A Dual-Aspect Panpsychist
Critique of Emergentist,
Quantum and Wilber’s
Holonic Theories of
Consciousness
Anand Rangarajan
Yale University
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Logical Supervenience
• Almost everything is logically
supervenient on the physical.
• Exceptions are:
– Experience
– Physical laws
– Awareness (locus of self)
• Causal closure of physical world
renders experience epiphenomenal.
• Introduce Gregg Rosenberg’s dualaspect panpsychist “Liberal
Naturalism” approach.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Rosenberg’s Liberal Naturalism
Experience and Causation
1. Physical facts do not entail experiential
facts.
2. From (1), experience is non-physical.
3. Physical explanations are a complete
explanation of causation. [Denied
here.]
4. From (2) and (3), experience lies
outside the causal structure and is
irrelevant.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Rosenberg’s Liberal Naturalism
A New Metaphysics of
Causation
• Humean regularity theories of
causation demolished.
• Receptivity: degree of sensitivity to
other effective states.
– Receptivity is not logically
supervenient on the physical.
– Visualized as a directed graph.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Rosenberg’s Liberal Naturalism
Receptivity and Spacetime
• Direction of time supervenes on
asymmetric receptive connections.
• Causality condition on locality and
not a locality condition on causality.
• Roughly visualized as a Markov
chain.
: Effective prop.
: Receptive prop.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Rosenberg’s Liberal Naturalism
Avatars in a “real” CG world
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Rosenberg’s Liberal Naturalism
Carrier theory of causation
• Receptive and effective properties form
a compositional circularity.
• Contrastive circularities in any system
have to be carried by external carriers.
• Good example is user semantics in
GUIs.
• Contrasts in physics are not carried by
anything extrinsic to physics.
• Phenomenal qualities carry effective
properties.
• Experiencing of qualities carries
receptive connections.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Rosenberg’s Liberal Naturalism
Phenomenal Individuals
• Phenomenal individuals carry the
nomic content of natural individuals.
• Every natural individual is a
phenomenal individual.
• Individuals can contain other
individuals.
• Such containment implies multiple
spacetime reference frames.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Rosenberg’s Liberal Naturalism
Hierarchical Spacetime
Frames
• Each individual has own spacetime
frame of reference.
• Each spacetime built up from
asynchronous receptive connections.
• Compositional hierarchy of
individuals may be separated into
same level versus different levels.
• Overlapping spacetimes at same
level can cohere.
• Possibility spaces of higher levels
under constrained by lower levels.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Rosenberg’s Liberal Naturalism
Ontology & Epistemology
• Directed graph of receptive connections
needed in physics.
• Duality of effective and receptive
properties.
• Causation and spacetime placed in the
framework of the directed graph.
• Receptive connections epistemically
opaque but ontologically clear.
• Experience is epistemically clear but
ontologically opaque.
• Clean duality exploited in this approach.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Critique of Wilber’s holonic approach
Twenty Tenets
1. Reality not composed of things or
processes, but of holons.
•
Insufficient distinction made between
emergent functional properties and
natural individuals.
2. Holons display self-preservation,
self-adaptation, self-transcendence
and self-dissolution.
•
Biology driven bias.
3. Holons emerge.
4. Holons emerge holarchically.
•
One-dimensional, temporal
emergence.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Critique of Wilber’s holonic approach
Twenty tenets (contd.)
5. Each emergent holon transcends
and includes its predecessors.
•
One-dimensional (see above).
6. The lower sets the possibilities for
the higher, the higher sets the
probabilities of the lower.
•
No explanation of the distinction
between possibility and probability.
7. Number of levels in a hierarchy –
depth. Number of holons on a
given level – span.
•
Hierarchies can be tangled.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Critique of Wilber’s holonic approach
Twenty tenets (contd.)
8. Each successive level of evolution
produces greater depth and less span.
•
Evolution is irrelevant.
9. Greater the depth of the holon,
greater the degree of consciousness.
•
Consciousness undefined.
10. Destroy any type of holon and you
will destroy all of the holons above it
and none of the holons below it.
•
Great Goddess destroyed when universe
is destroyed? Modification: If universe
never existed, Goddess destroyed.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Critique of Wilber’s holonic approach
Twenty tenets (contd.)
11. Holoarchies coevolve.
•
Evolution is irrelevant.
12. Micro is in relational exchange
with the macro at all levels.
•
Fine.
Evolution has
13. Directionality,
14. Increasing complexity,
15. Increasing differentiation/integration,
16. Increasing organization/structuration,
17. Increasing autonomy, and
18. Increasing telos.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Critique of Wilber’s holonic approach
Twenty tenets (contd.)
19. Every holon issues an IOU to the
Kosmos.
20. All IOUs are redeemed in
emptiness (shunyata).
•
Mysticism bracketed out.
Capsule summary: Functional properties of
evolution and self-organization synthesized
together with qualia. Does not take into
account supervenience relations.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Critique of Wilber’s holonic approach
Overall critique
• Critical temporal issues implicit in
twenty tenets.
• Over-reliance on evolution and selforganization as twenty tenets base.
• Supervenience relations not
mentioned.
• Hierarchies not constructed using
receptive and effective properties.
• Emergence linked to time.
“The manifest All-Unity evolves as AllForm, the summit application of the
twenty tenets.”
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Critique of emergentist approach
Evolution and selforganization
• Self-organization and selection:
cornerstone of emergentist approach.
• Direction of time assumed as well as
single spacetime.
• Evolution only selects functional
properties.
• Self-organization does not distinguish
between emergent functional
properties and natural individuals.
• No fundamental understanding of
causation.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Critique of Quantum Approaches
Quantum Theory and
Experience
• Several unique features of QM.
– Selection from a space of possibilities
(measurement problem.)
– EPR non-locality.
– Bose-Einstein “holistic” condensates.
– Interpretation of wave function.
• Projection operators performing
selection (Stapp).
• Orch OR non-computational collapse of
wave function (Hameroff and Penrose).
• Other approaches (Albert, Squires,
Goswami, Lockwood, Hodgson, Bohm).
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html
Critique of Quantum Approaches
Overall Critique
• Chalmers: “Even given a nonlocal,
physical process, it remains logically
possible that the process could take
place in the absence of consciousness.”
• Projection operators, non-local and noncomputational processes conceived in
functional terms.
• Quantum measurement problem and
non-locality in EPR: clues to an
asynchronous model?
• Asynchronous causation has potential to
unite quantum theory and general
relativity.
Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html