[crazygringo]

Conscious awareness appears to be a fundamental aspect of the universe -- as fundamental as the four known fundamental forces -- and physics is concerned with describing the laws of the universe.

How could consciousness not be lumped in with physics, from this perspective?

It doesn't matter whether consciousness pervades the universe in a form of panpsychism, or is emergent out of interactions we already understand. Fluid mechanics is emergent too, in a sense -- that doesn't put it outside of physics.

[yongjik]

Fluid mechanics might actually be a good analogy. We know that fluid mechanics happens, and it's entirely made of already known physical interactions, yet the phenomenon is so complicated that it deserves to be its own field of study.

On the other hand, asking something like "Is viscosity a part of the fabric of the universe?" would be meaningless, because viscosity is not a property of any elementary particle or force. The complication arises out of how those groups of particles interact with each other.

At least, with fluid mechanics, there's a good physical abstraction that reduces real world phenomena into partial differential equations which work surprisingly well. When it comes to consciousness, we can't even ask "What's the consciousness per gram of this substance?" and I doubt such a question will become meaningful any time soon.

[some_furry]

> Conscious awareness appears to be a fundamental aspect of the universe -- as fundamental as the four known fundamental forces -- and physics is concerned with describing the laws of the universe.

Why do you believe this to be true?

If it's a self-evident observation, try explaining it to me like I'm 5.

[crazygringo]

Sure, ELI5: the only things we actually know are from our conscious experience. Everything else we have to logically infer from those conscious experiences. Literally everything is built upon our conscious awareness. We have direct experience of our conscious awareness before we can even do physics to determine the four fundamental forces at all.

To clarify, consciousness isn't just a fundamental aspect of the universe -- for our human minds, it's the most fundamental aspect.

If you want to take this to an extreme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism

[some_furry]

That's an interesting philosophy, but I don't see how consciousness is implied by the standard model or the current investigations into physics beyond the standard model.

[crazygringo]

It isn't. It still has to be integrated with it, that's the whole point. We don't know how gravity is implied by the standard model either, but we still know it's there.

The point is that, at the end of the day, it's still necessarily going to be physics.

[some_furry]

I'm not a philosopher. I did study physics in college.

I do not see it necessary for consciousness to be as fundamental as electroweak interactions and so on. In my mind, it's perfectly possible for consciousness to be an emergent property of a complex system that itself is not conscious in any meaningful way.

Look at other examples of this; i.e. tensegrity.

To conclude that consciousness is as fundamental as bosons or gravity needs a lot of evidence.

Since you said so definitively that you believe that conclusion is true, I was hoping you had specific evidence on hand.

[crazygringo]

Nobody said consciousness is best described at the subatomic level next to bosons. It may be, it may not be. Currently there is no evidence in either direction. Gravity certainly proves that the standard model is quite incomplete so far, and we currently don't have the slightest idea how.

But I earlier used fluid dynamics as an example of emergence. To make the point that fluid dynamics is still physics.

Philosophically, the fact that consciousness is going to be part of physics is self-evidently true. It's true by definition if you believe that consciousness interacts with the universe as described by physics -- for which the specific evidence is that we're having this conversation in the first place.

[mindok]

How can you conceive of bosons or gravity without consciousness? How can you possibly prove objective reality through the filter of subjective consciousness?

[fatfingerd]

You've just demonstrated the anthropic principle. Intelligent contemplation requires a lot of things so we will see them and can see them as fundamental, but they might be obscure in the universe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

[crazygringo]

No, you are misunderstanding the anthropic principle. That merely explains statistical things such as why it might be hard to find intelligent life elsewhere.

The anthropic principle is a concept we've created out of our conscious observation of the universe. But take away our consciousness and you take away any and all of our knowledge of any universe whatsoever.

Consciousness cannot be "obscure" when it is the basis for one's own experienced reality, the substrata underlying everything else. Consciousness experience is fact; our conceptual understanding of the universe is mere theory. Well-tested theory, but theory nonetheless.

[fatfingerd]

> Consciousness cannot be "obscure" when it is the basis for one's own experienced reality, the substrata underlying everything else.

That you can do any of this has consciousness as a precondition, it is of significance to us but we are most likely a statistical anomaly in the Universe. It is statistically probable that we have this rather fragile viewpoint on the Universe, that's only available in small places for short times, because consciousness has preconditions.

For people who work in or consume TV and film maybe the video camera seems fundamental to the nature of the world, but it wasn't very important before it was created.

[amelius]

Not the parent commenter, but perhaps this helps:

1. Some people believe that conscious awareness exists on top of physics. I.e., something happens and conscious awareness notes that it happens. Here there is a flow of information going from physics to (our) conscious awareness. But not necessarily in the other direction.

2. The above (1) is not likely to be the true. We discuss conscious awareness in this physical world. Hence physics "knows" that conscious awareness exists, and thus there is at least also a flow of information in the other direction.

One might go further, and start questioning whether it is physics that does not really exist, and only our conscious awareness exists ...

[some_furry]

What about physics implies consciousness?

I've often heard some hand-wavy remarks about quantum physics, but they're largely unconvincing.

For example, a wavefunction will collapse because we use e.g. photons to measure a particle as it enters one of two slits. It's the act of measurement, not the introduction of a conscious mind, that causes the collapse. So that doesn't track.

[jemmyw]

Funny because the whole argument does work better if you imagine the proponents are 5. "I'm special therefore the universe must care about me and my thoughts"