Panpsychism? Oh, you know, everything is conscious. Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, who can be counted on to be honest, tells us, “I know that physicists have a reputation of being narrow-minded. But the reason we have this reputation is that we tried the crazy shit long ago and just found it doesn’t work.”
Um, no. But who told Hossenfelder that things should “work”? Not just sound deep? Okay, okay, let’s let her go on:
Now, if you want a particle to be conscious, your minimum expectation should be that the particle can change. It’s hard to have an inner life with only one thought. But if electrons could have thoughts, we’d long have seen this in particle collisions because it would change the number of particles produced in collisions.
The only element of physics that might work here, she thinks, would be a claim that the conscious state is so strongly bound within the particles that it has not been possible to discover them. But then,
With the third option [strongly bound particles] it is indeed possible to add internal states to elementary particles. But if your goal is to give consciousness to those particles so that we can inherit it from them, strongly bound composites do not help you. They do not help you exactly because you have hidden this consciousness so that it needs a lot of energy to access. This then means, of course, that you cannot use it at lower energies, like the ones typical for soft and wet thinking apparatuses like human brains. Sabine Hossenfelder, “Electrons don’t think” at BackRe(Action)
It’s the basic problem of the coffee mug. If naturalism (nature is all there is), often called “materialism,” is true, either you and the mug are both conscious or neither of you is. The comments at BackRe(Action) illustrate the difficulty many have
Overall, Hossenfelder is only just beginning to think about this problem so she underestimates the depth of the dilemma.
See also: From Scientific American: “we may all be alters—dissociated personalities— of universal consciousness.”
Panpsychism: You are conscious but so is your coffee mug
Will the Large Hadron Collider doom particle physics? They’ll find the money to continue. Consider: The Standard Model begins with the hated Big Bang. Nothing that supports string theory, eternal cosmic inflation, or a multiverse has been found. Don’t many people just have to keep looking and keep quiet about what they find that wasn’t what they hoped for?
and
(A response to Hossenfelder:) Experimental physicist: Particle theory is “in a crisis” and a bigger collider IS the answer! So we should do it because we can, not because we really expect to learn very much? It may be that Dorigo is just not a good spokesperson for his position; he spends a good deal of time attacking Hossenfelder and her book. Anyway, somehow, naturalism (nature is all there is) isn’t providing the hoped-for return on investments.
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As to Sabine Hossenfelder’s appeal to the standard model to refute panpsychism:
Actually, there is a more fundamental reason why the standard model says consciousness will never be found in electrons (nor in any other elementary particles).
But first it is necessary to highlight a little background on how the standard model came about.
The Standard Model is a paradigm of a quantum field theory.
And the standard model grew out of the success of Quantum electrodynamics (QED)
QED unifies special relativity with quantum mechanics,,,
Whereas the ‘renaissance’ of Quantum Field Theory (QFT), which led to the Standard Model, is the result of the combination of classical field theory, quantum mechanics, and special relativity
Richard Feynman (and others) were only able to unify special relativity and quantum mechanics into Quantum Electrodynamics by quote unquote “brushing infinity under the rug” with a technique called Renormalization.
This “brushing infinity under the rug” with QED never set right with Feynman.
In the following video, Richard Feynman expresses his unease with “brushing infinity under the rug” in Quantum-Electrodynamics:
One of the interesting facets of “brushing infinity under the rug” in Quantum-Electrodynamics, (besides the fact that taking ‘an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do’ happens to be fully compatible with Christian presuppositions),,,
,, Besides that uncanny compatibility with Christian presuppositions, one of the interesting facets of “brushing infinity under the rug” in Quantum-Electrodynamics is that, interestingly, “Although quantum field theory is fully compatible with the special theory of relativity, a relativistic treatment of quantum measurement has yet to be formulated.”
That is to say, although they unified special relativity and quantum mechanics together in QED by “brushing infinity under the rug”, this unification between special relativity and quantum mechanics into Quantum Electrodynamics has left the entire enigma of Quantum Measurement on the cutting room floor.
Yet quantum measurement is precisely where conscious observation makes its presense fully known in quantum mechanics. As the follwing researcher stated, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it.”
Thus since QED, and by extension the standard model itself, has left quantum measurement, i.e. conscious observation, on the cutting room floor by “brushing infinity under the rug”, then it necessarily follows that our best theory of the interactions of the fundamental particles of the universe will never include an adequate account of consciousness.
That is to say, as far as the standard model is concerned, panpsychism is dead even before it gets of the ground since consciousness has already been excluded from our best theory of elementary particles by “brushing infinity under the rug”.
Supplemental notes:
Verse:
Very interesting OP and very informative comments by BA77. Thanks.
It would be interesting to see WJM and gpuccio commenting here in this thread too.
I’m starting to like these esoteric topics, though they fly high above my head.
Still prefer reading more concrete down-to-earth scientific stuff like gpuccio’s protein-related OPs, thought they are also above my pay grade. But at least gpuccio’s eloquent explanations on the complex functional information jumps are more palatable than these esoteric philosophical debates. My “poorly evolved” mind can’t process so much abstraction at once.
Blame it on Natural Selection. 🙂