Consciousness and material reality | Avshalom Elitzur | Consciousness and material reality

Physicist Avshalom Elitzur faces the existential problems posed by consciousness, and blesses a baby.
Would we behave in exactly the same way if we had no consciousness?
Watch the full talk at iai.tv/video/consciousness-an...
Consciousness is widely seen as an impossible problem for materialism. Furthermore, the phenomenon of consciousness disobeys the laws of physics. Join physicist and philosopher, Avshalom C. Elitzur as he makes a radical new proposal about the relationship between consciousness and material reality.
#physics #consciousness #materialism
Avshalom C. Elitzur is a Professor in the Centre for Quantum Studies at Chapman University in the United States. He is best known for his work on the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb-testing problem in quantum mechanics.
00:00 Introduction
00:12 Physics leaves no room for consciousness
02:25 Romeo's love has no impact on his behaviour
03:52 When does fear become real?
05:19 Where, in evolution, does consciousness begin?
07:02 Philosophical explanations of consciousness reviewed
09:12 Avshalom blesses a baby
09:45 Non-interactionist dualism, epiphenomenalism, parallelism
12:42 Pan-psychism
13:34 The consciousness inessentialism postulate
The Institute of Art and Ideas features videos and articles from cutting edge thinkers discussing the ideas that are shaping the world, from metaphysics to string theory, technology to democracy, aesthetics to genetics. Subscribe today! iai.tv/subscribe?Y...
For debates and talks: iai.tv
For articles: iai.tv/articles
For courses: iai.tv/iai-academy/courses

[@TheInstituteOfArtAndIdeas]

What, if anything, is the relationship between material reality and consciousness? Leave your thoughts in the comments. To watch the full talk, head to iai.tv/video/consciousness-and-the-material-reality-avshalom-elitzur?KZbin&

[@seaneales6631]

Electrochemical reactions in the meat brain make a polar electromagnet human mind, which can think forwards and backward in time. When we look into wave functions of light they are made of particles... The human meat brain turns words (particles) into sentences (wave functions) that make pictures (wave functions) in human minds (wave functions) with particles in their meat brain. It is a closed quantum information feedback loop. And humans overthink it.

[@markborst5630]

He misses the most important one, Idealism. All is in consciousness, also matter. Everything you experience, the experience of reality (weight, love, momentum, anger, touch, seeing etc.) is experienced in your consciousness. Not only yours, but one single consciousness. All sorts of materialism, dualisms and pan-psychisms are trying to pull the territory (experience) out of the map (matter). The territory precedes the map, not the other way around.

[@dblaine-rg7jw]

Idealism is just a set of non conscious reactions, as is conservatism.

[@ehubb]

Exactly!!

[@LionKimbro]

12:24 -- Identity theory. He didn't miss it, he just disagreed with it.

[@pn2543]

cf Bishop Berkely, Vasubandhu, Yogacara

[@laaaliiiluuu]

What if matter (whatever it might be) is the territory and our experience is the map? Or what exactly do you mean with experience?

[@aesopstortoise]

This is all good fun, but clever as the language is, it's a bit silly to seriously doubt whether you are conscious, or whether it matters. We all know that we are and it does. If we cannot properly express what consciousness is, so what? That only means that we lack either the tools (language) or the ability, it doesn't call into question whether or not consciousness is real or whether it matters. Also, our technology has shown us that the deeper you look into what we call physical reality, the less recognisably physical it becomes.

[@Silks-]

The subject’s important for many reasons imo. Are you suggesting just don’t look into anything because the deeper you look, the more complex you realise something to be? For me personally that gives me more drive to look into a subject.

[@aesopstortoise]

​ @Silks- No, I am not suggesting that at all, quite the reverse. Interesting that you should think that my finding this endeavour somewhat absurd might lead me to think that the subject is not important. The joke is on us, we try to use language to express that which can only be experienced. The trouble with peeling this onion, is that in the end all you end up with is a lot of peeled onion.

[@Silks-]

⁠I just reread your original comment. I don’t know how I misinterpreted it so badly! I like your onion peeling metaphor btw

[@5piles]

it is argued that complex physics can arise as a physical appearance of blue.

[@tkwu2180]

I know what you mean, but in the kindest way. You may not quite grab the problem or mystery. Fine to not just care. But it requires explanation to those interested and without these 1st questions we would not be the unique beings in the universe that can simply gaze into a mirror or look to the stars and ask the big questions. I could go deeper if you like and explain why the very point of the question is that we don’t all know. There are at least 50 arguments for why that could be the case or why we are not separate from other life. There is a good answer that being a geek I’ve never been satisfied until recently, the royal society has a video on here that I couldn’t counter argue. I’ll find and post if interested

[@LendallPitts]

Consider Roger Penrose's comment that "understanding" is not a computational process.

[@ryanashfyre464]

Penrose is correct. There is nothing about a series of inputs & outputs that gets you to comprehension and understanding. It doesn't matter how fast you make it happen, the fundamental intractability remains the same.

[@sophitsa79]

That means that AI will never 'understand'

[@ryanashfyre464]

@@sophitsa79 Correct.

[@Mattje8]

It’s a bit more than that - Penrose says that (essentially because of Goedel’s theorem) understanding CANNOT BE a computational process.

[@ximono]

Also echoed by Iain McGilchrist.

[@patrickdelarosa7743]

This guy needs a talk with Bernardo Kastrup asap, idealism is the only ontology that explains consciousness to my satisfaction.

[@rtistic_Cosmic_translat3r]

0:32 before I start know this: A.i= a dogs knowledge. Any knowledge it radiates is just as paralal to ur awareness in faith and emotion= emotion has a limit of knowledge. = can’t predict tomorrows every detail but u can get an idea picture= that picture is limited don’t forget. My words are keys 🔑

[@daddyjimbeam]

Long before all these philosophers were born, the Buddhists have been talking about pan-psychism with some rather elaborate and detailed arguments, although semantics of many sutras are somewhat hard to parse due to translation.

[@pn2543]

cf Vasubandhu and Yogacara

[@tedgrant2]

When I was conceived, I was not conscious straight away. It took a while for my brain to develop the ability.

[@dblaine-rg7jw]

You were conscious, you just don't remember.

[@tedgrant2]

@@dblaine-rg7jw Memory requires a great number of cells. That probably explains why I can't remember being a single cell !

