Consciousness Live! with Evan Thompson (S4 E12)

0:02 All right, so we are live. Uh rejoining me today um an extra special guest, Evan Thompson. Um Evan, so thank you again for for joining me once again. I wonder if you could just remind people who you are and what you do in case they forgot since last time. Yeah, sure. So, I think when we last talked it was back in November. Um I sense the time during this pandemic is a little bit off, but uh yeah, so I'm professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Uh I also am an associate member in the Department of Asian Studies and in the

0:34 Department of Psychology and the Cognitive Science Group. And I work in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, have a strong interest in cross-cultural philosophy, Asian philosophical traditions, in particular Indian Chinese philosophy. And my writings, you know, concern the self, consciousness, uh cognition, its relationship to biological life. In very general terms, that's that's what I work on. Yeah. Very um all the good stuff. Very cool. Uh by the way, I guess I just realized um

1:07 Are are you This is kind of I just just just occurred to me. Are you contributing a paper to this Journal of Consciousness Studies uh special issue on kind of animal consciousness or something like that? Yeah, the one edited by Jonathan Birch, I think. Um I am. Uh I am That's right. I think our deadline is August, if I remember correctly, to to turn something in. Yeah, so I'm going to be writing about the idea of well, what Ernst Haeckel called biopsychism. So, this is the idea that all life

1:41 all biological life is minded or is sentient, uh is is conscious in the sense of capable of feeling. Um and he So, Haeckel distinguished this from uh what he called zoopsychism, which would be, you know, consciousness is restricted to animal life. And you know, you could restrict it even further and just say consciousness is restricted to human beings. And then he distinct so he just you know, he distinguished biopsychism from those positions and then he also distinguished it from panpsychism which of course is that consciousness is fundamental some instance consciousness in some sense of

2:14 consciousness is fundamental in some sense of fundamental. Um, so I'm going to explore this idea. Basically what I want to do in that paper um, is it it grows out of a talk I gave a few years ago at the philosophy of science association actually at a symposium that Jonathan organized. So what I want to do in that paper is to try to it's still a work in progress right now but to try to uh, see what the strongest considerations in favor of biopsychism are to try to marshal you know, arguments

2:48 um, for that position in part as a way of seeing what it's distinctive merits and distinctive challenges would be compared to these other positions. Interesting. And you know, this goes out of the work I did in my book Mind and Life on what I call there the strong continuity of of Mind and Life that life is already incipient mind and mind in its you know, furthest articulations belongs to belongs to life. Mhm. Um, or is a you know, is a is a biological phenomenon. So it's exploring

3:23 those ideas but specifically with regard to sentience or consciousness in the sense of sentience. Right. Which I characterize as minimally the feeling of being alive. The the feeling of you could even say the feeling of being but specifically the feeling of being alive that is of of being bodily of having you know, sort of affective life regulation processes where you know, things in the environment are threatening or advantageous or disadvantageous. Right. Um, distinguish from But, you experience it as such, not just representation or something.

3:55 That's right. That's right. Where it's felt It has a It has a a kind of lived felt vitality affect, I suppose you could say. Uh-huh. Um, that isn't necessarily So, one of the arguments or one of the lines of thought um, in spelling out this idea is that is that, um, in addition to the familiar, you know, exteroceptive sensory modes of consciousness there are feelings that we have that have to do with, um, you could say

4:30 liveliness or or affective vitalities like, you know, energized versus fatigued um, that don't, you know, specific that have to do with internal kind of regulatory states and processes, but that aren't really a matter of, um, registering uh, well, they're certainly not necessarily a matter of registering external kind of exteroceptive environmental situations, um, but they they also have a a kind of global character that makes them different from, say, the kind of feeling you have when your stomach rumbles or something

5:03 like that, a kind of localized you know, feeling digestive feeling. There's a There's There seems to be a more kind of global feeling or mode of feeling we have that has to do with our whole bodily uh, liveliness or affect. And so, I'm interested in the idea that that that that could be a kind of fundamental form or character of sentience that we might think, if we're thinking along biophysicist lines Mhm. would be characteristic of, um of living systems as such, um So, that's I mean, that's not to give an

5:36 argument, that's just to sort of say what the idea is. Yeah, interesting. And And that's what I'm working with in that paper, yeah. Which I still have to write. That's always the Yeah, exactly. That's always the hard part. The easy part is mapping it out Right. in your head. Then you got to sit down and bang it out on the keyboard. Um but uh so I think I'm supposed to write like a counterpoint or a piece to that's going to be a companion piece or something like that. Yeah. piece. Um about higher-order theories maybe. I I think what they want is me to be the

6:07 more restrictive guy, although I'm not 100% sure that I that I have to be. Because one of the things that I I really interested in is is um I guess the restrict the restricted version of biopsychism that I am most attracted to is the version that involves neurons. Um that there's got to be something biological, but that is that really is the neuron stuff that um that that is important for minds. Uh but so can you give us a sense of what why you think like how far you want to push this? Cuz I I assume you probably developed this in the paper,

6:38 but one big problem, of course, is like what is life anyway? Yes. And so like which systems count as living? And so far enough down the line, are are the protons going to count as living and get panpsychism back in the picture? Or like uh Yeah. Right. So so a bunch of a bunch of important issues and questions there. So with regard to life, I mean, I'm working from the general framework that I worked from in Mind in Life, which is to say that um that when we're talking about life, we're talking about a certain kind of organization, systemic organization, that is specified in the theory of

7:14 autopoiesis from Maturana and Varela as a self-producing uh organization, where self-producing means that the system, in virtue of interconnected, mutually productive processes, individuates itself. So it has a kind of self-dynamic self-individuation that puts it in a in a constant um interactive engagement with the environment. And you know, the the model for that in terms of a concrete, you know, actual example is is the cell. The minimal

7:49 example is the bacterial cell in terms of, you know, the evolutionary story of life on Earth. Um though we could imagine there might be other forms that it could take concretely. And so, the thought then is that when you have that kind of, um, individual self-individuating system that also can adaptively regulate itself in relationship to the environment, where that means that it can, um, that it can modulate its environmental boundary conditions and its own activity in virtue of what enhances its vitality or flourishing

8:27 and what poses a challenge to it, that it can modulate its own activity in relationship to this. The idea there is that, um, it's very difficult to articulate how a system would be able to do that without having some kind of, um, let's call it motivational feeling or affect in relationship to the environment. A feeling that, you know, this is better, as it were, this is worse, this is threatening, this is, uh,

9:00 this is advantageous. And where that feeling isn't a matter of, um, a kind of internal representation that, for example, lays that out propositionally. No, of course not, um, because those kinds of systems don't have that kind of architecture. Um, but where the the feeling is bound up with, um, the the, uh, the systemic nature of the self-production and self-individuation

9:34 and and engagement with the environment. So, that So, then the question is, okay, well, but, you know, why why um think that it's wider than So, there's two questions. One is, why think that that's that that's uh the case for systems that aren't neuronal, that aren't animals, basically. Right. Um or why think that if you're going to go down that far, you shouldn't go down as far as the panpsychists are wanting to go. So, with regard to the I'll start at the panpsychist end. With regard to the panpsychist

10:07 um move, so, they're not inconsistent. In other words, you could be a panpsychist, and you could also say, but really there's something distinctive about this kind of self-individuating, maintaining biological structure. So, they're not they're not logically inconsistent. But, what the panpsychist basically faces, it seems to me, is a version of the combination problem that uh actually I think Greg Rosenberg really hits right on the uh the head of the nail, which he calls it the um the boundary problem, or the individuation problem. What is it that

10:41 makes something an individuating system? Elementary particles aren't those kinds of things, but living cells are. So, the panpsychist, in order to, you know, to get mind or sentience in a sort of organized form, or, you know, organized in the sense of there being a subject rather than just sort of fleeting trope instances of phenomenality, or something like that. You need some account of, you know, how this kind of individuation or boundary forming system um comes to be. And And that's exactly what, in effect, these

11:15 theories of biological organization answer. So, so, the idea would be, to put it more much more more simply and succinctly, with regard to the panpsychist um the pan- Even if you grant the panpsychist this idea of fundamental consciousness, there still is this problem of how it forms itself or or self-individuates into a bounded subject rather than just a scattering or a conglomerate of phenomenality. And so the biophysicist

