Hoffman would insist noumenal, not phenomenal. If the universe is conscious as he asserts then there are no phenomena, all experience consists of thoughts of thoughts, consciousness of consciousness.
I also agree. The fact that I can agree with you means I’m conscious of your statement, does it not? How can it be said that consciousness does nothing? What is there without it?
There is a video out there on TH-cam of Hoffman having a conversation in which he tries to find some common ground with his fundamentalist parents. For anyone who is not religious but comes from an ultra religious family, you will be able to relate. It's kind of heartwarming and worth a watch.
Dr. Hoffman, I am a clinical social worker, not a scientist, but I have recently been watching some of your interviews and a Ted Talk on TH-cam re: consciousness, perception, reality, evolution, and I am absolutely captivated by your statement to the effect that 'consciousness is fundamental' to reality/the universe and that it is not a product of the brain. I agree with this although I cannot point to any scientific evidence to support it. I know your theory is not well supported by the scientific community, but I think that in time, your point of view will be substantiated. Thank you for the work that you do and thank you for sharing your time and thinking as you go forward.
There are more and more indications arising that this would be the case. I do believe we are limited to understand it completely. But I really believe that the brain only plays a role in a anchoring a fraction of the larger consciousness system into a physical body, and the brain isn’t the generator of consciousness, it only conditions it.
jimbo33 the problem is most of the interpretation is done by factors outside of our control so you can't say consciousness DOES anything. Consciousness is only that which experiences, that's it's only property and you cannot derive any control being done in the act of perception. It does not take a conscious human observer to collapse quantum waves
@@khaledyasser8293 how do you know it doesn't require an observer? The probability wave does not collapse unless it is observed or recorded for observation later.
When a revolutionary theory just came out, almost everyone in the scientific community will be skeptical. I hope Hoffman's theory is one of those. Great courage and great work!
We are sparks placed here for a brief moment to accumulate light and warmth (love) so that we can become as bright of a star as we can be...shining in heaven (joy, beauty and harmony). Good (god) knows every star by name. This is accomplished by appreciating this paradise planet lifeboat and the miraculous works of fine art called "life" that inhabit it. If we extinguish our light and warmth (love) with "greed" and it's ignorance (hate)...we become the darkness and e that surrounds the stars. A very cold, dark, lonely, desolate place to be...for eternity.
What is the purpose of consciousness? Without consciousness there would be no known axiological value and thus zero known purpose. Therefore, consciousness is the fundamental pre-requisite of all known purposes, both special and ordinary.
Consciousness is the same thing as being in function or online in this universe. Anything that is in function/operational and working can operate, navigate and perfom tasks in our Universe. The only reason why we try to make consciousness a separate thing and special is because we are afraid of dying. The topic is subconsciouslly refering to an afterlife. Which should be assumed wrong.
1. If there is not at least one truly eternally consciously existent entity that truly exists throughout all of future eternity, then all things would cease to matter one day. 2. If such an entity actually exists, then the one very thing they could never ever do would be to personally experience a total cessation of conscious existence. 3. The one very thing we as humans cannot apparently ever escape (as well as many other species also), is our personal cessation of conscious existence. 4. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe one special purpose of our conscious existence is to personally experience a total cessation of conscious existence. It would probably be the only way such an entity in item #2 above could ever experience "conscious death", the one very thing it could never ever personally do, it does through conscious entities that come into conscious existence and then cease to consciously exist.
Interesting ideas. I think 'universal consciousness', is a reality, proved by the fine tuning (FT) of the parameter space, of the Standard Model, explaining the 'self-organizing property of matter', hence Intelligent Design/er. However, I am not quite sure of 'conscious death', which might be programmed into fine tuning itself. A ten mile rock may hit us today or a million years later extinguishing all life. Yet one is destined to hit us every 200-250 million years, giving opportunity for evolution of new and improved species, like dinosaurs gave way to mammals. FT eliminates randomness/chance.
when did we came with this idea/concept of Consciousness? Can we define consciousness? Is it measurable? Is feeling a form of consciousness? Is intuition a product of the brain or consciousness?
The part where he says consciousness would serve no evolutionary benefit I found pretty odd. It would have clear social benefit to feeling that individuals are meaningful, and for individuals to strongly feel their “I” ness. I could see that having major fitness benefits to the group of humans with this strong consciousness.
I disagree, think of a colony of ants or a hive of bees, there is very little or no individuality, each ant or bee works and lives for the survival of the colony or hive. Also plants, trees flowers fungi, these organisms also have very little to no consciousness
When the only thing we experience firsthand is consciousness and we know that we can conjure up physical worlds from nothing literally in our sleep, why is suggesting that consciousness is the fundamental reality a giant leap? Why isn’t saying matter is the fundamental reality the giant leap?
All any phenotype requires to evolve is that men and women find those traits in each other attractive, and that those traits benefit the survival of their children and their community.
Quantum effects must be happening in our brains like entanglement and other effects we can not understand. And we know we can change the outcome of certain experiments by observing it. in effect changing reality. Who knows what we are capable of
From book: THINKING and DESTINY: Being the Science of Man, by Harold Waldwin Percival: CONSCIOUSNESS: Consciousness is not a being, or a thing, or a state. All beings, things, and states which exist, exist because of the presence of Consciousness in them. It is not space, or time, or matter, or force, or any God. It is independent of all these, but they and everything else depend upon Consciousness. It cannot be changed, qualified, affected, divided, destroyed, improved, weighed, or measured. There are no degrees of Consciousness. It has no attributes, no properties, no qualities, no states. It has no limitations, no beginning, no end. It is present everywhere and in every thing. By its presence everything is conscious and everything changes from the degree in which the being or thing is Conscious to the next higher degree in being Conscious. Consciousness is ever unmanifested. [from: Chapter XIII, The Circle, or Zodiac -- Thinking and Destiny, Being the Science of Man, by Harold Waldwin Percival] CONSCIOUSNESS: is the Presence in all things -- by which each thing is conscious in the degree in which it is conscious as or of what it is or does. As a word it is the adjective "conscious" developed into a noun by the suffix "ness." It is a word unique in language; it has no synonyms, and its meaning extends beyond human comprehension. Consciousness is beginningless, and endless; it is indivisible, without parts, qualities, states, attributes or limitations. Yet, everything, from the least to the greatest, in and beyond time and space is dependent on it, to be and to do. Its presence in every unit of nature and beyond nature enables all things and beings to be conscious as what or of what they are, and are to do, to be aware and conscious of all other things and beings, and to progress in continuing higher degrees of being conscious towards the only one ultimate Reality -- Consciousness. [Definition -- from: Thinking & Destiny, Being the Science of Man, by HWP]
"Consciousness is not a being, or a thing, or a state... It is not space, or time, or matter, or force, or any God. It is independent of all these, but they and everything else depend upon Consciousness. It cannot be changed, qualified, affected, divided, destroyed, improved, weighed, or measured. There are no degrees of Consciousness. It has no attributes, no properties, no qualities, no states." Yes to that. No to the rest. Conscious being is a Process, a Process of being, abstract, neither noumenal or phenomenal. Process is not a being, or a thing, or a state... It is not space, or time, or matter, or force, or any God. Process is not matter, it is only of matter and cares not at all about the nature of matter. This particular Process cannot be changed, qualified, affected, divided, destroyed, improved, weighed, or measured. There are no degrees to this Process. It has no attributes, no properties, no qualities, no states. But this process can stop processing and when it does we call it sleep, or death.
@@hetornhetorn Miscellaneous thoughts: Yes, process implies an assemblage of moving elements, pattern, inputs and outputs. Process is a notion, an abstract notion, a conception, a synthetic product of minds. Process is no 'thing', it is an immaterial existent like movement and pattern and time. Yes, time too is a notion, an abstract notion, a conception, a synthetic product of minds. You know there IS no past and you know there IS no future. There IS only: things... moving. If this is unclear see Carlo Rovelli for a good explanation: th-cam.com/video/NrjFE_Rd2OQ/w-d-xo.html Consciousness is the process going on in human beings which enables us to cooperate with each other well enough to make society much more fecund than our UNconscious ancestors could manage (in obedience to evolution's prime directive, replicate). We have started to explore the details of the conscious process only very recently, Psychology, Economics, Sociology, Linguistics, etc. "consciousness isn't ultimate reality" Quite so, because ultimate reality is inconceivable. Every content of the conscious process is strictly an idea and an idea is not the thing that the idea is about. An idea is merely a fantastically topologically transformed encoded reflection. Easy to imagine for those of the opinion that a brain has something to do with thinking. For those who think otherwise I'd very much like to read their theory outlining how it works. ttyl
@fynes leigh -- Words cannot describe entering into The Real. And one must ne'er cast pearls before swine (especially on line). Do you know what is REAL KNOWLEDGE? You obviously did not read, nor comprehend the excerpt of H.W. Percivals 'definition' which I posted. AND THAT's fine.
Consciousness does do something, it serves a purpose. If we we're conscious we would have all been eaten by now. Why does consciousness need to change, it's perfect as it is, pure awareness. Every thing changes but the awareness itself doesn't it needs to stay constant.