[@Joshua-dc1bs]

You were still in the process of constructing a world, that's why you can't remember what it was like as a baby. You are trying to reconstruct a memory of the world during a time when your brain was still constructing said world.

[@tedgrant2]

@@Joshua-dc1bs Interesting theory. You should write a book.

[@Joshua-dc1bs]

@@tedgrant2 not a cognitive scientist, but a neuroscientist. I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable treating a baby as if it weren't conscious, that is, without feeling. Would you feel comfortable torturing an infant? Would it be akin to torturing a laptop?

[@Ann-es2nm]

We're not of the physical body! Our Consciousness is our true essence! Our existence is eternal. Earth is a difficult school so that we're (some of us) able to understand the relationship between consciousness and energy. And beat the game. Understanding that our true selves have the big picture and these physical bodies are AVATARS. Taking this experience so seriously that believing THIS body we're in is IT. Wakey wakey or keep coming back and repeating until realization is reached. We're made for unconditional loving and we're unconditionally loved. INTERCONNECTEDNESS with all of creation...

[@morphixnm]

I think Avshalom Elitzur would behave much the same way if he had no consciousness as he is not using it very well in any case. But then again, it's always good to hear from someone who not only knows everything but who also knows that he knows everything. His billiard ball brain is really going!

[@Corteum]

Apparently you know everything he doesnt know lol

[@morphixnm]

@@Corteum Not everything he doesn’t know, but enough to bother making a comment.

[@Corteum]

@@morphixnm What's the actual argument, though? I'd be interested to understand your pov better

[@morphixnm]

@@Corteum He makes one assertion after another, always that it's all like billiard balls. Psychology reduces to biology, consciousness reduces to brain activity, etc. These assertions are not at all supported scientifically and are in fact based on the philosophical premise that there are no more than material bodies, fields and physical processes to which all things are reducible. There are many reasons why many scientists have historically and contemporaneously wuestiond and rekected

[@adamkallin5160]

Would we have debates on consciousness if we weren’t conscious? It just doesn’t make sense to me that we would.

[@peterbroderson6080]

The moment a particle is a wave; it has to be a conscious wave! Nicola Tesla states, “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration” Gravity is the conscious attraction among waves to create the illusion of particles, and creates our experience-able Universe. Max Planck states: "Consciousness is fundamental and matter is derived from Consciousness". Life is the Infinite Consciousness, experiencing the Infinite Possibilities, Infinitely. We are "It", experiencing our infinite possibilities in our finite moment. Our job is to make it inter

[@redjay4717]

Elitzur says that reaction of fear in complex organisms may also be traced to electrochemical responses and no need to evoke the notion of an abstract state of consciousness playing a role. If that is true then it can well be said that there is no agency which is acting upon or generating fear through a conscious action. Because a reaction is not without a corresponding action. Fear requires an agent which scares and also another which is scared. If each does not involve the role of consciousness then we need not talk about consciousness at all. Somewhere one has to realise that there is a third entity which is trying to understand this action and reaction duality. Does that involve consciousness? Ultimately you are back upon yourself and you realise that you cannot objectify your own experience otherwise it is going in loops. The ultimate conundrum may be that it is the consciousness trying to understand itself.

[@brothermine2292]

Wake me when someone solves David Chalmers' "hard problem" of physicalism, or when someone proves the hard problem is an impossible problem. The "original contribution" postulate described at the end of this video seems to be just a restatement of many philosophers' claim that unconscious "zombies" are possible and would be indistinguishable from conscious people. Whether or not zombies are possible is an interesting question, and is related to questions about how organisms evolved to become conscious and whether consciousness -- the subjective experiencing of qualia & thoughts -- provides a survival advantage. A good rule of thumb is that a biological feature that developed & thrived in a world of Darwinian natural selection bestowed a survival advantage, and this is an argument that consciousness is important for survival and that the postulate is wrong. I don't think this implies anything about whether consciousness is physical or dualist or the only thing that's really real, though. The speaker's definition of panpsychism, which talks about a "potential" for consciousness, is quite vague. Given that vagueness, ANY physicalist postulate about the nature of consciousness could be deemed panpsychist, including strong emergence & weak emergence, because the definition omits any description of how the potential is realized. It differs from the definition of panpsychism that I usually encounter, with which even an electron supposedly has a degree of real (not potential) consciousness.

[@MarkC-wood]

See Joscha Bach. It’s not a “hard” problem.

[@MarkC-wood]

You are correct. Panpsychism is an absurd cop out; saying matter has consciousness does nothing to explain consciousness. It’s like “explaining” H2O by saying it’s water.

[@brothermine2292]

>t_zara9020 : "See Joscha Bach." Bach apparently believes we're not really conscious, so the actual problem is to explain how the brain creates the delusion of consciousness. He apparently believes this problem isn't as hard as Chalmers' "hard problem." Wake me when someone solves Bach's problem OR Chalmers' problem... I can use some rest.

[@Mattje8]

⁠@@MarkC-wood Bach just seems to try to redefine consciousness into an algorithmic process, and concludes that therefore consciousness is an algorithmic process. I was certainly in that camp until I dug into what Penrose has to say on it (even if you put aside the quantum hypotheses).

[@mrschneideriii]

Romeo romances Juliet because Rosalind broke his heart, his family will require him to become a gangster, and the world breaks his spirit, so he is acting out a deathwish. It is difficult to reconcile Romeo’s deathwish with instinct, unless we admit, as Darwin did, the existence of Sexual Selection. Sexual Selection can account for human behavior that doesn’t increase survivability, because we choose mates that appeal to yearnings that can supersede Natural Selection. Sexual Selection, not Natural Selection, brings Darwin’s troublesome musings about consciousness into evolution. The professor did not represent Darwin’s views on consciousness accurately (or human evolution), but gave us instead the common misunderstanding of Darwin, which we received from Darwin’s successors, who mostly ignored Darwin’s later work.

[@pn2543]

consciousness is a key anomaly in physics, as physics is consistent with the absence of consciousness, hence it is assumed to be an epiphenomenon, an assumption that the future will regard as bizarre, when it has become obvious that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, not an epiphenomenon, as the mystics have been telling us for millenia

[@brys.3131]

I'll be honest, this didn't really seem as intellectually provoking as I assumed it might be, if was more or less him mostly just preaching his beliefs and saying clever things for laughs, which I don't mind because he was quite charming. On the positive I enjoyed it overall and felt his passion for the subject, which I feel is essential. Thank you for sharing these wonderful ideas I will definitely be thinking over it and meditating on this viewpoint. Also, please check out the work of Donald Hoffman PhD and his team of physicists at UCLA. And lastly, this from 2022--The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It, by Daniel Garisto. What an incredible time to be alive.