11:48 has a nice answer to that in the form of well, it's the way, you know, life is organized that that gives us that. If you then say on the other hand, oh, but, you know, look, I really don't think we have any reason to think it's characteristic of life, we we should think it really has something to do with neurons or the nervous system. Um of course, you know, there are things to be said in favor of that, but then you need to really specify, okay, what is it about neurons specifically and their forming, you know, the interconnected networks that they do in animals that makes the difference and moreover,

12:21 um is it something that you're going to have for very simple, so-called simple nervous systems in Aplysia or are you going to need a much more complicated neuronal architecture? And if it's more complicated, then how exactly does it have to be more complicated? And then you get into the train of well, maybe it needs to be a instantiate a global workspace or maybe there need to be these recurrent reverberant loops and and then we're in the train of sort of the human cognitive neuroscience debates about consciousness. Um these big bigger problems are not really

12:56 directly answered by those kinds of uh evidential debates, however, between say the global workspace and the reverberant loops because these bigger questions are more fundamental ones about how you bridge, you know, to consciousness or sentience in the first place. Um Right. So, just so I understand the the kind of view that you're developing, which I think is interesting and I think the kind of methodological points you're bringing up are all very Yeah, I think it's all very interesting and stuff. Uh But um so I was just okay, so the cell's the fundamental thing on your view that you're exploring or at least taking seriously to explore. There

13:30 would be it's I guess you would you'd put it in terms of phenomenal consciousness or something that it's like to be a cell. Yeah, we can we can put it that way if we if we want. I mean, you know, that locution sometimes bears more burden than it should. But but for our purposes, you know, we can feel free to use it, I think. Sure. For what it's Okay, good. Um all right. And then there's something that it's like to be me uh and uh I am of course composed of billions of cells. Right. Um so what's the relation on the view that you're uh exploring between like me? Isn't there like a combination

14:02 problem sort of similar in the wings here? no, that's a that's a great question. Um I I think that's actually a really interesting question. So if you're going to say that um individual cells having, you know, the the minimal um kind of biological or systemic organization for life and then on the biupsychic view for um also for consciousness or sentience, then you face this question, okay, well,

14:35 what happens when you have multicellularity? Basically, that's like the most minimal way of putting it. And it seems like you have a coup- a couple of options. You could say, well, there's something about the interdependent aggregation that generates a form of um sentience proper to the multicellular organism that supersedes um the constituent cellular consciousnesses.

15:08 Like a fusion. Yeah, like a fusion, for example. You could you could you could go down that road. Um and then you could allow that in cases where there's disruption or damage or lesions or breakdown that the fusion could come apart in ways where you actually generate uh distinct and rival subjectivities or streams of consciousness, you know, sort of in the way that's classically discussed in the split-brain cases, I suppose. So, that's one way you could go. Another way you could go is, well,

15:39 actually you could go a kind of Leibniz way. Well, they're all we're actually made up of this vast sea of simple perceptions, you know, Yeah. in Leibniz's sense. And we just don't hear that at our level of what we identify as I or me. You know, what it's like to be me. If we then search for the referent of the me, it's not like we're going to find a singular substant- I I don't think we're going to find a singular, you know, enduring substance that is the referent of that. We're going to find a complex

16:14 system that for various reasons we call I or me. But underneath the the hood, as it were, there's this sea of, you know, of um of simple perceptions or of micro consciousnesses or micro sentiences. You could go that route. Um I mean, the two might be compatible, I suppose. You could have, you know, fusion in some zones and micro consciousnesses in other zones. I mean, just conceptually, speculatively, it's like doesn't seem consistent to me. Um but I think it's a great question.

16:48 There's a couple things I want to say about it. I mean, Yeah, again, I I know this is work in progress and I didn't mean to spring this on you, but uh No, this is great. Um it is interesting it through to write it And I'm supposed to be writing on it, too. So, it helps me think Uh but I mean, one thing that occurs to me is it seems like So, first first of all, it seems like you get the same conundrums that the panpsychists get because they have, you know, the same two options. They they either end up saying, "Oh, you get this kind of emergent level experience from the micro-level experience, excuse me." Um and I I just talked to uh head of Merck and I think something like that is

17:21 her view that the micro experiences combine into the infuse into this macro experience. But then you get the other kind of constitutive panpsychism that it's just a combination of these these little micro experiences. You get the same sort of and each one of those has their kind of relevant problems or whatever, you know, like on the on the fusion view, my issue with that would be like don't you get the explanatory gap and you know, the same sort of issues about how you get from one to the other. So, aren't you really I mean so maybe that's just the way it is, but I mean don't you do you agree that you get similar you end up with a similar kind of place?

17:52 Yeah, I think you get analogous problems, but it's not actually so obvious to me that they're the same problems and that has to do partly with the methodological motivations or considerations that um lead to panpsychism versus biopsychism. So, in in the contemporary panpsychist literature um the arguments that often drive one towards panpsychism are largely it seems to me um a priori

18:27 and based on highly questionable I don't know what to call them, assumptions, conceptual intuitions. Yeah. Um but that's not the motivation in the case of biopsychism at all. The motivation is to say um we have a distinctive kind of system in the natural world where even in its simplest instantiations we might have reason to think that the dynamics of the system couldn't be what it is unless there was some kind of vital affect or

19:01 feeling of being alive that the the system couldn't be adaptively regulatory and self-individuating and directed in the way that it is in relation to its environment without affect as the um the impetus as it were was or the or the the motivator or driver of of or condition maybe would be a more minimal way to put it as a condition of behavior. Uh-huh. And that could be wrong. That could be totally wrong. But it's a different kind of argument. It's based It's a

19:34 philosophy of nature argument that comes out of um trying to make sense of complex systems whereas the panpsychist arguments at least in the case of say someone like um uh Philip Goff um they're based on intuitions like you know phenomenal transparency which you know I I don't want to start an argument there. I think I mean I I I I I I By that I mean I don't want to like make that a premise of an argument because I think Yeah. uh it it's not obvious to me that there is any such thing as phenomenal transparency. And if that's going to be

20:06 a road to um to dealing with consciousness and nature um that's not the road I want to travel. So that's a big difference it seems to me. Totally. Um I agree uh the Goff stuff is based on introspection and it revealing essences or Right. Exactly. Yeah. That's kind of Yeah. I just don't That's one of the things that maybe we talked about before and I've talked about with Bryce as well, Huebner, um about the way in which the these kinds of um you know especially Eastern traditions uh and the practices involved

20:39 there and can kind of break down that idea and show how it's kind of very simple-minded actually and maybe just a beginning. There's a lot more complexity than these simple like qualities or whatever. So I think maybe that's the sense in which you were saying that's based on these kind of you know kind of naive intuitions or something like that. But isn't there something similar at least going on with what you were just saying? Like isn't the intuition I mean because let me put it slightly differently because doesn't what you were saying um have the consequence or predict that we couldn't build a mechanism that could do something like that without it playing a

21:12 certain way because Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I mean it would have a consequence that if we were able to successfully synthesize artificially uh which which as just as an an an aside, I think means building an actual concrete system not running a simulation in a computational purely computational uh universe. So if we were to build synthetically either chemically or robotically or some combination of the two a system that did

21:45 instantiate that kind of self-individuating regulating organization uh in relationship to the environment, it would follow that it would be sentient. Yes, on on the view that I'm considering. uh But but but I was thinking so but yeah, but couldn't I mean I was thinking of from the modus tollens to your modus ponens. Couldn't couldn't one say look we could build a system that isn't sentient which does that? Um therefore there's something wrong with the definition or the connection there. But I mean because it depends on

22:19 what you mean by sentient. So it's like you know my favorite example, I love the Roombas of the world. Um is Roomba sentient? Well, I don't know. It it interacts with the environment um and it you know even has some meta goal states like keeping itself charged and plugs itself in when the battery's low uh stuff like that. So isn't that doing the sort of thing that you're talking about or at least a a step on the path towards building something that can do that stuff without feeling? I I don't think so. I think that the kind of system that I'm considering has a fundamentally different kind of organization and building such a system

22:51 is way more demanding. Um I think that what we're talking about is is a system that that synthesizes its own material individuality where the model of that is, you know, metabolism where it it constantly synthesizes, regenerates itself, including its own, you know, membrane boundedness. And that very process also regulates its its being in relationship to the um environment

23:24 with regard to its own viability conditions. And uh we're not anywhere near being able to construct systems like that. Right. Another way to put it classically would be to say that such systems have an intrinsic purposiveness or teleology in the Kantian sense. They don't have an external attributed means-end teleology. You know, the system that recharges itself, that's just external, you know, it's sophisticated, you know, it's like a clever design, but it's external instrumental teleology that has to do with our purposes in designing it and

