If pansychism is true, all organisms are always conscious.
We are not always conscious.
We are organisms.
So, some organisms are not always conscious.
So, panpsychism is not true.
We can get some more specific conclusions. It is very plausible that:
We are not conscious during deep sleep.
If we are not conscious during deep sleep, primitive plants are not conscious.
If primitive plants are not conscious, neither are particles.
So, neither primitive plants nor particles are conscious.
Why think (7)? Because our lower-brain functioning in deep sleep is surely still way more sophisticated than the coordinational functioning of primitive plants, and it is plausible there is a correlation between degree of functioning and level of consciousness. A similar line of thought yields (8).
Suppose it’s disputed that we are not conscious during deep sleep. Maybe we are conscious then, but don’t remember. Then I have another argument for the non-consciousness of primitive plants.
Right now I am now not directly conscious of the activity of my autonomous nervous system.
If right now I am not directly conscious of the activity of my autonomous nervous system, primitive plants are not conscious.
So, primitive plants are not conscious.
To deny (10) would to fall into wacky skepticism. It would posit that I may have conscious states that, as it were, I am completely unaware of. Note that I am often (always?) aware of various effects of the autonomous nervous system’s functioning, such as my breathing.
Premise (11) is where I think the hard work happens. But the thought is again about sophistication of coordinational functioning, and my guess is that my autonomous nervous system is more sophisticated than its analogues in primitive plants.
I think the general line of argument yields something potentially interesting. By knowing that we are not aware of what’s going on in our autonomous nervous system, we know how much coordinational sophistication is insufficient for consciousness.
I am not a biologist. Don’t ask me what primitive plants are. I just made that concept up, and I could be wrong in thinking that anything in reality corresponds to it.
Dr. Pruss, I think this is a fascinating argument. If I may ask, what do you think about NDEs (i.e., "Near-Death" experiences)? I've noticed that Joshua Rasmussen seems to find them quite compelling, but personally, I do not. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that some NDEs involve genuine contact with the ultimate Creator. We then run into an epistemic dilemma regarding divine veracity.
ReplyDeleteIf God created an objective reality in which propositions have definite truth values—where Caesar either crossed the Rubicon or did not, where humans either evolved or did not, where Christ either rose bodily from the dead or did not—then reality cannot ultimately be whatever each individual experiences.
Yet NDE testimony often contains radically incompatible metaphysical content:
1. One person encounters Jesus and receives confirmation in explicitly Christian terms.
2. Another encounters an explicitly Hindu cosmos governed by cyclical rebirth and karma.
3. Others report non-personal or pantheistic realities that undermine both.
If we suppose for a moment that this contradictory content originates from the transcendent Being rather than human misinterpretation, something deeply unsettling follows: God would be actively communicating incompatible descriptions of reality to different people. But I'm still not sure. What do you think?
I wouldn't be very confident of the details of data from people in states when brain functioning is breaking down.
DeleteI suspect that 6) is false. I have heard reports of people lucid dreaming in non-REM stages of sleep, so it may just be the case that we are conscious during deep sleep but don't have memories of it (similar to how we don't have memories to most dreams).
ReplyDeleteMy credences for what is conscious/feel pain follow the following pattern:
Particles ≈ AI < Plants << Insects < Mammals < Other Humans ≈ Me (Cartesian certainty)
How would you respond to the argument from moral risk for some consideration of AI welfare? I think it should be treated as if someone was arguing from moral risk for plant welfare.
If people dream in non-REM stages of sleep, then replace this with general anaesthesia. I suppose one might worry there that there is no memory either. But that would be horrid!
ReplyDeleteI think my credence for plant consciousness is higher than yours--the gap between plants and insects is smaller. And the gap between AI and plants is really big, because I don't think computers or other artifacts exist, while plants do.
Regarding plants, I think we don't have a moral risk, because I think we should trust our moral intuitions, and our moral intuitions say that an extremely weak reason suffices for plucking a flower.