perceptronium means A hypothetical state of matter capable of giving rise to self-awareness and subjectivity. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 88 out of 100.
Why “perceptronium” is a great word
PERCEPTRONIUM — [Noun] A hypothetical substance or state of matter postulated to be the specific physical substrate from which subjective consciousness arises. Coined by physicist Max Tegmark from *perceptron* (a type of artificial neural network unit, itself from *percipere*, "to perceive") + *-ium* (a suffix used in scientific contexts to denote substances or elements), it is materialism's most audacious promissory note. Unlike *qualia*, which names the ineffable textures of experience, or *panpsychism*, which imbues all things with primordial mind, perceptronium is a candidate for the precise structural alchemy that transforms arrangement into awareness. It is the ghost not in the machine, but as the machine—a particular symphony of information in a neural net, a specific lattice of qubits in quantum computation, or the silent, integrated network that contemplates its own existence. We await the substance of our selves.
noun
- A hypothetical state of matter capable of giving rise to self-awareness and subjectivity.“Max Tegmark, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Physics (he also spoke at the New York event), has proposed that there is a state of matter — like solid, liquid and gas — that he calls perceptronium: atoms arranged so they can process information and give rise to subjectivity.”