Why? The Purpose of the Universe - Part 4

 Laura Knight-Jadczyk

In part 3, I briefly covered Philip Goff’s arguments about consciousness in his book “Why? The Purpose of the Universe”.  There I noted the Presocratic dilemma:

Either mind is an elemental feature of the world, or mind can somehow be reduced to more fundamental elements.  If the view is that mind is reduced to more fundamental elements, then one must explain how the reduction happens.  If one takes the position that mind is an elemental feature, then one must explain the apparent lack of mental features at the fundamental level of material reality.

Goff pointed out that our Standard Scientific View is the second option of the Presocratic problem and that it is committed to:

Micro-Reductionism:  What a human being does is ultimately fixed by the fundamental particles making them up, and the behaviour of the fundamental particles making up a given human being is entirely determined by the basic laws of physics. 

Goff has a problem with that and points out that if it were true, we would all be Meaning Zombies. But he sees that this is not the case, that there is Experiential Understanding above and beyond what a Meaning Zombie ought to be able to manifest.  He then makes clear what his goal is: to interpret physics in such a way as to allow experiential understanding to bring about novel and unexpected behaviour which can ‘override’ the laws of physics. 

Goff announces that the first step to solving the Meaning Zombie problem is to deny micro-reductionism. If the basic laws of physics determine how an individual behaves regardless of whether or not experiential understanding emerges (<- note Goff’s term here), then Natural Selection will not care whether or not experiential understanding emerges.  It is only if the emergence of experiential understanding makes a difference, better survival, that sense can be made of the emergence of experiential understanding.

So, how is he going to demonstrate this emergent behaviour within the Standard Interpretation of Physics?

First of all, he just disposes of Schrödinger’s Cat. He writes that:

“… on the ‘consciousness collapses the wave function’ view, the unobserved system exists in this weird indeterminate state because there is no consciousness involved in it. … This interpretation is no good for a Panpsychist.  Given that conscious particles are everywhere, including in the locked box with the unconscious cat, there would be no quantum indeterminacy anywhere.”

But then, according to the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Physics, what we think of as collapse of the wave function is actually the universe splitting into numerous branches.  By removing the collapse of the wave function, Many Worlds removes the need for consciousness.  But Goff doesn’t like that because “it’s hard to make statements about probability when everything that could happen does happen.”

Goff likes the Pilot Wave interpretation because there are both wave-like things and particle-like things.  He declares that “the appearance of uncertainty is simply a reflection of our lack of knowledge as to the initial location of particles.”  The pilot-wave view dispenses with the collapse of the wave function.  The Pilot Wave theory (known also as Bohmian Mechanics) accepts the existence of the wave function but also adds particles.  This means two distinct spatial realms: the very high dimensional space inhabited by the wave function, and the familiar three dimensional space inhabited by particles.  For the Pilot Wave Theory, all the many possibilities represented by the wave function exist, but only one will ever correspond to three-dimensional, concrete reality.  In addition to Schrödinger’s Equation, Pilot Wave Theory postulates an additional equation – the guidance equation – which specifies a lawful connection between states of the wave-function and locations of particles.  The wave function pulls around the particles a bit like the moon pulls the tides.

The problem with Pilot Wave Theory, according to Goff, is that it appears to leave particles causally impotent – dead matter that can only be dragged around by the wave function. So, he proposes his theory: Pan-agentialism.

Pan Agentialism

·       Consciousness exists at the fundamental level of reality.

·       The physical universe is made up of tiny fundamental particles each of which has conscious experience of a very rudimentary sort.

·       There seems to be no inherent limit to how simple subjective experience can be.  If particles have experience, then it is presumably of an incredibly simple form.

·       Particles have a kind of proto-agency of their own.  Particles are never compelled to do anything, but are disposed to respond rationally to their experience.

·       The conscious inclinations of an electron would be unimaginably simple compared to the conscious inclinations of the simplest organism.

·       So long as conscious inclinations of particles arise in a simple and predictable way, the actions will be simple and predictable.

·       The Wave Function is what causes the particles to have certain conscious inclinations.

·       The particles then respond to do what they feel inclined to do.

·       Thus: It is particles rationally responding to the conscious inclinations produced in them by the wave function that results in the standard predictions of Quantum Mechanics.

My own impression of Goff’s proposal is that it is somewhat incoherent.  Particles have a sort of consciousness and proto-agency, yet it is the Wave Function that ‘implants’ the conscious ‘inclination’? That is like giving with one hand and taking away with the other.  The particle’s ‘agency’ is subject to a sort of mind control which is no agency at all.