Even with consciousness, we still get eaten. And other things without consciousness, or animals with less consciousness don’t get eaten that much. What about tigers, for example? Consciousness is definitely not a perquisite for not getting eaten.
Consciousness is needed for independence in life especially in creating new stuff and learning stuff. Without consciousness, you would need a PROGRAMMER for steps in doing things. Humans can be independent unlike computers and robots that must be maintain and program.
'No one had been able to explain a function that consciousness would do that it would be selective by evolution', that is a remarkable state of affair, remind me of a video, probably titled 'What Darwin did not know', which explained how a group of mouse living in an environment with a lots of trees, that got cut down, one day, when the mice got exposed for their predators, and suddenly found themselves endangered. The very next generation of mice acquired a coat of brown color (instead of a lighter color) that enabled them to hide among rocks, surviving the predators. I did a little research to find out what mechanism we use for evolutionary changes to take place' I found out that the protein needed by the mouse to change color involves the brain (hard ware) that sends signal to the relevant cell containing the genetic information (soft ware) that enables the production of the protein that gives the mouse a dark coat. The environment acts as the input/output screen on which reality is projected, and from which brain gets it's input, like a computer.
So you're saying that whenever a mouse is presented with a predator, it would somehow modify its DNA so that its offspring will have the coat of the colour of its environment? In that case, I could put it in a blue box and scare it, and its offspring would have blue coats.
It's not that complicated. It is assumed that there are already some mice in the population with dark fur. The ones that are more easily detected (the ones with light fur) are killed off, leaving more of the ones with dark fur to continue their genes. Evolution isn't some external entity, it's just the process by which members of a species are narrowed down- much like contestants on a reality show.
It has a purpose however, no 'special' purpose, much overlooked purpose is to keep us alive! Without many of us even realising human awareness is a simple aspect of consciousness as much of consciousness 'drives' and is pervasive within all aspects of consciousness and reality itself within existance.
Kinda funny how the majority of scientists are coming at it from the opposite perspective of the actual purpose. It's the job of consciousness to evolve, not of evolution to preserve consciousness. It survives evolution and exists outside of it. Good thing these fellas can see past it.
can a conscious mind create an autonomous new conscious inside it ?! like why do we take time to choose the flavor of ice cream from the shop ? if we know our favorite flavor we can spontaniously choose the answer but we all spent time thinking what we actually want as if we are discussing it with other consciousness inside.
we are the universe experiencing itself. we are a way for the cosmos to know and learn about itself. and all things with conciousness like plants crystals and minerals and animals, humans and aliens, other beings ect. everything is that self. and is that conciousness that the universe produced to learn know and observe itself. well that is us and all the other beings in the universe too. so that means that everything is connected on a quantum level. and dark matter is not nothing. it is quantum particles of matter that do not absorb, reflect or emit light. so they cant be detected by observing electromagnetic radiation. it exists but we cant see it from our human perspective. And the First Law of Thermodynamics states that heat is a form of energy, and thermodynamic processes are therefore subject to the principle of conservation of energy. This means that heat energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can, however, be transferred from one location to another and converted to and from other forms of energy. so i dont believe that conciousness is produced by the brain. i believe that its produced by the universe. and that your conciousness which is universal can exist outside of your physical body. bcuz ive had some near death experiences where my conciousness did exist outside of my physical body. so i believe that time is just a construct from our limited human perspective. and many physicists and philosophers now suspect that time is not fundamental; rather, time emerges out of something more fundamental - something nontemporal, something altogether different (perhaps something discreet, quantumized, not continuous, smooth). so for that reason and all the other reasons that i just stated. i believe that our conciousness will not die. and that it will just continously experience life in many different forms and ways. after all we are made from stardust, the nitrogen in our dna the calcium in our teeth and the iron in our blood, and the carbon and hydrogen in the molecules of our cells. think about that.
3:30 Hey Don, this logic seems to forgo viewing human technology as an extension of our Earth's consciousness. Humans use these programs and tools the same way we would use facilities in our brains; to compute information in some way, and to give us feedback that we can then each individually interpret and communicate about between each other.
6:40 Don I don't agree with this line of logic. There seems to be much more at play with wave/particle duality than just our ability to measure; some "higher" explanation based on more complex behaviors at the quantum level. in my opinion humanity just hasn't adapted to enough novel stimuli in within the universe to be able to break down all behaviors in the universe. Taking an approach through cognition instead of physics I would suggest that since our brains produce our individual realities based on our subjective experience and environment, this limits the amount of reality we can possibly create for ourselves, since we have to arrive at potentially new forms of perception or viewing reality through some level of exposure and being able to realize that exposure. What I'm arriving at is that wave/particle duality is an example of the human organism (all of us together) unable to grasp a complex behavior through an inability to measure it with the tools that we currently have at hand.
7:38 Yes I agree with your models! the overall accuracy of information within humanity is one based on fitness & survivorship, rather than on truth. I'd warrant humans cooperatively communicating in large and/or more complex groups can come up with much more complex rationalizations of phenomena and behavior that may not be accurate on the individual level, but overall give an positive trajectory for that group's survival
Consciousness is a tool.It It remains neutral without change, however, it is a beacon that shines light on where it is pointed. Evolution or devolution is a matter of opinion. Theories and concepts on this topic exist because humans have not understood the limitations of thought therefore the intellect.Meditate for 3 hours a day for one year and these questions will not arise.
Human intellect will never be able to understand the universe because it's smaller than the universe, this is so trivial, that it's even worthless to state.
But the intellect of course does not want to admit it, it's a very hard thing to swallow for it. The thing is that if one looks sincerely at this, humans are still considering themselves center of the universe conceptually speaking, even though this has been disproven from the physical standpoint.
But don't the apparent laws of physics seem to exist independent of our conciousness? And doesn't the apparent continuity of the universe seem to suggest that the material universe also exists independent of our conciousness? If the material universe only exists when we observe it, wouldn't this be the result of some underlying law that surely exists independent of our conciousness? I doubt my conciousness can conjure up all that I observe as well as all of the underlying rules and structure that would seem to be necessary to make my observations even possible in the first place.
It seems that the qualitative and subjective nature of consciousness has a sense of immediacy that non-qualitative/non-subjective awareness/information processing does not have. This would clearly be useful for self-preservation and so be selected for by natural selection. Evidence suggests that the brain 'pushes' things that are immediately relevant to us into our subjective/qualitative awareness. This is the only explanation I can think of that gets around the problem proposed in this video
@fynes leigh I've honestly got no idea, I've subsequently realised I don't know anything about consciousness. My brief acquaintance with philosophy of mind and psychology gave me a case of the Dunning-Kruger Effect :)
Yes, we are the only animal in the history of this planet that has ever gotten off. The only one that landed on the moon and come back. So, as far as fitness points go and we are the only animal that knows about extinction level events so the fitness points we can score is saving our species and maybe other species as well. Done and done.
The brain is important but what about those people born without brains who function normally. Look up the research of Dr John Lorber and keep in mind in the Gospel of Thomas we are told that Consciousness came first not matter.
No one born without a brain functions. I welcome some supporting evidence for the assertion that there are people born without brains who function normally. Anencephaly is not the absence of a brain. It is an incomplete brain. A brain stem, portion of a limbic brain and some portion of a cortex can function more or less normally if there are not other conditions impairing metabolism. That is not a complete brain, but it is not the absence of a brain.
Hoffman: No one has ever identified an evolutionary function for consciousness. How about realizing that petting a lion could be a life ending effort? Or realizing that the wolf pack sees you as prey and that they appear to be hungry?
Animals survive because they don’t sit around thinking “ I’m hungry it’s raining I’m tired and miserable it’s no use” our consciousness causes us to do that and sometimes we take our lives.. animals don’t . How would consciousness be a benefit to evolution?
If this was the case we would have been extinct. Obviously it works. Being able to communicate and cooperate at higher level, or what eddie said about predicting future, creativity and many more outweights the "bugs" in sporadic suicides.
The challenge of humanity and our ultimate purpose is to isolate and separate entirely our consciousness or our spirit from our physical bodies. What if our consciousness, freed from the shackles of Earth's physical world, carries with it the power to be architects or masters of our Universe? What if our consciousness has been tricked, then trapped & enslaved here on Earth, our existence confined to the limits of Earth's physical world?
It's not a noun. There is no such thing as consciousness. It is a verb and the verb is process. To be conscious is to be a process. Process is immaterial, abstract. You can't see Process or feel Process or weigh Process . You only see and feel and weigh matter. It is the movement of the matter that is the process, not the matter itself. This is why and how being conscious has an immaterial flavor.
But wait a minute; doesn't the Copenhagen Interpretation define an "observer" to be any entity -- such as even a single particle -- that reacts (to the event) and not necessarily a whole organism that's alive??
Isn't he wrong that evolution only selects for things that add to fitness? Isn't it actually that it selects against things that go against fitness? So if consciousness did nothing it wouldn't be selected against or for, it would just be there?
