If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious
This philosophical paper explores a startling implication of materialism: if consciousness arises from the functional organization of matter, then entities like the United States—with its complex information processing and feedback loops—might qualify as conscious. The author examines this possibility, challenging our intuitions about where minds can exist.
If materialism is true, the United States is probably conscious.
- wolframhempel
I'm perfectly happy to believe that the United States has an awareness of itself in the abstract sense that its a complex system with emerging behaviors that are feedbackloops of itself. I'm also convinced that all mammals and most sea and air creatures have consciousness in this as well as the more general sense.
To me, the fact that an awareness of one self exists isn't particularly stunning - what's stunning to me is that we believe it is something incredibly special and we are the only ones endowed with it.
I think this assumption comes from the same human self confidence that decided it was the only thing "created in gods image" in the universe and so on...
- Waterluvian
An onotlogical pivot I experienced in my late teens was recognizing that the taxonomy of life is not some immutable fact that we're uncovering. It's this Sisyphean task of providing structure to something that is everchanging. It's never complete, never correct, but it's often useful. In that way it's a lot like unicode!
When thinking about the evolution of the taxonomy of life, I think about how there's really no good reason to imagine a lifeform as being a singular, physically connected organism. We structure it that way because it's useful. We see trees and we imagine each one is a lifeform, but there are entire forests of just one tree. I don't think it's too bizarre to structure a model that demonstrates communities of lifeforms (whether ants, slime mold, or humans) as being effectively one conscious being.
- delichon
No individual wrote the Constitution. It was a collective effort. Yet it has features of a work we would expect from a consciousness, such as a view of itself as embedded in a larger historical context. I don't have a hard time seeing that document as a form of speech emitted by a conscious collective. And not knowing exactly how human individual consciousness works, it isn't very clear whether such collective consciousness is a metaphor or an example. Especially when individual consciousness seems to emerge from a collective of neurons.
- omnicognate
> something it's like to be you
This phrase comes up a lot in discussions of consciousness and I've never understood it and never seen why it's supposed to encapsulate the idea.
It isn't "like" anything to be me. There isn't something else I can compare it to. All I know is that I exist and experience and that there is an aspect of that experience that is impossible to communicate, define or share.
- someguynamedq
There's nothing requiring consciousness in one arena to look/feel/be like consciousness in another. The United States could be "conscious," but that doesn't mean it wakes up in the morning and thinks "I need some coffee." Restated, there may be something it is like to be the United States, but that doesn't mean it is anything like what it is to be human.
Metaphysical Idealism is on the rise these days. It's not clear why, but I wonder if AI is making humans cling to the hope that there is something truly special about us after all. It is not clear to me that there is a reason to reject materialism apart from ego.