Question regarding panpsychism
Panpsychism says that consciousness is fundamental. What does that mean exactly, that consciousness is fundamental? That the substance that the universe is composed of is essentially consciousness? Where did "knowing" come into play? Something had to initially know how to arrange atoms and chemicals in way to give rise to awareness.
Comments (230)
Perhaps this could be 'speeded up' by scientific progress in transhumanism.
I am not a panpsychist but I currently raise a very skeptical eyebrow of interest toward it.
There are many forms and articulations of panpsychism. The one I know well is Galen Strawson's. The gist of it is that the basic constituents of reality are so made up that if they are assembled in a certain way, consciousness will follow. So we don't need to think in terms of "emergence" in this case.
Put it this way, given an extremely long period of time, odds are that at least once, this specific configuration of stuff will mix in such a way that its dormant experiential properties are given a chance to appear.
But the potential for experience was always there all along.
That's how I understand him anyway.
That's not panpsychism, that is materialism.
The Galen Strawson-Philip Goff idea is that even sub-atomic particles possess a rudimentary form of consciousness. 'The basic commitment is that the fundamental constituents of reality—perhaps electrons and quarks—have incredibly simple forms of experience' - Phillip Goff. So pan-psychism means literally 'consciousness (psyche) everywhere' - it claims that consciousness is not only an attribute of sentient beings but is all-pervading throughout the Universe.
Strawson, being provocative, though not necessarily inaccurate, calls his panpsychism "materialist panpsychism", as his materialism takes consciousness to be the thing we are best acquainted with out of all of nature, he adds that consciousness is physical, not physicScal.
Dennett certainly is no panpsychist, he uses the term "nifty" and argues, sure pansychism is fine, but if so, then why not pan-niftyism? And he has a point here.
Yes, there is a sense in which there are extremely rudimentary forms of experience everywhere. But it has virtually nothing to do with how we think or talk about consciousness ourselves, or at best, very little.
Aristotle showed that substantial being is in-formed. It is the combination of material and formal cause. So everything that exists - such as an organism with life and awareness - is a product of a process of material potential becoming suitably structured to achieve the "goal" of having some stable material identity.
But material dualism arises where form isn't deemed to be fundamental and so "consciousness" cannot be explained in these structuralist terms.
The appeal of panpsychism is thus that of a reductionism which is so extreme it even wipes away the vast biological and sociological complexity of the human organism. All that structure counts for nothing and "consciousness" can be made another fundamental property of nature, like mass or charge ... even if that ruse involves claiming that it is a fundamental property which is "first person" and thus will never be measurable.
If panpsychism seems to not to add up, that is because it doesn't. It is material reductionism taken to its self-parodying extreme.
Panpsychism doesn’t solve the hard problem, it reifies it by installing the dualism within each bit of objective reality.
Here’s a way to really solve ( or dissolve) the Hard Problem:
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4007/1/ConsciousnessPrimaryArt2.pdf
Panpsychism doesn’t solve the hard problem, it reifies it by installing the dualism within each bit of objective reality. -Joshs
Would you mind rephrasing that? It's quite intriguing.
What do you make of Bitbol’s attempt to dissolve the hard problem? He’s following Varela here.
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4007/1/ConsciousnessPrimaryArt2.pdf
Panpsychism does not propose that quarks are in themselves conscious or neurons are conscious but that the 'ingredients' of consciousness exist naturally in the Universe due to vast variety and vast combination over an evolutionary period of natural selection of around 14 billion years. Consciousness has now evolved to the manifest stage that is exhibited in the animal world and most successfully within lifeforms such as humans. - Universeness
If consciousness is fundamental, that doesn't mean that knowledge is fundamental. Wouldn't there have had to be something like a mind that knew how to arrange these ingredients in such a away to give rise to awareness?
How do you "solve" a problem by combining two problems in an unresolved fashion? It is like shoving the shit that makes you uncomfortable into a locker and saying, see, I can still shut the door on it. Case closed. No metaphysics necessary.
Quoting Watchmaker
That is the miracle that appeals. You don't have to explain anything about anything. Folk who promote panpsychism don't want to have to explain either mind or matter. They just want to take these familiar cultural categories at face value. So both get shoved in the locker of simple-minded reductionism. And job done.
