect and ask such questions about their complexity are the complex ones
I don’t see how this prediction failing means that panpsychism is less likely true. It’s astonishingly unlikely that I would be born with exactly the dna, mental disorders, and personality I have and yet I AM born.
Unlikely events occur all the time.
Good question! Probability theory tells us that if one theory has a failed prediction, but a second theory doesn't make a failed prediction, then this raises the probability of the second theory relative to the first. The reason some unlikely events don't impact the probabilities of our theories at all is because those unlikely events (e.g. the details of your birth) were *not* better predicted by any particular theory! Panpsychism and functionalism do an equally good job of predicting your sequence of DNA. But functionalism does a better job of predicting that you're not a particle than panpsychism.
Yes, but since there are more particles than organisms, Panpsychism makes the right prediction almost all the time.
What his means is that humans should think that Panpsychism is false, and particles should think it is true (although they unfortunately can't think).
ought implies can@@ApologeticsSquared
The prior probability of Paris being in France is vanishingly low, therefore Paris is not in France
This would be a reasonable argument a priori. But we have a posteriori information that we need to update on as well.
@ApologeticsSquared You really need to be more self aware. This is a huge problem of your current 38 video long argument lol.
I feel like this attitude would mean that Solipsism beats all other models on prior probability of me having my experience, because with Solipsism it is 1.
I think Solipsism can be viewed as a "family" of views. If only Jim existed, that would be Solipsism. If only I existed, then that would be Solipsism. Now, the fact that I exist is evidence for "Squared-Solipsism," and disproves "Jim-Solipsism," but it doesn't increase the probability of Solipsism overall. Another point is that Solipsism is disconfirmed by the Population Principle which I explored in my last non-PHA video.
There seem to be many problems with this. First and foremost, organisms are not comprised of a static set of particles. If I'm not comprised of static components, than my consciousness doesn't have a one to one relationship with me, even it you consider my lifetime of consciousness monolithic.
So me and my consciousness are really complex systems, derived from the interplay of innumerable sets that make up me and my consciousness in any given moment.
In fact, you could most likely swap any random particle in me at any moment for any other random particle and the concepts of me and my consciousness would be unaffected.
Does every particle then have a consciousness that connects into mine? Or does every particle merely have the potential to be part of a consciousness? Is this a meaningful distinction?
Are any of these sets meaningful distinctions?
Apologetics, while I do enjoy the concept behind the argument here, I think that it is based on faulty logic.
The panpsychist view does not generally take the conscious experience of each conscious thing (particles potentially included) to be even remotely similar, and there is no saying that a given consciousness simply 'takes the form of' an entity.
It may well be (and seems not only more likely but more convincing) that the conscious experience as described by a panpsychist model is created with/by the associated physical thing. In this way, the 'me' that is not a particle never could have been a particle, nor could I have been any other human being, animal, or organised system. The argument here requires a very specific metaphysics to function, (that consciousnesses exist before they are associated with a physical entity) which is one that is not remotely held in common panpsychist thought.
With this in mind, the argument, while statistically pleasing, fails to actually address panpsychism.
There might be another way to consider this.
Let's imagine consciousness as being something like sunlight. When the sun is shining, it's shining everywhere all at once.
Take the view of a mountain. Sunlight is shining on that mountain. It is also shining on a particular tree on that mountain. It is also shining on a particular branch on that tree. The fact that the entire mountain is illuminated is nothing other than the fact that individual leaves, branches, trees, stones, foot-paths, rivers, waterfalls, boulders, and the like, are illuminated.
Many structures arise in, are illuminated by, sunlight. Many structures arise in, or are illumined by, consciousness. Thoughts, feelings, perceptions, concepts, are not raw awareness, they are psychological structures, comparable to the physical structures associated with the mountain. There is not "Mountain sunlight" and "tree-branch sunlight", there is only sunlight permeating all scales of the scene. Not "human awareness" or "cell awareness", only awareness at all scales. Nor is the "self" "aware" any more than the mountain produces sunlight, rather the self is a structure that arises within and is illumined by awareness, as the mountain is a structure that exists in and is illuminated by sunlight.