I love the intellectual WOO guys like this ...they are masters at post Hoc and using their strong science background and credentials to grow their pet ideas 💡. I bet he has a belief in the supernatural of some type . That is usually the driver ....BTW if he ends up being correct I will be the first one to praise his efforts
Donald Hoffman is actually staunchly secular, which makes his investigation all the more honest. It's refreshing to see a nonspiritual person be concerned with the problem of consciousness and point out that it needs to be accounted for. We've made great strides in biology, chemistry, neurology, and physics over the last several centuries but when we get to the nature of consciousness it falls on deaf ears, brushed away, trivialized, and ignored.
i think the argument about the computer program is a terrible one. the "development" of our consciousness took millions of years, before we could write computer programs. so the 2 have no correlation.
@@JoBlakeLisbon hoffman is stating that because a computer program can solve novel problems without the use use of consciousness, that our consciousness did not evolve to solve something novel. i dont know about the conclusion. but i think the premise is incorrect. he forgot to mention that the computer program was designed by a conscious being. one could argue that it was our consciousness that played a role in our ability to make computers and write programs, in the first place. i am not being condescending, when i ask if you have studied logic. if you havent, you may not be aware of what i am about to say. but correctness is not the same thing as being logical. logic is a means by which one uses facts and/or assumptions, to derive a conclusion that can be based upon these facts and/or assumptions. and in this case, hoffman is incorrect with his logic. whether his conclusion is correct or not, i dont know. but i can have a completely correct conclusion by simply guessing. if it is a true or false question, i have a 50% chance of being correct, without the use of logic. he is overstepping, in order to justify something that he has biased opinions about - it is a very common mistake.
Before diving into consciousness, check our awareness. Awareness of the presence of food or of predators, etc, etc, obviously confers an evolutionary advantage. Consciousness is basically the awareness that you are aware. It may be epiphenomenal or it may have at least started out that way but yesterday's epiphenomenon is grist for today's exaptationist mill.
If it was as easy to create an evolutionary algorithm that could accomplish the same things as consciousness then we'd have had true AI already. And I think most will agree that we are a long way away from that.
Sergio If you have a good point, just state it. I know about Gödel‘s incompleteness theorem, and I am not aware of any process that happens in the brain or the mind that would require solutions to non-computable predicates. Which ones do you know that would fit in this category, and that are solved by human minds? I only know Penrose from physics, but I am not aware that he claims the human brain solves this kind of problems. What exactly do you mean? So again, instead of giving me two author’s names and basically telling me to study their complete works because someone on the internet told me so, just state your point directly, right here. I could also ask you to study Hofstadter, but that wouldn’t help in any way.
Sergio Instead of referring to some unnamed video, could you please simply point out which kind of process the human mind does that requires the solution of a non-computable problem? Please stop referring me to other sources, just make your point directly.
what about challenging survival-related deepest fears? As long as somebody goes on in the usual robotic mode, indeed volition is dictated by physicality (unconsciousness, subconsciousness). But as you defy your most inherent instincts (what can only happen when you scent that there is another framework determining reality, and it has to do with beliefs), then you make choices that contradict basic instincts and the commands of physicality, denying your own physical feelings and your tendencies to certain choices. There are several layers of events of choice to be explored before coming to such a simplistic conclusion that we're just byproducts of a physical body. But these layers have to be explored within oneself. One has to be corageous though.
i agree. It is hard to put an accurate definition on consciousness. I think that I know at least what it's not: 1) a byproduct of the brain 2) necessary for survival purposes. I really believe the brain plays a role in a anchoring a fraction of the larger consciousness system into a physical body, but the brain isn’t the generator of consciousness, it only conditions it.
Consciousness allows for imagination , for a next-level future space-time frame, even a frame that is beyond our immediate physical being. This imagination may not immediately help us within our life time, but it could allow this imagination-projection to shape our future evolution. So, there is probably not much to consciousness with regards to our lives now. So, it does not do anything NOW......
Physicalism in relation to consciousness seems implausible to me . Add to this the Copenhagen Interpretation and the door is open to something like panpsychism, or at least consciousness as a fundamental property irreducible to lower level explanations - rather like space and mass, for instance. I believe we are at a Galilean turning point away from the dark age rigid belief system of physicalistic scientism, to that which simply accommodates the facts. Consciousness cannot simply be brushed aside by saying it simply "emerges" from the brain, whether micro tubules, synapses or whatever.
The problem with panpsychism is that it explains nothing about consciousness. It just poses new questions, so if we follow Occam’s razor, it would be wiser not to assume panpsychism. There is a parallel between panpsychism and the belief in god. If we answer the question about the origin of the universe with “God did it!”, that explains nothing and only introduces new questions. A similar thing happens if we answer the question about the origin of consciousness with panpsychism. Nothing is explained, and new questions arise. Where did the universal consciousness come from? Why does it exist? Since it does some form of information processing without a substrate, how does it do that? Et cetera. So panpsychism just replaces some open questions with a mystical black box. I don’t think this has the power to change scientific canon.
@@Madoc_EU Yes. Let me augment with a more direct arg... Ape Urson: I don't 'have' consciousness, rather, I am conscious. I AM conscious. But sometimes, when I am asleep or passed out, I am NOT conscious. This is an indubitable fact and true of all of us. Thus panpsychism cannot be the case because there are definitely billions of elements in the universe that are nightly not conscious. To suggest that a rock is conscious because it expands as it is warmed by the morning sun is to confuse the meaning of the word 'conscious' with the meaning of the word 'reactive'. Yes?
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL We both agree in the assumption that panpsychism is not the favorable position, given what we know. So I am on the same page with you when it comes to the rejection of panpsychism. However, in your additional rebuttal of panpsychism, I get the impression that your view of panpsychism is too narrow. That means, I believe that the view you reject is not the common view of panpsychism, so I regard your line of reasoning as dangerously prone to the strawman fallacy. Here is why: Maybe some proponents of panpsychism argue that a rock is conscious because it reacts to its environment in the way you described. Probably there is someone out there who thinks that this is the case for panpsychism. But this is not the view that I got from panpsychism. My source is the book "Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind" by Annaka Harris, plus some interviews that Sam Harris did where the topic was also touched. (This is not a recommendation to you for reading the book, I just want to cite my sources. The book is not bad and contains some food for thought, but I regard it as fundamentally incomplete and not fully thought through.) Rather, panpsychism is an answer to the question why subjective experience exists at all. Why do we have the strong impression that there is one centralized locus in which all of our thoughts, feelings and experiences flow together? We could easily imagine a being that is capable of everything that humans do, without the need for there being a centralized experiencing of oneself. Neither philosophy, nor evolutionary biology, nor psychology have yet come up with an explanation that shows the necessity of subjective experience the way we experience it. What is not necessary must be denied, according to Occam's razor. And herein lies a paradox of sorts: We cannot deny our subjective experience, because we definitely know that we experience it. I am not a philosopher myself, so please take this with a grain of salt: As far as I know, in philosophy this problem is known as the "hard problem of consciousness" (see Wikipedia article with the same title). Even though the problem persists in some shape since the ancient Greeks, it is yet unsolved. Usually, consciousness is viewed as an emergent phenomenon of our mind, which is produced by our nervous system. (I would also subscribe to this view.) But this view poses the hard problem of consciousness. Panpsychism tries to evade this problem by denying consciousness as an emergent phenomenon. Rather, it posits that consciousness is a fundamental property of the physical universe. Just like every particle has mass, spin, charge and other properties, it also has the physical basis of consciousness. When particles are combined in complex patterns, their properties also combine, in ways described by the laws of physics. Similarly, panpsychism argues, our consciousness arises as the way that the myriads of consciousness-bearing particles interact in our nervous system, in a way that is yet to be figured out by physics. At least, this is my understanding of the argument. In that case, a stone would not be conscious because it reacts to its surrounding thermodynamics, but because it consists of particles that all bear a teeny-tiny micro bit of fundamental consciousness. To the human mind, if we somehow could magically experience what a stone "experiences", we would likely not call it "consciousness" at all. In fact, we would most likely not even be able to recognize the "experience" of a stone as such, or as anything at all, because we are so used to our comparatively gigantic experience, which consists of so much more complexity than what happens in a stone. It would be similar to try to detect the motion of a few atoms on your skin. That is impossible, because your skin is used to so much bigger forces. Still, it would be foolish to deny the motion of individual atoms on that basis. That said, I have to say that I still do not follow the path of the panpsychists. Still, I think it is good to know the position that you reject. In the worst case, I just misunderstood you. In the best case, either I gave you new information, or you can show me where my understanding is wrong, so I get to learn something from this exchange.
@@Madoc_EU The panpsychists seem, like many people, to hold that there is some actually existing 'thing' that IS consciousness in just the way early scientists invented phlogiston in their initial attempts to explain combustion. When I was young and foolish I laughed at them because I had no appreciation for the challenge that levitation presents to a world in which the best available tools were boot straps. Unt zo, in appropriate humility, It seems to me... there are two grand realms constituting the totality of being. These are... The Material and the Abstract. Further, its seems to me inevitable that problems will arise if one takes denizens of one realm to be native to the other. Take the word 'process' for example. At first glance one might suppose it to belong to the Material realm. But a few moments contemplation drives one to the realization of its pure abstract nature. There is no 'thing' in the material universe that IS a process. But at the same time there can be no process in the absence of the material realm. A process is always 'of' something. When one investigates the ketchup factory one sees the bottles moving along the conveyors and being filled in the carousel and so on. That is what one sees. The process of the factory on the other hand is synthesized by the mind out of the experience of watching the behavior of all of those disparate elements. The process in the brain in the body in the tank of liquid helium has halted. The body is not conscious because it is the process of the body that is what conscious is. And process is abstract. Conscious is abstract. That's why it feels ephemeral. That's why beer and LSD which alter the behavior of the matter (behavior, another pure abstract denizen) change conscious experience. It's getting late so the ending there is a little rushed but I believe there's enuf to get the gist of my thrust. Yes?