According to Goff’s Pan-agentialism, matter is inherently disposed to respond rationally to reality.  Particles simply follow their conscious inclinations; never mind that those inclinations are imposed on them by Pilot Waves, thus casting doubt on the idea that matter is ‘inherently disposed’ in its responses.  Here Goff brings in Evolution. He writes:

“As complex conscious minds emerge, they start to have experiential understanding of the world around them.  That is, the capacity for rational response of the particle can do very little, but when that capacity is married to the rich cognitive understanding of a human being, it flowers into a complex engagement with the world around it.”

Goff’s Equation:

Proto-agency + experiential understanding = Agency.

The problem is that this ‘proto-agency’ sort of got swallowed up by the Pilot Wave’s imposition of ‘inclination’ though Goff tries to distinguish between ‘capacity to respond rationally’ and ‘imposition of inclination.” 

Now, if human agency is simply a matter of doing what we feel like doing, as Goff says the particles do, guided by the pilot waves, then we are back to David Hume’s “Reason is the slave of passion.”  And Goff doesn’t like that.  He refutes Hume saying:

“It is not desire that is determining action but judgement, specifically the judgement that a certain action is objectively worth doing.” 

He explains that humans have the capacity to choose whether to follow their desires or their value judgments.  Humans can pursue something because it is worth doing.  That is, radically undetermined free choice or “Libertarian Free Will.’ Goff writes:

“If there are objective facts about value, which the kind of cosmic purpose defended in the book commits us to, then presumably human beings are able to recognize and respond to considerations of value: I can do something because I think it’s worth doing, regardless of whether or not I feel like doing it. … Recognition of value brings with it Libertarian Free Will, the capacity to choose whether to respond to one’s inclinations or to one’s judgement about what is worth doing.  Free Will consists in my capacity to choose whether to follow my desire or my judgement.”

And so, we come to this progression:

1.     Proto-agency: The capacity of a particle to respond to its immediate inclination to perform a specific action in the here and now.

2.     Agency: (proto-agency + experiential understanding) The capacity of an organism to pursue objects of desire spread out over space and time.

3.     Free Will: (proto-agency + experiential understanding + recognition of value) The capacity of a human being to choose whether to respond to their conscious inclinations or to their value judgements.

In regard to the above sequence, Goff writes:

“Note that in each case there is not some magical new capacity that appears totally out of thin air.  Rather, the basic capacity to respond rationally – that very capacity possessed by the humble particle – has latent within it all of these possibilities.”

Freedom From Physics?

Micro-reductionism ties us to the view that everything that happens in the biological world is ultimately determined by what is going on at the fundamental level of reality. To describe higher level processes, you just need to employ higher level descriptions of processes that can, in principle, be exhaustively described at the level of particles and fields.

In contrast to Micro-reductionism, Goff’s Pan-agentialism claims that, as complex conscious systems with experiential understanding begin to emerge, they bring into being new causal principles over and above the basic laws of physics and that such systems are those that behave in ways that depart from the predictions associated with Quantum Mechanics which are generated by the Born Rule, i.e. the ‘Core Theory’, which combines the Standard Model of particle physics with the weak limit of General Relativity.  Goff claims that what the Born Rule tracks is how physical things behave when they’re responding to the very simple inclinations imparted to them by the wave function in accord with the particle’s own ‘capacity to respond.’  More or less.  Goff writes:

“If there is no logical connection between our experience and the behaviour that results from it, why would it be that conscious experience and behaviour line up in a rationally appropriate way?  If we just live in a fundamentally meaningless universe where what stuff does is determined by mathematical laws of nature, why should the behaviour that conscious states produce respect norms of rationality?  […]

“If we did not live in a pan-agentialist world where things are somehow set up to ensure that the behaviour of a physical system is rationally appropriate (relative to its conscious experience), then physical systems would likely respond to their experience in a way that had nothing to do with norms of rationality.  And if it is unlikely that a physical system would respond rationally to its experiential understanding of the world, thereby surviving well, then evolution has no motivation to endow physical systems with experiential understanding in the first place.  Without some inherent push for matter to respond rationally to the character of its experience, our universe would almost certainly be populating by meaning zombies. […]

“We need to give an evolutionary account of the emergence of experiential understanding.  But this is possible only if we assume there is something about the universe that ensured, or makes likely, psycho-physical harmony.  Pan-agentialism seems to me to be the simplest way to do this.”

And that is the centrepiece of the book: An evolutionary account of the emergence of experiential understanding; an evolutionary account of the emergence of consciousness. 

I haven’t decided yet what part of the remainder of Goff’s book I’m going to cover here; probably not much of it, but there are a few points I’d like to mention.  That will be the next post.

P.S. 24-03-24 (A.J)

Emergence of consciousness