[@Parasmunt]

This was an interesting talk. I like the uses of reflexes to hone in on what consciousness is.

[@paulusbrent9987]

A pure reflex can be, or can be not, followed by a conscious experience. So, talking about reflexes doesn't tell us much.

[@Parasmunt]

@@paulusbrent9987 It's just an example he uses showing how a physical response can occur without consciousness to illustrate his point.

[@bretnetherton9273]

Awareness is known by awareness alone.

[@Thomas-gk42]

that´s rght.

[@BlueCoore]

y r u gae tho

[@rseyedoc]

Spoken like a Dzogchen master...

[@itsyouitsyou]

:) shhhh dont tell! its so funny to see the scientists try to know awareness with their rational mind 🤣

[@Silks-]

I don’t have access to the full episode so I don’t know if he was going to go on to say this, but I like the idea I’ve heard once; that our brain/body makes and acts on its sensory inputs without us being conscious of it, our consciousness is merely us narrating and feeling the ‘Quale’ marginally after the true present time. To put it another way it’s as though we’re just remembering, or experiencing, what our body has already done, with the illusion of free will.

[@willholzer5811]

Don’t know that I agree, but thank you for sharing.

[@PeterIntrovert]

this is what he mentioned - epiphenomenalism

[@cashglobe]

Who is this “us” narrating or this “we” remembering? This model doesn’t make so much sense because you’re already assuming some conscious “thing” or “mind” that then becomes conscious “of” the things the body/senses already went through. It is circular. The thing that is conscious “of” the senses, memories, etc, is the mystery. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

[@Silks-]

I don’t see what’s stopping an illusion of self during the collation of the brain’s sensory inputs. There clearly is a consciousness or feeling of the self, because I’m me, as illusory as it may be. So in other words the body has already reacted instinctively as soon as the senses have done their most basic instinctive reaction, and then the conscious/subconscious self like reviews what’s just happened, decides if it was a good or bad reaction to it, reflects on how the self could improve next time and all the other feedbacks that they seem to be teaching basic AI atm to self improve. On that note, I believe AI has the potential to become more conscious than a human. I also believe ants have consciousness, although it’s a very basic one and they don’t experience the self as introspectively/acutely as a human does. With your logic I don’t see any answer besides ‘we don’t feel consciousness or the self’ when we clearly do.

[@ryanashfyre464]

Except the intractable problem w/ this idea is that it doesn't actually address the issue of consciousness. This is a *redefinining* of consciousness, not an actual explanation of it. The issue of conscious experience is the problem of how *qualitative experience* arises from purely mechnistic processes. To say that consciousness is "the narrating and feeling the 'quale' after the true present time" has no more explanatory power than saying that consciousness is the involuntary twitching of my right hand. Are you *explaining* anything by saying this? No, you're not explaining anything at all. You're just engaging in theoretical wishcasting that doesn't accomplish anything. Is there so much as even one single theory in the entire history of scientific literature to even begin to probe how qualitities could arise from pure quantities? No. It does not exist, not in any way, shape or form - and I would submit to you that's not because it's a ridiculously complex problem, but because the assumptions themselves that it could even happen in the first place are fundamentally flawed.

[@courrierdebois]

Top to bottom. First off; "our mind" is consciousness and that's what we are. If the organism is absent of consciousness while awake, awareness is a field that it is in. The actions/activities would not be the same as when 'consciousness' was present. "Where along evolution do I talk about consciousness?" When the sensation of being a something comes into being. That sensation being the brains accumulated registrations of sensations. You, the experiencer, are born. The baby, that body... does not have consciousness. It is simply not separated by thought from a world in non duality with awareness.

[@MassDefibrillator]

"there are only the laws of mechanics" are there? contact is an illusion produced by action at a distance, gravity is action at a distance, it appears to be non-contact fields all the way down. In what sense is anything at all "mechanics" or "material"? only in a sense that these terms are stripped of any meaning they once had. Consciousness is easy, as Bertrand Russel said, our conscious experience is our highest level of confidence: we understand consciousness better than anything else in the world, implicitly. What's hard is matter, we don't understand it at all. It's only when we fool ourselves into thinking we have a good grasp on what matter is that we can be made to believe that consciousness seems to be something disconnected from it. As Noam Chomsky points out, when Newton forced the notion of action-at-a-distance on to the world, what he did was to banish the machine from the ghost, and left the ghost thoroughly intact.

[@satoriR]

There is only consciousness in which we and the whole universe exists

[@Dyslexic-Artist-Theory-on-Time]

Hodgkin and Huxley model of Neurons basically explains Neurons as electric circuits with the organization and movement of positive and negative charge. The positive and negative is in the form of ion atoms. The big question is how can this process of electrical activity form consciousness? To answer this question we have to look deeper into the process. When we do this, we find that the movement or action of charged particles like ions emit photon ∆E=hf energy. Therefore, this whole process can be based on an interpretation of Quantum Mechanics In the theory explained in these videos, Quantum Mechanics represents the physics of time ∆E ∆t ≥ h/2π as a physical process. The uncertainty ∆×∆pᵪ≥h/4π of Quantum Mechanics is the same uncertainty we have with any future event. We have a probabilistic uncertain ∆×∆pᵪ≥h/4π future coming into existence with the absorption and emission of electromagnetic waves with potential energy PE continuously transformed into kinetic Eₖ=½mv² energy of electrons as an uncertain ∆×∆pᵪ≥h/4π future comes into existence with each light photon ∆E=hf electron interaction.

[@ryanashfyre464]

And where, exactly, in all of that does the qualitative experience of the smell of coffee or the sensation of falling in love actually occur?

[@5piles]

yes huxley the founder of church physicalism also said colors arising from electrical meatchunks is magical thinking.

[@marianagyorgyfalvi3659]

Conciosness becomes after experients

[@dblaine-rg7jw]

He's right. "Consciousness" is just a combination of ego and hubris.