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL I think I see what you are aiming at. What you call "the material" and "the abstract" is better known to me as "physical existence" and "conceptual existence". Physical existence is for things as the keyboard I am typing on, my liver and a chair in my kitchen. Conceptual existence is for concepts, such as the number 7, the quadratic function or the golden ratio. While I would be inclined to go along with you for most of what you wrote, I do not think that your reasoning is a proper response to the hard problem of consciousness (and maybe you also didn't try that). Consider this: There is something that it is like to be me right now, paraphrasing Nagel. In every moment, I am experiencing the enormous collage of all of my thoughts, feelings and impressions, all at once. There is a very distinct and hard to explain feeling to this. This is what I would call "subjective perspective" or "experiencing". The way I see it, the contents of subjective experience is the momentary contents of my consciousness, as experienced by me, right now. And this is not abstract. My subjective experience is not like the number 3, or the property of a number to be a prime. I wouldn't go as far as the panpsychists and say that consciousness is best explained as a fundamental property of physics, but it rather appears to be an emergent phenomenon of the activity of my brain. Still, I could easily imagine a human being that does everything that I do, but without any subjective experience. It mystifies me to some degree why my experience exists at all, but I am quite positive that this will be explained by science some day, purely on a materialistic basis, without any need for esoteric or supernatural beliefs.
Sadly, a rigorous mathematical theory won't do me any good but it might transform Dr. Hoffman into a kind of abstractionist high priest whose word the rest of us (mathematical simpletons) will have to take on faith, or just flatly deny. I picked up a book ("Neural Networks - An Introduction" by B.Muller & J.Reinhardt, Springer-Verlag 1990) imagining it would make a fascinating read and possibly give me some good ideas about how to improve the design of the control program I was writing for the microcontrollers in my gardening robot. I wasn't expecting any math at all. Chapter one was interesting and contained only one equation that, with more than usual effort, I was barely able to decipher (roughly: Hi(t) = SUM from j(WijNj(t) ). Chapter 2 was straightforward but from chapter 3 on the 226 pages of equations made that first one look like child's play. I despaired in my realization that my dear rule based robot would never become conscious, though it can fool the very naive. A word of advice to the young: do your math homework! If it puts you to sleep drink coffee, manufacture an interest, it doesn't matter that it seems inauthentic. There are a vast number of utterly fascinating careers dependent on mathematical literacy that right now you cannot imagine you might later be interested in pursuing. Remember, the older you get, the more crystalline your brain becomes and the more difficult it becomes to learn, do it now. I mean, you were just a child but look how easily you learned to speak, no mean feat. When they say your brain is plastic they don't mean it's made of plastic. They mean no insult, only that it can be melted into a better shape, metaphorically speaking.
"It's very easy to write a program to do that..." To do what? To respond to novel situations with human intelligence? It's very easy to write a program to do that? Give me a break.
you invite the guy just to say in the end "I'm skeptichal" why? just keep it to yourself, you are really rude with your guests some times. I hope that changes in the future
Guy is a literal genius, but somehow cannot avoid starting thoughts or sentences with the word "so". Why is this word overused to this extreme? Very strange and annoying.
What are they even talking about when they say conciousness? Why the hell aren't they defining what they mean with that? This is almost useless to watch because they never say what conciousness is to them!? Do they mean the ability to think or what exactly?
*What* human consciousness? Men (human beings) are dreaming machines, and the idea that they are capapable of consciousness is laugable. That said Thomas More supposedly said: " “God made the angels to show Him splendor, as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind.” T hat is a bit tricky for those that suppose that they can be given or *told* either knowledge or understanding.. *Whose* consciousness ........ of what..... when?
Seekthetruth3000 Nobody knows exactly why a certain traffic jam forms, and what happens to its essence after it dissolves. Yet, it would still be unjustified to believe in an afterlife for traffic jams.
Matthias J. Déjà I'm saying consciousness is fundamentally qualitatively different from everything else in the world by virtue of it having experiences, being a WINDOW in which the universe (matter and energy) is LOOKING at itself.
There's too much intelligence going on here, something I never thought id ever find in the you tube comments section, whats going on? Have i entered a parallel universe? 👀😅
Hoffman deals in ambiguity and abstraction layered on abstraction. He doesn't even know himself what he is talking about. He has found a way to be popular speaking nonsense like his fellow traveler, Deepak Chopra. The only difference is his use of science to legitimize his looney ideas. Hoffman will fade away like all conmen eventually do.
Not really - he publishes his work in academic journals - they are available for other scientists to debate, improve upon and disprove. He is merely taking a novel approach to the hard-problem of consciousness by attempting to reverse the order in which the problem is addressed. If you look at his proofs on human perception and evolutionary game theory, they're extremely persuasive.
Awareness aides understanding of the world, thus decision making. So it would benefit even simple lifeforms to evolve it. And no, you cannot write a program that replicates this. Hoffman is a bullshitter.
What kind of awareness though? Awareness differs vastly from one species to the next. Hoffman doesn't claim to have written programs that create aware species - but he does show very clearly in both observable biological life and computer simulations that life does not evolve to see external reality as it is - life evolves to identify fitness points in the environment. This is a stunning realisation in of itself - his work on consciousness is actually less interesting than his work on evolutionary game theory which is likely to become the standard model of understanding perception in living beings.
I love both of these guys. It's amazing to see such an intelligent and respectful conversation on TH-cam.
So true And compare it to brain less religious fights around the globe!!
Well, you're half right. At least we know that the host is intelligent.
This convo in its entirety is a bit over my head if I can be honest.
This show and host and guests and their conversations elevate the entire Internet’s consciousness. Thank you, Robert Kuhn and colleagues.
This guys work is phenomenal and original.
Agreed.
Hoffman would insist noumenal, not phenomenal. If the universe is conscious as he asserts then there are no phenomena, all experience consists of thoughts of thoughts, consciousness of consciousness.
I also agree. The fact that I can agree with you means I’m conscious of your statement, does it not?
How can it be said that consciousness does nothing?
What is there without it?
The brain is like a radio receiver.
It allows the soul to experience this universe as we perceive it.
_I_ concur! Dilly, dilly!
I'm gonna tell you this just one time, stay off the drugs.
The only soul have has is on my shoes.
I have 3 souls 2 in reserve if one brakes.
What if the brain only acts like it creates the consciousness?
There is a video out there on TH-cam of Hoffman having a conversation in which he tries to find some common ground with his fundamentalist parents. For anyone who is not religious but comes from an ultra religious family, you will be able to relate. It's kind of heartwarming and worth a watch.
Sounds interesting, but there's a lot of Hoffman material out there now. Do you have a link or even just part of the title?
Beautiful camera quality imo.
Dr. Hoffman, I am a clinical social worker, not a scientist, but I have recently been watching some of your interviews and a Ted Talk on TH-cam re: consciousness, perception, reality, evolution, and I am absolutely captivated by your statement to the effect that 'consciousness is fundamental' to reality/the universe and that it is not a product of the brain. I agree with this although I cannot point to any scientific evidence to support it. I know your theory is not well supported by the scientific community, but I think that in time, your point of view will be substantiated. Thank you for the work that you do and thank you for sharing your time and thinking as you go forward.
"I agree with this although I cannot point to any scientific evidence to support it." Do you also believe in fairies?
Hoffman's work its exceptional
How about consciousness is a universal presence and our brains are filters that accesses and interprets it according to our own experiences.
There are more and more indications arising that this would be the case. I do believe we are limited to understand it completely. But I really believe that the brain only plays a role in a anchoring a fraction of the larger consciousness system into a physical body, and the brain isn’t the generator of consciousness, it only conditions it.
Evidence for that?
jimbo33 the problem is most of the interpretation is done by factors outside of our control so you can't say consciousness DOES anything. Consciousness is only that which experiences, that's it's only property and you cannot derive any control being done in the act of perception. It does not take a conscious human observer to collapse quantum waves
@@redwaldcuthberting7195 Quantum Entanglement.
@@khaledyasser8293 how do you know it doesn't require an observer? The probability wave does not collapse unless it is observed or recorded for observation later.
When a revolutionary theory just came out, almost everyone in the scientific community will be skeptical. I hope Hoffman's theory is one of those. Great courage and great work!
We are sparks placed here for a brief moment to accumulate light and warmth (love) so that we can become as bright of a star as we can be...shining in heaven (joy, beauty and harmony).
Good (god) knows every star by name.
This is accomplished by appreciating this paradise planet lifeboat and the miraculous works of fine art called "life" that inhabit it.
If we extinguish our light and warmth (love) with "greed" and it's ignorance (hate)...we become the darkness and e that surrounds the stars.
