u/Select_Eggplant6801

This post isn't about my theory of consciousness, but rather about using clearer language when discussing consciousness so that we don't run around in circles. Although I truly love the discipline of philosophy of the mind, it sometimes gets held up in semantics, which never allows us to get to a clear answer. So it's my hope with this post that whenever you discuss consciousness, you can use clearer language in order to get your point across better and which allow people to investigate what you mean by consciousness.

Now, since this is just a Reddit post, I won't go to much into detail, but I'll link papers for further reading

This will be broken down into 3 main sections.

1: Difference between Human Consciousness vs General Consciousness [link for the paper]

This one is to explain attributes we seem to know happen for sure in human consciousness but are not sure about in other animal or plant consciousness. Something in the human consciousness realm would be complex language processing and metacognition. In the General Consciousness category, what we are talking about is having an experience. This can be a property like vision, feeling, smelling etc.

This can help us from a scientific lens with getting towards the neural correlates of consciousness, what allows humans to be so self-aware and creating a complex identity. Basically, this distinction can help us with understanding conscious vs knowing we are conscious

2: This comes from Sean Carroll's emergence paper, which explains Type 0, Type 1 (a and b), Type 2, and Type 3 emergence [link for the paper] [link to the podcast].

This one I won't explain to much cause the paper is much better at explaining it and there is also a podcast associated with it. instead ill just give examples for each

Yet basically emergence can be classified as

Type 1a: a macrostate that can be explained by its microstates in an algorithmically simple way i.e a tungsten cube (made of tungsten), a diamond (made from strongly bonded carbon molecules)

Type 1b: a macrostate that can be explained by its microstates in an algorithmically complex way. i.e fluid dynamics or the biological system of an animal,

Type 2: This is non-local emergence.

An example of this could be freedom of speech from the US Constitution. The Constitution does not need to exist spatially and temporally; i.e if the actual document were to burn today, you don't need to worry; you'll still have freedom of speech in America tomorrow. There are also interesting ways to see how this is pre-described to mental states and the feeling of being "jerked" in a stopped car. Those are better explained in the paper, though.

Type 3: This is augmented emergence or what people might consider to be strong emergence.

The explainer for this is a macro theory featuring both variables that are constructed from states of the micro theory, and new variables that are independent of micro states, but which become dynamically relevant only in certain macroscopic situations.

Idealism, in a sense, could be categorized into this. You could say that everything that constitutes human consciousness is within the brain and body, but what makes us actually conscious and not p-zombie is that there is a separate, independent microstate that comes into action once a human is fully formed.

3: Difference between Public and Private Emergence

Finally, this is a distinction which helps us understand things that are publicly emergent vs privately emergent. I personally like to call this external vs internal states.

External States are states that an "observer" can interact with. i.e a phone screen, looking through a telescope.

Internal States are states in which an "object" gets changed in a fashion that it is only privy to.

**I will say Public and Private emergence are the two types of emergence that I have put the least thought into and therefore are subject to much more critique but still believe they require their own definitions.

I think that people should have an opinion on these subject matters, as philosophy pushes the boundaries of what reality is, yet I think our shallow definitions cause us to be stuck into loops. Pls comment if you think any of these definitions require more explanation and if there are any other definitions you would like to add.

Hi,

So, I would say I am in the physicalist camp and believe that human consciousness is emergent from our brain and body. My thought being that all of the parts in a human body create a single human consciousness.
What I am wondering is something similar to a China Brain thought experiment, which is if the collective of all the people, organisms, and the planet overall creates an emergent phenomenon that we don't know exists. Sort of in the same way the sum of our parts creates the conscious human experience.

I understand this question has an unprovability aspect built into it, as we as humans can't really understand what emergent phenomena would exist from our point of view, but I am still interested in whether there have been thoughts or considerations on a worldwide "consciousness".