[@hexagram531]

@dblaine-rg7jw You're almost right. It should have said, "Comments on KZbin, including mine as well as yours, are just a combination of ego and hubris, neither of which would exist without consciousness." Jesus, humans.

[@Thomas-gk42]

Avshalom is a great and soulful mind and this is a wonderful lecture, that I luckily saw live. Saying this, I´m not a friend of panpsychism, some of their protagonists, like Goff, Sheldrake or Kastrup, are pure pseudoscientists. Isn´t it sufficient, to say, that self-awareness is an emergent property of the human brain, and define it as the sum of the properties that differ humans from animals?

[@Trymsi]

How could emergent properties be possible if panpsychism is false?

[@Arunava_Gupta]

Panpsychism, like materialism, is indeed false. There's no doubt about it. The only way one can account for consciousness is by introducing an entity, conscious by nature, connected to the brain, as an immaterial purely spiritual first principle. Agree?

[@Thomas-gk42]

@@Trymsi biological life is emergent to chemistry, right? It seems to be "magic" too, but it´s a fact. So what´s wrong to assume that at a certain developement of a brain "magic" consciousness comes out. Both is understandable as an emregent property of the previous state and you don´t need a panpsychistic connection.

[@gkannon77]

​@@Thomas-gk42interesting comparison. However, I don't think it's apt. Biological life is another thing "matter" does. A unique thing, but still a thing. Like the matter that makes up a star (ie. Hydrogen), can, under the right circumstances, ignite to become a star. Similarly, matter, thrown together in a certain way, "ignites" into life. Maybe I'm off base, but matter making unique configurational things is QUITE different than matter making an experience. 2 separate categories, hence the hard problem.

[@Thomas-gk42]

@@gkannon77 Hi, yes comparisons don´t fit perfect. But anyhow, isn´t "life" in some sense a "metaphysical" idea too? We invent some properties, with whom we differ a living system from a non-living, the same we do, if we differ a conscious being from non-conscious. We don´t need living stones to define life, so why do we need conscious stones to define consciousness? And what changes in a body who´s alive in one moment and dies in the next?

[@damianclifford9693]

Avshalom needs to read more, Iain McGilchrist would be a good place to start.

[@BetAgain2]

Science depends on some tools. Current theories will prove non sense sometime later when new tools see things more clearly than now

[@slickwillie9526]

The tiger chases, kills and eats prey, as It's just surviving. The street urchin robs the liquor store and kills the clerk for the $20 in the till, to survive. The two examples are the same, according to mechanics and physics?

[@garysullivan8464]

Each individual has the right to their own belief system. Is it not true that modern social religions has to be taught and indoctrination heavily applied. Before the Abrahamic religions were spread by colonial imperialist and forced upon people for political purposes what was the natural way of thinking? ; set aside what Abrahamic religions tell you that's part of their indoctrination and mind control. Think independently and critically. I have my beliefs and they are the same since my earliest memories which go back to infancy. I recall thoughts and concepts before learning language. My belief system is based on my experience, not some one else's motive driven indoctrination.

[@toddfulton2280]

Judaism is anything but "colonial" or "imperialist". They just want to be left alone. Islam and Christianity on the other hand, yes, I would agree to a degree, but I think you're miss using the concepts of colonialism and imperialism. Islam is certainly imperialistic, Christianity is not so much, though it does depend on the branches of each religion we're talking about. Sufism for example, lacks much of the violent and subjugating aspects of Islam and focuses more on spiritual and conceptual aspects.

[@sunbeam9222]

​@@toddfulton2280 Judaism just wants to be left alone on someone else's land.

[@toddfulton2280]

@@sunbeam9222 This is a very shallow understanding of what's going on in Israel. Do better.

[@sunbeam9222]

@@toddfulton2280 oh sure, I was there and it's exactly what's going on in Palestine. Not up to me to do better. I don't steal. Jews might do better and go back to exil, where they belong tho.

[@masroorbukhari2145]

Disappointed by IAS to put such a useless talk. It does not make any sense, all just personal opinions and prejudices. Schrodinger, Planck and such great minds and their ideas were not futile. Physics is increasingly being convinced that the base of reality and fields could all be in Consciousness. Quantum mechanics points towards it.

[@NondescriptMammal]

Consciousness doesn't "break physics", it breaks deterministic behavior because it evolved a capability for autonomous decision making through some mechanism as yet unexplained.

[@5piles]

if it breaks determinism it breaks "physicality". which general relativity and newton already did anyway but whatever.

[@NondescriptMammal]

@@5piles Not really. Determinism still governs all the inanimate and lifeless objects of the universe, since they do not possess the ability to alter their own behavior.

[@NondescriptMammal]

It's a clear and obvious distinction with a reasonable explanation, and every behavior you have ever observed by either kind of object is evidence in support of it. Physicists can predict the behavior of the lifeless, mindless objects with some precision, given their current state. Have physicists ever been able to do the same with living objects?

[@tkwu2180]

@@NondescriptMammal quantum mechanics do but just recently shown by a paper of max tegmark that the scale is so huge by order of *22 that it would still make our lives almost indistinguishable from determinism

[@tkwu2180]

@@5pilesnewton and Einstein did not break physicality. They may not have been able to answer all mysteries about it. But they did the opposite and got closer to explaining it in a deeper sense. They were also smart enough to realise no one knows, and possibly never will .

[@distantstanza4635]

I found dubious in the end regarding his theory. When he states that neurophisiological process "doesnt know" about the qualia that takes place... "know"? Can this processes also include awareness or non awareness in the cells? Like a consciousness? What a mess this is, to include these terms like this in this context. I welcome his "isms" introduction, but it is so incomplete that it would be better no to refer to it. Or maybe their only purpose is to empower his thesis.

[@myradioon]

What about when Juliet loves another Juliette? When there is no desire for procreation? When someone falls in love with someone on a higher level of consciousness. Maybe they love that that person does not prescribe to traditional biological roles or thought? What if someone falls in love with someones thoughts and mind with no offspring involved? That trumps "science with purpose".

[@ximono]

Doesn't have to be for procreational reasons alone, any psychological reason could account for her actions. Based on past experiences, for example.

