Is the sun conscious?

[YesNo]

Rupert Sheldrake raises the question of whether the sun is conscious in the following YouTube video. I plan to look into this more by discussing his comments and references in this thread. I hope this will lead to some insights about philosophy and science.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JGPDXJ9FCM&t=736s

[YesNo]

Around 10:20 in the video is this description of consciousness: “The function of our consciousness is to choose among possibilities.”

The linking of consciousness and choice I think is critical. To show that consciousness is not present one has to show that choice is not possible. To show that our consciousness is a delusion and can be “eliminated” (as in “eliminative materialism”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism ) one has to show that we do not have free will. This means we can be completely modeled by deterministic/random machines. Those machines can then act as us. It is possible that eliminative materialism may itself be “eliminated” depending on whether social mood thinks we have free will or not since whether something is eliminated or not seems to be a collective-subjective assessment of its value not an empirical argument.

Alternatives to eliminative materialism are reductive materialism and revisionary materialism, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionary_materialism

[desiresjab]

He just rolls around heaven all day.

[desiresjab]

There can be no applications of this theory until it advances materialism. How is that for irony?

I would also remind you of one of your own strongest values--not to confuse a model with reality. If a model of a conscious universe can eventually be more useful and practical than the old materialistic view, that still would not prove the universe is conscious, but just that the model works better for purposes we may find in the future.

Currently, the usefulness of the idea is about on a par with the usefulness of a statement of intelligent design. Treating matter as conscious may have no scientific applications whatsoever. For that, the good old materialistic approach might remain the mainstay of scientific progress. Sheldrake's approach seems much more philosophical than scientific. Some of his scientific experiments on animal psychology gave interesting but arguable results. One can easily get the feeling that he is a believer already, looking for evidence to support his beliefs, rather than a neutral, objective investigator. The type of things he investigates are difficult to get a good measure on, if not impossible. The intuition that we are being stared at or observed is one such thing he investigated.

I am not trying to refute Sheldrake, just applying some brakes to his wagon. His beliefs have a significant area of intersection with my own. But I mention what he didn't--that we ourselves are sense organs of God. I believe mosquitoes and amoebae are, too. Even God needs a way of doing things. Matter allows as much consciousness through as the form permits. The human brain permits more consciousness to pass into than a piece of granite, an amoeba or a mosquito. A difference of forms.

By the word God, I mean the Original Consciousness which I believe holds the universe together through the power of imagination.

Without experiencing fear, God would remain ignorant of the experience, and the same for all experiences. God must have a way of concealing its own immortality from conscious bits of itself for the purpose of experiences it could not otherwise feel, and we are it, or at least part of it. Immortality could get awfully boring without a very extensive playground for the OC. God had to have a reason for creating everything, and Love does not fit the bill for rational thinking. There was nothing to love yet.

I have come to the conclusion that God created the Universe to fill the idle hours of immortality. Rather than try to kill itself, God figured out a way of experiencing death without dying, since outright death itself may have been impossible for the OC. That it might have the single limitation of being unable to die, satisfies the reason for creation and ourselves. You and I would not just sit there in the gloom of immortality, but try to make something of it, even if it was just poetry. The universe is God's poetry spoken into existence. The works of God are so advanced even the characters within them fully believe themselves to be alive, as much as the form permits, that is. I have every confidence that a mosquito's musings on its own existence do not rise anywhere near our own level of self awareness.

If God had no beginning, God has always been at it. In that case, we on earth would not be the first or the only life forms created for the benefit of God's experience. We ourselves can too easily imagine a multiplicity of experience types for which we would be useless vessels, and senses we do not have, for this to be the case.

Another limitation God may have placed upon itself is in knowing our future. Let's face it, if God knows the details of our future then we have no free will. For if God knows the future, then it is predestined. The only way for humans to have free will is for God not to know our futures. No way around it. We might still have something asymptotically close to free will, but it would nonetheless be a mere approximation of the ideal thing.

[YesNo]

There can be no applications of this theory until it advances materialism. How is that for irony?

It is not just Sheldrake who thinks the sun might be conscious. Greg Matloff in March of this year summarized his view of stars having volition and and hence being conscious in “Stellar Consciousness: Can Panpsychism Emerge as an Observational Science?”: http://www.gregmatloff.com/Edge%20Science%20Matloff-ES29.pdf



I would also remind you of one of your own strongest values--not to confuse a model with reality. If a model of a conscious universe can eventually be more useful and practical than the old materialistic view, that still would not prove the universe is conscious, but just that the model works better for purposes we may find in the future.

I agree. The scientist creates a model that allows predictions to be made. If the predictions are not better than chance, the model has no value. The philosopher asks about reality and takes into account evidence where predictions seem to work whether that is from predicting where one will find a planet or a psychic doing remote seeing.



Currently, the usefulness of the idea is about on a par with the usefulness of a statement of intelligent design. Treating matter as conscious may have no scientific applications whatsoever. For that, the good old materialistic approach might remain the mainstay of scientific progress. Sheldrake's approach seems much more philosophical than scientific. Some of his scientific experiments on animal psychology gave interesting but arguable results. One can easily get the feeling that he is a believer already, looking for evidence to support his beliefs, rather than a neutral, objective investigator. The type of things he investigates are difficult to get a good measure on, if not impossible. The intuition that we are being stared at or observed is one such thing he investigated.

We are all believers in our viewpoints. That is a good thing. We would not find out anything if we were not motivated to argue for positions we believe to be true. The neutral, rational, Spock-like observer is not a normal human being.



I am not trying to refute Sheldrake, just applying some brakes to his wagon. His beliefs have a significant area of intersection with my own. But I mention what he didn't--that we ourselves are sense organs of God. I believe mosquitoes and amoebae are, too. Even God needs a way of doing things. Matter allows as much consciousness through as the form permits. The human brain permits more consciousness to pass into than a piece of granite, an amoeba or a mosquito. A difference of forms.