A very cold, dark, lonely, desolate place to be...for eternity.
What is the purpose of consciousness? Without consciousness there would be no known axiological value and thus zero known purpose. Therefore, consciousness is the fundamental pre-requisite of all known purposes, both special and ordinary.
What I got out of this video - Daniel Dennett has the fewest friends among the consciousness philosophers.
@fynes leigh Thanks, but I'm not sure I want to know more about philosopy. (Useful) Philosopy of Science is as far as I go.
@fynes leigh Thanks for the Jim Baggott Concept of Mass link.
................................................. Consciousness is .the state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings.
Fittingly tough questioning for some big claims. Very good!
Entertainment for its creator.
Consciousness is the same thing as being in function or online in this universe. Anything that is in function/operational and working can operate, navigate and perfom tasks in our Universe. The only reason why we try to make consciousness a separate thing and special is because we are afraid of dying. The topic is subconsciouslly refering to an afterlife. Which should be assumed wrong.
1. If there is not at least one truly eternally consciously existent
entity that truly exists throughout all of future eternity, then all
things would cease to matter one day.
2. If such an entity actually exists, then the one very thing they
could never ever do would be to personally experience a total cessation
of conscious existence.
3. The one very thing we as humans cannot apparently ever escape (as
well as many other species also), is our personal cessation of conscious
existence.
4. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe one special purpose of our conscious
existence is to personally experience a total cessation of conscious
existence. It would probably be the only way such an entity in item #2
above could ever experience "conscious death", the one very thing it
could never ever personally do, it does through conscious entities that
come into conscious existence and then cease to consciously exist.
Interesting ideas. I think 'universal consciousness', is a reality, proved by the fine tuning (FT) of the parameter space, of the Standard Model, explaining the 'self-organizing property of matter', hence Intelligent Design/er.
However, I am not quite sure of 'conscious death', which might be programmed into fine tuning itself.
A ten mile rock may hit us today or a million years later extinguishing all life. Yet one is destined to hit us every 200-250 million years, giving opportunity for evolution of new and improved species, like dinosaurs gave way to mammals. FT eliminates randomness/chance.
Consciousness wants to die so it live, when it live it don't want to die.. lol
Charles Brightman Calm your tits, this video wasn't about some primordial entity, dare I say, GOD
when did we came with this idea/concept of Consciousness? Can we define consciousness? Is it measurable? Is feeling a form of consciousness? Is intuition a product of the brain or consciousness?
The part where he says consciousness would serve no evolutionary benefit I found pretty odd. It would have clear social benefit to feeling that individuals are meaningful, and for individuals to strongly feel their “I” ness. I could see that having major fitness benefits to the group of humans with this strong consciousness.
I disagree, think of a colony of ants or a hive of bees, there is very little or no individuality, each ant or bee works and lives for the survival of the colony or hive. Also plants, trees flowers fungi, these organisms also have very little to no consciousness
It really depends on the kind of organism to assess the levels of individuality within that group
When the only thing we experience firsthand is consciousness and we know that we can conjure up physical worlds from nothing literally in our sleep, why is suggesting that consciousness is the fundamental reality a giant leap? Why isn’t saying matter is the fundamental reality the giant leap?
All any phenotype requires to evolve is that men and women find those traits in each other attractive, and that those traits benefit the survival of their children and their community.
I went to Wikipedia to see if I could get his religious views and discovered I share a birthday with him! 29th December.
So?
Matthias your comment is pointless
Quantum effects must be happening in our brains like entanglement and other effects we can not understand. And we know we can change the outcome of certain experiments by observing it. in effect changing reality. Who knows what we are capable of
From book: THINKING and DESTINY: Being the Science of Man, by Harold Waldwin Percival:
CONSCIOUSNESS: Consciousness is not a being, or a thing, or a state. All beings, things, and states which exist, exist because of the presence of Consciousness in them. It is not space, or time, or matter, or force, or any God. It is independent of all these, but they and everything else depend upon Consciousness. It cannot be changed, qualified, affected, divided, destroyed, improved, weighed, or measured. There are no degrees of Consciousness. It has no attributes, no properties, no qualities, no states. It has no limitations, no beginning, no end. It is present everywhere and in every thing. By its presence everything is conscious and everything changes from the degree in which the being or thing is Conscious to the next higher degree in being Conscious. Consciousness is ever unmanifested. [from: Chapter XIII, The Circle, or Zodiac -- Thinking and Destiny, Being the Science of Man, by Harold Waldwin Percival]
CONSCIOUSNESS: is the Presence in all things -- by which each thing is conscious in the degree in which it is conscious as or of what it is or does. As a word it is the adjective "conscious" developed into a noun by the suffix "ness." It is a word unique in language; it has no synonyms, and its meaning extends beyond human comprehension. Consciousness is beginningless, and endless; it is indivisible, without parts, qualities, states, attributes or limitations. Yet, everything, from the least to the greatest, in and beyond time and space is dependent on it, to be and to do. Its presence in every unit of nature and beyond nature enables all things and beings to be conscious as what or of what they are, and are to do, to be aware and conscious of all other things and beings, and to progress in continuing higher degrees of being conscious towards the only one ultimate Reality -- Consciousness. [Definition -- from: Thinking & Destiny, Being the Science of Man, by HWP]
"Consciousness is not a being, or a thing, or a state... It is not space, or time, or matter, or force, or any God. It is independent of all these, but they and everything else depend upon Consciousness. It cannot be changed, qualified, affected, divided, destroyed, improved, weighed, or measured. There are no degrees of Consciousness. It has no attributes, no properties, no qualities, no states."
Yes to that. No to the rest.
Conscious being is a Process, a Process of being, abstract, neither noumenal or phenomenal.
Process is not a being, or a thing, or a state... It is not space, or time, or matter, or force, or any God. Process is not matter, it is only of matter and cares not at all about the nature of matter. This particular Process cannot be changed, qualified, affected, divided, destroyed, improved, weighed, or measured. There are no degrees to this Process. It has no attributes, no properties, no qualities, no states. But this process can stop processing and when it does we call it sleep, or death.
What is described is not consciousness... it is awareness, which is even more base level than consciousness.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL A process implies time and other particles of a system. In such a case, consciousness isn't ultimate reality.
@@hetornhetorn Miscellaneous thoughts:
Yes, process implies an assemblage of moving elements, pattern, inputs and outputs. Process is a notion, an abstract notion, a conception, a synthetic product of minds. Process is no 'thing', it is an immaterial existent like movement and pattern and time.
Yes, time too is a notion, an abstract notion, a conception, a synthetic product of minds. You know there IS no past and you know there IS no future. There IS only: things... moving.
If this is unclear see Carlo Rovelli for a good explanation:
th-cam.com/video/NrjFE_Rd2OQ/w-d-xo.html
Consciousness is the process going on in human beings which enables us to cooperate with each other well enough to make society much more fecund than our UNconscious ancestors could manage (in obedience to evolution's prime directive, replicate). We have started to explore the details of the conscious process only very recently, Psychology, Economics, Sociology, Linguistics, etc.
"consciousness isn't ultimate reality"
Quite so, because ultimate reality is inconceivable.
Every content of the conscious process is strictly an idea
and
an idea is not the thing that the idea is about.
An idea is merely a fantastically topologically transformed encoded reflection.
Easy to imagine for those of the opinion that a brain has something to do with thinking.
For those who think otherwise I'd very much like to read their theory outlining how it works.
ttyl
@fynes leigh -- Words cannot describe entering into The Real. And one must ne'er cast pearls before swine (especially on line).
Do you know what is REAL KNOWLEDGE? You obviously did not read, nor comprehend the excerpt of H.W. Percivals 'definition' which I posted. AND THAT's fine.
Consciousness does do something, it serves a purpose. If we we're conscious we would have all been eaten by now. Why does consciousness need to change, it's perfect as it is, pure awareness. Every thing changes but the awareness itself doesn't it needs to stay constant.
Even with consciousness, we still get eaten. And other things without consciousness, or animals with less consciousness don’t get eaten that much. What about tigers, for example? Consciousness is definitely not a perquisite for not getting eaten.
.."The magic of consciousness doesn't seem to be needed". I'd say that this is one of the most eye-opening phrases I've heard in years.
I suppose what he means is that you as conscious being can writer programs for a computer without consciousness to work??
So brilliant I am awed
Intuition helps bring distant unexpected thoughts together, so it has just as much role in novel problem solving, as consiousness does.
Yep. From whence our thoughts? From the unconscious. What better home for the unconscious could be imagined than a brain, merely matter in process?
To assert all that is is conscious is to drain all meaning from the word.
Consciousness is needed for independence in life especially in creating new stuff and learning stuff. Without consciousness, you would need a PROGRAMMER for steps in doing things. Humans can be independent unlike computers and robots that must be maintain and program.
'No one had been able to explain a function that consciousness would do that it would be selective by evolution', that is a remarkable state of affair, remind me of a video, probably titled 'What Darwin did not know', which explained how a group of mouse living in an environment with a lots of trees, that got cut down, one day, when the mice got exposed for their predators, and suddenly found themselves endangered. The very next generation of mice acquired a coat of brown color (instead of a lighter color) that enabled them to hide among rocks, surviving the predators.