[@myradioon]

@@ximono He cites Darwin as the basis of all our actions. He doesn't state 'psychology'. A person with "Higher Consciousness" through meditation or therapy does not operate on base/sub conscious levels in all instances. All (most) other animals do. Mentally ill people often make decisions contrary to what a purely 'instinctual animal mind' would do. (Jumping off a roof thinking one can fly etc.). 'Psychology' disproves his assumptions and is where his answer lies. It's a world based on 'abstracts' - yet a world. Even a "Collective Consciousness" world - all based on "the abstract" - not quantifiable. Magik and Art.

[@richardasmus9426]

Don't confuse love with desire.

[@sunbeam9222]

I think you would enjoy Donald Hoffman. He talks about that.

[@sunbeam9222]

What if that someone's thoughts and mind change tho. Would the love go?

[@wulphstein]

This is an example of the dopyness in physics. It's just dopy reasoning.

[@gcangur1]

we are creatures of evolution, and the concepts are our creatures, now we make science with those concepts, we can, why? Concepts are grandchildren of our own evolution.

[@simonhibbs887]

He didn’t once mention the most relevant aspect of physicalism to this question: information. How can any discussion of this issue not discuss information processing, computation, the actionable symbolic representation of states of affairs, and crucially recursions and self referentiality. Right now we have computational systems that have a representational model of the world, a representational model of themselves, in a basic way are self referential, recursive and can even introspect and modify their own runtime state. I’m not saying we have a complete model of consciousness yet, but pretending that this account of the physical doesn’t even exist is bypassing a crucial dimension of the physicalist account.

[@5piles]

the entropy of systems ie. information is only important for designing complex physical function, not for appearances of colors etc. literally the better the physical body and extremely complex computation is understood, the less the physicalist view withstands.

[@simonhibbs887]

@@5piles How can the appearance of a colour and how we experience it not be informational? In any case, he didn’t even attempt to refute the informational account, didn’t even acknowledge that it exists. That seems to be a huge omission.

[@davidw4987]

As far as I can possibly know everything exists within my consciousness. I don't know about the rest of you tho...

[@pequod4557]

Consciousness adds to the system; we wouldn't act the same if we weren't conscious. However, you could in theory create a simulated mind. That mind won't be conscious but act as if it were. Consciousness isn't the product of the physical system, but it changes its behaviour, that change is deterministic and can be simulated.

[@Silks-]

you seem so certain about all of your statements. It seems many talk the same about consciousness with wildly different takes on it lol. I disagree with your take. I believe we would act the same without consciousness. I also believe consciousness can be built. I believe consciousness was never the ‘goal’ of evolution or the universe, I believe there is no purpose, consciousness was a happy little accident that’s naturally emerged from a complex system (e.g. brains), and consciousness is on a spectrum/gradient.

[@pequod4557]

@@Silks- And on what grounds are you holding dear? Only uncertainty is what we have in common. Assumptions they are. And mine's no more truth-worthy than yours.

[@Silks-]

@@pequod4557 I was referencing the way you say your theories as though they’re fact - it’s never ‘I think’ or ‘I believe’. I’m glad I pointed it out though because it appears you’ve been unaware. I was glad when someone pointed it out to me when i used to be in that habit.

[@pequod4557]

@@Silks- We both aren't qualified to think or believe. That I learned. We only pick the next thought that floats from under the sea of unconscious computation that we take no part in.

[@jmanoochx]

observer effects ya know, what about it

[@darkflip]

I presume roughly 4 measures, happy healthy free and inclusive, are Properties of consciousness. And are likely inside the ideas of the atom

[@KaliFissure]

If you could levitate with your mind, THAT would break physics.

[@that_angie]

I would like to chat with this dude for an afternoon.

[@vishaltanwar30]

Except consciousness everything is illusion

[@abduazirhi2678]

I love Avshalom's talk.....but fact is.....consciousness is not a physical entity ....

[@keithmetcalf5548]

Agreed. It's an entity that falls into the category of magic. Which only means not yet understood, but it's somthing separate from the physical dimention. In 100 years even the conversation is gonna look vastly different from today I believe..

[@Sharperthanu1]

There is physics and the void.The void is the theoretical opposite of physics

[@halfglassfull]

interesting but yet another paywall.

[@rdjinaz]

I think this is materialistic reductionism "on steroids". This kind of extrapolation from what we know about very simple systems we think we understand into the far flung boundaries of life and consciousness we can't even define yet, isn't very helpful. It's OK to speculate. But this should not be presented as scientific dogma.

[@stefanomader2299]

Consciousness can't be found from outside.

[@MrGeometres]

All he does is intuition-pumping...

[@ejenkins4711]

Wake up little silver crown, QCs got the Tudor Rose CGJ preking kkng

[@ThepurposeofTime]

Any Dawkins fans here? 🤔

[@thewefactor1]

Cockroaches are nocturnal and flee from the light? Perhaps the chair cockroach was instinctively positioning itself to the darkest area of the chair during its movement.

[@Silks-]

I don’t think that observation would change his point. Rather than ‘fearing’ the human, it ‘fears’ the light and acts accordingly, whether consciously or not. Nice observation though.

[@thewefactor1]

@@Silks- Is it really fear or an instinctual impulse to remain in the dark? A difference of consciousness' of the human being consciousness and an exhaustive reaching memory capability and the instinctive animal consciousness... Even though it probably exhibits a modicum of memory for other purposes of survival and may not be dedicated to fear, something like the patella reflex?

[@thewefactor1]

@@Silks- Or perhaps the blinking reflex...

[@Silks-]

Ah right; I interpreted your original comment differently than what you intended it to mean. I didn’t realise you were questioning the cockroaches level of consciousness. Personally I reckon many insects and animals have more consciousness than most people think. I agree that memory’s likely an important aspect of consciousness as we know it, however I can’t see why it must be crucial. But I’m just guessing, I have absolutely no confidence in my imagination of what it ‘feels like’ to be a cockroach.

[@shonmardani2637]

6:50 This israeli jew compared a black / Palestinian child to a cockroach. 9:30 he kissed a white child.Brits are being raped by zion, do their children deserve it or they will pay for the crimes of their parents?