23:56 the attributions we make. It's not generating its own purposiveness in relationship to the environment. Whereas any why I said it was like a step in that direction, not like the thing. But can't you see like how n iterations of this with, you know, m degrees of complexity would be the thing we're talking about? No. No, I don't think so. I think it's like I think that's like thinking that you're going to, you know, get to the horizon by walking in the direction of the apparent line. It's just like, no, you need to do something really different because the organization is is, you know, is qualitatively different for something like a bacterial cell from

24:31 it is that it is Sorry, the organization of a bacterial cell is fundamentally different from any artifact that we've ever built. And we don't, you know, we have some glimmerings of how we might be able to artificially, synthetically synthesize in lab environments aspects of the self-production and self-regulation of a living cell. Um but we're nowhere near to being able to um actually generate autonomous, freely interacting, free-standing, self-productive uh entities. And thinking that we could do

25:05 it by just adding more sort of external means and systems, I think is I think that's an illusion, like the walking to the horizon is illusion. I mean, I'm a philosopher, I could be wrong, you know, some clever engineer prove me wrong, you know, obviously. I don't want to be arrogant about this, but but it it seems to me that there's a big difference. Uh-huh. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, it's interesting to think about because I mean, when I think about like a simple organism, like a single cellular

25:37 organism, the sorts of things that it does, I guess I'm not I I guess I wonder what the strength of the conceptual claim that you're making here is. Because like you take So, they have flagella and they rotate around and you know, when there's something in the environment that it is nutrient for it, they kind of go towards it. If something is dangerous, then they tumble in a random direction. Right. Um I guess I'm having trouble understanding the sense in which you can't imagine something like doing that without feeling a certain way. Um

26:10 and so I'm wondering if like what if what you're saying is like conceptually like it's not conceivable or just that maybe it's conceivable, but it's because it's not really possible. So, yeah, I'm just cuz I don't share that intuition. It seems like we could build like a mechanism that did exactly that and then I wouldn't want to say that I felt anything. Yeah. So, um I don't I don't think myself that I can close

26:43 a conceptual gap between um let's say let's call it the feeling of being alive, which is to characterize it phenomenally Right. and the systemic organization that constitutes a living system. I don't I'm not proposing to close that gap conceptually because I you know, I I I don't think it's really possible to do that in the sense where

27:16 you would derive one from the other, let's say. Um it's more a question of whether we think that we we have good reasons to think that systems of that class or type merit being considered sentient as compared to

27:51 uh fundamental particles on the one hand or let's say animals with complex nervous systems on the other hand. So it's a it's a I suppose here's another way to put it. I mean I this is what I call the body-body problem in in mind and life actually is this idea that um on the one hand we want to pursue a kind of, you know, let's call it a kind of complex systems um or systems theory perspective on, you know, the different kinds of natural systems there are and the capacities that we think

28:24 that systemic complexity, you know, warrants our attribution of or or warrants, you know, thinking they instantiate. We pursue that on the one hand. And then the other hand we pursue a kind of conceptual phenomenological exploration of the complexity of consciousness, mind, sentience and we pursue both of them kind of in parallel mutually informing each other to see how they can enrich each other. And I see that is different from trying to close a gap because it it seems to me that uh we're not really in a position

28:58 to be able to close that that gap. Um I mean it's it's funny because just as I'm hearing you speak, what I'm what I'm thinking of and sorry for cutting you off, but it's just like No, no, go ahead. Uh I mean, you know, the issue of life at least in philosophy of mind circles. Um I think you'd probably chase this back to someone like David Chalmers, which maybe is, you know, you have some some things to say about, but I'm not sure, but you know, the issue of life is often offered as an example of of something where people used to say, "Oh, you can't understand how it could be done in a functional manner." And there's élan vital and then we go nyuk

29:32 nyuk nyuk. Look at these guys, the vitalists. Uh now we know it's just functions and you know, reproducibility and DNA and home and a blast and homeostasis. Uh you fulfill those functions, you're alive, end of story. But it sounds like sort of what you're saying is, "No, we got to go back." Then maybe not to élan vital, but to something about uh an association with a kind of sense or feeling of awareness of the being alive with the functionality that we're postulating here. So, we can't just say understanding life equals understanding the functions of living

30:04 systems. That's right. That's right. I mean, I think in the sense in which um people often say life is functionalizable and consciousness isn't, um I would disagree. Uh that is, I would say that uh that um there's a difference between function in the functionalist sense, which implies multiple realizability, and organization in the systems theory sense, which doesn't which is which allows for, let's say,

30:36 compositional plasticity, that you can have different physical structural realizations of the same organization, but that's not necessarily the same as multiple realizability in the strict functional sense where you have um the same functional property instantiated in different physical causal mechanisms. Um so, I don't think it's true that we functionalized life in that sense of functionalism on the one hand, and I also don't think that um that consciousness is uh something Well, I'll put it this way. I don't I

31:09 don't accept the zombie argument in and the intuitions that drive it. In other words, I think if we had a a proper organizational conception of life, it wouldn't follow obviously that um you could have that um in the absence of consciousness. In In order to think that, you would have to think Let Let's leave it just for human for the human organization and human consciousness to leave out all the, you know, biophysicist considerations. You kind of have to think that that consciousness is

31:42 either epiphenomenal or explanatorily irrelevant to the system being able to do what it does. And I don't see any reason to accept that. I mean, I think that everything we know about consciousness suggests that, you know, my body is able to do things dynamically in relation to the environment because it feels itself in doing so. And I can't certain things cannot be done cannot happen in the world if that feeling is absent. And you have to deny that if you think that zombies are are metaphysically possible. It's it's so or so it seems to me. Yeah, but it's interesting cuz I mean,

32:14 one thing I that I don't think anyone has really talked about Maybe someone has talked about, I don't know, but whether zombies are alive. Right. Yeah, I have another way of getting at the issue. That's right. That's exactly right. And and in fact, I do I do talk about this in Mind and Life. I do say in imagining a zombie, you have to imagine a system that from the outside in imagining a zombie Evan, let's say, my zombie twin, we have to imagine an Evan zombie twin that is alive in the sense of being able to exhibit all

32:48 the behaviors and physical characteristics from the outside that we consider to be constitutive of life while thinking that nonetheless there's no feeling of being alive on the inside. Right. No vitality, affects, nothing. And I don't see any reason to think that that's I actually don't think it's conceivable. I mean, I think if someone can like say the words to me and then if and then if it's supposed to be conceivable in a positive sense of conceivability, I have to like spell out the story in such a way that it makes sense. And I I don't

33:23 actually see a a good way to do that. Uh so I mean, so I mean, I I yeah, I can see where you're coming from, but let me I want to figure out I want to ask you what what you might say that that kind of I mean, I guess like the kind of argument that would be more convincing to me. I mean, not that this isn't convincing. I'm kind of I'm on the fence here a little bit, I guess, but uh um Yeah, anyway, so let me try this on you and excuse me, see what you say. Um So,

33:56 I I think that in the case of well, maybe you disagree given what we just been talking about, but in the case of humans, well, one of the main discoveries of the last you know, 7500 years or so is it's the unconscious. Um that there's unconscious processing. Um and actually we might distinguish levels of unconscious processing. There's like deep unconscious which you can never access or become conscious. Like what's going on in my cerebellum. Um and our brain stem and then there's stuff which I'm not conscious of right this exact moment, but I could become conscious of like my birthday and things of that nature. So, you might want to

34:28 distinguish those. Some people have, whatever. So, uh but but it seems to me that there's a lot we can do unconsciously. And so that we have good reasons for our postulating the existence of unconscious perception. There's a debate about it, obviously, and I talked to these people who are on both sides of the debates, and I think it's interesting, but and while no means resolved, I think that, you know, the general kind of view is that there is unconscious perception. Um So, for first I wonder if you agree about that. I think we talked about a little bit about this last time, but just a refresher for this discussion. Do

35:01 you agree that there are unconscious perception? Because if you do, then I think you and Kevin have an argument which goes from us to the other direction, which is that in us there are various things which we can do unconsciously. Um and when we do them unconsciously, there doesn't seem like there's anything like phenomenal consciousness involved. There's nothing from our point of view to have those things being done. Uh then, furthermore, those sorts of things look like the kinds of things which these other kinds of things we're talking about engage in. So, trees are very sophisticated. And, you know, I like this evidence they can be conditioned. I think there's lots of evidence that they have cognitive