Quoting Watchmaker
Depends on how absurd your notion of "physical matter" is. Most folk are naive realists rather than Aristotelean hylomorphists, or modern day particle physicists who talk about stuff like gauge invariance, Yang-Mills couplings, stacks of QFT fields, conformal de Sitter spaces, and the like.
Physicists have looked at "physical matter" rather closely and the naive folk view of things is long dead.
Neuroscientists have looked at "mental matter" and ditto.
FWIW, I try to avoid the philosophical problems of Panpsychism, as it is usually formulated. If Consciousness is fundamental, then we could assume that every thing in the universe is conscious to some degree. But the notion of conscious atoms and dust particles has been vociferously debated. As an alternative, I take "Information", in a post-Shannon sense, as the Spinozan single substance of the universe. In order to understand what that means, you'd have to spend some time getting familiar with the scientific postulation that "Information" (essence of both matter & mind) is the fundamental element of Reality. I explore the meaning of that unorthodox concept in my BothAnd Blog. :smile:
Is information the only thing that exists? :
Physics suggests information is more fundamental than matter, energy, space and time – the problems start when we try to work out what that means
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431191-500-inside-knowledge-is-information-the-only-thing-that-exists/
Cosmopsychism vs Enformationism :
Goff scoffs at the materialist assumption that mental properties mysterious emerge from complexes of physical properties. "It’s silly to say that atoms are entirely removed from mentality, then wonder where mentality comes from." This discrepancy is why the ancient theory of Panpsychism proposed that even matter is made of Mind (psyche). “Consciousness” is the most common term used to indicate that metaphysical “substance” of reality. But the term is misleading, so I prefer to use the more technical term "Information" in reference to the mind-stuff of which sentience, awareness, feelings and knowledge are made.
http://bothandblog.enformationism.info/page53.html
I think it may have bearing on the topic at hand. Not really sure just yet how, but if things can be in two places at one time, then to me at least, all bets are off. It's not a huge leap from there to say that the universe itself is a mind.
https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2020/10/need-be-two-places-once-it-may-be-possible#:~:text=Quantum%20physics%20has%20demonstrated%20that,also%20exist%20in%20multiple%20places.
Are we talking reality's atoms, or reality's degrees of freedom? ... and thus its invariances ... and thus its structural dichotomisation into its global spacetime invariances (the structure of its Lorentz, Poincare and even de Sitter symmetry groups) and its local gauge invariances (starting with the Standard Model's SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1))?
The problem is that the notion of material atoms is already as reified as it gets. And modern hylomorphism makes that clear. Material reality is composed of a structure of constraints acting to shape amorphous material potential.
So whether you are seeking to explain mind or matter, both have to fit within that ontic structural realist frame.
Quoting Joshs
I like Bitbol's clarity. But you know that my answer is pansemiotic. So we can't reduce out accounts of reality to phenomenology as our first person point of view - our semiotic Umwelt - is the least general "view of reality" possible. And we are seeking the maximally general view as the ground under our ontology.
Even for a phenomenologist, it is obvious that your "experience" in any passing moment - or attentional state covering about half a second - is far more particular and "first person" than your "sub-conscious" habits, which are states of mind, or psychological structures, formed over years of living and development. And your neurological level of reflexes and sensory apparatus are even more general and "unaware" than that.
So phenomenology that actually examines the structure of experience would not seek to ground itself in the sharp and personal sense of the immediate. It already has to turn towards the subconscious and automatic to find that which is more general. And it is already thus becoming more receptive to standard neuro-reductionism - as an account based on the methodological naturalism which is all about explaining the particular from the better vantage point of the general.
Thus Bitbol can be quite right about physics and its struggle to generalise the fact that we are indeed humans making models of an objective reality, yet seem forever entangled in those models.
The quantum collapse issue highlights that fact. Yet as I have argued, it also shows us exactly where the epistemic incision must be made.
In the semiotic view, reality is our Umwelt - a picture of the world as it is ... with the small addition of it being the world with "us" in it as its intentional centre.