By the word God, I mean the Original Consciousness which I believe holds the universe together through the power of imagination.

Without experiencing fear, God would remain ignorant of the experience, and the same for all experiences. God must have a way of concealing its own immortality from conscious bits of itself for the purpose of experiences it could not otherwise feel, and we are it, or at least part of it. Immortality could get awfully boring without a very extensive playground for the OC. God had to have a reason for creating everything, and Love does not fit the bill for rational thinking. There was nothing to love yet.

I have come to the conclusion that God created the Universe to fill the idle hours of immortality. Rather than try to kill itself, God figured out a way of experiencing death without dying, since outright death itself may have been impossible for the OC. That it might have the single limitation of being unable to die, satisfies the reason for creation and ourselves. You and I would not just sit there in the gloom of immortality, but try to make something of it, even if it was just poetry. The universe is God's poetry spoken into existence. The works of God are so advanced even the characters within them fully believe themselves to be alive, as much as the form permits, that is. I have every confidence that a mosquito's musings on its own existence do not rise anywhere near our own level of self awareness.

If God had no beginning, God has always been at it. In that case, we on earth would not be the first or the only life forms created for the benefit of God's experience. We ourselves can too easily imagine a multiplicity of experience types for which we would be useless vessels, and senses we do not have, for this to be the case.

Our views of God are similar. I hadn’t thought of God needing to create the universe because He could not kill himself, but that is an interesting idea. I assume there are many universes and all of them have life because ours is limited and infinity is not.



Another limitation God may have placed upon itself is in knowing our future. Let's face it, if God knows the details of our future then we have no free will. For if God knows the future, then it is predestined. The only way for humans to have free will is for God not to know our futures. No way around it. We might still have something asymptotically close to free will, but it would nonetheless be a mere approximation of the ideal thing.

The thing about “knowing” is interesting. We differ slightly here. We assume the universe is deterministic because our models are mathematical. Even if we are limited to approximations, we assume the universe is random. What is the opposite of a deterministic-random universe that would appear like the one we have? It would be a universe where there are agents able to make choices but in only limited ways. This is what I think panpsychism is trying to describe even when atheists are promoting it. If the choices of these agents in a panpsychist universe are “free” they cannot be predicted--that is, “known” even by God--prior to the choice being made.

So I can see this God knowing everything there is to know, but a free choice is not something that is knowable prior to that choice being made. Once the choice has been made, it can be known what the choice was. One gets both God’s omniscience and the freedom of various kinds of agents within the universe.

[YesNo]

After reading Gregory Matloff’s summary of his research http://www.gregmatloff.com/Edge%20Science%20Matloff-ES29.pdf I am left with the following thoughts:

1) The idea that cooler (red) stars circle the galaxy faster than hotter (blue) stars, or Parenago’s Discontinuity, adds a twist that any future gravity theory will have to take into account. This should be confirmed or falsified next year.

2) Could there be self-organization below the molecular level?

3) Matloff’s prediction of the possibility of very advanced computers being conscious if they can take advantage of this molecular self-organization puzzles me. Computers, and even tables and chairs, are now conscious at the molecular level if panpsychism is true, but that consciousness is not what AI expects it to be. The advanced computer would have to allow self-organization implying intentionality and goal setting to get beyond that molecular consciousness. It could not be a deterministic-random machine as computers are today.

[YesNo]

Not being able to find dark matter raises questions about the validity of Einstein’s gravitational theory. Galaxies and clusters of galaxies are rotating too fast to remain stable without some other source of mass that is not evident.

The alternative gravitation theory, Moffat’s modified gravity, seems to fit the data. There is at least another gravitation theory that one can fall back on, but I wonder if Moffat’s theory fits Parenago’s Discontinuity. I didn’t see a reference to it in “Reinventing Gravity”.

Moffat and Einstein have one thing in common: neither of them suspect that stars are conscious unlike Matloff.

[Calidore]

By coincidence, I've just found some old Chicago Readers while cleaning, and one had a Straight Dope column on this very subject.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3351/does-quantum-mechanics-prove-the-universe-is-conscious

[YesNo]

That Reader article is right on topic, Calidore. Matloff's article is recent (last March) although this stellar consciousness concept goes back several years. I agree with Cecil Adams when he comments about "vacuum fluctuation". It is another way of saying "abracadabra". As soon as I hear the term used in an argument pretty much anything follows.

By the way, back in the early 70s when I was living in Hyde Park and I wanted to grow my own coffee, I sent a letter to the Reader asking if that was even possible. They published it! Apparently, it is possible, but like a lot of possible things not worth doing.

[desiresjab]

Actually, the reason for a universe at all has already been cited by Yeats probably better than anyone else will ever be able to do it.

To keep a drowsy emperor awake.

[YesNo]

Why does the universe need a reason to be? If its existence is the result of a free act of consciousness, then its reason for being is neither due to a deterministic theory nor due to random chance. It just is.

[desiresjab]

You are not quite as interesting as Yeats.

[YesNo]

If the sun is conscious one might view the sun as Yeats' emperor. Why would the sun want life? Perhaps it makes the sun happy? Perhaps it is proud that it could do something like that when bragging to other stars?

[desiresjab]

Perhaps you sound goofy now.

[desiresjab]

A while back I met a guy who was playing guitar in a park. We talked. He is convinced the world is flat, and has a bunch of inane arguments to support the inane notion. Your smiley-faced sun that is happy and proud and brags to other stars and chortles to stellar objects like a housewife exchanging brands, recalls the same bucket of inanities.

You seem to believe there are large scale objects which are so conscious that their consciousness goes right over our heads. Such objects are likely in other universes, if they exist, not this one. You must believe that somewhere in all the frequencies the sun broadcasts is a clear message we cannot yet decode.

We might as well both be silly. I will join you. What do you see as more conscious, a mosquito or an electron? Sometimes I almost believe you would say the electron. I think that is wrong. Finding the electron making its choices is much harder than finding the mosquito making its.