35:33 they they do cognition. And but all that stuff seems like stuff that's like classical conditioning, things that can be done unconsciously in human beings. So, therefore, I wouldn't I would wonder why would we attribute consciousness to it when we're talking about something which in us we can demonstrate or give an argument that there's no consciousness involved in this sense anyway. So, if you start from there, like there are things in us which we do unconsciously, those things resemble to a high degree the things that these protozoa, trees, etc. do. So, probably they do them in a way that that's unconscious like us. Uh where where have

36:07 I gone wrong in that line of reasoning, would you say? I mean, I don't think you've necessarily gone wrong, um because, again, for me, these arguments are arguments that aren't, you know, armchair conceptual arguments. They're arguments from, you know, here's a body of evidence, here's some considerations, they lead this direction, here's another body of evidence, here's some other considerations, they lead this direction. Now, how do we, you know, how do we make sense of that? Um so, I mean, what I would say about specifically about the uh the issue with unconsciousness is that um

36:42 I mean, this is a very complicated issue, actually. So, certainly there are you know, many processes that make us up that occur apparently, you know, without awareness. Uh the extent of those is a very difficult, I think, issue to get a grip on. And the relationship of them to the rest of the system that is

37:16 typically conscious in the sense that um you know, we go through a complex wake-sleep cycle in which we, you know, experience different kinds of consciousness. So, consciousness isn't one thing. We experience different states, different modes. Um and this is shifting. And within that context, some things we say are unconscious, some things are conscious, where conscious means what? It means I can report them. Well, sure, there's lots of things I can't report. Are they unconscious in the sense of phenomenally you know, not phenomenally conscious,

37:48 even if I can't report them? Well, that's a tricky question. So, I mean, right away we get into this, you know, difficult terrain of the different senses of consciousness. And then processes that, you know, there's this discussion in in neuroscience of, you know, so-called automatic zombie processes. But they're very circumscribed and they happen for systems that happen to be complex conscious systems. So, like, if you then try to extrapolate from that to other whole systems, be they you know, uh I don't know, E. coli bacteria or

38:20 trees, that extrapolation is not straightforward at all. Um So Interesting. Yeah, so I mean that's not that's not an answer to your question. It's just to say Uh I mean it's not a Yeah. Yeah, it's just to say it's very complicated. We have to we have to kind of go case by case. I mean so I mean just to give you another example, you know, we wrote about this um well, I wrote about it in waking and dreaming being and then we did this paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences with um Jennie Vent and uh Tory Nielsen. So you

38:54 know, Jennie is Oh, the dreamless sleep one. the dreamless sleep one, right. And and and Tory is a sleep scientist. And you know, the basic idea of that paper is, you know, people standardly say dreamless sleep is a blackout state where there is no consciousness. But if you actually look at what dreamless sleep is, it's not one thing. It's a whole bunch of things. And in some cases, the uh evidence for saying that consciousness is absent is not so good. And there are all sorts of complicated methodological questions. Do you have a kind of rolling phenomenal consciousness that is this like minimal sentient feeling of being

39:26 alive, but you're just not keeping it in memory? And so when you wake up, you just kind of have like some maybe lingering sense of it, but there's nothing really to report because it's not really you're not carrying it along in working memory or something like that. Um These are really difficult issues. Right. Yeah. So I mean, but just to get clear on the extent of the position that you're defending here, are you going to say that like Yeah, like the hypothalamus, let's say, for example, monitoring the um salt content of the blood.

40:02 Uh that that's a process which there's a something that is like to undergo even that word I mean, so I'm awake right now. It's happening right now, you know, and Yeah. that information is going to be used to determine whether I'm thirsty or not. I've just had a glass of water over here. I'm I'm a bit thirsty, so I I'm guessing you know, some system in me must be detecting that this you know, salt content in the blood is too high and they want to thin it out or whatever. So, uh but but so that seems to me something that's deeply unconscious. I can't access what's going on in the uh hypothalamus in any way at all. It's not like this

40:34 other stuff that you're talking about. Um but so but I can still make sense I seem it seems to me of how the system there is doing the stuff that is doing Yeah. um in terms of the neurons, you know, carrying out certain uh instantiating certain computations and blah blah blah. But but it sounds like what you're saying is that we shouldn't be able to do that um because we'd have to sort of attribute to the hypothalamus a sense of feeling or something like that to be able to act in this complex way that it's doing. No No more what I was saying was at least if we're talking about the early sort of earlier um zombie kind of considerations

41:08 was that um the idea that I as a whole integrated organism could behave in relationship to the world in the way that I do with absolutely zero consciousness in the zombie sense, with no um feeling whatsoever. That is that, but the reason why I brought the zombies up was because we were talking about the protozoa first. Uh or you know, single-celled organisms. And you were saying that I I thought you were saying that even there you couldn't make sense of like them doing what

41:41 they're doing. And then I was saying, well, what about hypo hypothalamic? We can make sense of what it's doing there without typically attributing feeling to it. So, why can't we work backwards from things like that too? Yeah, so no, the arguments were a little bit different. I mean, in the case of the of the single-celled organism, I wasn't I mean, that argument I was basically And I should say just by parenthesis, I'm I'm trying to develop this argument in a way to see how strong or weak it is, where it leads. I'm not I'm not, you know, it's

42:14 No, totally. Totally. absolutely committed to it, but it seems to me that um that you can you can you can you can put together evidence and certain methodological assumptions in a way that can lead you in the direction of proposing sentience for life as such including the single-celled organism. But that's that a different kind of argument from the argument I was the counterargument I was giving in the zombie case because

42:47 the counterargument there was simply look, you tell me it's conceivable that, you know, there could be zombie Evan um with no feeling of being alive whatsoever where zombie Evan does everything Evan does and is absolutely capable of doing everything Evan does. And and if you give me that as an argument, then I I just don't see any reason to believe it. I mean, it's just like it's not persuasive to me whatsoever. That's as a conceptual, you know, But can't we link the two though a little bit here Evan if if what we say is is it conceivable that there's zombie single-cell organism?

43:20 Well, it sounds like you weren't denying that. So, you can conceive of zombie single-cell organism and then okay, zombie Evan is just 80 billion of those or 80 hundred billion or you know, however many billion of those together. Yeah, but but but that's to make the argument about the single-celled organisms into into a kind of zombie argument, which is precisely the a kind of argument that I don't want to engage with or put stock in because it just seems to me that you know, my intuitions don't count for

43:54 very much there. My so-called intuitions I don't count for very much there. The only reason I engaged in the conceptual zombie argument was purely negatively when it's raised um in relationship to say human beings in life, it's just to say that's supposed to be the home terrain of the argument and I don't find it persuasive. Now, in the case of the organ- you know, the single-celled organism, I mean, yeah, I can like look at it and its behavior and try to imagine either consciousness present or consciousness not present, given the

44:27 various concepts I have at my disposal to engage in that kind of imagination. Sure, but that I just don't think that that gives us very much at the end of the day for philosophical purposes. It's It's always been always have misunderstood though what you were saying then, which I do a lot, but I I guess I must have done it here. Um, cuz I thought what you were saying earlier was uh Oh, I I know. of systems that we can't really make sense of without attributing these feelings. And what how they do what they do without attributing the feeling of life to them.

44:59 So That's what I've been trying to pick on is that part. Right. Right. Right. Fair. Fair. So So I I would maybe want to put that uh I might have said make sense of, but but that's a misleading expression. This is my fault because um that could be heard as it's inconceivable given the concepts we're deploying. Yeah. Whereas what I really meant is something a little different, which is um it's more of that kind of inference to the best explanation, I suppose. It's to say something like, "Okay, here's what

45:33 we know about biological systems. Here's what we know about um sentience. Um, are there are there considerations that would lead us to make an inference to the best explanation that would be along the lines of um wherever there's life, there is consciousness." We might even say wherever there's consciousness, there's life, but that's going to be a different kind of argument, but let's just say wherever there's life, there is consciousness, even in the case of these single-celled critters as an inference to the best explanation. That would be the better way to put it.

