Is It Time To Accept That EVERYTHING is Conscious?
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– VIDEO NOTES
Rating Your Philosophical Hot Takes, episode something.
– LINKS
Watch my podcast with Annaka Harris: https://youtu.be/4b-6mWxx8Y0?si=J2onKDqhuWMGNqiq
Watch my older podcast with Philip Goff on panpsychism: https://youtu.be/RlY7wDDpjpQ?si=bWWLjqC8UcG-clMr
– TIMESTAMPS
0:00 – Philosophy is Mostly Vibes
7:32 – Consciousness is Fundamental
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@CosmicSkeptic
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
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@frankjspencejr
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Making sense of MY experience alone (since consciousness is inherently private and first person):
Consciousness is the one thing that must exist; Consciousness can contain illusions but cannot BE an illusion.
Materialism has no use nor explanation for consciousness.
Matter can be an illusion.
The most efficient answer is that experience is the stuff of reality, and experience creates the illusion of a material world, self, others.
Materialism is in this scenario simply an explanatory construct for experience. It is the most efficient way to describe and make sense of experience.
My biggest concern with this model is: experience is inherently passive input: sensations, thoughts, and feelings, with no obvious mechanism for output. Thus, combined with the private, singular nature of consciousness, suggests that there are no actual separate consciousness beings interacting, but rather a single consciousness. I find this both logical and seriously depressing.
@FirstNameLastName-rh6zc
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
I was like holy shit because it was so absurd that I was literally just sparking up one as you talk about cigarettes as a predictive factor to knowing Albert Camus and Absurdism which is one of my favourite Philosophies 😭😭😂😂 Why is that even a predictive factor, the whole thing feels quite absurd. Good job Universe, Alex, Albert.. Idk anymore
@worldcitizen3.14
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
I haven't heard of Albert Camus and funnily enough I don't wear a turtleneck. This reminded me of the norm macdonald joke about the professor of logic from the University of science 😂
@karltind
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
But consciousness is still emergent.
@nathenwesner9856
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
The combination problem .
@nathenwesner9856
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Clickbait. Nice commercial. Lame.
@nathenwesner9856
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Is this about consciousness?
@nathenwesner9856
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
If you like Nietzsche, read Schopenhauer.
@nathenwesner9856
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
No Alex, it is time to accept idealism. Pansychism is close, but no cigar.
@gaulxtraining5444
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
As soon as you mentioned Peterson, I was out.
@MissHayleyRoberts
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Isn’t this what people have said all along with animism and polytheism?
@nicholaslarmour5647
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
I found a video of you singing un the past and I have so many questions
@erykflapjak9036
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
That's can't be a fact in the definitive chain of reason that I comprehended. Maybe I'll put it together in few months, destroy what humanitys colective perception of reality is, maybe I'll overdose on amphetamine. Its whatever, Fear is a tool of my existence that I leave for the split second moment when I am not sure what the cat moving in the dark is. I'll have no regrets, I am just a part of this thing
@pissum
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
i feel that you shouldn’t have justified that first take. fully and deeply engaging with opinions and thoughts that you don’t agree with or “vibe” with is incredibly important
@peterblair6489
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Yep, I was just saying that to a few rocks the other day. They didn't choose to elaborate, so I assume they agreed.
@jannesplatteau
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
wallet salesman
@markoshun
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
It might be, but if all these things that happen in consciousness aren't there in a rock, how would we ever know?
On the other hand, you can make a case for consciousness arising/evolving out of awareness. It could just be just what happens, or at least what happened, when aware beings were free to propagate and evolve. Awareness emerged and consciousness evolved out of it.
@mayragarcia9451
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
I won't be able to see my chair the same way…
This reminded me of the scene when they become rocks in the movie "everything everywhere all at once"
@ingihafsteinsson
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Yes it the old tired story about a man within a dream, he dosen´t know that he is just a character in a dream.
so he tries to contact the dreamer, but the dreamer is of course fast asleep.
So then he decides to invent this thing called life, just so that he can survive in this fantasy world, but that dosen´t do it,
it´s nagging him not knowing in who´s dream he´s stuck.
After 20 years in this dreamscape he just can´t take it any longer, he has no control over anything, he can´t prof a thing,
not even that he is just a dream. So now he must invent some escape plan, yes he´s gonna brake out of this
prison.
But after another 20 years of planning the escape, it slips away from him, suddenly he dosen´t remember who or
what he is, finally he is content, made perfect in a state of oblivion, he is now just another hamster on a wheel.
@flavertex658
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Panpsychism does kinda require the rubber to meet the road on what "subjects" and "objects" are. If consciousness per-se is all that exists, then what does it mean that "I" am conscious? Is it just my brain, or is my entire body part of "my" consciousness? Why not my liver, or my heart, are they conscious in a way which is wholly disimilar and disconnected from the way that I am? Must the system be "integrated" in some way, i.e. integrated information theory? Its a puzzle, a mystery.