So as a model of third person objectivity, the fact that we then also find ourselves buried in the heart of the model as its first person finality, is the feature of the model, not the bug.
As organisms, we could never afford to take a dispassionate stance on existence. Our models have to be enactive. So the self must arise out of the pragmatics of semiosis.
That means that when we inquire into the third person view of the physical world, we find it reflects our intentions and needs rather directly. We experience an Umwelt.
And the same then goes when we try to take a third person view of "consciousness" as this act of modelling the world. The "self" is a necessary part of the psychological structure that is the Umwelt.
So first and third person view are the dualised aspects of the model itself. Neither "exist" outside that.
That is the general statement about the semiotic modelling relation that grounds things. And then moment to moment states of mind are all about the great particularity of being a model that is forever dynamically evolving its overall adaptive balance.
When someone gets a moment, would you mind explaining this like you're explaining it to a six year old?
The problem lies in the misconception of what, exactly, is meant by 'substance'. Usually by substance we mean 'a material with uniform properties'. However in philosophy, 'substance' was derived from the word 'substantia', meaning 'that in which properties inhere' or 'the bearer of attributes'. Socrates is of the kind of being 'man' (substantia) but he happens to have blue eyes (an 'accidental' property). The original word for 'substance' in Aristotle was 'ousia' which means something much nearer to 'being' than what we mean by 'substance'.
And the common misconception that 'substance' is 'stuff' leads to the ridiculous notion of 'thinking stuff' - which is actually very close to what panpsychism is saying! Hey, all stuff thinks, but it's not until it congeals into human form that it thinks intelligently'. Or something of the kind.
Incidentally some years back, Phillip Goff, noted panpsychist, joined the forum to respond to my criticism of an article of his. That can be read here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/58859
"Substance" is not "stuff"? This is interesting. Could you explain that a bit more?
Thought I did! The original term was 'ouisia'. I'm not a Greek scholar, or Classics scholar, but what I've learned is that 'ousia' doesn't mean anything like 'stuff'. It is a form of the ancient Greek verb for 'to be'. So 'ousia' is more like a kind of 'being' than a kind of 'stuff'. There's an entry here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousia which is not a bad starting point but to really get your head around it takes a fair bit of study.
(Actually, I noticed this in that article: 'Much later, Martin Heidegger said that the original meaning of the word ousia was lost in its translation to the Latin, and, subsequently, in its translation to modern languages. For him, ousia means Being, not substance, that is, not some thing or some being that "stood" (-stance) "under" (sub-).' )
Thanks.
So substance is a form of being, not stuff. Would it be conceivable that matter is ultimately composed of ousia?
I guess in some ways that is what the panpsychists are driving at, although I agree with @apokrisis criticism of it - that it tries to solve the problem of what, exactly, is consciousness, by saying that everything is conscious.
When we say 'composed of', what do we mean, exactly? The atomist view is that matter is 'composed of' indivisible point-particles. That's what everything comes down to. That is a very difficult thing to defend, however, in light of the findings of 20th century physics, which calls into question the possibility of atoms in that simple sense; the current model of the atom is just that, a 'model' comprising mathematical abstractions that can be validated against observations (albeit with quite a few missing pieces.)
I would say that the intuitive exploration of the nature of 'being' requires a different kind of mind-set to the hard-nosed approach of physics and science generally. Considering such questions is more an existential question, than a scientific one. I think it harks back to a different age, with a very different kind of mentality or outlook on life, than our own 'objectivist' culture.
Phenomenology, for example, which has been mentioned already, consists of disciplined reflection on the nature of experience - not on the composition of objects.
This makes sense in that Being grounds Becoming in the Aristotelean scheme. So that which stably exists becomes the stuff which also can stand under the change.
Of course, this new variety of reductionism is disputable. Hylomorphism reads better when understood as Being being the stability of the material potential once it has become structured or in-formed in a fashion that supports its persisting existence.
In that light, the Becoming grounds the Being. You have to have the dynamics - the flux - before you could negate that in some way that results in the stasis of a continuous identity.
So the general Greek scheme is the same whether it is the Pythagorean apeiras and peras, the Heraclitan flux and logos, or the Aristotelean hyle and morph, or material impulse and Platonic constraint.