[YesNo]

It is good to be aware of what we think is goofy. Then ask why we think something is goofy or not.

I agree with you that the Earth is not flat. One can perhaps guess that by looking at the stars circling us and seeing that other planets seem round enough. But to ask whether something is conscious or not is not so easy to decide. One has to look at the objective measurements of the object and from that wonder if the object has a subjectivity of any sort. The only reality we know for sure that has a subjectivity is ourselves because we can experience our own subjectivity.

One way to look at the objective measurements is to ask if there is anything that appears "random". Now it may be random because we don't know what determines its behavior yet. However, it may be random because it is making choices. Randomness would be one way subjective consciousness appears in objective data especially randomness that is not uniform, that is, not like flipping dice.

You're asking a good question about the level of consciousness of an electron and a mosquito. Sheldrake asked something similar with regards to how conscious the sun is with respect to us. I think the mosquito would have a more complicated level of consciousness than an electron because it is a more complicated self-organizing object. However, one can quickly reach a conclusion that the electron is conscious if one interprets quantum indeterminiism ("randomness") as making choices. Admittedly this is precisely why there are so many interpretations of quantum physics. They all want to get around the idea that the electron made a choice. Some of those interpretations are pretty bizarre such as many worlds.

So it goes back to what one finds goofy. I find it less goofy to think the electron made a choice (that is, the electron is conscious) than to believe in parallel universes or many worlds.

Some people today think that perhaps sometime in the future an AI computer will be conscious. Is that a goofy idea or not? And what motivates one to think of it as goofy or not. In my case, I would say that because the computer is not making a choice, evidenced by it having a programming, that it is not conscious.

[desiresjab]

There was a time before LitNet, by God, when some type of support for a notion such as the sun is conscious was obligatory. NO more. Now just make the proposal, and if no one disproves it within twenty-four hours, why, the sun must be conscious.

Nothing compelling is being offered in support of a conscious sun, in my opinion.

As for machines becoming conscious, I still like the idea of "asymptotically close," that I developed last semester on the subject.

Once two items become asymptotically close, they are indistinguishable and their labels arbitrary.

Most natural examples would be too close to call quantitatively. In the case of machines becoming conscious, would we be seeking a quantitative difference or a qualitative one?

If two outputs are repeatedly indistinguishable, then what exactly would enable us to say that one of them is conscious and the other not?

I am pretty sure Yeats is referring to God by the word emperor. But then the hammered gold and gold enameling requires some sunlight to keep a drowsy emperor awake.

* * * * *

Of the two scenarios I have devised (Universe with a beginning and universe with no beginning) only the second one is the natural environment for being that "just is," as you say, and needs no reason for existence. The two scenarios work completely differently and produce different phenomena. Something going eternally backward must precede all causation by necessity, and of course, there can be no First Cause, in this case, since eternity has no beginning.

[YesNo]

I agree that the two scenarios of a universe with a beginning and one without would show different phenomena. Because one can't see further back than the cosmic microwave background, a bit under 14 billion years, the first scenario is likely the case. One might be able to see further with better tools to detect gravitational waves. If a choice was made to start the universe, I don't think it would require a reason. However, if no choice was involved, then one needs a reason or an explanation.

We don't know scientifically what underlies the objective data we measure. That we can model that data and get good results allows us to make predictions, but having a model does not mean the model is what underlies the objective data. Any conclusion about what reality really is would come from a philosophic argument or assumption, not a scientific one. Furthermore, in the case of AI robots they are far better than we are at doing things. Hence, they aren't modeling us. Besides we really don't want these robots making choices. We want them to obey our choices. We don't want them to be conscious.

If the objective data shows randomness, it is not modeling that random data to say that what produces it is conscious. It is a philosophic interpretation of that randomness.

[YesNo]

I was thinking about why a particular real choice (sometimes called a “free choice”) does not have a reason or complete explanation for why it was made. If it had a reason, that reason would diminish the freedom of the choice.

A reason is a way to explain what happens in terms of something else. If one can give a complete reason for everything then we have determinism. More often all we know is what is likely to happen, but not exactly what will happen.

If we asked an electron to state its position or momentum we get an answer, or a measurement. If we could give a reason for that particular result then we would have an explanation for that particular result which would contradict quantum physics because all we can know is the likelihood for a particular result.

Consider on the other hand the pseudo-choices, or artificial choices, made by an AI robot. If we wanted we could trace through the programming, the stimuli the robot received, the weights obtained for each node in its artificial neural network and give a complete reason for why the robot made that particular choice. I could imagine test code existing to collect all that information to make sure the robot is functioning correctly.

A robot offers no mystery although after it is tested we don’t care to know how it made the artificial choice. It may look like it made a real choice, but these test traces, were they turned on to collect the information, would prove otherwise.

[YesNo]

The idea of the sun being conscious comes from panpsychism and is also intended to be a challenge to some panpsychists who see consciousness everywhere but as more primitive than our own. We occupy a rather special place in these panpsychist viewpoints.

Is there a phenomenon that we can point to that is larger than we are individually and yet is also conscious? Our species might be one. Or the planets and stars. Or social mood.

In trying to get a clearer understanding of what panpsychism is I’m rereading some of the articles in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, in particular, Howard Robinson’s “Idealism” and William Seager’s “Panpsychism”.

[YesNo]

William Seager’s chapter, “Panpsychism”, is a useful introduction to the terminology of panpsychism and it contains references.

Seager refers to “mentality” rather than “mind”, but the key idea of panpsychism is that mentality is (1) ontologically “fundamental”, meaning it cannot be reduced to something more basic, and (2) it is “ubiquitous”--everywhere.

This is not Descartes’ “substance dualism”. Cartesian mentality is fundamental but it is not ubiquitous. Mentality gets attached dualistically to what is not mental and, I suspect, there could be forms of mentality that are not attached to any unconscious matter.