I did a little research to find out what mechanism we use for evolutionary changes to take place'
I found out that the protein needed by the mouse to change color involves the brain (hard ware) that sends signal to the relevant cell containing the genetic information (soft ware) that enables the production of the protein that gives the mouse a dark coat. The environment acts as the input/output screen on which reality is projected, and from which brain gets it's input, like a computer.
So you're saying that whenever a mouse is presented with a predator, it would somehow modify its DNA so that its offspring will have the coat of the colour of its environment? In that case, I could put it in a blue box and scare it, and its offspring would have blue coats.
It's not that complicated. It is assumed that there are already some mice in the population with dark fur. The ones that are more easily detected (the ones with light fur) are killed off, leaving more of the ones with dark fur to continue their genes. Evolution isn't some external entity, it's just the process by which members of a species are narrowed down- much like contestants on a reality show.
It has a purpose however, no 'special' purpose, much overlooked purpose is to keep us alive! Without many of us even realising human awareness is a simple aspect of consciousness as much of consciousness 'drives' and is pervasive within all aspects of consciousness and reality itself within existance.
Kinda funny how the majority of scientists are coming at it from the opposite perspective of the actual purpose. It's the job of consciousness to evolve, not of evolution to preserve consciousness. It survives evolution and exists outside of it. Good thing these fellas can see past it.
can a conscious mind create an autonomous new conscious inside it ?! like why do we take time to choose the flavor of ice cream from the shop ? if we know our favorite flavor we can spontaniously choose the answer but we all spent time thinking what we actually want as if we are discussing it with other consciousness inside.
we are the universe experiencing itself. we are a way for the cosmos to know and learn about itself. and all things with conciousness like plants crystals and minerals and animals, humans and aliens, other beings ect. everything is that self. and is that conciousness that the universe produced to learn know and observe itself. well that is us and all the other beings in the universe too. so that means that everything is connected on a quantum level. and dark matter is not nothing. it is quantum particles of matter that do not absorb, reflect or emit light. so they cant be detected by observing electromagnetic radiation. it exists but we cant see it from our human perspective. And the First Law of Thermodynamics states that heat is a form of energy, and thermodynamic processes are therefore subject to the principle of conservation of energy. This means that heat energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can, however, be transferred from one location to another and converted to and from other forms of energy. so i dont believe that conciousness is produced by the brain. i believe that its produced by the universe. and that your conciousness which is universal can exist outside of your physical body. bcuz ive had some near death experiences where my conciousness did exist outside of my physical body. so i believe that time is just a construct from our limited human perspective. and many physicists and philosophers now suspect that time is not fundamental; rather, time emerges out of something more fundamental - something nontemporal, something altogether different (perhaps something discreet, quantumized, not continuous, smooth). so for that reason and all the other reasons that i just stated. i believe that our conciousness will not die. and that it will just continously experience life in many different forms and ways. after all we are made from stardust, the nitrogen in our dna the calcium in our teeth and the iron in our blood, and the carbon and hydrogen in the molecules of our cells. think about that.
When the physical was evolving the nonphysical was evolving too only we never knew how to study it.
3:30 Hey Don, this logic seems to forgo viewing human technology as an extension of our Earth's consciousness. Humans use these programs and tools the same way we would use facilities in our brains; to compute information in some way, and to give us feedback that we can then each individually interpret and communicate about between each other.
6:40 Don I don't agree with this line of logic. There seems to be much more at play with wave/particle duality than just our ability to measure; some "higher" explanation based on more complex behaviors at the quantum level. in my opinion humanity just hasn't adapted to enough novel stimuli in within the universe to be able to break down all behaviors in the universe. Taking an approach through cognition instead of physics I would suggest that since our brains produce our individual realities based on our subjective experience and environment, this limits the amount of reality we can possibly create for ourselves, since we have to arrive at potentially new forms of perception or viewing reality through some level of exposure and being able to realize that exposure. What I'm arriving at is that wave/particle duality is an example of the human organism (all of us together) unable to grasp a complex behavior through an inability to measure it with the tools that we currently have at hand.
7:38 Yes I agree with your models! the overall accuracy of information within humanity is one based on fitness & survivorship, rather than on truth. I'd warrant humans cooperatively communicating in large and/or more complex groups can come up with much more complex rationalizations of phenomena and behavior that may not be accurate on the individual level, but overall give an positive trajectory for that group's survival
Consciousness is a tool.It It remains neutral without change, however, it is a beacon that shines light on where it is pointed. Evolution or devolution is a matter of opinion. Theories and concepts on this topic exist because humans have not understood the limitations of thought therefore the intellect.Meditate for 3 hours a day for one year and these questions will not arise.
Human intellect will never be able to understand the universe because it's smaller than the universe, this is so trivial, that it's even worthless to state.
But the intellect of course does not want to admit it, it's a very hard thing to swallow for it. The thing is that if one looks sincerely at this, humans are still considering themselves center of the universe conceptually speaking, even though this has been disproven from the physical standpoint.
But don't the apparent laws of physics seem to exist independent of our conciousness?
And doesn't the apparent continuity of the universe seem to suggest that the material universe also exists independent of our conciousness?
If the material universe only exists when we observe it, wouldn't this be the result of some underlying law that surely exists independent of our conciousness?
I doubt my conciousness can conjure up all that I observe as well as all of the underlying rules and structure that would seem to be necessary to make my observations even possible in the first place.
Sock it to ‘em Don. Think outside the box!
It seems that the qualitative and subjective nature of consciousness has a sense of immediacy that non-qualitative/non-subjective awareness/information processing does not have. This would clearly be useful for self-preservation and so be selected for by natural selection. Evidence suggests that the brain 'pushes' things that are immediately relevant to us into our subjective/qualitative awareness. This is the only explanation I can think of that gets around the problem proposed in this video
@fynes leigh I've honestly got no idea, I've subsequently realised I don't know anything about consciousness. My brief acquaintance with philosophy of mind and psychology gave me a case of the Dunning-Kruger Effect :)
Yes, we are the only animal in the history of this planet that has ever gotten off. The only one that landed on the moon and come back. So, as far as fitness points go and we are the only animal that knows about extinction level events so the fitness points we can score is saving our species and maybe other species as well. Done and done.
The brain is important but what about those people born without brains who function normally. Look up the research of Dr John Lorber and keep in mind in the Gospel of Thomas we are told that Consciousness came first not matter.
No one born without a brain functions. I welcome some supporting evidence for the assertion that there are people born without brains who function normally.
Anencephaly is not the absence of a brain. It is an incomplete brain.
A brain stem, portion of a limbic brain and some portion of a cortex can function more or less normally if there are not other conditions impairing metabolism. That is not a complete brain, but it is not the absence of a brain.
nothing like having an adult beverage and going on a mindbending voyage
I would say in some way consiousness have evolved for self preservation. To have an ego.
Just animals.
Hoffman: No one has ever identified an evolutionary function for consciousness. How about realizing that petting a lion could be a life ending effort? Or realizing that the wolf pack sees you as prey and that they appear to be hungry?
You don't need conscious for that.Just the input that petting a lion=death would be enough
There is a difference between consciousness and awareness
@@xenphoton5833 Are you saying that an unconscious person would still be aware that petting a lion would be dangerous? I think you're mistaken.
@@brud1729 have you heard of what a philosophical zombie is?
The ALL is mind, the universe is mental -The Kybalion
Animals survive because they don’t sit around thinking “ I’m hungry it’s raining I’m tired and miserable it’s no use” our consciousness causes us to do that and sometimes we take our lives.. animals don’t . How would consciousness be a benefit to evolution?
Doug G by allowing an understanding of time . Our consciousness allows us to perceive the future .
My cat is conscious, people are smart.
But he may see that the other way around.
If this was the case we would have been extinct. Obviously it works. Being able to communicate and cooperate at higher level, or what eddie said about predicting future, creativity and many more outweights the "bugs" in sporadic suicides.
The challenge of humanity and our ultimate purpose is to isolate and separate entirely our consciousness or our spirit from our physical bodies. What if our consciousness, freed from the shackles of Earth's physical world, carries with it the power to be architects or masters of our Universe? What if our consciousness has been tricked, then trapped & enslaved here on Earth, our existence confined to the limits of Earth's physical world?
It's not a noun. There is no such thing as consciousness.
It is a verb and the verb is process.
To be conscious is to be a process.
Process is immaterial, abstract.
You can't see Process or feel Process or weigh Process .
You only see and feel and weigh matter.
It is the movement of the matter that is the process, not the matter itself.
This is why and how being conscious has an immaterial flavor.
So you can experience emotion without consciousness?
Why doesn't he ask Ken Wilber?
Evolution is a product of consciousness
Advaita
Another way of saying: In the absence of conscious being only unimaginable nothing?
But wait a minute; doesn't the Copenhagen Interpretation define an "observer" to be any entity -- such as even a single particle -- that reacts (to the event) and not necessarily a whole organism that's alive??
By the way what if neither is fundamental reality? Why do we even think one of those has to be fundamental reality?