Substance is the stability that results from a structure of constraints acting on a field of free possibilities. It is the stabilisation of the unstable.
Reductonism needs one or other to come first - either the dynamically stable results or the dynamically uncertain start. But holism says the dynamism - the process view - is the thing. And so existence is all relative to that.
Either the dynamism is maximised in one of its directions, or minimised in the other. It is the wholeness of this relation that counts - which is the ground - and not which way around you try to arrange the two complementary poles.
So you can read it as Being begets Becoming. Substance describes an informed state of materiality such that there is something that is both stable enough to have a persisting identity, yet also fluid enough to partake in further evolutionary change. The clay can be made into bricks.
But then Becoming also grounds this Being. The wish to build a house drives the need for solid little cubioids as the Platonically ideal construction material. And so that wish - imposed on the innocent undirected dynamics of clay - bring about the result of restricting its claggy material freedoms. An end is put to its less substantial state of being.
In other words, as others have suggested, "panpsychism" is a reductionist yet anti-emergence mystery-of-the-gaps which only compounds 'the mystery of consciousness' with a proposal to substitute a (lower level) harder problem for "the" (higher level) "hard problem". A question begged, not answered.
Yes. In my thesis, I call that "Knower" by various names that indicate only its functional role, because I don't know anything for sure about anything that is not within the space-time universe.
Since the "Knower", as a whole, must necessarily be more-than the comprehendable parts, I assume that he/she/it must be external & prior-to the known universe. Also, since some theorists portray the Information-centric universe as a computer program, I use the label "Programmer" to indicate the creative role of the "Enformer". And, for those who are more comfortable with the baggage-laden concept of God, I sometimes refer to the Knower as "G*D". The asterisk is intended to hint that this is not your grandfather's notion of deity. Some traditional philosophical appellations for the executor of the program is "First Cause" or "Prime Mover". Of course, William Paley's, pre-computer, functional description of "Watchmaker" is also historically appropriate.
As far as I'm concerned, whatever the "Knower" is, beyond the conceiver of the world's Information, is of no concern to me. I can make some assumptions & conjectures about Eternity & Infinity, but that's really beyond my scope of knowledge. Apparently, the Knower wants to be known only for He/r knowable Forms. If there is any other revelation, I don't know anything about it. Presumably, you can know the "Artist" by his/her works. :cool:
The Information Philosopher on Panpsychism :
https://www.informationphilosopher.com/mind/panpsychism/
Universe information theory :
Digital physics is a speculative idea that the universe can be conceived of as a vast, digital computation device, or as the output of a deterministic or probabilistic computer program.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics
Perhaps. "Ousia" was adopted by Christian theologians as a reference to the spiritual "substance" or "essence" of God. So, if you think of Matter as a tangible form of incorporeal Spirit, that might work. But, for a science-oriented audience, it might be easier to convey the same idea by substituting 21st century "Information" for ancient spooky "Spirit".
From that perspective, God would be the Enformer, who created a world from his own "substance" : in this case, "Information" -- the creative power to enform. That's an update on an old pre-20th century Deistic notion : either God became the physical world, or that God transformed some of his metaphysical Essence into physical matter. Today, pragmatic scientists have learned that knowable Information (meaning) can transform into invisible Energy (potential ; causation), and into mathematical Mass, that we experience as weighty Matter. (E=MC^2)
However, that same "Information" was originally known as the intangible ideas & thoughts in a Mind, in a brain. So, Information is the ultimate shape-shifter. In my thesis though, I also refer to the ultimate source of all things as BEING : the "foundation of all existence". BEING is simply the power to become, to exist. To sum up : everything in this world is a form of Information, or as I prefer, EnFormAction. :nerd:
Metaphysics of God (as One Infinite Eternal Substance) :
Many philosophers and scientists of the past have understood God as One Dynamic Substance that causes and creates the world. This is conducive to the pantheist conception of God as the Universe / Nature / Reality.
https://www.spaceandmotion.com/metaphysics-god-substance.htm
Mass, in physics, mathematical measure of inertia, a fundamental property of all matter. It is, in effect, the resistance that a body of matter offers to a ... change of state..
