A DualAspect Panpsychist Critique of Emergentist, Quantum and Wilbers Holonic Theories of Consciousn

1
A Dual-Aspect Panpsychist Critique of
Emergentist, Quantum and Wilbers Holonic
Theories of Consciousness

• Anand Rangarajan
• Yale University

2
Logical Supervenience

• Almost everything is logically supervenient on
  the physical.
• Exceptions are
• Experience
• Physical laws
• Awareness (locus of self)
• Causal closure of physical world renders
  experience epiphenomenal.
• Introduce Gregg Rosenbergs dual-aspect
  panpsychist Liberal Naturalism approach.

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Experience and Causation
Rosenbergs Liberal Naturalism

• Physical facts do not entail experiential facts.
• From (1), experience is non-physical.
• Physical explanations are a complete explanation
  of causation. Denied here.
• From (2) and (3), experience lies outside the
  causal structure and is irrelevant.

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A New Metaphysics of Causation
Rosenbergs Liberal Naturalism

• Humean regularity theories of causation
  demolished.
• Receptivity degree of sensitivity to other
  effective states.
• Receptivity is not logically supervenient on the
  physical.
• Visualized as a directed graph.

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Receptivity and Spacetime
Rosenbergs Liberal Naturalism

• Direction of time supervenes on asymmetric
  receptive connections.
• Causality condition on locality and not a
  locality condition on causality.
• Roughly visualized as a Markov chain.

Receptive prop.
Effective prop.
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Rosenbergs Liberal Naturalism
Avatars in a real CG world
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Carrier theory of causation
Rosenbergs Liberal Naturalism

• Receptive and effective properties form a
  compositional circularity.
• Contrastive circularities in any system have to
  be carried by external carriers.
• Good example is user semantics in GUIs.
• Contrasts in physics are not carried by anything
  extrinsic to physics.
• Phenomenal qualities carry effective properties.
• Experiencing of qualities carries receptive
  connections.

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Phenomenal Individuals
Rosenbergs Liberal Naturalism

• Phenomenal individuals carry the nomic content
  of natural individuals.
• Every natural individual is a phenomenal
  individual.
• Individuals can contain other individuals.
• Such containment implies multiple spacetime
  reference frames.

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Hierarchical Spacetime Frames
Rosenbergs Liberal Naturalism

• Each individual has own spacetime frame of
  reference.
• Each spacetime built up from asynchronous
  receptive connections.
• Compositional hierarchy of individuals may be
  separated into same level versus different
  levels.
• Overlapping spacetimes at same level can cohere.
• Possibility spaces of higher levels under
  constrained by lower levels.

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Ontology Epistemology
Rosenbergs Liberal Naturalism

• Directed graph of receptive connections needed in
  physics.
• Duality of effective and receptive properties.
• Causation and spacetime placed in the framework
  of the directed graph.
• Receptive connections epistemically opaque but
  ontologically clear.
• Experience is epistemically clear but
  ontologically opaque.
• Clean duality exploited in this approach.

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Twenty Tenets
Critique of Wilbers holonic approach

• Reality not composed of things or processes, but
  of holons.
• Insufficient distinction made between emergent
  functional properties and natural individuals.
• Holons display self-preservation,
  self-adaptation, self-transcendence and
  self-dissolution.
• Biology driven bias.
• Holons emerge.
• Holons emerge holarchically.
• One-dimensional, temporal emergence.

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Twenty tenets (contd.)
Critique of Wilbers holonic approach

• Each emergent holon transcends and includes its
  predecessors.
• One-dimensional (see above).
• The lower sets the possibilities for the higher,
  the higher sets the probabilities of the lower.
• No explanation of the distinction between
  possibility and probability.
• Number of levels in a hierarchy depth. Number
  of holons on a given level span.
• Hierarchies can be tangled.

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Twenty tenets (contd.)
Critique of Wilbers holonic approach

• Each successive level of evolution produces
  greater depth and less span.
• Evolution is irrelevant.
• Greater the depth of the holon, greater the
  degree of consciousness.
• Consciousness undefined.
• Destroy any type of holon and you will destroy
  all of the holons above it and none of the holons
  below it.
• Great Goddess destroyed when universe is
  destroyed? Modification If universe never
  existed, Goddess destroyed.

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Twenty tenets (contd.)
Critique of Wilbers holonic approach

• Holoarchies coevolve.
• Evolution is irrelevant.
• Micro is in relational exchange with the macro at
  all levels.
• Fine.
• Evolution has
• Directionality,
• Increasing complexity,
• Increasing differentiation/integration,
• Increasing organization/structuration,
• Increasing autonomy, and
• Increasing telos.

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Twenty tenets (contd.)
Critique of Wilbers holonic approach

• Every holon issues an IOU to the Kosmos.
• All IOUs are redeemed in emptiness (shunyata).
• Mysticism bracketed out.

Capsule summary Functional properties of
evolution and self-organization
synthesized together with qualia. Does not take
into account supervenience relations.
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Overall critique
Critique of Wilbers holonic approach

• Critical temporal issues implicit in twenty
  tenets.
• Over-reliance on evolution and self-organization
  as twenty tenets base.
• Supervenience relations not mentioned.
• Hierarchies not constructed using receptive and
  effective properties.
• Emergence linked to time.
• The manifest All-Unity evolves as All-Form, the
  summit application of the twenty tenets.

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Evolution and self-organization
Critique of emergentist approach

• Self-organization and selection cornerstone of
  emergentist approach.
• Direction of time assumed as well as single
  spacetime.
• Evolution only selects functional properties.
• Self-organization does not distinguish between
  emergent functional properties and natural
  individuals.
• No fundamental understanding of causation.

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Quantum Theory and Experience
Critique of Quantum Approaches

• Several unique features of QM.
• Selection from a space of possibilities
  (measurement problem.)
• EPR non-locality.
• Bose-Einstein holistic condensates.
• Interpretation of wave function.
• Projection operators performing selection
  (Stapp).
• Orch OR non-computational collapse of wave
  function (Hameroff and Penrose).
• Other approaches (Albert, Squires, Goswami,
  Lockwood, Hodgson, Bohm).

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Overall Critique
Critique of Quantum Approaches

• Chalmers Even given a nonlocal, physical
  process, it remains logically possible that the
  process could take place in the absence of
  consciousness.
• Projection operators, non-local and
  non-computational processes conceived in
  functional terms.
• Quantum measurement problem and non-locality in
  EPR clues to an asynchronous model?
• Asynchronous causation has potential to unite
  quantum theory and general relativity.