46:04 Okay. So, make sense of is not a good choice of words on my part if cuz we're going to hear that as a conceptual claim. Yeah, I did hear it that way. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. that's fair. That's fair. Okay. Yeah, interesting. Okay, I mean, because uh I mean, this is kind of a total non sequitur, not exactly here or there, but you know, I've always thought that these kinds of issues matter for, you know, uh uh questions about like um that come up in philosophy of religion about um problem of evil, for example. Mhm. Um and problem of suffering. And so, one of one of the things that I've I've

46:38 wondered about is um if if you have views like this, it certainly multiplies the possibility for suffering. But I mean, I guess it's it's not clear like, you know, what something like what the what you're attributing to these cells. Like, I'm I'm not clear you want to say that the thing the amoeba is like got a longing for the sugar and a Mhm. fear or aversion of the of the salt over there or whatever. Um that's not what you're saying, is it? Right? It's just that there's this kind of inchoate sense of being alive, but not that there's these distinguishing qualities in their experience or

47:11 Well, that I mean, that would be a further question. Um so, I mean, I want to say something like there's if we're pursuing this line of thought, that there's um a a kind of that there's a there's a feeling of being alive that would be made up of things like feeling energized or depleted and energized could also be hedonically valenced, so it feels, you know, good or pleasant or well to be energized, and it's

47:45 distressing to feel depleted or to um feel that one's being or integrity is, you know, coming apart either through being swallowed by a predator or through, you know, acids eating away at one's membrane. And if if if that is a proper characterization, or at least if that if that characterization is on is in any way adequate, or not adequate, but accurate, um then you're right. It does imply that there is a kind of we

48:20 might call it uh small-scale, minimal, low-grade, I don't know what we want to call it, suffering, um that is that is characteristic of of life as such. I mean, I actually am inclined to think that when I'm thinking in this biopsychic frame, to think that, you know, what it is to be alive is to be constantly challenged by the environment to exist in what Ezekiel De Paolo, following Hans Jonas, calls, you know, a kind of condition of precarity, a precarious

48:53 conditions. Um where um you know, everything you do is something you have to compensate for in order to hold together as the kind of being that you are. Right. And that that kind of like, you know, dialectical tension of being individuated in a way where you're constantly uh needing to hold together, um that that's a mark of life. And from a philosophy of religion angle,

49:27 depending on what religion you're coming from, um that raises all sorts of other questions, certainly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one way one way I thought this towards is uh saying that, you know, we if there were a god, uh at least as the Christian god sort of is depicted, you know, perfect being, morally perfect, all-powerful, knowing, then humans would have been created photosynthetically, so that we wouldn't be uh having cuz even vegetarians are carnivores in like the strict sense of the term. They have to eat other beings, you know? And of course if they're sentient, then that's bad. I

50:00 mean, what are you going to do? Be a Jainist and you know, it's not doing anything. I mean, that that is exactly one option is to try to I mean, this is the situation where we're in a universe of, you know, characterized by by life and suffering. And one option is the Jain option. You try to minimize your footprint, basically. Um you sweep where you walk. You wear masks to minimize, you know, Right, exactly. you know, uh killing small beings. Um you don't travel, you know, things like that. That That's one response to that situation, for sure. And then there are

50:34 a whole range of other responses as well. Right. But uh But yeah, I mean, even if you're a vegetarian, if you garden, you know that, you know, every time you pull out lettuce, you know, you're killing you're killing insects. I mean, Yeah, exactly. So, it's it seems like if there were a perfectly just being that could do it in a different way, then uh you know, that would be preferable. So, certainly I I feel like if someone were had the choice to sort of make a system that did all this sort of stuff, but didn't suffer, and then but also did exactly the same thing, but you added

51:06 but it's got to feel something, then it would be bad to add the feeling to it, at least for, you know, if you think about before even animals came, just all the bill- the billions of years where they're just single-cell organisms in the ocean on planet Earth. According to that's that's already a tremendous amount of like uh suffering if this view is right. Yeah, I mean, where you have life, you have suffering on this view. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And so, if you're going to build a universe with life, you're going to build a universe with suffering. That's right. Yeah, it's kind of a depressing view. Um

51:40 I mean, that that doesn't mean it's wrong. one I mean, from one perspective, it certainly it certainly is. I mean, and some religions, Gnostic religions, uh or you know, Manichaeism and things like that, you know, they see you know, the universe is just such it's just a big prison saturated with you know, nothing but suffering and um Yeah. you know, liberation salvation comes from you know, uh getting out of that. Um so And even some versions of of you know,

52:14 uh even some versions of of Buddhism can be rendered in in this way not in the sort of fallen, you know, created by a God way, but this this idea that you know, conditioned existence existence where things occur due to causes and conditions is fundamentally existential suffering. And the only liberation or you know, alternative to that is unconditioned mental peace nirvana which they conceive when they're following this line of thought as a as a kind of extinguishing of you know, of the life force. Um so I mean this is what religion grapples with

52:48 totally. Yeah, exactly except on a much grander scale. I mean it is yeah, alarming to think that could be going on at this uh at this level here. Um but uh let's see I see yeah, man time flies so fast when I'm having these conversations with uh it's amazing. But I want to cuz I want to go back to something that was talked about in passing like a while back. I want to come back to this thing you just mentioned a second cuz I think that's interesting too. But but part of what you were saying earlier was that um that uh this sort of thing that you're talking about has to be in the world. It can't be in an artificial environment.

53:22 Uh so I guess what what follows from that is that you can't have truly like simulated life on the kind of view that you're uh pushing here. Right. Right. So I I mean the way that I would put this is is that you can't that that life fundamentally is constituted by materiality. And so the idea that you could have um life in a purely formal or syntactic or symbolic domain um would be questionable. Yeah. So, it it's not that you couldn't create

53:57 in the sense of synthesize artificial life either in a lab. a different question, right? That's a different question, right? But, the idea that you could have um I I I suppose, you know, I don't know how much this is still really discussed uh cuz I haven't followed the literature recently, but you know, back in the in the sort of heyday of artificial life research, that the you know, analogy was made between like strong AI, weak AI, strong artificial life, weak artificial life. So, of course, you know, weak artificial life is you can

54:29 simulate all sorts of aspects of you know, living processes um computationally, but um instantiating a living system as a living system in a purely computational medium, which would be strong artificial life is another matter again. And my view on that is that um no, that that you you what what's constitutive of life are certain, you know, physical material dynamic processes um

55:02 involving, you know, everything that goes into that, you know, thermodynamics and entropy and you know, all of those things. Yeah. Um and that's an ingredient of life. Yeah, that's a necessary couldn't those be simulated though? I I mean, so Yeah, you I mean, you could formally simulate within certain limits aspects of them. Sure. But, that doesn't imply wouldn't it? I mean, so So, certainly we could build a simulation um which had elements in the simulation which behaved in these sort of ways that

55:36 we're talking about. Mhm. Um I mean behaving as though they were in an environment, being challenged by it, seeking things beneficial to it, being harmed by things detrimental to it. All in virtual environments that right that that that could be something um the behavioral stuff could be simulated. Yeah, we can simulate uh various aspects of what living systems do, but does it follow from the fact of simulation that it's a realization? Um I mean that I mean that raises

56:10 general questions about simulation, what simulations are. Yeah, exactly. But I mean suppose you took something like, you know, I agree there's a question here. So I'm not trying to say that obviously this is the case. I think it's interesting and complicated, but suppose that you were someone and you thought like, oh well, you know, David Chalmers has this view about the digital world being a real world. Yeah. Um it's just that there aren't physical objects in the digital environment, there are digital objects in the in that environment. And those things are real in the sense that they can be experienced and interacted with. And they depend on

56:43 actually occurring computational processes in the in the computer's hardware. Um And so in in the material world those, you know, tables and chairs are composed of atoms. And in the digital world they're composed of bits. Uh but why does that really matter? Of course we'd say that that this is a physical table and that's a digital table. And so you interact with them in different ways and so forth and so on. But I'm not sure why we wouldn't want to say there's a digital table in the virtual world. Of course it's not a physical table, you don't want to confuse the two, but why

57:15 isn't it a kind of thing in its own right in in this kind of way? Yeah. Um right. So I mean that's that's a question obviously independent of any considerations about life. It's more a question about um the the digital domain or the or the computational domain And relation to the physical a question of what counts as the environment in which the system gets to be enacted or enacts its its whatever. So I'm I'm wondering why there couldn't be this kind of digital environment where you can do all of this stuff.

57:47 Yeah. Um so I'm I'm I mean this is interesting. I haven't I haven't thought about these issues in a while, but I'm doubtful that there I I I guess one way to put it is I I might be inclined towards a certain kind of what would be the best term? Anti-realism, observer relativity for the digital environment. No. Um I I Like what computations it's performing or whatever depend on.

