Anand Rangarajan Yale University

1. 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

2. 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 dual-aspect panpsychist “LiberalNaturalism” approach. Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html

3. Rosenberg’s Liberal Naturalism Experience and Causation • Physical facts do not entail experiential facts. • From (1), experience is non-physical. • Physical explanations are a complete explanation of causation. [Denied here.] • From (2) and (3), experience lies outside the causal structure and is irrelevant. Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html

4. 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

5. 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. : Receptive prop. : Effective prop. Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html

6. Rosenberg’s Liberal Naturalism Avatars in a “real” CG world Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. Critique of Wilber’s holonic approach Twenty Tenets • Reality not composed of things or processes, but of holons. • Insufficient distinction made between emergent functional properties and natural individuals. • Holons display self-preservation, self-adaptation, self-transcendence and self-dissolution. • Biology driven bias. • Holons emerge. • Holons emerge holarchically. • One-dimensional, temporal emergence. Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html

12. Critique of Wilber’s holonic approach Twenty tenets (contd.) • Each emergent holon transcends and includes its predecessors. • One-dimensional (see above). • 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. • 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

13. Critique of Wilber’s holonic approach Twenty tenets (contd.) • Each successive level of evolution produces greater depth and less span. • Evolution is irrelevant. • Greater the depth of the holon, greater the degree of consciousness. • Consciousness undefined. • 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

14. Critique of Wilber’s holonic approach Twenty tenets (contd.) • Holoarchies coevolve. • Evolution is irrelevant. • Micro is in relational exchange with the macro at all levels. • Fine. Evolution has • Directionality, • Increasing complexity, • Increasing differentiation/integration, • Increasing organization/structuration, • Increasing autonomy, and • Increasing telos. Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html

15. Critique of Wilber’s holonic approach Twenty tenets (contd.) • Every holon issues an IOU to the Kosmos. • 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

16. Critique of Wilber’s holonic approach Overall critique • Critical temporal issues implicit in twenty tenets. • Over-reliance on evolution and self-organization 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 All-Form, the summit application of the twenty tenets.” Anand Rangarajan. URL:http://noodle.med.yale.edu/anand/profile.html

17. Critique of emergentist approach Evolution and self-organization • 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

18. 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

19. 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 non-computational 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