Is Information the Fifth Form of Matter? :
It states that information is the fundamental building block of the universe, and it has mass . . .
https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/article/is-information-the-fifth-form-of-matter
I think you mean 'matter'.
We should consider what the ancient philosophers understood as the philosophical significance of the forms, which is that they are changeless or incorruptible. So they signify immortality, that which is beyond the vicissitudes of becoming and passing away. The quest was for the correspondence between that element of the soul which could be identified with that immortal aspect of being; by knowing that, the philosopher was united with it (i.e. in the Phaedo, where philosophy is the 'preparation for death' and 'the soul' is 'united with the eternal forms'.) Their aim is not to arrive at an objective or what we would nowadays understand as a scientific understanding - it was, from today's perspective, mystical.
Quoting Gnomon
I think that's a reification.
Nope. But we do tend to define matter as that which can take the imprint of our rather particular human wishes.
That doesn't do justice to the deeper definition of substance that goes beyond it being already present as a material cause, and instead defines it in terms of a privation of form, and so unformed potential.
Quoting Wayfarer
So I give the Aristotelean view and you reply with the popular theistic version of Platonism - the one without the chora as its version of the material potential or formless receptacle.
I agree Aristotle said the soul was the form of the body. But then a neuroscientist would also say the same these days. With the emphasis on the lack of immortality, perfection, changelessness, etc, that in fact essential to substantial being as something developmental and temporal, not timeless or transcendent, but thoroughly immanent and actual in its substantial particularity.
Quoting apokrisis
Could you explain the reduction?
Reduction normally involves explaining one thing completely in terms of things other than it. So a is reduced to x, y, z if a is fully explained by x, y, z with no reference to a in that explanation. Something like that anyway.
So if panpsychism is a reductionist theory of consciousness, what non-conscious things do you think it reduces consciousness to?
I find this very odd, as one of the primary theoretical motivators for panpsychism is the that is it not a reductionist theory, that is, difficulties with attempts to explain consciousness in non-question-begging terms lead us to the conclusion (not assumption) that consciousness is a fundamental property of reality.
Not all panpsychists think that consciousness is fundamental. I do though.
All that is necessary for panpsychism is that consciousness is present somehow in everything. The IIT, for example, is reductionist, it says consciousness is integrated information, so in a sense information is more fundamental than consciousness, it just so happens that there is no unintegrated information around, so everything is, in fact, minimally conscious.
There are also micropsychists, that take a bottom-up panpsychist approach, starting with small things and building up; and macrospsychists, who take consciousnes as a property of reality as a whole and get to multiple subjects by division (rather than addition). Lots of different versions with different theoretical motivations.
That's what I think, yes. Not all panpsychists think that though.
Quoting Watchmaker
I don't understand what you mean, or what that's got to do with panpsychism. Panpsychists do not usually explain consciousness in functional, chemical or any such terms, although some do. Even those who do would say there is no prior knowing, knowing is these processes, not a pre-existing condition of them.
I think there is a point in the emergence of consciousness where a mind is needed to create a cream cake. cream cakes and cars or guns cant evolve they are invented by conscious minds but I think it's THIS intuitive logic that human consciousness 'projects' from the origin of cream cakes onto the origin of the Universe. The possibility that the origin of the Universe and the origin of consciousness was down to random chance is at least not impossible and is therefore possible and we might eventually be able to demonstrate that it's highly likely, on the way to knowing that it really did happen that way. Knowledge is not fundamental, I agree. Knowledge is acquired by consciousness but I don't see why knowledge has to exist before random happenstance.
Perhaps 'data' is fundamental and 'meaning' is fundamental.
I think the problem is simply 'the current limiting factors of human consciousness.' Current human consciousness is quite limited in its scope.
I don't think that the natural evolution of human consciousness has yet given us any ability to decipher the origin story of our Universe. I think this is one of the main reasons why most people take the very easiest and laziest of roads possible to scratch that annoying itch to know, they become theists.