It is also not physicalism (or materialism). Physicalism is almost the opposite of panpsychism. The physicalist believes that unconscious matter is both fundamental and ubiquitous and mentality “emerges” from the non-mental in mysterious ways.

The opposite of physicalism would be a form of idealism where mentality is both fundamental and ubiquitous and whatever is unconscious emerges from mentality. That is, the unconscious can be reduced everywhere to the mental. Most panpsychists do not go this far. They believe there is some unconscious fundamental reality, but this idealism would be a form of panpsychism.

[YesNo]

Here is a YouTube video of William Seager. Toward the end he mentions rejecting “scientific realism” implying that science only provides useful models of the universe.

That is how I see scientific activity. Philosophy talks about reality. Science talks about models that lead to good predictions. Its models cannot be assumed to be reality just because they are internally consistent.

Something like this has already happened to mathematics in the 19th century when multiple consistent geometries were discovered. Mathematical realism would have assumed that the Euclidean geometry was reality. Now Euclidean geometry is one model among many. I assume there are still mathematical realists, but they would limit mathematics to what is finite spoiling a lot of the fun that Cantor’s transfinite arithmetic provided. Of course, if one doesn’t care if the theory is real or not, then it doesn’t matter. It just needs to lead to consistent results.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCq5II_a4dU

[YesNo]

I’ve found another survey of panpsychism by David Skrbina from Seager’s references that looks more complete, “Panpsychism in the West”: http://www.geocities.ws/john_russey/philosophy/Panpsychism_in_the_West_Skrbina.pdf

[YesNo]

I suspect most of the panpsychics today are atheists. A belief in physicalism (unconscious matter as the only fundamental reality) combined with the hard problem of consciousness, which is not a belief but our lived experience, is no longer appealing for them. Consciousness in a rudimentary way has to be everywhere so consciousness is not emerging.

This does solve the problem of the origin of consciousness but there is still a problem. How did the consciousness of an atom become the consciousness of a human being--or of the sun, if it is conscious? There is still an emergence problem even if one accepts panpsychism.

The basic problem is one of synthesis. One can analyse something into component parts (or atoms), but how does one go back from atoms to that more complicated something? How does one go from whatever consciousness atoms have to human consciousness? The hard problem of consciousness returns even with panpsychism.

It is not enough to assume that atoms are conscious in some way. One has to also find a mechanism of emergence to get to more complicated forms of consciousness even assuming panpsychism.

In mathematics this works easily. Take an integer. One can analyze that integer into a unique prime factorization. Those factors are the atoms of the integer. If one wants to go back to the integer the emergence mechanism is called “multiplication”. The process is (1) reductionistic and (2) deterministic. That doesn’t seem to be the way nature works. Nature is more top down than bottom up. The most advanced consciousness has to be there from the start.

[YesNo]

In David Skrbina’s “Panpsychism in the West”, http://www.geocities.ws/john_russey/philosophy/Panpsychism_in_the_West_Skrbina.pdf, he mentions that “mass/energy monism” comes from our scientific culture (page 6).

I hadn’t thought of this as a monism before. There are many fundamental quantum particles or realities and they don’t all merge into one. Also mass and energy are measured attributes of reality. I don’t know to what extent they are reality.

But Skrbina’s concept does help clarify something about new age philosophies. I keep hearing them talk about “energy” and how everything is energy. That seemed incorrect, because energy is unconscious and they are talking about consciousness. Now I see why. Even though they are new age, their perspective is still part of the physicalist worldview.

[YesNo]

Gregory Matloff uses Parenego’s Discontinuity as a way to show that stars may be making choices: http://www.gregmatloff.com/Edge%20Science%20Matloff-ES29.pdf That could justify that the Sun is also conscious. What it would challenge is not only Einstein’s Gravitation Theory, but also Moffat’s Modified Gravity. Both of these theories try to describe “laws of nature”. But if stars are making choices (within certain constraints) all one would have are probabilistic physical theories or models. The models may work accurately enough for our purposes, but fail when other stellar choices are measured.

That makes me ask myself if laws of nature exist at all?

What I understand by a law of nature is a mathematical description of a deterministic process that is valid at any time and everywhere.

Given quantum physics, we know that there are no laws of nature for an individual quantum particle because its behavior is not deterministic. For groups of quantum particles there is a probability wave function that allows predictions to be made. Does that undermine the existence of laws of nature in general?

If we relax the requirement of determinism on a law of nature but only require that the probabilistic patterns remain true at any time and everywhere, is that even true? How would we know? For example, did the speed of light always and everywhere have the same value as we measure it today on Earth? Or does its speed “evolve” with the universe?

[YesNo]

Skrbina focuses on philosophical panpsychism and not theological panpsychism or panentheism or religion. What’s the difference? More specifically what’s the difference between science, panpsychism and religion?

This is how I see it:

Science collects data and formulates theories so predictions can be made about future data.

Philosophical panpsychism tries to understand what reality is about.

Theological panpsychism, or religion, tries to understand how best to relate to conscious reality.

In a physicalist or materialist model of reality there is no need for either theological or philosophical panpsychism. Science should be all one needs. That even people who identify with atheism find physicalist explanations inadequate to describe mind is why panpsychism comes up at all.

[YesNo]

I’ve read David Skrbina’s first chapter of “Panpsychism in the West” a couple times now: http://www.geocities.ws/john_russey/philosophy/Panpsychism_in_the_West_Skrbina.pdf

What stands out at the moment is that modern panpsychism is about individualism. It starts with the human being and admits that we are conscious and have something called a mind. It views human beings as special on the top of the chain of being. That there is nothing above us: no ghosts, no angels, no muses, no deities, no species only emphasizes the reductionist perspective that focuses on individual things.

This is where it goes wrong in my view at the moment. It will not be able to understand mind by looking at individuals alone. The rest of Skrbina’s book I expect will go into the details of different philosophical perspectives that can be described as panpsychist.

[fudgetusk]

If the sun is conscious it doesn't say much.