The reason why I chose these three states of consciousness is that to some degree we say that we “lose” consciousness. I understand that framing when it comes to having human consciousness lost. But I’m wondering what philosophers say the internal experience and knowledge we get from the first two (since anyone who has died hasn’t been able to tell us what happens).

Hey so i have death anxiety and a downstream effect is health anxiety, this can range from not being bad at all and barely in mind, to an all consuming aspect. It mainly stems with the fact that i can’t imagine me not existing. But that’s besides the point i wanted to ask if taking psychedelics have helped you with death anxiety and why it specifically helped?

Hey so i have death anxiety, this can range from not being bad at all and barely in mind, to an all consuming aspect. It mainly stems with the fact that i can’t imagine me not existing. But that’s besides the point i wanted to ask if taking psychedelics have helped you with death anxiety and why it specifically helped?

. To my knowledge (please correct me if I’m wrong) physicalism says that consciousness is but an emergent property of physical properties. Same way your phone and light outputted by it is a physical property. What tricks me up is the that adding up these physical things in a certain way creates an internal state (i.e love, pain etc.). The reason why physicalism seems to me a panpsychist interpretation is that at some point a property that is never found in the universe (i.e an internal state rather than just an external state) comes about.

Let me use the phone example again. We know that a phone is made up of elementary particles and governed by elementary forces. At some point when you clump enough of stuff together it moves up from quantum level to microscopic level then from microscopic level to macroscopic. Once at the macroscopic level we get the phone yet it is still governed by the fundamental forces. . There is charge which allows electricity. There’s the electromagnetic spectrum which allows for the light we can see and radio waves for the phone to get WiFi. Theres the strong and weak force which allows the particles stay together and not fly away. None of the things the phone does breaks the laws of physics is my point.

Where this confuses me with the physicalist interpretation is that we are governed by those same exact laws of physics. Nothing has changed, yet at some point of time when you arrange particles a certain way an internal state comes through. And in according to the standard model and general relativity there’s nothing there that states internal states of being need to exist. Theres nothing inherent to the nature of cortisol interacting with a neurotransmitter that should give you the feeling of stress. But when it’s pumped through your brain and interacts with your neurotransmitters a feeling of stress occurs. In a simpler way molecule + neuro transmitter —> an internal experience. What leads me to believe that physicalism is a sub category of panpsychism is what happens at the arrow. The pure observation of this interaction doesn’t give us the knowledge of stress. Instead we use our own knowledge of having an internal state to bridge the gap and understand this causes the feeling of stress. The only reason why we don’t think our phone has a conscious experience is 1. We can’t ask it and expect a response back 2. We also don’t have prior knowledge of what it’s like to be a phone.

I believe if you ask a physicalist if we are fundamentally different than a phone they would most likely say no. In that way the 4 fundamental forces of nature are fundamental, it seems that the physicalist supposes that matter can have this internal state i.e the cortisol molecule binding to a certain neurotransmitter and this happening all over the brain can cause the feeling of a stressed person.

Overall to me there seems to be a slight logical leap from the interaction we can observe in a human and inferring an internal change is happening. And to me that logical leap presupposes that matter can have an internal state, and the only thing that differs between our human consciousness and that of the phone is there is much more complexity in the former.

Please let me know if I am misrepresenting the physicalist point of view at anytime here btw :)

I am right now a second-year Public Affairs major and not sure what I want to do. I love my major a lot and the classes I take, but I have become more disillusioned with the job prospects of the degree (going into politics/ law school). Although I love my major, I really love the work that data science, AI, and space companies do. It seems like pioneering work, and I would love to integrate myself within that industry. My main question is, is there a route to take to still work and contribute to these industries with a Public Affairs degree?

TLDR: Can I work in data science, AI, or Space sector with a Public Affairs and Politcal Science degree?

I am right now a 2nd year Political Science and Public Affairs Major at UCLA but have been researching the work at JPL and love what they do. Is there any advice to how I could possibly do some work or intern at JPL?