58:18 Exactly. It's hard for me to make to to I'll put it personally. It It's hard for me, which you know, take for what it's worth, um to understand some things being um a digital table apart from some you know, mapping of physical elements to formal elements that doesn't proceed through an observer, a programmer, a designer. Um

58:53 you know, to put it in terms of an older cognitive science language, I mean when you have a when you have a physical a physical symbol system or a physical formal system, a physical computational system, you know, you have these mapping functions, you know, that instantiate, that tell you how to you know, how to instantiate the formal structures in the physical structures, and then if they have a semantics, how to give the formal structures a semantics. And those mappings it seemed to me come from um they come from an observer.

59:27 They come from they come from something outside the system that that is physical that that's you know, a life and blood you know, flesh and blood physical system. So it's it's difficult for me to understand the idea of digital being maybe we could put it that way uh independent of that of that outside attribution. But why is that I mean I guess I don't see why that that matters because I mean the Empire State is real I think but it's you know, we built it. There's an external outside force that

1:00:01 that constructed it and blah blah blah but the building itself is standing over there. It's perfectly real. So why couldn't the same be true for the digital table? It's built by some external thing but there it is the digital table and so you know I'm just not sure what what sense Yeah, the real table you know, maybe it had to be built too obviously. So you know Well, I mean this is maybe not a popular thing to say in many circles today but it seems to me that the difference is that

1:00:34 the very nature of computation or information is observer involving in a way that the concrete that makes up the Empire State Building isn't. I mean yeah, the Empire State Building as Empire State Building depends on you know, conventions of individuation and sortals for building and all sorts of stuff that you know, don't exist in the world unless you have human beings with their conceptual linguistic practices. Yeah. But the physical structure individuated in a different way doesn't depend

1:01:07 well unless you're a hardcore anti-realist it would depend even even there. I mean that that you could go that way but we don't have to. I know I get what you're saying yeah. I mean I have some sympathy for that for that line actually but but that that's to take the argument down to the ground where where is no ground. Um but if we leave out that, it seems to me that, you know, when we're talking about information, we're talking about something that's observer dependent. Um Yeah, but I I guess I still don't see why that would why that matters to whether there's a digital table or not. You just have to sort of say it's

1:01:40 relative observer relative, and that's not what constitutes tables, but maybe. That That would be fine, actually. So, I don't you know, I don't have a problem with that, except that in the case of life, living systems, the idea is that they aren't simply dependent in that way because they they materially, energetically individuate and synthesize themselves. Yeah, but why couldn't I mean, so why couldn't something do that in in the in the digital environment? Uh interact

1:02:14 with its environment. You know, maybe it was pro maybe there's a set of instructions you give it that, you know, you know, like not not as simple as the Conway's Game of Life, but something, you know, you could program in which gives it this ability to modify itself and to interact with the environment and I guess I just don't I don't understand why at a certain point you wouldn't get something which was as complex as a living system in the digital environment. Um Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe this is just a fundamental intuition that

1:02:47 that just comes down to bedrock, but I'm not sure what would really Like if you I mean, maybe maybe there's two claims. One, could we do it cuz we haven't done it yet, obviously. Um but so could we build a digital simulated thing which had this level of complexity? You know, the the the the slingshot here is like simulating the human brain. Like could you scan my brain and put it in there? Um so, or could you do it to the rat brain or to a cockroach brain or whatever? Um so, that's one thing, is it technically possible? But secondly, like conceptually, if you could do that, then I just don't see why that would be any

1:03:21 count as any different than interacting with tables and chairs out here. These are physical, they're made of atoms, and there they're made of bits. But, uh um I'm just not seeing what what the So, yeah, there maybe have to be So, maybe this is kind of like a digital design argument. There has to be an external designer. Mhm. So, you know, I don't see why that should be make the view false. Uh maybe it implies that there's a in you know, one one level up there's someone that built the system or something. But, uh why why would that all by itself have anything to do with whether there were

1:03:53 objects in the system? It just implies I think a kind of form of idealism maybe in a sense. But, I don't know if that's really a bad thing or not. right right. So, I So, So, the the two positions then would be a kind of uh digital being versus, you know, digital analog of real being. Right. Um and, you know, I don't know. In the realm of intuitions, people are going to go different ways. For me,

1:04:27 um the very idea of a bit doesn't seem to me to be observer free or or free of some um mapping of informational structure onto physical structure that doesn't exist apart from the mapper. Right. So, you say it's made out of bits. Well, yes, in a sense that's true, but not in a sense that is true apart

1:05:02 from our practices of imposing maps and schemes onto systems in a way that's different from on table. Or maybe it's the same for the table. I don't know. I don't know actually. Maybe it's the same for the it is the same for the table, but mostly because of like quantum mechanics stuff. Great. Yeah, that could be. That actually could That that could be true. I mean that could be right. Sure. And of course, you know, whether the observer is an a fundamental element in quantum mechanics is something that's hotly debated, but it's not I don't think ruled out and Certainly not. that decoherence and all that stuff. Yeah, you know, so the stuff about

1:05:34 simulation is is hard because people will say things, you know, I I've heard people say things like various things. Simulating a hurricane doesn't get the computer wet. Simulating a bladder doesn't cause my computer to pee. Simulating a black hole doesn't cause matter to but all of those things I think involve a confusion because no one's going to going to say a simulated black hole's going to affect physical matter. What they're going to say is it affects digital matter. Uh so if there is simulated material, then the simulated black hole will affect it in in a certain way. And that's exactly what simulations of

1:06:07 black hole that's what they do. That's what they're for. If they didn't affect simulated matter, then what would be the point of simulating? So I do think that, you know, people I mean I want to bio psychics to be true and especially for this reason. Like I would like it to be true that you can't simulate my consciousness. But I I guess I I and that's why I'm attracted I like think about enactivism and the three E's and all that stuff because it's a way of thinking around that gets you sort of close to denying those. But I'm not really sure that it works though because I don't really know what the actual Yeah, no. arguments actually are. Great. I mean these are very interesting questions and you know, I haven't

1:06:40 thought about these questions in a while. It just brought back to mind I I don't think I can reconstruct the argument here on the fly though, but there was a very interesting paper some years back and I I found it quite compelling. Uh I'll I'll actually go back and read it after our conversation. It's by Margaret Boden. So it's like from the '80s or '90s and it's on the question of whether you could have um a purely digital analog realization of metabolism in a way that would warrant saying you have digital life. Interesting.

1:07:11 And her argument was no. No. And I it it it's a good argument as I recall in in the sense that you know it's a the analysis is is a deep analysis, but I cannot right now bring out the steps in the analysis and argument, but I'm going to go back and look at it, but it's on this very topic and I remember reading it. love to see it. Yeah, if you if you find it, please send it it to you. Yeah, I'll send it to you. Yeah, I'll put a link to here. Yeah. Um okay, so I also want to ask like we talked about this a little bit last time. I want to revisit this issue about like where does this all leave us metaphysically speaking? So especially considering biopsychism, so can you be a

1:07:45 naturalist, a physicalist and accept these views or it sounds like you're now in some other I mean if you can have single-celled organisms having these kind of you know complicated experiences, I would say if you know you know being distressed or being attracted to things. Is that compatible with physicalism do you think or do you care? Cuz I get the maybe you don't care, but I wonder. Um really I give that impression? Um Yeah, I mean my my line about physicalism is that I just don't think

1:08:20 it is a informative thesis. So in general um So what I what do I mean by that? I mean that you know physicalism if it's supposed to be a substantive metaphysical thesis depends on giving content to the concept of physical. And I pretty much think Hempel got this right with his you know the so-called Hempel's dilemma, right? You know so on

1:08:53 the one hand you can say well um what differentiates physicalism from you know more older forms of materialism is we defer to science specifically physics, specifically fundamental physics on this way of thinking, to tell us what the physical is. Okay, so if we defer to contemporary physics, then we know that, you know, what we think of as physicalism today is strictly speaking false, incomplete, inadequate, particularly with regard to the mind. So then if we defer to some future physics, physics at the end of the day,

1:09:26 whatever that might mean, it probably doesn't mean anything actually, but whatever it might mean, then we have no idea what physicalism is, and specifically with regard to the mind, given controversies in quantum mechanics and the whole range of other things about the place of the mind in the physical universe, you know, we don't really know what what that thesis is. Some Right. Some physicists, some philosophers of physics have argued that, you know, we're going to to deal with quantum physics, we either need to supersede the mental