As an aside. Early man(like the Egyptians) believed the sun was God. Funny thing is suns are the creators of the elements that make up our world and our bodies. Like God.

[YesNo]

All one would have to do is show that the Sun’s random behavior is not uniformly random and cannot be explained by a supposedly deterministic program or law to raise the possibility that the Sun makes choices. If the Sun is making choices it would reduce whatever deterministic programs we think are in place to models which may be useful to us for predictions but are not what is actually going on.

That’s what Gregory Matloff is trying to do with the Parenago Discontinuity. http://www.gregmatloff.com/Edge%20Science%20Matloff-ES29.pdf

This might involve more than making the elements of our bodies which may not involve a conscious choice on the part of a star.

[fudgetusk]

Has Matloff proved anything?

[YesNo]

I don’t think science proves anything. That would be left for mathematicians who inhabit fictions created by their assumptions. What science can do is find ways to make predictions which may or may not be useful.

In Matloff’s case, he is basing his claim that stars may be conscious on whether they show volitional activity not explained by Einstein’s gravity theory (or Moffat’s modified gravity theory) by looking at Parenago’s Discontinuity. Here is one paper suggesting that is the case: http://www.conscious-stars.com/blog/2016/6/9/parenagos-discontinuity-and-the-onset-of-stellar-molecular-spectral-lines

Of course, there are people who say this is not true. They would maintain that stars follow gravitational laws of nature unconsciously.

There may be other ways to show that stars are conscious by looking at variability say in sunspots or solar flares and argue that they are neither determined nor uniformly random, hence volitional. Volition or "free will" implies enough consciousness to exercise that volition.

[fudgetusk]

I don’t think science proves anything. That would be left for mathematicians who inhabit fictions created by their assumptions. What science can do is find ways to make predictions which may or may not be useful.

In Matloff’s case, he is basing his claim that stars may be conscious on whether they show volitional activity not explained by Einstein’s gravity theory (or Moffat’s modified gravity theory) by looking at Parenago’s Discontinuity. Here is one paper suggesting that is the case: http://www.conscious-stars.com/blog/2016/6/9/parenagos-discontinuity-and-the-onset-of-stellar-molecular-spectral-lines



Of course, there are people who say this is not true. They would maintain that stars follow gravitational laws of nature unconsciously.

There may be other ways to show that stars are conscious by looking at variability say in sunspots or solar flares and argue that they are neither determined nor uniformly random, hence volitional. Volition or "free will" implies enough consciousness to exercise that volition.

Einstein's theories and equations on gravity have come into question lately because of dark matter. A head scientist from CERN said that Einstein probably has to be considered wrong about gravity. Maybe this strange activity with the stars is explained by this? I would suggest that lack of data is to blame for anomalies. Free will would be down the list of options. But I will read your evidence.

[YesNo]

I heard about another modified gravitation theory yesterday. André Maeder has a new gravitation model based on “scale invariance of empty space” that would not need dark stuff: https://phys.org/news/2017-11-dark-energy.html

Maeder’s model, like Einstein’s and Moffat’s, are deterministic. They do not involve panpsychism. They are very different from Matloff’s model which implies that stars may volitionally account for some of their motions.

[fudgetusk]

Well I've read the evidence. I'm not averse to the idea that consciousness pervades all things. I believe it is possible for our minds to influence the world. I've seemingly experienced this. I believe things that are far stranger than the idea that suns could carry consciousness. But I only believe these things when I have so much evidence that I have no choice. I don't think there's enough evidence to support the fact that these stars are vessels for a mind...yet. Maybe in a few decades or maybe even centuries we may be able to study stars better and have more data. The author suggests PK is being used by this consciousness. Seems to me that if this is all true then God has left us a big clue to his existence. If he's so keen for us to know he exists then I wonder why he doesn't just appear or lift a car in front of people or do something. Maybe he only manifests for people who are ready. Maybe when we become sufficiently wise enough to be able to study stars this will be a signifier that we are ready.

Ps I have posted your theory on a skeptics forum to see what they say.

[YesNo]

I agree that more data is needed as well as people interested enough to look at it.

To my knowledge most of the panpsychists I’ve mentioned don’t discuss God (except for Sheldrake who is a theist). Skrbina specifically ignores theological panpsychism to focus on the philosophic implications of panpsychism.

[fudgetusk]

I had the idea that God may be a massive quantum computer.

[YesNo]

Why use computer metaphors?

[fudgetusk]

I posted this theory on a skeptics forum. Most responses weren't of use. Someone did provide a link...

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/is-the-parenago-discontinuity-a-real-thing.925023/

Which he believes disproves the parenago discontinuity. I don't know. I'm no cosmologist.

[fudgetusk]

Why use computer metaphors?

I'm not using a metaphor. I mean an actual computer. Not with a brand logo and LEDs. But basically acting like a computer.

[YesNo]

That you find something like that believable and assuming we have no free will then that belief should have some kind of explanation or cause. Why do you believe something like that? It is not something that I find believable. Assuming I have no free will there must be an explanation for my lack of belief.

I can’t get to physicsforums at the moment, but I will look at it more closely when it becomes available.

[YesNo]

One of the problems with panpsychism as I was reading it in Skrbina is the “combination problem”. If one can assume that individual quantum reality is conscious, how do these centers of subjectivity combine to get larger subjectivities such as our own?

Recently I’ve found Freya Mathews, “Panpsychism as Paradigm” http://www.freyamathews.net/downloads/PanpsychismParadigm.pdf. She talks of global panpsychism which I think is an improvement over the type I’ve been reading about so far. However, her position requires that one solves the opposite problem, or the “combination problem in reverse”. Starting from a unity how does one get to individual forms of subjectivity?

[YesNo]

I read the thread: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/is-the-parenago-discontinuity-a-real-thing.925023/ It appears that CygnusX-1 is most knowledgeable about the topic. They may have a high “velocity dispersion” but that might not signal a “discontinuity” between the two groups of stars. I think the existence of the velocity dispersion is what Matloff is interested in.

