If materialism is true, the United States is probably conscious

Abstract

Abstract:There seems to be no principled reason to deny entityhood to spatially distributed but informationally integrated beings. The United States can be considered as a concrete, spatially distributed but informationally integrated entity. Considered as such, the United States is at least a candidate for the literal possession of real psychological states, including phenomenal consciousness or subjective experience. The question, then, is whether it meets plausible materialistic criteria for consciousness. My suggestion is that if those criteria are liberal enough to include both small mammals and weird alien species that exhibit sophisticated linguistic behavior, then the United States probably does meet those criteria. The United States is massively informationally interconnected and responds in sophisticated, goal-directed ways to its surroundings. Its internal representational states are functionally responsive to its environment and not randomly formed or assigned artificially from outside by the acts of an external user.And the United States exhibits complex linguistic behavior, including issuing self-reports and self-critiques that reveal a highly-developed ability to monitor its evolving internal and external conditions. Keywords: metaphysics, consciousness, phenomenology, group mind, superorganism, collective If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably ConsciousIf materialism is true, the reason you have a stream of conscious experience -the reason there's something it's like to be you while there's (presumably!) nothing it's like to be a toy robot or a bowl of chicken soup, the reason you possess what Anglophone philosophers call phenomenology -is that the material stuff out of which you are made is organized the right way.You might find materialism attractive if you dislike the thought that people are animated by immaterial spirits or possess immaterial properties. 1Here's another thought you might dislike: The United States is, literally, like you, phenomenally conscious. That is, the United States, conceived of as a spatially distributed entity with people as (some of) its parts, literally possesses a stream of conscious experience over and above the experiences of its members considered individually. I will argue in this essay that accepting the materialist idea you probably like (if you're a typical early 21 st century philosopher) should draw you to accept some group consciousness ideas you probably don't like (if you're a typical early 21 st century philosopher) -unless you choose, instead, to accept some other ideas you probably ought to like even less.The argument in brief is this. If you're a materialist, you probably think that rabbits have conscious experience. And you ought to think that. After all, rabbits are a lot like us, biologically and neurophysiologically. If you're a materialist, you probably also think that conscious experience would be present in a wide range of alien beings behaviorally very similar 1 For purposes of this essay, I'm going to assume that we know, a...

Corporate Agency and Possible Futures

“…8 Collectivists who deny the possibility of group consciousness include Tuomela (2013), p. 52; Theiner (2014); Tollefsen (2015), p. 63;List (2016). Two rare exceptions who do not rule out this possibility are Huebner (2014), p. 120, andSchwitzgebel (2015). Note that what is at issue here is phenomenal consciousness.…”

Split-brain syndrome and extended perceptual consciousness

“…Whilst this would be a surprising and counter-intuitive conclusion, it is not clear that it should be rejected solely on that basis. Just as the extended mind is (arguably) logically entailed if one accepts a functionalist account of mind (Wheeler 2010), it could turn out that the existence of group consciousness is logically entailed if one accepts a functionalist account of consciousness (Schwitzgebel 2015). Thus, the existence of group consciousness may simply be a consequence of a sound and valid argument.…”

What is it Like to be a Group Agent?

“…For example, Huebner (: 120) writes: “it is hard to imagine that collectivities can be conscious; but it is just as hard to imagine that a mass of neurons, skin, blood, bones, and chemicals can be phenomenally conscious … The mere fact that it is difficult to imagine collective consciousness does not establish that absent qualia intuitions have [the force they are sometimes thought to have]” . And Schwitzgebel (: 1697) provocatively argues that “[i]f materialism is true, the United States is probably conscious”, offering perhaps the most elaborate defence of group consciousness in the literature. His central point is that the United States is a sufficiently integrated system such that if we accept materialist criteria for consciousness that are “liberal enough to include both small mammals and highly intelligent aliens, then the United States probably does meet those criteria” (ibid.…”

“…But should we also accept that there is such a thing as group consciousness? I give an overview of some of the key issues in this debate and sketch a tentative argument for the view that group agents lack phenomenal consciousness ( pace Schwitzgebel ). In developing my argument, I draw on integrated information theory, a much‐discussed theory of consciousness.…”