1:09:58 versus physical dichotomy, or we need to appeal to mental processes or properties sui generis. If that's what physicalism is, then it loses like all meaning as something that's opposed to whatever anti-physicalism is. So, I just find physicalism not a terribly helpful framework within which to think. Now, if you say, "Okay, let's like drop physicalism and let's just generally talk in terms of naturalism." Then I would say, I think of my own work on this on this topic as, you know,

1:10:33 broadly naturalist in the sense that um I'm not appealing to things that take us outside of the framework of what could be made scientifically intelligible. I mean, that's a very weak specification of naturalism, I guess. Yeah. So then I would say, "Sure, it's naturalist. It's not supernaturalist, if that's contrast. I mean, naturalism as it a concept that comes into being historically in order to hive off the

1:11:06 supernatural. And you know, I'm not appealing to anything supernatural, so in that sense it's naturalist. So in some sense the the naturalism bit is just to to get the idea that there's like laws that govern the way it behaves or something like that. Is that all you mean by naturalism or yeah, or that I mean that's why I said scientifically intelligible. So I mean laws, maybe models, theories, counterfactual supporting generalizations spelled out in terms of models. I mean like philosophy of science people can argue about what the

1:11:38 best way to think of it is, but yeah, scientifically intelligible. you didn't like physicalism, so could we get you to What about biologicalism? Um suppose that you know you But when you say didn't like physicalism, what are you thinking of? Like what would be the the reasons? Well, in the way that you didn't like it. Oh, I see, for my reasons, like that. Yeah. Yeah, so suppose you thought it was of too imprecise or whatever, is biologicalism um I see. Oh, I see. So I mean what I would say about that is I would say

1:12:11 um everything I said about trying to think through the problem of the relation of life and mind was meant to be done within a framework where um we would be pursuing things through a scientific perspective. Um using scientific tools and and so on. So that would then mean it's naturalist.

1:12:48 Um under under like one very general heading of of meaning of what naturalism means. but notably that camp also would include David Chalmers as a naturalist and Philip Goff as well. Yeah, I mean they call themselves naturalist, don't they? I mean Yeah, they do. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm just saying that's a very weak conception. Right. That's a weak conception. Yeah. Right. So, for me, let me let me put it this way. This is a this is a different way of coming at the issue. For me, the issue isn't physicalism versus I don't know dualism

1:13:21 um or naturalism versus well, supernaturalism. For me, the contrast is naturalism versus transcendental philosophy. So, naturalism in the usual sense of the term, well, let me not say usual. Let me say one sense of naturalism means that you're committed to science being the best explanatory framework. And often it you you're also committed to physicalism. So, you have kind of like a

1:13:54 methodological component and an ontological component. Right. So, I've already said, well, the physicalism ontological component just doesn't seem to me the right way to think about, you know, what we're doing. Um you could put that by saying that, you know, I'm very interested in philosophy of nature, but physicalism just seems to me to be too kind of empty a concept to really say much. So, then the contrast with naturalism and transcendental philosophy is one where the transcendental thinker, and by the transcendental thinker I mean a certain lineage coming out of Kant

1:14:26 that flows through like Husserl and phenomenology. Um I'm I'm thinking of it in that sort of continental sense specifically. Okay. Those that tradition says, well, there are certain kinds of questions and explanatory, you know, investigations that we want to engage in that naturalism uh doesn't work for because naturalism has to assume answers to questions that we're interested in, namely questions about conditions of possibility for objectivity, for observability, things like that. Right. Um and naturalism is silent on those questions. So, that I'm very sympathetic

1:15:00 to. I mean, I I have a strong kind of uh affiliation with that transcendental evolving transcendental line of thought. So, on one way of using the word naturalist, this is a long answer to your question. Right. That makes me not a naturalist or not just a naturalist, but also someone committed to you know, the transcendental philosophical project. I see. Okay. Um the transcendental I I I don't want to get dist- I'm already distracted by cuz the transcendental bit here I was worried about throwing that into

1:15:31 the mix. Yeah. Uh because I mean, the this maybe you can help me understand cuz I the way Kant understands trans- transcendental stuff versus the way like, you know, Husserl does. I think are they they got to be different, right? I mean They are different. I mean, they're the transcendental stuff for Kant is the noumena, but for Husserl it's the experiences themselves are transcendental in in a sense. They're outside of us or something, right? Um so, well, the general shared core of meaning between Kant and Husserl is the idea of um

1:16:05 of when we when we raise transcendental questions, we're not concerned so much with what something is, but how it is cognizable or how it is thinkable or how it is knowable or how it is meaningful. Um so, possible means when when we say conditions of possibility, we mean conditions of possibility for thinkability or for meaningfulness or for, you know, givenness or, you know, different words people use. So, that's like that comes out of Kant and then Husserl specifically uh is interested in

1:16:37 that in relationship to the intentional activities of consciousness or mindedness um and he thinks that naturalism if that means causal mechanistic modeling and explanation is fine for you know it's the best for for you know the physical world um for stating you know laws and regularities and things like that but it

1:17:10 doesn't address the question of how we can you know cognize something as an instance of a law or how it's meaningful as law governed. That's like a transcendental question. I see. Um so that's the sense in which I'm using the Yeah and then that helps that clears it up actually that's good. Um okay but so I I want to get back to physicalism. Okay. So I I want to understand because I mean to me there's something there that makes sense so I guess I disagree with you a little bit about that and that's fine. I think we knew that already but I want to know to the sense in which like suppose I had some simple biological organism like as simple as we can make it single

1:17:46 cell. Mhm. And suppose I knew everything about this single cell organism that there is to know um biologically and forget about the level of physics if you don't like that because I have both whatever just biologically speaking everything that we needed to know is explained. Um do do I then know what it's like to be a single cell organism on your view? Oh I see. So so right so your your your concern is um so that's what you're using the word

1:18:21 physicalism to mean. Um so instance yeah. That's why I said I don't really care about physicalism so I agree with you but who cares about the word but I want to know about is there anything more at the end of this story that's not explainable accountable or falls out of our understanding of just the biology of this system, or do we need some other notion like consciousness or feeling to make sense of it that has to get added in at that point? Well, okay, so I I mean I heard two different things there. So, um

1:18:55 I would say that there's there's a difference between what we do when we are doing science. We, you know, we we we state we formulate laws, we construct models, um we give we give, you know, formal mathematical theories, you know, all of that gives us a particular uh representation of reality, let's say. Um and

1:19:31 it leaves all sorts of things out. Um it it leaves out the consciousness of the person who's, you know, doing the modeling, who's stating the laws. So, the idea that when I simply if I had a, you know, a completely adequate biological model for the behavior of an organism, that would tell me everything that there is to know about the organism. No, I would I would say no. It's a it's a I mean, the nature of models is that's not the nature of a model. A model is selective. It abstracts from certain things. I

1:20:03 mean, so here, you know, I'm I'm relying on things in the philosophy of science, you know, in terms of how I think about science. Um you know, models are are sort of by their very nature selective, partial, rely on, you know, other things being equal conditions, and they don't give us, you know, everything there is to know about reality. That's just not the nature of of how it works. So, I I don't like the underlying assumption that is often in these arguments, well, if you knew everything

1:20:36 there was to know in scientific terms, because it buys into a certain kind of I would say strongly metaphysically realist view of science that I just don't think is how science works. Uh-huh. So, um I wouldn't know I mean I wouldn't have Of course I wouldn't be able to subjectively access the feeling of being a bacterium. Um in virtue of simply having an incredibly detailed model of all the biochemical pathways that, you know,

1:21:09 make up its structure in relationship to the environment. I You know, but that's not the job of science to give me that. Of course. Um but but could you know that it had one or like a general what it was like? Um I'm inclined to think so here is where we connect maybe to the transcendental line of thought. I'm inclined to think um if if no means could I derive one from the other purely formally, no, I would have to go through my own experience and my own empathetic in a

1:21:43 very general sense of empathy relationship to that system as a living system in order to to treat or recognize it as as conscious. And um that would be in a way transcendental cuz it's the kind of condition of possibility of me being able to even relate the idea of a physical structure of that complexity to the idea of subjectivity or mindedness or consciousness. Yeah. Uh yeah, I mean that's interesting because I guess