[fudgetusk]

That you find something like that believable and assuming we have no free will then that belief should have some kind of explanation or cause. Why do you believe something like that? It is not something that I find believable. Assuming I have no free will there must be an explanation for my lack of belief.

I can’t get to physicsforums at the moment, but I will look at it more closely when it becomes available.

Not sure what you are referring to here. Did you post this in the wrong place?

[YesNo]

Assume you have no free will. Then there is a cause for the beliefs you hold. All I am asking is what is that cause?

I do think there are influences, in particular, social mood, but I don’t think there is a deterministic cause for our beliefs. At some point they are the result of choices which may not always be conscious, but can be considered to be our choices.

[YesNo]

In 2006 John Conway and Simon Kochen presented “The Free Will Theorem” https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0604079.pdf followed by “The Strong Free Will Theorem” https://arxiv.org/pdf/0807.3286.pdf Here’s a Wikipedia summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem and a blog post by Dolors “Do Electrons Have Free Will?” with references http://web.mit.edu/asf/www/Press/Do%20Electrons%20Have%20Free%20Will%20The%20Conway-Kochen%20Free%20Will%20Theorem%20-%20Closing%20the%20Free%20Will%20Loophole.pdf

I see this as implying panpsychism since the the quantum particles involved have enough mind to make a choice.

The theorem assumes that we have free will first and some argue that perhaps we don’t have any free will? If that is true then every experiment performed is determined from some state at the beginning of the universe. If that is possible then what we see as the indeterminacy of quantum physics is an illusion.

If that is true then there would be God(s) or Laws of Nature, the physicalists’ version of God, that knows or determines everything and even the believers or the physicalists are fooled by It.

[YesNo]

Here is a video of the blog post I referenced earlier. I think this video is easier to understand (and more entertaining) than the references above.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZqUEAACfyk

[fudgetusk]

Assume you have no free will. Then there is a cause for the beliefs you hold. All I am asking is what is that cause?

I do think there are influences, in particular, social mood, but I don’t think there is a deterministic cause for our beliefs. At some point they are the result of choices which may not always be conscious, but can be considered to be our choices.

I don't think a lack of free will stops us having complicated thoughts. Just that our thoughts are logical from our point of view. Obviously there must be reasons why I came to follow this belief. It just seems obvious that decisions are made by the decisions themselves(to put it another way).

[YesNo]

I don’t think that decisions have enough “free will” to make a decision. However, it is hard to believe that an electron might have free will.

There is also the question of who is making the decision. It is possible that “my” decision is the decision of more agents than myself. That may seem counterintuitive, but in the Free Will Theorem it is not the individual electron that has free will but the entangled pair.

[fudgetusk]

NOt sure what you mean about not having enough free will. It goes like this: We collect data. The world provides more and more new data. The new data is compared to the data we already accrued. Calculations are made. A decision springs from it. (we enjoy a cheese sandwich. We enjoy an egg sandwich slightly less. We are offered a choice of either. We choose the cheese sandwich) It's more complicated than that. bUt that about sums it up. No free will going on in the equation.

As for electrons...who knows if they make a decision. I suspect there is more going on.

[YesNo]

What you are assuming is our decisions are rational which brings us back to whether we make decisions like that. It also assumes our own reasoning about what we intend to do is what we actually do. See Jonathan Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind”.

However, if the Conway-Kochen Free Will Theorem is true and we have free will then so does an entangled system of particles. They don’t have brains. Our free will may well not need this rational process either. That is, our brains would be secondary to our free will which may be arrived at from gut decisions.

[fudgetusk]

I don't see the Haidt argument because all my decisions have been rational so far. I've never been asked if I wanted tea or coffee and said "speedway stadium" in response. I'm joking but serious at the same time. Do you do irrational things and then rationalise them later?

"The free will theorem of John H. Conway and Simon B. Kochen states that if we have a free will in the sense that our choices are not a function of the past, then, subject to certain assumptions, so must some elementary particles. Conway and Kochen's paper was published in Foundations of Physics in 2006.[1] In 2009 they published a stronger version of the theorem in the Notices of the AMS.[2] Later Simon elaborated some details.[3]"

I would argue that all our choices are a function of the past. Even when we are faced with something new. Nothing is ever fully new. Only when we are babies. But then we try anything as babies and formulate a basis for all future decisions by doing so. as for the 'axioms' of this theory...it would be nice if scientists didn't always write for other scientists.

[YesNo]

It is not “irrational”, but intuitive or non-rational. The rational process comes after the decision. Almost all my decisions are intuitive. I do try to justify them with reasons. I am a very motivated reasoner, but the decisions come first without a complete explanation or cause. This is where I place free will.

The article is difficult to read. There is a YouTube video that made it clearer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZqUEAACfyk

It doesn’t have to be “fully new”. There will always be constraints and influences from the past. As long as those influences are not a complete explanation or cause, there is likely room for all the free will I claim exists. Note that we are not the only free agents in the universe. What we see as constraints are the results of other free agents, some not human. Some, given Conway-Kochen result, not even alive.

[fudgetusk]

Yeah. But like I said. Why is it seen as non-rational/intuitive? because it is quick and doesn't involve us? I think this is underestimating the brilliance of the brain. What you should consider is how much of a disability the conscious mind is. Hmmming, ahhhhhing. We have come to believe THIS is thinking and anything else is not. And why does slowness equate to freewill? because it works at the same speed as our conscious minds therefore feels like we are doing it. Rather than IT doing US. Neither quick subconscious thought or slow conscious thought contains free will. We are not powering the mind. the mind is powered by some other source. We just are and we have little choice(if any) about it. It is a machine that keeps switching on. And we have to keep taking in data. Try and stop it happening. We keep making calculations, mostly on how much we like something that is happening. Did you have ANY choice in any of this so far? It happens despite us. We are nothing but data. AND WE DO NOT GET A CHOICE OF WHAT DATA ENTERS OUR MINDS at any given moment. BANG! just happens. I've read that the brain takes in 11 million bits of data a second and then the brain shrinks this down to 40 bits and that is what the conscious mind(US) experiences of the world.
But that is just a side effect of this discussion.
The only way we have of calculating an event is by data(past events). This is what free will really is. It is a calculation. we are offered something. "Do I want this or not?"(I haven't liked it in the past) "No, I do not want it".