[@vladimirrogozhin7797]

Many thanks! The mystery of consciousness → in the mystery of the meaning of primordial tension of Cosmos. The mystery of meaning → in the mystery of time. The mystery of time → in the mystery of number. The mystery of number → in the mystery of rhythm. The mystery of rhythm → in the mystery of space. The mystery of space → in the mystery of matter. The mystery of matter → in the mystery of "coincidence of ontological opposites". The mystery of the "coincidence of ontological opposites" → in the mystery of the "Logos" ("Meta-Law"/ "Absolute Law"). The mystery of the "Logos" → in the mystery of the Primordial (absolute) generating structure. The mystery of the Primordial (absolute) generating structure → in the mystery of the Ontological (cosmic, structural) memory. Ontological (cosmic, structural) memory is "soul of matter", its measure, the semantic core of the conceptual structure of the existence of the Universe as an eternal holistic process of generating more and more new meanings, forms and structures. Ontological (structural. cosmic) memory is that "nothing" that holds, preserves, develops and directs matter (enteleschia, nous, Aristotle's "prime mover"). Consciousness is an absolute (unconditional) attractor of meanings. Meaning is the unconditional foundation of the existence of the Universe. Consciousness is a qualitative vector/bivector value. Consciousness is a univalent phenomenon of ontological (structural, cosmic) memory, which manifests itself at a certain level of being of the Universe as an eternal holistic process of generating meanings, forms and structures. Consciousness is a "tool" of ontological (structural, cosmic) memory, its semantic "radar". Evolution is an eternal process of accumulation of memory. More than a quarter of a century ago, the mathematician and philosopher Vasily Nalimov set the super-task of building a "super-unified field theory that describes both physical and semantic manifestations of the World" - the creation of a model of the "Self-Aware Universe" (1996). In the same direction, the ideas of the Nobel laureate in physics Brian Josephson (which are not very noticed by mainstream science), set out in the essay "On the Fundamentality of Meaning" (2018). Fundamental science requires a Big Ontological revolution in the metaphysical / ontological basis. Physics must move from the stage "Phenomenological physics" to the stage "Ontological physics". The paradigm of the Universe as a WHOLE must come to the aid of the “part paradigm” that dominates science. The New Information Revolution is also pushing for this. J.A. Wheeler: "To my mind there must be, at the bottom of it all, not an equation, but an utterly simple idea. And to me that idea, when we discover it, will be so compelling, so inevitable, that we will say to one another, 'Oh, how beautiful.' How could it have been otherwise?'" Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: "The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world." A.N. Whitehead: "A precise language must await a completed metaphysical knowledge."

[@CoreyChambersLA]

Cockroaches are social creatures, and certainly have fear. Nevertheless, they are not allowed in my house under penalty of death.

[@user-zq2pw8xv7f]

What's the understanding of, spiritual realm!

[@PetraKann]

They rarely define these terms. Convenient so that they can make any claim or inference

[@MaxPower-vg4vr]

The Problem of Mental Causation Contradictory: Classical Property Dualism Mental properties and physical properties are distinct. But how can the mental cause any physical effects/behavior? This is the core paradox of the mind-body problem - mental causation seems impossible on dualist premises. Non-Contradictory Possibility: Monadic Neutral Monism Qsystem = Usystem|0> (mental state from monad perspective) Physical = RelativeState(Qsystem, Qenv) If mental states are monadic perspectives and physics arises relationally between monads, mental causation is simply the modulation of physical relative states via monadic perspectival transitions. Paradoxes of Subjective Experience Contradictory: - The Explanatory Gap and Hard Problem of Consciousness - Integrating First/Third-Person Accounts of Mental States - The Binding Problem of Unified Perceptual Experience Classical theories struggle to coherently model the existence of subjective first-person experience from their third-person formalisms. Non-Contradictory Possibility: Monadic Idionamic Phenomenology |ωn⟩ = Rn|Ψ⟩ (Witnessed State from Universal Wavefunction) |Ωn⟩ = ⊗i |ωn,i⟩ (Bound Unified Perceptual State) Qualia(|Ωn⟩) = Feel(|Ωn⟩) (Qualitative Experience) Grounding subjective experience in witnessed monadic perspectives |ωn⟩ on the universal wavefunction, with unified percepts |Ωn⟩ as bound tensor factorizations, allows modeling qualia phenomenology.

[@MaxPower-vg4vr]

The Problem of Qualia Contradictory Theories: - Physicalism cannot account for first-person subjectivity - Property Dualism cannot bridge mental/physical divide - Panpsychism has combination issues Non-Contradictory Possibilities: Monadic Integralism Qi = Ui|0> (first-person qualia from monadic perspective) |Φ>= ⊗i Qi (integrated pluriverse as tensor monadic states) Modeling qualia as monadic first-person perspectives, with physics as RelativeState(|Φ>) could dissolve the "hard problem" by unifying inner/outer.

[@randomone4832]

As someone who believes that the simulation hypothesis is the leading explanation for the existence of our universe, I don’t find a conflict arising from consciousness affecting the physical world. As with simulations we build for video games, flight simulators, etc., there are set of physical laws that dictate how the world behaves, but we are allowed to input our own actions into the world, albeit with those physical constraints. I can see how with just the deterministic Newtonian physics, that there’d be a clash with conscious agents, but I don’t see this as an issue with quantum mechanics, which we know is more fundamental.

[@paulusbrent9987]

A simulation is only a simulation. It doesn't create anything, let alone consciousness.

[@timoxyz1466]

This starts with wrong premises just because you can calculate or measure something doesn't mean it's 100% predictable or that it's gonna behave according to those laws the next time - you simply cannot know. People and their assumptions man pure animal faith.

[@marcobiagini1878]