Isn't he wrong that evolution only selects for things that add to fitness? Isn't it actually that it selects against things that go against fitness? So if consciousness did nothing it wouldn't be selected against or for, it would just be there?
I love the intellectual WOO guys like this ...they are masters at post Hoc and using their strong science background and credentials to grow their pet ideas 💡. I bet he has a belief in the supernatural of some type . That is usually the driver ....BTW if he ends up being correct I will be the first one to praise his efforts
Donald Hoffman is actually staunchly secular, which makes his investigation all the more honest. It's refreshing to see a nonspiritual person be concerned with the problem of consciousness and point out that it needs to be accounted for. We've made great strides in biology, chemistry, neurology, and physics over the last several centuries but when we get to the nature of consciousness it falls on deaf ears, brushed away, trivialized, and ignored.
Consciousness as spandrel.
i think the argument about the computer program is a terrible one. the "development" of our consciousness took millions of years, before we could write computer programs. so the 2 have no correlation.
His point is simply that problems in the environment can be solved without consciousness. The same applies for every species.
@@JoBlakeLisbon hoffman is stating that because a computer program can solve novel problems without the use use of consciousness, that our consciousness did not evolve to solve something novel. i dont know about the conclusion. but i think the premise is incorrect. he forgot to mention that the computer program was designed by a conscious being. one could argue that it was our consciousness that played a role in our ability to make computers and write programs, in the first place.
i am not being condescending, when i ask if you have studied logic. if you havent, you may not be aware of what i am about to say. but correctness is not the same thing as being logical. logic is a means by which one uses facts and/or assumptions, to derive a conclusion that can be based upon these facts and/or assumptions.
and in this case, hoffman is incorrect with his logic. whether his conclusion is correct or not, i dont know. but i can have a completely correct conclusion by simply guessing. if it is a true or false question, i have a 50% chance of being correct, without the use of logic. he is overstepping, in order to justify something that he has biased opinions about - it is a very common mistake.
Before diving into consciousness, check our awareness. Awareness of the presence of food or of predators, etc, etc, obviously confers an evolutionary advantage. Consciousness is basically the awareness that you are aware. It may be epiphenomenal or it may have at least started out that way but yesterday's epiphenomenon is grist for today's exaptationist mill.
If it was as easy to create an evolutionary algorithm that could accomplish the same things as consciousness then we'd have had true AI already. And I think most will agree that we are a long way away from that.
There are problems that cannot be solved with computation, which means they may require consciousness. See Penrose.
That seems far fetched. Give me one example of a problem in everyday life that our consciousness solves, but that can’t be solved through computation.
@@Madoc_EU research Penrose and Godel
Sergio If you have a good point, just state it. I know about Gödel‘s incompleteness theorem, and I am not aware of any process that happens in the brain or the mind that would require solutions to non-computable predicates. Which ones do you know that would fit in this category, and that are solved by human minds?
I only know Penrose from physics, but I am not aware that he claims the human brain solves this kind of problems. What exactly do you mean?
So again, instead of giving me two author’s names and basically telling me to study their complete works because someone on the internet told me so, just state your point directly, right here. I could also ask you to study Hofstadter, but that wouldn’t help in any way.
@@Madoc_EU there's a video with Penrose talking about tiling, conciousness, and quantum mechanics. Look it up, I don't have the time.
Sergio Instead of referring to some unnamed video, could you please simply point out which kind of process the human mind does that requires the solution of a non-computable problem? Please stop referring me to other sources, just make your point directly.
If deterministic view of world is true I mean everything is determined at the time of big-bang, then Consciousness is unnecessary..!
Whos the pompous interviewer who acts like he has it all figured out? He needs a slice of humble pie.
May be there is no conscious being only a sum of mental projections which give us an idea of illusionary self
And we experience this illusion in consciousness.
Eliminative materialism always comes in and destroys the idea that there is some volition separate from physicality. I don't see how you escape that
Interesting... What are your beliefs?
what about challenging survival-related deepest fears? As long as somebody goes on in the usual robotic mode, indeed volition is dictated by physicality (unconsciousness, subconsciousness).
But as you defy your most inherent instincts (what can only happen when you scent that there is another framework determining reality, and it has to do with beliefs), then you make choices that contradict basic instincts and the commands of physicality, denying your own physical feelings and your tendencies to certain choices.
There are several layers of events of choice to be explored before coming to such a simplistic conclusion that we're just byproducts of a physical body. But these layers have to be explored within oneself. One has to be corageous though.
John Morris his name is Bernardo Kastrup.
i agree. It is hard to put an accurate definition on consciousness. I think that I know at least what it's not: 1) a byproduct of the brain 2) necessary for survival purposes.
I really believe the brain plays a role in a anchoring a fraction of the larger consciousness system into a physical body, but the brain isn’t the generator of consciousness, it only conditions it.
...he would NEVER interview Bernado..never...
Algorithms?? Are you computer scientist? Which program? 😮
Heady stuff.
Consciousness allows for imagination , for a next-level future space-time frame, even a frame that is beyond our immediate physical being.
This imagination may not immediately help us within our life time, but it could allow this imagination-projection to shape our future evolution.
So, there is probably not much to consciousness with regards to our lives now. So, it does not do anything NOW......
wow...
Physicalism in relation to consciousness seems implausible to me . Add to this the Copenhagen Interpretation and the door is open to something like panpsychism, or at least consciousness as a fundamental property irreducible to lower level explanations - rather like space and mass, for instance. I believe we are at a Galilean turning point away from the dark age rigid belief system of physicalistic scientism, to that which simply accommodates the facts. Consciousness cannot simply be brushed aside by saying it simply "emerges" from the brain, whether micro tubules, synapses or whatever.
The problem with panpsychism is that it explains nothing about consciousness. It just poses new questions, so if we follow Occam’s razor, it would be wiser not to assume panpsychism. There is a parallel between panpsychism and the belief in god. If we answer the question about the origin of the universe with “God did it!”, that explains nothing and only introduces new questions. A similar thing happens if we answer the question about the origin of consciousness with panpsychism. Nothing is explained, and new questions arise. Where did the universal consciousness come from? Why does it exist? Since it does some form of information processing without a substrate, how does it do that? Et cetera. So panpsychism just replaces some open questions with a mystical black box. I don’t think this has the power to change scientific canon.
@@Madoc_EU Yes. Let me augment with a more direct arg...
Ape Urson:
I don't 'have' consciousness, rather, I am conscious.
I AM conscious.
But sometimes, when I am asleep or passed out, I am NOT conscious.
This is an indubitable fact and true of all of us.
Thus panpsychism cannot be the case because there are definitely billions of elements in the universe that are nightly not conscious.
To suggest that a rock is conscious because it expands as it is warmed by the morning sun is to confuse the meaning of the word 'conscious' with the meaning of the word 'reactive'. Yes?
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL We both agree in the assumption that panpsychism is not the favorable position, given what we know. So I am on the same page with you when it comes to the rejection of panpsychism.
However, in your additional rebuttal of panpsychism, I get the impression that your view of panpsychism is too narrow. That means, I believe that the view you reject is not the common view of panpsychism, so I regard your line of reasoning as dangerously prone to the strawman fallacy. Here is why:
Maybe some proponents of panpsychism argue that a rock is conscious because it reacts to its environment in the way you described. Probably there is someone out there who thinks that this is the case for panpsychism. But this is not the view that I got from panpsychism. My source is the book "Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind" by Annaka Harris, plus some interviews that Sam Harris did where the topic was also touched. (This is not a recommendation to you for reading the book, I just want to cite my sources. The book is not bad and contains some food for thought, but I regard it as fundamentally incomplete and not fully thought through.)
Rather, panpsychism is an answer to the question why subjective experience exists at all. Why do we have the strong impression that there is one centralized locus in which all of our thoughts, feelings and experiences flow together? We could easily imagine a being that is capable of everything that humans do, without the need for there being a centralized experiencing of oneself. Neither philosophy, nor evolutionary biology, nor psychology have yet come up with an explanation that shows the necessity of subjective experience the way we experience it. What is not necessary must be denied, according to Occam's razor. And herein lies a paradox of sorts: We cannot deny our subjective experience, because we definitely know that we experience it.
I am not a philosopher myself, so please take this with a grain of salt: As far as I know, in philosophy this problem is known as the "hard problem of consciousness" (see Wikipedia article with the same title). Even though the problem persists in some shape since the ancient Greeks, it is yet unsolved.
Usually, consciousness is viewed as an emergent phenomenon of our mind, which is produced by our nervous system. (I would also subscribe to this view.) But this view poses the hard problem of consciousness. Panpsychism tries to evade this problem by denying consciousness as an emergent phenomenon. Rather, it posits that consciousness is a fundamental property of the physical universe. Just like every particle has mass, spin, charge and other properties, it also has the physical basis of consciousness. When particles are combined in complex patterns, their properties also combine, in ways described by the laws of physics. Similarly, panpsychism argues, our consciousness arises as the way that the myriads of consciousness-bearing particles interact in our nervous system, in a way that is yet to be figured out by physics.