That is freewill. remarkably like a binary computer gate. The brain looks remarkably like a computer. Logic would suggest it is a computer.

It is doing nothing outside of being a computer. a simple network of switches. every choice is a switch. it is not some magical property. free will is a switch being flicked by a stream of electrons that happened to be greater than a value created by past data.

[YesNo]

It is not so much “logic” that suggests the brain is a computer, but a bullish social mood that favors individualism and rationality. Many of the constraints we have to deal with are holistic in origin, such as social mood.

Free will is quick and involves us. By the Conway-Kochen theorem, even quantum systems have free will (indeterminism). In general it can’t require a brain. I think Haidt is right that the brain is mainly for rationalizing our prior choices, although I don’t know what his views are on free will and determinism.

You wrote, “We are not powering the mind. the mind is powered by some other source.” What is this other source?

[fudgetusk]

Tried to watch that Youtube film. Why do they assume particles are not acting out of prior events? I think they are making an assumption based on the natural vagueness of how particles act. To make the leap to the idea that particles have free will is bizarre.

>>It is not so much “logic” that suggests the brain is a computer, but a bullish social mood that favors individualism and rationality. Many of the constraints we have to deal with are holistic in origin, such as social mood.

It is certainly rationality, as for individualism and social mood I do not know. Could you explain what you mean. You use words in a very personal way. By which I mean only you could understand what context you are using them.

what source? memory. data. prior events. That powers us. a newborn baby lies there. we get up and do stuff. because we know doing stuff that we've done before gives us pleasure.

[YesNo]

Why do they assume particles are not acting out of prior events? I think they are making an assumption based on the natural vagueness of how particles act. To make the leap to the idea that particles have free will is bizarre.

Empirically they are not acting out of prior events and there are no hidden variables that we are missing. It is not an assumption. Given a state there is ambiguity in outcome.

My interpretation is to assume choices are being made. Some think there are many worlds one for each possibility and we live in all of them. Some don’t look at it. If they make choices (as my interpretation sees it) they have free will. If they have free will that only shows that brains aren’t necessary for free will. So we can forget trying to completely reduce our minds to our brains. There is more going on.



It is certainly rationality, as for individualism and social mood I do not know. Could you explain what you mean. You use words in a very personal way. By which I mean only you could understand what context you are using them.

I see history in terms of Elliott Waves. Look up “socionomics” for more information. That is where “social mood” comes from.

Jonathan Haidt isn’t part of this (to my knowledge), but his moral foundation theory fits in well. His description of the rationalist delusion as starting in the late 1700s and proceeding until now corresponds to the third wave of our current grand supercycle as socionomics describes it.

We are at the final mania stage of a centuries old bull market (see bitcoin and the US financial markets). This leads to wave four which is a bear market lasting decades. It is not a personal way of viewing things. I’m basically following Robert Prechter’s market and cultural analysis. What is personal is I may not understand it as well as I think I do.



what source? memory. data. prior events. That powers us. a newborn baby lies there. we get up and do stuff. because we know doing stuff that we've done before gives us pleasure.

Do any of these prior events make choices? Who is responsible? If we do stuff because it gives us pleasure, then we are responsible. We make choices.

I am not saying that we don’t have influences or constraints on our choices. We do have them. What I am saying is that those influences, constraints, prior or current events, do not completely explain our behavior. We have the ability to make choices given all of that. The determinist would say we have no ability to make such choices, but I don’t see evidence for that. On the contrary, the determinist is saying that all of our experience of making choices is an illusion--basically all of our experience in choose what experiments in science to do is an illusion. Science for the determinist is an illusion. I am more empirical than that.

[fudgetusk]

This free will particle idea relies on ambiguity though. We are not able to predict a measurement. Ok. To say they are indetermined is a big leap. To suggest they act out of free will is a massive leap. And you say there are no hidden variables again. No one can say that.

>>Do any of these prior events make choices? Who is responsible? If we do stuff because it gives us pleasure, then we are responsible. We make choices.

A decision? a choice? no a mathematical equation. a machine spitting out change according to what buttons are pressed. Is that a choice? if a thermometer rises is that a choice?
we are a more complex version of that. millions of thermometers.

another way of seeing it is that if there is a reason to do something then it is the reason not us that decides.

[Tammuz]

It is one thing to postulate a telepathic ability of humans and animals, as Sheldrake does (and as for humans, he is surely right, since I know two partially schizophrenic guys who have this ability), and another to postulate a conscious sun. As for the former, there are methods to prove the thesis, as for the latter, not. So why mull over the sun thesis if there is not the least possibility to prove or disprove the thesis? And how are we to imagine a sun consciousness? Such objects are existing for billions of years without undergoing too many significant changes with regard to itself or its environment. Wouldn´t it be rather boring to consciously exist in such a way for such long periods? I think, to apply the consciousness concept to such entities means to unduly overstretch this concept.

It might be more instructive to see how the concept of solar consciousness developped historically, since such an idea is anything but new. As part of an own study of the Roman sun god Mithras, I recently wrote the following:

Why solar deities were only invented in the Neolithic, can be explained by a changed world view, which had shifted its focus from the lunar cycle to the solar cycle due to the introduction of sedentariness and agriculture, the latter most probably invented by women on the basis of their botanic knowledge. The sun was now considered to be the cosmic clock for the fertility of nature. One can only chew over the gender of the first sun deities due to the lack of written evidence. The frequent appearances of sun goddesses and goddesses closely associated with the sun in historical mythologies suggest an originally female gender, since the introduction of a female sun deity (such as Sol in Germanic religion and Wurushemmu in the Hittite empire) after the establishment of the patriarchate is highly improbable. In case goddesses have an important function in patriarchal systems--such as, to name more examples, Hathor in Egypt, Inanna in Mesopotamia, Isis in the entire Roman Empire, Anahita in Persia and Sarasvati in India--it's only because they are rooted in formerly dominating pre-patriarchal Neolithic goddesses, which in turn go back to Paleolithic goddesses.