You could say "trees should not exist, a tree is composed of billions of cells, statistically cells should exist but there should never be a tree". Could say "Cells should not exist, a single cell is composed of innumerable atoms, the likelihood of atoms existing is great, but of cells, almost unreasonably small", or you could say "structure exists at all scale, a large structure being parsed down to smaller structure being parsed down to smaller structure, a large structure itself a parasol of a greater structure which is a parasol of a greater structure. Structure exists invariant of scale, awareness permeates or shines upon the whole things, a perfectly smooth (non-quantized) continua"
Here's where that difference becomes important. If you are standing in the sunlight and you die, and begin to rot, there is no less sunlight than there was before. It is just sunlight shining on a corpse. If you are thinking in terms of "my consciousness", "my awareness", you are missing the point that when you die, the awareness carries on without any substantial change, except that, for a time, it is no longer illuminating a psychological structure that reflexively identifies itself as the source of the illumination. This is where making distinction between "my consciousness" and "the consciousness of one of my atoms" comes into play, as if when an atom finally disintegrates or you finally die one unit of consciousness has disappeared, or when a new structure arises a new consciousness has appeared, and that therefor there is not "consciousness", like there is a gravitational field, but "consciousnesses", like innumerable quantized particulates, which leads to the notion of separation, which leads to the attempt to apply statistical argumentation.
If I understand the reason panpsychism is a thing, it's only as a caveat/refutation/implementation (I'm not sure which) for people who absolutely postulate the impossibility of getting conscious things from strictly physical things. So if you've refuted panpsychism (though Emerson Green's reductio does work for me), all you've done is raised the a posteriori probability of the counter postulate -- conscious things can arise out of strictly physical things. As a physicalist I'm fine with that, although the reason I would refute a particle being (proto) conscious is not statistical, it's that particles (simply) lack a needed organization or architecture that (is hypothesized to) make physical things entail consciousness.
This doesn't make any sense. There's also a tiny chance of me being born, yet I was born. The chances of something being an organism is super tiny, so what? guess that's why there's more particles than organisms. Whether they are conscious or not seems to be beside the point.
Probability theory tells us that if one theory has a failed prediction, but a second theory doesn't make a failed prediction, then this raises the probability of the second theory relative to the first. The reason some unlikely events don't impact the probabilities of our theories at all is because those unlikely events (e.g. the details of your birth) were not better predicted by any particular theory! Panpsychism and functionalism do an equally good (or bad!) job of predicting, say, your specific sequence of DNA. But functionalism does a better job of predicting that you're not a particle than panpsychism.
Very clever argument. Well done.
Thanks!
The easier argument seems to be: what is the evidence that tables or rocks have consciousness?
I'm curious if panpsychism only makes sense if you have a complex, robust understanding of consciousness. Clarifying what consciousness is in this case is critical to understand it and it's implications. Just saying consciousness is awareness (presumably sensing or feeling) seems a very low level. In what sense do tables and rocks have this capability and how do we know? What's the evidence?
I guess at least panpsychics realize we don't like in a material-only universe.
I don't understand your argument, the statement "you have a vanishingly low probability of coming to exist as a human" means just that. It doesn't mean "you cant be a human".
Also the whole argument assumes that everyone kindof "exist before existing" and we have to roll a huge dice that will decide which form we'll take. If instead it turns out we just start existing as ourselves then the probability of anyone being anyone else is exaclty 0 because you started existing already as yourself so there was no point at which "who you are" was in doubt.
You could just say "lack of evidence" and be done.
I don't think anyone actually believes panpsychism as described in this video either, the (very) few I've talked with would say the particle argument is a strawman, and that of course they don't believe small units like particles are conscience. If they just move that goalpost this video becomes irrelevant.
Would be interesting for you to address some spiritual beliefs with other topics though, or even panpsychism of objects or something.
So no one believes it then according to you?
@blankspace2891 I've yet to meet a single person who believes in particle consciousness. There might be one, but it's not a major belief within the group that believes it so they would most likely say it's a strawman.
Just look at the people reasoning to this vid lol
@@blankspace2891 You mean the people actively telling Squared he's wrong for the same reason? LOL
The probability for me to exist in this location is very small given the vastness of space as proposed by science
=> space does not exist
So yeah I don't think the argument works
I think a panpsychist would disagree with the way you oppose the consciousness of fundamental particles versus the consciousness of organisms. After all, organisms are just special arrangements of fundamental particles. So the unlikely event is not that your consciousness was zapped into an organism rather than an electron (which seemingly presupposes dualism btw), but that your conscious experience is that of a particularly complex arrangement of particles. It’s unlikely in the sense that “most” conscious experiences (if they can even be quantified) come from less particular configurations, but inevitable in the sense that something had to experience the consciousness of your body. I think where your argument fails is that all of these other conscious exists but are simply unable to comment on youtube videos
3:55 Is the concept of me having a first-person experience of reality other than my own even coherent? Could it be the case that I have to have my own first-person experience of reality and couldn't have the experience of any other mind? Plus, it seems like the lottery. Someone has to have the experience of being a human, so I'm not sure if should I be surprised that it's me.