At least, this is my understanding of the argument. In that case, a stone would not be conscious because it reacts to its surrounding thermodynamics, but because it consists of particles that all bear a teeny-tiny micro bit of fundamental consciousness. To the human mind, if we somehow could magically experience what a stone "experiences", we would likely not call it "consciousness" at all. In fact, we would most likely not even be able to recognize the "experience" of a stone as such, or as anything at all, because we are so used to our comparatively gigantic experience, which consists of so much more complexity than what happens in a stone. It would be similar to try to detect the motion of a few atoms on your skin. That is impossible, because your skin is used to so much bigger forces. Still, it would be foolish to deny the motion of individual atoms on that basis.
That said, I have to say that I still do not follow the path of the panpsychists. Still, I think it is good to know the position that you reject. In the worst case, I just misunderstood you. In the best case, either I gave you new information, or you can show me where my understanding is wrong, so I get to learn something from this exchange.
@@Madoc_EU The panpsychists seem, like many people, to hold that there is some actually existing 'thing' that IS consciousness in just the way early scientists invented phlogiston in their initial attempts to explain combustion.
When I was young and foolish I laughed at them because I had no appreciation for the challenge that levitation presents to a world in which the best available tools were boot straps.
Unt zo, in appropriate humility,
It seems to me...
there are two grand realms constituting the totality of being. These are...
The Material and the Abstract.
Further, its seems to me inevitable that problems will arise if one takes denizens of one realm to be native to the other.
Take the word 'process' for example. At first glance one might suppose it to belong to the Material realm. But a few moments contemplation drives one to the realization of its pure abstract nature. There is no 'thing' in the material universe that IS a process. But at the same time there can be no process in the absence of the material realm. A process is always 'of' something.
When one investigates the ketchup factory one sees the bottles moving along the conveyors and being filled in the carousel and so on. That is what one sees. The process of the factory on the other hand is synthesized by the mind out of the experience of watching the behavior of all of those disparate elements.
The process in the brain in the body in the tank of liquid helium has halted. The body is not conscious because it is the process of the body that is what conscious is. And process is abstract. Conscious is abstract. That's why it feels ephemeral. That's why beer and LSD which alter the behavior of the matter (behavior, another pure abstract denizen) change conscious experience.
It's getting late so the ending there is a little rushed but I believe there's enuf to get the gist of my thrust. Yes?
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL I think I see what you are aiming at. What you call "the material" and "the abstract" is better known to me as "physical existence" and "conceptual existence". Physical existence is for things as the keyboard I am typing on, my liver and a chair in my kitchen. Conceptual existence is for concepts, such as the number 7, the quadratic function or the golden ratio.
While I would be inclined to go along with you for most of what you wrote, I do not think that your reasoning is a proper response to the hard problem of consciousness (and maybe you also didn't try that).
Consider this: There is something that it is like to be me right now, paraphrasing Nagel. In every moment, I am experiencing the enormous collage of all of my thoughts, feelings and impressions, all at once. There is a very distinct and hard to explain feeling to this. This is what I would call "subjective perspective" or "experiencing". The way I see it, the contents of subjective experience is the momentary contents of my consciousness, as experienced by me, right now.
And this is not abstract. My subjective experience is not like the number 3, or the property of a number to be a prime. I wouldn't go as far as the panpsychists and say that consciousness is best explained as a fundamental property of physics, but it rather appears to be an emergent phenomenon of the activity of my brain. Still, I could easily imagine a human being that does everything that I do, but without any subjective experience. It mystifies me to some degree why my experience exists at all, but I am quite positive that this will be explained by science some day, purely on a materialistic basis, without any need for esoteric or supernatural beliefs.
Sadly, a rigorous mathematical theory won't do me any good but it might transform Dr. Hoffman into a kind of abstractionist high priest whose word the rest of us (mathematical simpletons) will have to take on faith, or just flatly deny.
I picked up a book ("Neural Networks - An Introduction" by B.Muller & J.Reinhardt, Springer-Verlag 1990) imagining it would make a fascinating read and possibly give me some good ideas about how to improve the design of the control program I was writing for the microcontrollers in my gardening robot. I wasn't expecting any math at all. Chapter one was interesting and contained only one equation that, with more than usual effort, I was barely able to decipher (roughly: Hi(t) = SUM from j(WijNj(t) ). Chapter 2 was straightforward but from chapter 3 on the 226 pages of equations made that first one look like child's play. I despaired in my realization that my dear rule based robot would never become conscious, though it can fool the very naive.
A word of advice to the young: do your math homework! If it puts you to sleep drink coffee, manufacture an interest, it doesn't matter that it seems inauthentic. There are a vast number of utterly fascinating careers dependent on mathematical literacy that right now you cannot imagine you might later be interested in pursuing. Remember, the older you get, the more crystalline your brain becomes and the more difficult it becomes to learn, do it now. I mean, you were just a child but look how easily you learned to speak, no mean feat. When they say your brain is plastic they don't mean it's made of plastic. They mean no insult, only that it can be melted into a better shape, metaphorically speaking.
If my roommate was more conscious, he might see the food he leaves on dishes when he is washing them. Pay attention folks, its free.
LSD kicks the coherence of the brain, it's like hitting a cymbal with a stick, it then vibrates in different patterns.
"It's very easy to write a program to do that..." To do what? To respond to novel situations with human intelligence? It's very easy to write a program to do that? Give me a break.
Imagine life nowhere...it's enough of an answer for me
you invite the guy just to say in the end "I'm skeptichal" why? just keep it to yourself, you are really rude with your guests some times. I hope that changes in the future
Guy is a literal genius, but somehow cannot avoid starting thoughts or sentences with the word "so". Why is this word overused to this extreme? Very strange and annoying.
So maybe it's because ...
I dunno
What are they even talking about when they say conciousness? Why the hell aren't they defining what they mean with that? This is almost useless to watch because they never say what conciousness is to them!?
Do they mean the ability to think or what exactly?
What have algorithms got to do with anything? The algorithms are all written by a conscious person. Remove the person. No algorithms!
*What* human consciousness? Men (human beings) are dreaming machines, and the idea that they are capapable of consciousness is laugable.
That said Thomas More supposedly said: " “God made the angels to show Him splendor, as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind.”
T hat is a bit tricky for those that suppose that they can be given or *told* either knowledge or understanding..
*Whose* consciousness ........ of what..... when?
Nobody knows where consciousness comes from and what happens to it after we die.😏😏😏😏
Seekthetruth3000 Nobody knows exactly why a certain traffic jam forms, and what happens to its essence after it dissolves. Yet, it would still be unjustified to believe in an afterlife for traffic jams.
Matthias J. Déjà A traffic jam does not have experiences
jzonkel Still, when we die, there is no reason to assume that consciousness goes on. That’s just wishful thinking.
Matthias J. Déjà I didn't say it did go on. I said they aren't comparable.
Matthias J. Déjà I'm saying consciousness is fundamentally qualitatively different from everything else in the world by virtue of it having experiences, being a WINDOW in which the universe (matter and energy) is LOOKING at itself.
Does This TH-cam Video Have Special Purpose?
in order to understand consciousness psychedelic substances should help ?
Th einterviewer interrupts too much
There's too much intelligence going on here, something I never thought id ever find in the you tube comments section, whats going on? Have i entered a parallel universe? 👀😅
Dark energy has consciousness.
My farts have consciousness too!
@@GeoCoppens Mine are too! They even follow me around sometimes!😮
Dark matter could be the key
@@DaleSteel Rubbish!
@@GeoCoppens soz Steven hawkins
The consciousness cause the genetic mutation to emerge
I want to be special so badly, i am willing to invent stories where i am !
Absolute twaddle...congratulations. Even the location looks like the grounds of a funny farm.
Donald Hoffman - Does Human Consciousness Have Special Purpose? NOPE! What a stupid idea!
Because there's no such thing as "human consciousness".
Consciousness is the whole ball of wax!
?
Does Human Consciousness Have Special Purpose?
No!
GeoCoppens read Penrose
Surely Human Consciousness is kinda necessary for running a global civilization with 8 billion members?
Hoffman deals in ambiguity and abstraction layered on abstraction. He doesn't even know himself what he is talking about. He has found a way to be popular speaking nonsense like his fellow traveler, Deepak Chopra. The only difference is his use of science to legitimize his looney ideas. Hoffman will fade away like all conmen eventually do.
Not really - he publishes his work in academic journals - they are available for other scientists to debate, improve upon and disprove. He is merely taking a novel approach to the hard-problem of consciousness by attempting to reverse the order in which the problem is addressed. If you look at his proofs on human perception and evolutionary game theory, they're extremely persuasive.
Straw man much?!
Awareness aides understanding of the world, thus decision making. So it would benefit even simple lifeforms to evolve it. And no, you cannot write a program that replicates this.
Hoffman is a bullshitter.
What kind of awareness though? Awareness differs vastly from one species to the next. Hoffman doesn't claim to have written programs that create aware species - but he does show very clearly in both observable biological life and computer simulations that life does not evolve to see external reality as it is - life evolves to identify fitness points in the environment. This is a stunning realisation in of itself - his work on consciousness is actually less interesting than his work on evolutionary game theory which is likely to become the standard model of understanding perception in living beings.
@@JoBlakeLisbon what is so mysterious? you can't see it because you are it.