I am a physicist and I will explain why our scientific knowledge refutes the idea that consciousness is generated by the brain and that the origin of our mental experiences is physical/biological . My argument proves that the fragmentary structure of brain processes implies that brain processes are not a sufficient condition for the existence of consciousness, which existence implies the existence in us of an indivisible unphysical element, which is usually called soul or spirit (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). I also argue that all emergent properties are subjective cognitive contructs used to approximately describe underlying physical processes, and that these descriptions refer only to mind-dependent entities. Consciousness, being implied by these cognitive contructs, cannot itself be an emergent property. Preliminary considerations: the concept of set refers to something that has an intrinsically conceptual and subjective nature and implies the arbitrary choice of determining which elements are to be included in the set; what exists objectively are only the single elements. In fact, when we define a set, it is like drawing an imaginary line that separates some elements from all the other elements; obviously this imaginary line does not exist physically, independently of our mind, and therefore any set is just an abstract idea, a cognitive construct and not a physical entity and so are all its properties. Similar considerations can be made for a sequence of elementary processes; sequence is a subjective and abstract concept. Mental experience is a precondition for the existence of subjectivity/arbitrariness and cognitive constructs, therefore mental experience cannot itself be a cognitive construct; obviously we can conceive the concept of consciousness, but the concept of consciousness is not actual consciousness. (With the word consciousness I do not refer to self-awareness, but to the property of being conscious= having a mental experiences such as sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories and even dreams). From the above considerations it follows that only indivisible elements may exist objectively and independently of consciousness, and consequently the only logically coherent and significant statement is that consciousness exists as a property of an indivisible element. Furthermore, this indivisible entity must interact globally with brain processes because we know that there is a correlation between brain processes and consciousness. This indivisible entity is not physical, since according to the laws of physics, there is no physical entity with such properties; therefore this indivisible entity can be identified with what is traditionally called soul or spirit. The soul is the missing element that interprets globally the distinct elementary physical processes occurring at separate points in the brain as a unified mental experience. Some clarifications. The brain doesn't objectively and physically exist as a mind-independent entity since we create the concept of the brain by separating an arbitrarily chosen group of quantum particles from everything else. This separation is not done on the basis of the laws of physics, but using addictional subjective criteria, independent of the laws of physics; actually there is a continuous exchange of molecules with the blood and when and how such molecules start and stop being part of the brain is decided arbitrarily. Brain processes consist of many parallel sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes occurring at separate points. There is no direct connection between the separate points in the brain and such connections are just a subjective abstractions used to approximately describe sequences of many distinct physical processes. Indeed, considering consciousness as a property of an entire sequence of elementary processes implies the arbitrary definition of the entire sequence; the entire sequence as a whole (and therefore every function/property/capacity attributed to the brain) is a subjective abstraction that does not refer to any mind-independendent reality. Physicalism/naturalism is based on the belief that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. However, an emergent property is defined as a property that is possessed by a set of elements that its individual components do not possess; my arguments prove that this definition implies that emergent properties are only subjective cognitive constructs and therefore, consciousness cannot be an emergent property. Actually, all the alleged emergent properties are just simplified and approximate descriptions or subjective/arbitrary classifications of underlying physical processes or properties, which are described directly by the fundamental laws of physics alone, without involving any emergent properties (arbitrariness/subjectivity is involved when more than one option is possible; in this case, more than one possible description). An approximate description is only an abstract idea, and no actual entity exists per se corresponding to that approximate description, simply because an actual entity is exactly what it is and not an approximation of itself. What physically exists are the underlying physical processes. Emergence is nothing more than a cognitive construct that is applied to physical phenomena, and cognition itself can only come from a mind; thus emergence can never explain mental experience as, by itself, it implies mental experience. My approach is scientific and is based on our scientific knowledge of the physical processes that occur in the brain; my arguments prove that such scientific knowledge excludes the possibility that the physical processes that occur in the brain could be a sufficient condition for the existence of consciousness. Marco Biagini

[@JasonSmith-mk7up]

Magnifico Marco!

[@kyaintit]

I love how you called yourself a physicist but wrote 7 paragraphs of you jumping through some wild philosophical "hoops" and speculation. I think if you approached it using actual physics and understanding how an organ uses physical processes to interpret and interact with the world, you'd come to some different conclusions. Also I'd argue that approach would require less use of deductive reasoning and less use of the word "implies". Nowhere in there did you describe how cognition and consciousness "cannot be emergent properties" from an organism that receives sensory data from its environment, interprets, and often produces an output. -You say "being conscious= having a mental experiences such as sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories and even dreams". Under your definition, there's a bunch of non-human organisms that would be conscious with a "soul" as you described. -"Mental experience cannot itself be a cognitive construct" is a wild claim when the entire "mental experience" is literally constructed cognitively in your head. -"cognition itself can only come from a mind" Tell that to plants that we now know have a level of cognition never discovered before. Or the animals like an octopus that don't have a mind, only a distributed neuron network throughout their body. -"my arguments prove that this definition implies that emergent properties are only subjective cognitive constructs and therefore, consciousness cannot be an emergent property" Where did you prove that consciousness isn't just another "subjective cognitive construct" that emerges from the "mind" computing sensory inputs?

[@marcobiagini1878]

@@kyaintit You wrote:”I love how you called yourself a physicist but wrote 7 paragraphs of you jumping through some wild philosophical "hoops" and speculation.” You are wrong. I have made no speculations but I have provided rational arguments supporting my conclusions. You wrote:”I think if you approached it using actual physics and understanding how an organ uses physical processes to interpret and interact with the world, you'd come to some different conclusions. “ Wrong again. My arguments prove that both “an organ” and “interpret” are cognitive constructs used to approximately describe the underlying physical processes, which are described by the laws of physics. You wrote:” Nowhere in there did you describe how cognition and consciousness "cannot be emergent properties" from an organism that receives sensory data from its environment, interprets, and often produces an output.” Wrong, my arguments prove that very clearly. You wrote:” You say "being conscious= having a mental experiences such as sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories and even dreams". Under your definition, there's a bunch of non-human organisms that would be conscious with a "soul" as you described.” It is a common opinion that also animals have mental experiences: I am not saying that it is a wrong opinion, but the point is that there is no way to prove that such hypothesis is true. Animals could be only unconscious biological robots. this hypothesis cannot be excluded, so the existence of consciousness in animals is only a matter of personal beliefs. The fact that an object is responsive to one's surroundings certainly does not mean that such object has a mental experience; also the automatic doors of the supermarket are responsive of their surroundings, since they open when somebody approaches, but that certainly doesn't mean they have mental experiences.The point is that the laws of physics explain how a physical entity can respond to its physical surroundings without any kind of mental experience. We already know how to build machines completely devoid of mental experience that are able to reproduce those behaviors of animals that were once interpreted as demonstrating that they had a mind; this is sufficient to prove that animal behavior cannot be interpreted as proof of the existence of mental experiences in animals. In fact, according to the laws of physics, all biological organisms should be unconscious biological robots, without any mental experience. I am not saying that animals certainly have no mental experience, just that we cannot rationally rule out this hypothesis. Since ancient times, man has shown a marked tendency to anthropomorphize nature and the idea that animals have a mind could be the result of this attitude. You wrote:"Mental experience cannot itself be a cognitive construct" is a wild claim when the entire "mental experience" is literally constructed cognitively in your head. “ Mental expoerience is the preliminary necessary condition for the exostene of any cognitive construct, and therefore, mental experience cannot itself be a cognitive construct. Obviously the concept of “mental experience” is not the actual mental experience; for example the concept of pain is not the pain actually experienced.

