Complex Numbers

Revisited: "Once More With Feeling"

It's Sunday (some say Easter Sunday), so it's time once again to forget the worries of the present and focus on the disaster of the past.

Apparently, back in 2020 (a pretty bad year from most perspectives), I'd had a few blog entries, most of which I vaguely remember, talking about panpsychism, the persistent belief (for it is a belief, not scientific knowledge) that consciousness arises in complex life because every thing in the universe, including subatomic particles, has a rudimentary form of consciousness. I may not be getting it exactly right, but that's the gist of it.

Naturally (pun intended), I push back—not from any deep-seated need to be special, but because it's not, as far as I've been able to tell, a testable, falsifiable hypothesis. Apparently, I pushed back a few times, based on the title of the entry ("Once More With Feeling" ), and the first line:

This is probably the last bit about panpsychism I'll be linking. For now. Maybe.

And I can't be arsed to scour every day since August 11, 2020 to see if I talked about it again until now.

But let's turn this into a Merit Badge Mini-Contest.

Yeah, I know, I haven't done one of these in a while. Interest seemed to peter out. But maybe I'll start them up again, perhaps once a month. Not today, though.

Anyway, the link (available at the original entry above) is still active, if you're interested in what this publication, and one philosopher, has to say about it.

This entry is about what I have to say about it.

In the link above, I copied the "elevator pitch" for panpsychism:

In our standard view of things, consciousness exists only in the brains of highly evolved organisms, and hence consciousness exists only in a tiny part of the universe and only in very recent history. According to panpsychism, in contrast, consciousness pervades the universe and is a fundamental feature of it.

And today, rereading this, I realized that I didn't address the misconception about evolution: that there are "highly evolved organisms" as opposed, apparently, to less-evolved organisms.

That point of view is dangerously self-centered.

Every living being on Earth shares a common ancestor. Every living thing on Earth has therefore been subject to evolutionary pressure for the same amount of time (3-4 billion years; the exact time is irrelevant to this discussion so I won't bother splitting hairs on it). We have certain adaptations that have made us very good at becoming an invasive species, even to the extent of being able to live in places like Antartica and, for at least a little while, on the moon.

But that doesn't make us "highly evolved," any more than a bacterium is "highly evolved" because it acquired antibiotic resistance from its progenitors.

None of this means that panpsychism is right. I'm just pointing out that the "standard view" noted in the quote is kind of a straw man. I can accept the idea that any living thing has some form of consciousness, but every nonliving thing? I'mma need evidence. "Consciousness pervades the universe" is more in the realm of theology, which requires no evidence.

Anyway, the original entry goes deeper into other arguments, which I won't rehash here. Bottom line is, sure, it's a legitimate philosophy; it's also older than recorded language in humans (in the form of animism). It makes for good creative writing, and excellent (if later forgotten) stoned dorm room conversations.

What it's not, is science.

It may be, someday, when we know more. Which is why we do science.