@Хрю-у6м
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
i had this theory that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe that gets stronger as the complexity of a structure increases. like a plant has less complexity so it has less consciousness and the brain is more complex so the experience is more intense. while i was exploring this idea i found out there are actually people who think similarly and this idea is the closest to how i see it. i wish i could work on this in a scientific way but i have no idea how
@betabenja
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
is it time to accept you don't have a good definition of "conscious"?
@br0wnie017
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
If memory requires consciousness, doesn't this revoke the deterministic view (inexistence of free will)?
@analogia_entis
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
I am beginning to think Alex just one dumb assshole.
Just take that opening. WHY WHY WHY would anyone study just any school of thought and why long enough to be convinced???
Kant taught us via the Antinomies that it is just the opposite that if you START from somewhere primal on say free will / deternimins (because you must start somewhere) you can justify opposites !!!
Now this pompous effeminate clod violates even his own premise since Why assume everything is ____ at all. All things share BEING but not even a materialist would posit that from the naturalist Big Bang position everthing had consciousness !!!
Sorry, this is the kind of guy we all loathed at the prep school I went to, a guy that can talk but has no inner anything behind it
HE should have been a Colbert style TV host or maybe a Chuck Schumer
@azhaz578
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Christ is all and in all
@usagitenpura9080
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Now I want a "scientific" theory about how sponginess is the fundamental constituent of the universe.
My aesthetic preferences rocks.
@bogo5012
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Yay ive been hype for these philosophy patch notes
@michaeld77
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Perhaps consciousness can be defined as a unified field of awareness. The material universe is consciousness that is expressed as a profound diffusion with varying degrees of progressive reintegration.
@ryanbudney3356
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Small variation maybe mentioned elsewhere. Perhaps consciousness is essentially a ground-state of the universe. The idea of individual consciousness is a fiction amplified by our organic bodies and localized memory. i.e. individuals are like a stylus on a record-player, picking up the local consciousness about their bodies.
@robhoneycutt
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Just not buying the panpsychism thing. Seems to me consciousness is a product of evolution. A sense of self awareness (consciousness) is going to assist in survival, almost like it’s an advanced form of fight or flight. The chair or your microphone have no capacity for self preservation and therefore lack consciousness.
@rhizin
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
1.If a philosopher writes in such a way I do not have to read every sentence three times to understand it, they have already won.
2. Maybe the microphone has some kind of consciousness. How would we know? It has no way to express it we could understand.
@jorick-zs3up
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
I think that idealism as in all is mind the universe is mental, is more accurate then pan psycism
@joe-un1ky
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
say "athstetic" one more time
@zubairmohammed1264
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Spicy take: Time is an illusion created by the mind. There are trillions of universes each representing a moment of time. Consciousness orders each universe and thus creating the image of time.
@NoureddineAteur
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Wahdat al Wujud
@kevinpatrickfield
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
It would make my day if Nicholas Humphrey came on the show.
I used to feel panpsychism was obvious and now I think of it as a non-statement, no more or less explanatory than saying consciousness is an illusion or doesn’t exist – in some ways the same as “god of the gap” arguments in theories of the origin of life.
Just saying that consciousness is in everything, that it is fundamental, doesn’t answer the question of what consciousness is and how it functions. I’ve come to see panpsychism as a cheap and unsatisfactory way out of grappling with the profundity that is my lived conscious experience – seeing red, tasting wine, looking into someone eyes.
If my comment is interesting to you, whoever you are – check out Humphrey’s work, you will likely find it captivating.
@JoëlFrançais
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
As a mathematician who has an interest in narrative, reads fiction, and cares about purpose, I am offended. ;-;
@SquidofCubes
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Im a mathematician, and I like cigarettes, AND I like Camus.
But I never thought of mathematicians as lacking for interest in "meaning." Indeed they get impatient with philosophy, because it lacks concrete evidence of progress. Mathematics is essentially the branch of philosophy that actually benchmarks and audits itself for progress. Hot take?
@ZenitAllin
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
this word salad ad at the end, this was my last video.
@andrewmontano9412
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
How does this account for AI, it can be more complex in the future or maybe is already more complex. Would that make AI capable of more consciousness.
@tonyp1479
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
Wheeee! Without reality anything is possible! Wheeeeeeee!
@purplej12
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
So to put in the analogy of listening to music, sometimes it is good to listen to other artists that others like even if you don't like that genre. I think a lot of people who like rock like other rock, but will still appreciate a great rap or country song; even if they don't want to listen to it all of the time. Sometimes when you've heard a song that really "resonates" with you, then you just listen to that song over and over.
@snazzypringle
September 7, 2025 at 11:45 am
That's it. Shifting is real.
Say no more
Comments are closed.