1:22:15 uh I mean one corollary of what you're saying is that you you're not going to get an answer to this question even like even if you extrapolate to the limit, which maybe we we could never get to, but it's even like if you could extrapolate to the limit where we're done like where we we understand as much about biology of single cell systems as we could, we wouldn't ever get an answer to this question is is there something that it's like to be them? Do they have a feeling? It's always going to be this kind of abductive argument. Uh because something like what you're saying is not No amount of science ever will kind of get to the point where you can say, "Aha, look, we could deduce the fact that there is something that it's

1:22:48 like to be a single cell organism or not." Whereas I think that someone like, you know, I would be hopeful. I think someone like Thomas obviously thinks that we could do that. Right. Whereas someone like me would at least be it would be nice if we could do something like that. It would make things a lot easier. Yeah, I mean, deduce is really a tricky word there because um We'll come to know or something like Yeah, I mean, so so Well, it's not that I don't like it. It's it's it's more that, you know, when you deduce something, you you've got to have, you know, premises. You've got to have formal rules and you've got to have

1:23:21 certain premises and concepts and assumptions in place. So, maybe we could deduce given certain concepts and assumptions in place, but I don't think those concepts and assumptions in place are going to be in that place outside of our um larger kind of, you know, empathetic engagement with the world. It's like we could we could within a we could within a limited frame we could say, "Okay, here are the concepts and assumptions and now we can make a deduction." That might be possible. I don't want to say a priori it's not possible. How how how could I possibly know that? But I'm

1:23:54 strongly inclined to think that we couldn't get those concepts and assumptions into the framework in a stable place without this larger um what I would call kind of transcendental condition of possibility that comes from our being sentient and minded and um in virtue of that able to, you know, perceive the world in certain ways where we can where we can make these these bridging these bridging connections. Um Yeah, and that's that's the transcendental stuff that you were

1:24:25 talking about basically. So, it starts from our case and says, "How is this possible? And how how can we make sense of an organism like that?" It's an interesting I mean, you kind of have to buy the whole package uh the whole background view in order to get to that that point though, right? Um Yeah, I mean, that's philosophy. Sooner or later, somewhere in philosophy, you got to buy a whole package. It's true. That's a good point. That's a good point. We we work with whatever packages we think, you know, are most attractive to us and we see where they go and then other people come along and you know,

1:24:59 build on what they already have. I guess so I know we're running out of time here, at least I am cuz I I'm on a timer called kids home from preschool. That's my That's my timer. Yeah. I know I know that one for sure. Uh but I I guess I wonder like it seemed like part of your reason for buying this background package or this thing that we're just talking about uh the the kind of causal efficacy of consciousness at least in our own case. Um and so then extending that outwards and making sense of other organisms doing the things that they do uh and having that kind of causal power

1:25:33 and that these other kind of dualist views lack they don't have an account of that, they can't explain it. So, I wonder what how what you think of the kind of panpsychist argument that they can explain that. And that's kind of one of the big motivations for this modern revival of panpsychism. That To be honest, that's why I like take it seriously is because it I mean, what drove me towards what I might might consider views the identity theory mind brain identity was the stuff about causal efficacy. But here they come along and they say, "Well, no, no, no, actually it's the electrons and protons that are doing all the work and those things just are consciousness. So, actually

1:26:04 consciousness does the work." And so, I wonder what you think about that kind of move. You seem skeptical, but I wonder what do you say to I I guess I'm Yeah, I'm not really I'm not I'm not really persuaded by that consideration that you've got a better account of of causal efficacy um because you're basically you're taking I don't know what to call it. It's you're taking phenomenality

1:26:37 and you're distributing it across the universe at you know at everywhere at the fundamental level and then you're saying that because it's the intrinsic nature of the physical you get causation um but you're not appealing to it for the causation. You're getting the causation out of the physical structures that you're appealing to and you're just placing the phenomenality as the intrinsic nature of the physical. If I you know I'm if we're thinking of panpsychists you know like Goff for example.

1:27:11 So I mean that that doesn't really seem to me to be I mean given that you got to that place through all of these kind of a priori assumptions um the path to it I find not a compelling path and then the idea that you're somehow getting causation out of it seems to be a bit of illusory because you the causation isn't coming from it specifically at least as far as I can as far as I can see. Now I I let me let me say though just you know I know we're

1:27:44 running out of time but um that although I'm not attracted to that kind of panpsychism I am very much attracted to thinkers who want us to kind of overhaul and rethink our conception of nature in a way where experience and nature are no longer um conceptually divorced from each other. So I'm thinking of somebody like Whitehead actually. Um Whitehead is not a panpsychist in the contemporary sense because he doesn't he doesn't start from where they start,

1:28:17 which is in his terms a kind of bifurcation of nature into the subject and the objective. He says, "No, we need to rethink what we mean by nature. And when we do that, we will have, you know, put together experience and nature in a in a different way." This is the neutral monism stuff? Yeah, you could call it a kind of neutral monism, I suppose. Um he didn't use that term himself. Um but in any case, it's it's it's I would call it a kind of philosophy of nature that rethinks the relationship of mind and nature in a in a way that that shares some things

1:28:51 with pan psychism, but really is fundamentally different. Um so I know we can't launch into a discussion of that now, but but I would say that I do find that an attractive route. Um and there I think you're going to have more success with the causation problem than you will with the kind of pan psychism that's invoked right now. No, this is the outside of the bio psychism discussion, right? This is a Yeah, this is a more Yeah, this is a bigger discussion outside of the bio psychism. I mean, Whitehead interestingly takes the word organism and uses it as a you know, he says, "The organism is

1:29:24 a model for how we should understand um elementary physical events because it's, you know, individuating and it has a certain kind of, you know, temporality and it's more uh relatable to um ideas process and mind." So I mean, that's kind of how he goes. It's a terminological move he makes in the early 20th century. Whether it's the right terminological move now is another question. But but that's Exactly. He's he's He's he's enlarging in a way a bio psychist framework all the way out, but not in the way that a pan psychist today

1:29:56 would do. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. I know I just as a kind of anecdotal note, I'll say I talked to Ruth Millikan a lot and I've always tried to get her to say something about consciousness and she she won't do it. She always says, "In another lifetime" as a joke, but then never you know, she's like, "I'm interested in technology." But the one thing she did say about consciousness was that if we're going to make progress on it, we got to read more Whitehead. Oh, really? Yeah, I know. I was kind of surprised by that, but she said she's very grateful to Very interesting. I would never she doesn't necessarily think he's right, but that you've got to challenge the way we think about things in the way that he does to get to something that

1:30:28 maybe is right. Oh, that's I'm very I'm very interested and encouraged to hear that cuz I wouldn't have guessed that she would say that. Exactly. I wouldn't have either. Exactly. And I think I think she's right. It's not that we It's not that he got it, but that his direction of thinking is the one to work with. Actually, this is something I'm writing about now. There's a whole other conversation, which we won't have I know cuz you have time, but I'm working on a book with two physicists Marcelo Gleiser and Adam Frank. Oh, wow. It's called The Blind Spot: Experience, Science, and the Search for Truth. And MIT will publish it eventually when we

1:31:01 give it to them. And Whitehead looms large in that book. He's Yeah, he's he's a large figure in that book. I'd love to get a sneak peek at that someday, so I'll have to pester you about that, but uh Yeah. Now it looks like we're going to have to have to have you back again to talk about all these other cool things that you're doing. Yeah. Well, this is great fun and it helped me today just work through some of the thoughts about the paper that I have to write for that JCS issue. So that's that's very useful. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. I also similar to me. All right. So on that note I do have to let you go cuz the countdown is ticking,

1:31:35 but I I wonder like my usual final question, I wonder if there's anything you were Well, I was expecting we'd talk about death more today, but I guess we'll have to talk about that again later, but Well, that was that's the other book I'm working on. That's a single author book, so we could have a conversation about that entirely sometime. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I would love to cuz I think those are important issues, but was there anything you were expecting would come up that hasn't besides the things we've mentioned? No, we covered a lot of ground. Hopefully it'll be interesting to the out there who may watch it or listen to it. Um Yeah, uh there are is that hope eternally someone will find this episode. Like I

1:32:08 think they will actually. I think yeah, your work is super cool as always, but uh this is in particular super interesting and it's a it's it's a surprisingly an issue that hasn't got a lot of attention in in philosophical circles at least lately, panpsychism I mean. Um so it's cool to see it kind of uh being um attended to carefully, thoughtfully. So on that note, uh thanks again for joining me and uh hang out for a second. I'll say bye after you. Okay, thank you very much. Bye. All right, we're clear. Good.