Evolution has not stopped, It continues. Give the humans another few million years. The dinos had somewhere between 77 million and 165 million years according to my google search, and they never even tamed fire! Push for merging humans with technology to extend lifespan. Push for global unity of our species. Push for developing technology that will allow us to leave this planetary nest as a prudent policy of further protection against the possibility of our extinction.
This is only my very humble opinion of course, regarding the ways in which YOU personally could be MOST useful to OUR human species, in your and my, currently, very short lifespan.
That's not true. If the gap is closed no more then no more gods of the gaps are needed. Then the gods are true gods, not serving to fill gaps, say between inflation and time zero.
These pushes are the causes of our future extinction. We could prevent that extinction by stop pushing. What if we arrive on another nest? An Earth-like planet. Then the pushing starts all over?
There are more gaps in our knowledge than there are bits filled in.
Newtons I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. This was true when he is supposed to have said it and it's still true today.
Quoting EugeneW
Don't be such a big fearty, ya big fearty! :rofl:
Oh, laughing at my own joke attempts is never a good thing :scream:
You got the basic symmetry wrong. It's a SU(3)XSU(3)XSU(1) symmetry.
Quoting apokrisis
The epistemic cut can be made wherever you like.
Quoting apokrisis
Why you add "pathological"? It's the material metaphysics that's pathological.
Quarks and electrons already contain the seeds of consciousness. They tend to like one another or hate one another. Already at that level there is the dual at work.
A dual duel?
I would like to understand what Joshs said here:
it reifies it by installing the dualism within each bit of objective reality.-Joshs
Does your statement above coincide in any way with what Joshs stated? His statement was very condense and it resonated like a riddle.
If it were true random happenstance, then no, I don't see why there would need to be a mind either. It just happened. Rationality sprang from irrational forces. Minds that seek truth emerged from forces that know nothing of truth.
I agree and think that what you describe above must be quite possible. I find it much more plausible than god or even g*d.
It's the basis of the chaos...combination....assembly....order...entropy....disassembly....chaos....bounce suggested by Roger Penrose. At least that's my very basic attempt at a summary of the stages he describes.
Yes! :smile: Duelle and Duette dueling already there. Love and hate. Just look at the comment exchanges here on TPF...
A fearty farty forty! What fear?
I dont agree. Understanding is not rational. The conscious minds appearing in the course of evolution know already bout the truth. Ratio alone can't explain the truth.
The primal fear which I am convinced is the substrate of all theism that you display in your typings.
I push our species to boldy go where no man has gone before. You advocate we stay on Earth and huddle together back in our caves with artist impressions of god(s) talisman's hanging around our necks, for protection against the noises outside the caves at night.
Okay, I know I am caricaturing your viewpoints a little but I have become very used to the windup aspect of debate. Such a tendency can annoy others but can also be fun for those who are like-minded to me.
Could you rephrase that please?
A would still equal A in any possible world that could have arisen by random chance.
An example of what you mean would help. If algebraic A is instantiated to 'the existence of gravity' then yes, I agree. If A is assigned 'consciousness' then perhaps not. I just choose these two examples as an attempt to illustrate my point.
Quoting universeness
But fear of what? We can boldly push and go where no man has gone before, but space being the final frontier "but it's made in a Hollywood basement", as you know the song goes.
If consciousness, the soul, the mental, is already present at the fundaments then every attempt to rationally explain it is doomed.
Let me think about that and get back with you. I appreciate your time.
Stability of form and structure is an illusion. It is a product of our minds' frequency relative to the frequency of what is being observed. Change is relative and minds change relative to every other process. The rate at which they change, or process external information, is relative to the speed or frequency at which the external world changes. Some changes happen very fast and some very slow. Those that happen fast appear as "non-physical" processes, while those that happen very slow appear as stable "physical" objects.
If reductionism is faulty then how is it that we understand the things we have invented as products of smaller parts? How can I repair your computer by replacing a part, not the whole computer, or by the process of elimination by eliminating the causes that are not at fault to get at the cause that is the fault? You only arrive at the right answer after making all possible mistakes.