Now let us look at a some historical remnants of the presumed prehistoric sun goddesses and at some results of the gender transformation into masculine which still show traces of the transformation process, especially in India. There the god Surya (Skt. for ´sun´) personifies the sun. In Vedic mythology he belongs to a group of deities called 'Adityas'. The mother of these Adityas is the unmarried heavenly goddess Aditi, whose name means ´unattached´,

In the mythology of the Rigveda, one of the oldest Vedic texts from before 2,000 BCE, Aditi is the most prominent manifestation of the Great Goddess (Skt. Devi) and has, though being mother of a dozen of deities, no association with a male partner, which is sufficient evidence of her rooting in the prehistoric idea of a monogenetic goddess. The ´Mahanirvanatantra´ says about the Devi that she is "the Great Mother sprung from the sacrificial hearth of the fire of the Grand Consciousness, decked with the Sun and Moon" and in another place with reference to this Devi: "The sun, the most glorious symbol in the physical world, is the mayik vesture of Her who is ´clothed with the sun´".

("mayik" = illusory)

Hence the masculine sun god Surya has a mother who also is equipped with a solar competence as well as with the moon competence typical of the Great Goddess. As if that wasn´t enough, in the Rigveda the sun god is assigned a daughter with the name ´Surya´ (pronounced as opposed to the sun god with a prolonged ´a´) who acts as goddess of the dawn and driving force for the awakening sun.

In Sumer the gender transformation of the lunar deity was accomplished by a transfer of the lunar competence of goddess Inanna to a male god named Sin. A basically comparable process must have taken place in the case of Surya, since mythology connects him with a monogenetic mother in form of a heavenly goddess ´clothed with the sun´, what suggests that the sun was formerly personified by Aditi and only in the course of patriarchalization became associated with a male god, whom to separate completely from the original sun goddess the strength of the patriarchal ideology was however not sufficient because of the rooting of a large part of Hindu faith in the prehistoric matristic world.


***

Of course Sheldrake is familar with the Rigveda tradition, so most probably his sun consciousness theory is inspired from there.

[YesNo]

@Tammuz One way to provide evidence that the Sun is conscious is to look for behavior that cannot be explained by uniform randomness or a deterministic theory. That is what Gregory Matloff is trying to find with some stars whose behavior cannot be explained by either uniform randomness or determinism http://www.gregmatloff.com/Edge%20Science%20Matloff-ES29.pdf Our Sun isn’t one of those stars, but if those stars are conscious, then our Sun is likely also but exhibiting it in ways we haven’t looked at yet.

The gender based history of those Hindu stories is interesting. It attempts to explain them but no explanation we can come up with is complete. We wouldn’t be able to know it being part of what we are describing. It might be possible using socionomic’s “social mood” to explain why we are not likely today to see the Sun as conscious. We are near the end of a bull market starting in the 1780s. Such tendencies favor the idea of individualism and rationalism. If we enter a bear market as socionomics predicts we should see a change in perspective. It is possible during this century that acceptance of a conscious Sun will gain popularity because we enter a bear market of grand supercycle degree.

@fudgetusk That measurements of quantum reality is indeterministic is part of quantum physics. There are deterministic interpretations of that such as Bohmian pilot waves or Many Worlds, but other interpretations accept the indeterminism and try to work around the “collapse” of the wave function. Others, such as how I see it, cut through all that and say the measurements are the results of some reality making choices. No waves. No particles. No collapse. All choices.

At the quantum level there are no hidden variables to explain the indeterminism. I suspect that is partially because there isn’t much there to base a hidden variable upon. To my knowledge, no one has seen a Bohmian pilot wave nor a parallel universe to our own. They are all ad hoc solutions.

At the level of gravity, the problem is likely the inverse. Here there is so much data that is unknown that it is unlikely that our deterministic gravitation theories will be able to handle all of this data. That is, they will all be falsified eventually. For example, unless dark matter can be found, Einstein’s gravitation theory is falsified by the evidence of the rotational speed of galaxies. They should fall apart. There are two other deterministic gravitation theories, one by John Moffat and one by Andre Maeder, that might avoid the dark matter issue, but will they be able to withstand falsification from some other source?

[YesNo]

I am reading Shimon Malin's "Nature Loves to Hide: Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality, a Western Perspective". It is not about panpsychism. Rather it takes an approach to physics that comes from Whitehead and Plotinus with some Plato, Schrodinger and Heisenberg. It may even be better than panpsychism as an approach to science, in particular, the laws of nature.

His goal is to make sense out of the collapse of the wave function which is what all the differing quantum interpretations try to do in their own ways.

[svejorange]

No, the sun is dead energy not the same as us and every other living thing!

[cacian]

No, the sun is dead energy not the same as us and every other living thing!
I can't believe that.
How do you know it is or it isn't? Energy is the very epitome of live.

[Pompey Bum]

I just asked it, and it said: No, Pompey Bum, you need your head examined.

[newby]

Maybe, but maybe not in the way we perceive consciousness as human conscious.
Maybe everything is ''alive'' in a microbiological level - nature and its components being 'smart' to function and evolve; just like gears make a clock work.

I like how this debate can even reach a theological level. If God is omnipresent and omniscient, is he part of what we call particles or atoms?

An interesting take are the theories aroung the ''Particle of God'' of Higgs.

Quoting Carl Sagan: ''“The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”.

[NikolaiI]

Surprisingly, no one has lived long enough to find out :)