// Is the concept of me having a first-person experience of reality other than my own even coherent? //
I just mean "experiencing something else." It's totally coherent to talk about what one would have experienced if the world was different (e.g. if you were hit on the head, it would hurt). Panpsychism predicts that the experience you would have would be whatever particles experience.
// Someone has to have the experience of being a human, so I'm not sure if should I be surprised that it's me. //
Say I had a theory that there was a huge multiverse, but tomorrow every universe would be destroyed except one random one. Tomorrow, we find our universe not destroyed. Okay, fine, *some* universe had to survive. But still, it seems that if my theory was true, we got really lucky! So, if we reason probabilistically, we reject my theory, because no other theory needs this sort of luck. Same goes for Panpsychism. It needs a lot of luck, and other theories don't. So, I'm going with other theories.
@@ApologeticsSquared That's a good point about the multiverse, I didn't think of it like that, but something still seems wrong with the idea that I could have the conscious experience of a different mind. It seems to me that each mind can only have one first-person experience, and my mind is necessarily linked to my personal experience, so I couldn't be a different mind and still have a first-person experience as I wouldn't exist at all then (most of the essential properties of what it means to be me would be gone). If I were hit on the head, I'd still be be me, and my mind and personal experience would still continue, but I couldn't become a different mind, like that of a subatomic particle. Maybe I'm way off base, but that's just the way it seems to me. I'll have to think about this more.
0:56
1. It (A random person) is most probable to be born in India (as opposed to some other nation. It's technically more probable for a random person not to have been born in India when only accounting for population though.)
2. It's (Identitying a random individual is) just as probable to been born male or female. (I've heard that this isn't quite true, but the ratio is almost 1:1).
3:22 I don't anything about panpsychics, but I doubt that they claim that particles experience complex humanlike consciousness.
Lastly, the calculation 1/(10^30) could be simplified for your future videos. Just use the exponent and the exponent would indicate how much information one would gain if this turned out to be true. So if panpsychism were true, then you would have gained 30 units of information (base 10).
Regarding point 1: I’m not talking about a random individual, I’m talking about you yourself.
@@ApologeticsSquared but I'm not a random person. So there isn't anything random that you can draw from.
@@mesplin3 I don't understand.
@@ApologeticsSquared I put 5 blue marbles and 3 red ones in a bag. I draw a random marble from a bag. There is a 5/8 probability that I drew a blue marble.
I put the world population in an abstract set. I pick a random individual from that set. There is about 50% probability of a male individual.
I put myself in an abstract set and then draw a random member? If so, then I will always pick myself because I am an the only element in that set.
@@mesplin3 Well, let's change the thought experiment. I put 5 blue marbles and 3 red ones in a bag. One of those eight is my favorite marble, named Marby. Marby the marble. What color is Marby? I don't tell you. Now, Marby isn't random. It's a very specific marble! What's the probability that Marby is blue, until you get new information? It's still 5/8.
The only thing required for this probabilistic assessment is that we have *no reason* within our background knowledge to expect that the individual is any particular member of the set.
I was about to make an objection but maybe I realized I misunderstand probabilities. You seem to have a great understanding of the subject, so suppose that males had 100 times the lifespan of women, but that each birth is still equiprobable to be a male or a female. In that case, which of these statements is falsified and why?
"it is equally likely to be born male as female"
"it is equally likely *you* were born male as female"
"it is equally likely to be a man as to be a woman"
I was thinking of messing with the hypothetical lifetime of either particle consciousness or organism consciousness, but I'm too uncertain of my statistical intuition to make the objection flow
I don't think that affecting the lifespans would change the first two probabilities. Whether or not the third changes depends on how you answer the super controversial "Sleeping Beauty" paradox. "Thirders" will say the probability changes, "halfers" will say it doesn't.
@@ApologeticsSquared So maybe there's a way for thirder panpsychiatrist to get out of the picke. Let's say for example that a particle's consciousness lasts an infinite amount of time, while an organism's consciousness ends on average 10^80 times per day, but the new one inherits the memories and the train of thought of the previous one. In that case, thirders would say it's more probable to be organisms than to be particles.
@@tafazzi-on-discord If we're updating on what we're experiencing at a given moment, most experiences at a given moment are particle-experiences. However, if I understand you right, you're suggesting we update on what being we are identical to, and "I" am actually upwards of 10^80 beings, each lasting a moment. This might be work, but the panpsychist would need to thread the needle of providing a theory of personal identity on which an organism's identity cannot persist, but particles can somehow retain it.
@@ApologeticsSquared Quantum decoherence seems possible only at the level of two or more entangled particles, that could be seen as a "death", so if every instance of decoherence (which we have difficulty estimating) may possibly be a death in an organism.
Still though, 10^80 is a big number, maybe this isn't good enough to solve this.