If not reductionism, does that mean we live in a world that is only made up of Earth, Wind, Air and Fire? In a non-reductionist world, there would be uncountable substances and forms - none of which would be reducible to anything else. Energy and matter would be different substances and forms. Plastic, metal, wood, electricity, light, sound, etc., would all be different substances and forms without being reduced to smaller processes. It seems to me that a non-reductionist view would be the view of the naive realist - that things exist as they are experienced without being reduced to things that we don't see, or can observe.
It seems to me that a lot of people are saying the same thing, but using different terms, mostly in an effort to make the simple sound complicated as a way of "chest-beating" for social status.
I wonder what the motivation is? I mean, I look around at the world, and I see that some things are conscious, you and me, my dog, and I see that the mechanisms for consciousness are in our brains, we can switch them off and on. I see that some things are not conscious, rocks, dead people or dogs. I think bacteria for example aren't conscious (because we can explain their behaviour through non-conscious processes), but they do have something which is a prerequisite for consciousness, they are individuals, separated from their environment.
This stuff is surely super-important?! Whether we ourselves and other items are conscious or not really matters to us.
So I'm wondering what is gained by losing the distinction between conscious and not conscious.
Of course. But the suggestion was intended as a change of perspective, in order to adapt to a challenge to someone's religious worldview. From my own science-based philosophical worldview , I have concluded that what the ancients called "Spirit" (invisible agency), is what we now call "Energy" (invisible causation). The difference is that, thanks to Einstein, we can now equate invisible Energy & tangible Matter via the moderation of mathematical Mass. (E=MC^2)
With that in mind, I could re-word my tongue-in-cheek proposal as : "think of Matter as a tangible form of intangible Energy". That's not the fallacy of Reification, but the realization that Energy is a mental model constructed to explain physical changes, that would otherwise seem mysterious. Energy may seem less mysterious (spiritual), if you view it as an active form of Generic Information, which I also call "EnFormAction", to denote its relationship to mundane Energy .
Why are most forms of energy invisible to the naked eyes :
[i]"There is no manifestation of energy that is visible. Even light itself is not visible."
"Mostly because energy is a model we invented to make our physics easier. It doesn't physicially exist, it's just something we created to show how things behave"[/i]
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-most-forms-of-energy-invisible-to-the-naked-eyes-while-we-can-see-heat-as-fire-for-example-What-make-some-forms-seen-and-other-not.
Note -- we see the effects of Energy inputs as the physical changes in Matter
Information is Generic in the sense of generating all forms from a formless pool of possibility : the Platonic Forms.
BothAnd Blog, post 33
EnFormAction :
[i]"En-" within : referring to essential changes of state
"Form-" to mold or give shape to : it's the structure of a thing that makes it what it is.
"Action-" causation : the suffix “-ation” denotes the product or result of an action.
* So the cosmic force of EnFormAction is the Cause of all Things in the world and of all Actions or changes of state. In physical terms, it is both the Energy and the Material, plus the Mental concept of things. It is the creative impulse of evolution.*
* Plato’s "Form"s were described, not as physical things, but as the idea or concept or design of things. The conceptual structure of a thing can be expressed as geometric ratios & relationships which allow matter to take-on a specific shape. So, in a sense, the ideal Form of a real Thing is the mathematical recipe for transforming its potential into actual.[/i]
BothAnd Blog, post 33
Primal fear of the unknown/misunderstood/things which seem much bigger and stronger than you.
Attempt an imaginary mindwalk for a moment, in the shoes/or lack of shoes of a very early ancestor of our species. I imagine language/communication with our fellows would mostly be grunts and hand/arm gesticulations at that time.
Consider being one of the first consciousnesses to comprehend that the sun seemed to rise up from one side of the sky, move across the sky and fall down the other side, and then all is dark and you can barely see ten feet in any direction and all you hear is a terrifying cacophony of roars, screeches, hisses etc.
If you can do that then you will begin to understand primal fear/terror.
How happy you will be to see the light rise again and feel its warmth. You can leave your dark cave and hunt and gather. You can see the big scary beasts and can avoid them, you can run, climb, swim or work with your fellows and spear the ba******. But then the Sun goes down again. Run to the caves!
When I mindwalk in those 'feet,' by F*** I am a theist. I love that big light in the sky! I worship it.