[@Thomas-gk42]

Wow, I read that heap of nonsense not the first time. Are you a bot?

[@unpakable]

This is the philosophy of genocide. You could only deny the subjective quality characteristic of human consciousness if you wanted to dehumanize people. You can see another person's body, but you can also assume that, just like you, that body is experiencing consciousness, even though you can't see, or experience, their conscious experience: it seems a safe assumption to make that they are having some conscious experience qualitatively similar to yours. Why would you want to harm another person that is just as conscious as you?

[@MarkC-wood]

Panpsychism is a joke. You can’t explain consciousness by saying consciousness is in matter. That just boots consciousness to another layer of the unexplained. Thats absurd circular reasoning. It’s equivalent to saying “it’s turtles all the way down” or explain H2O by saying it’s water. But what’s water? H2O.. Oy. Btw, Joscha Bach has the best, most simple and reasonable take on consciousness. All others are chasing their metaphysical tails.

[@ximono]

What do you think of Michael Levin's work then ("Cognition all the way down")? His findings do point toward some sort of panpsychism. I don't think it's saying "H₂O is water", but I agree that it doesn't explain _what_ consciousness is. It is "turtles all the way down", but that's only because we're still learning about what consciousness really is. I think it's telling how certain influential worldviews mirror the influential technologies of the time. "It's all clockwork" and "we're all like machines" in the age of clocks and machines, "it's all computation" and "it's all a simulation" in the age of computers and AI. The simulation argument is an intriguing one from an analytical philosophical perspective, but it hardly proves anything, as I see it.

[@Thomas-gk42]

"Panpsychism is a joke." -- thank you for saying this clearly, I totally agree.

[@Thomas-gk42]

@@ximono Yes, we can learn a lot about consciousness, but it´s clear what it is for everyone who hasn´t the urge to mystify it: it´s an emergent property of the human brain.

[@ximono]

@@Thomas-gk42 That's not clear at all if you look at Levin's findings. That it has an element of emergence, yes, but not necessarily of the brain. (Unless you're narrowing the definition down to human consciousness only, which would be very anthropocentric. Surely you mean brains in general, not just human brain?) Serious scientists who research consciousness are not trying to mystify it but to understand it. I'm thinking of the likes of Levin, Hameroff and Penrose. What they find do point in the direction that consciousness is much more fundamental than what we have previously thought. Whether it should be called panpsychism is open to discussion, that's crossing into the realm of philosophy. That said, people first need to agree on a definition of consciousness before even beginning to discuss it.

[@Thomas-gk42]

@@ximono Don´t feel insulted, but i´m afraid, Levin is a bit crazy at that point. Where is your consciousness when you are in anesthesia? What about my dirty underware - have I to assume that it´s conscious too?

[@larsthorwald3338]

Harpo speaks! hahaha

[@NondescriptMammal]

"Consciousness breaks physics"? What a strange assertion, does it even have a meaning?

[@ximono]

Did you even watch the video? It's clickbaity, but he does explain what he means by it.

[@sunbeam9222]

Consciousness breaks and makes. So I guess any assertion goes lol.

[@NondescriptMammal]

@@sunbeam9222 I guess so, maybe we've entered a new age of science where vague but sensational claims are the currency lol

[@crashdummyglory]

Maybe consciousness is dark matter and energy

[@ArlindoPhilosophicalArtist]

It's funny because, ironically, the answer is in the proposition that he called 'dumb'. Idealist metaphysics is more parsimonious than materialism or even constitutive panpsychism. I was very disappointed in the fact that he could not see how absurd it is to say that consciousness is an illusion or that epiphenomenalism has a leg to stand on when the fact that we talk about consciousness proves that the subject matter is not an epiphenomenon at all. When are these experts going to understand the philosophical implications of assuming that matter comes first and there is nothing else? The hard problem of consciousness, under physicalism, is not a 'problem' at all-it is an impasse! Consciousness is an ontological primitive, it is fundamental, and therefore does not require a secondary phenomenon to explain it any more than a photon requires a secondary light source to shine on itself. It is its own light! We are the eternal witness. Reality is a mental construct shared by many conscious observers. On my channel, I explain why metaphysical idealism should be the default position-not materialism, as such a view suffers from the hard problem of consciousness, which is an impasse, and physicalist metaphysics itself violates Occam's razor.

[@konberner170]

Good.

[@paulusbrent9987]

Occam’s razor is used much too often to justify one’s own worldview. With it, one can defend everything and also the opposite of it. And, anyway, neither in science nor philosophy, it is not a mandatory methodological choice.

[@ArlindoPhilosophicalArtist]

@@paulusbrent9987 Occam's razor is a useful tool to simplify things. It is clearly indispensable. The things that violated Occam's razor are always unreasonably superfluous. Why add the unnecessary when you already have theories with far more explanatory power and fewer assumptions? Think about it...

[@konberner170]

@@paulusbrent9987 True! Occam's razor is an unreliable heuristic. There are many cases where simplest doesn't equal correct. This is in no way a refutation of, or even something addressing, his points.

[@paulusbrent9987]

@@ArlindoPhilosophicalArtist I thought about this long enough to know that this isn't correct. Occam's razor can be useful in some contexts but has also led in the wrong direction in many cases. Reality isn't always as simple as we would like it to be. The point is that the notion of what is "simple" or "parsimonious" is a matter of personal preferences. You can use OR to defend one position, and its opposite at the same time. At any rate, it is not a mandatory prescription. No science book will tell you so. Nowadays, it has become more of a fashion to defend one's own ideological position, rather than an effective tool for discovery.

[@Makeshiftjunkbox]

Unqualified false misleading interpretation of reality which is being policed continually!

[@swenic]

SHAME ON YOU FOR PAY-WALLING !!!

[@SirPhatyJ]

Use weed extensively before reading

[@MrOksim]

This is embarassing, physicalism is religion, not science.

[@ZENTEN7777]

Everything you do involves consciousness. You cannot be unconscious and observe meaning.