One time during the time it moved over the sky, something started to eat it, a shadow, we all screamed and screamed. The end is nigh! but after a long time, the shiny came back. There must have been a fight and our shiny light won. We must give thanks to the shiny light. Give thanks to the........ggggod!
Primal fear still controls or at least has a major influence on many many people, it runs so very very deep in the human psyche. I think it can be utterly conquered, eventually. I don't want to lose the fight or flight instinct but I do want to defeat primal fear and our need/yearning for supernatural protection/responsibility/guidance.
I also appreciate your time and your effort.
Do you know anything (else) that's fundamental? Biology claims that cells are fundamental to life. What do you suppose that means? Well, the way I see it is you take any living organism and deconstruct it so to speak, the process continues until you hit a point beyond which it stops making sense to call what you have is alive. That point is our humble cell.
Take the same approach with anything at all - it doesn't havta be alive, a toilet, your eye liner, whathaveyou - and analyze it (break it down into more simpler constituents), you'll end up with consciousness, beyond that, nothing, absolutely nothing. That's what "consciousness is fundamental" means. The world, at the smallest of smallest scales is an idea!
Niels Bohr, someone else, not sure who, said that atoms (matter) behave like mathematical points (ideas).
Am I on the right track, here? Sabrá Mandrake!
I conceive a range such as:
Not capable of self-generated movement(dead or a rock for example)....capable of self-generated movement...some measure of awareness.....greater measure of awareness..... sentience/consciousness ....distracted ..... tranced/hypnotised(maybe)...dreamstate/sleeping/unconscious ..... comatose....dead
I dont think this is a very good progression, at all but I just mean that rather than a clear state of 'difference' between conscious and not conscious there is a group of 'states of being' which could all belong in the same 'range.' I am not sure if such has any significance or meaning towards the 'bigger picture,' however. I am just musing as I type a response to your interesting line I quoted above. I don't think we are losing the distinction between the terms I think it's more about attempting to categorise correctly/convincingly.
Quoting apokrisis
What does general mean here? How does the general
escape or transcend the first personal? Keep in mind the referential out of consciousness doesn’t reduce to some reified idealist notion of mind or first personal at the expense of the ‘general’, but simply a
radical situatedness. It is neither a preferencing of the subjective over the general and invariant or the other way around , but a system of mutual constraints .
Bitbol says questions about consciousness are not just referential, they are radically self-referential.
“As any reasoning, a reasoning about consciousness involves a conscious experience ; aknowledging the validity of a personal reasoning, or even of a mechanical inference performed by a Turing machine, is still a conscious experience. A reasoning bearing on consciousness is included in what is reasoned about. So, when consciousness is presented as an object of reasoning, this can only be in a fake sense.
In fact, as soon as we embark on anything like discourse,
reasoning, or scientific research about consciousness, we are driven away from mere aknowledgment of what is lived now, and thereby away from the central topic of the inquiry. So much so that recovering contact with it becomes difficult, and that, from then on, we tend to value more the abstract product of arguments than their
experienced source.
In the science of consciousness, one should neither try to absorb the subjective into a previously defined objective domain, nor objectivize somehow the subjective, nor give the subjective any kind of supremacy over the objective. One should rather go back to the experiential realm from which the very dichotomy between subjectivity and objectivity arises, and then establish within it a system of mutual constraints. In actual fact, mutual constraints are enforced between first person statements of phenomenal contents, and third person descriptions of those phenomenal invariants that are established by the collectively elaborated neurosciences.
If science is extended so as to include a “ dance ” of mutual definition taking place between first-person and third-person accounts (Varela, 1998, p. 42) ; if nature is made of views and situated experiences as well as of their manifold invariants; and if, accordingly, naturalizing consciousness means including its disciplined contents within a strongly interconnected network of objects and experiences, then any problem has disappeared.”
Quoting apokrisis
But the sharp and personal sense of the immediate is also involved in the modeling of the subpersonal, the pre-reflective, the unconscious and the automatic; in other words, the general that is placed as outside of the situated awareness of the personal is itself a product of that situated awareness.
Quoting apokrisis
I suspect that semiotic models and Bitbol are not that far apart here. Neither wants to reify either subjectivity or the invariant products of empirical objectivity at the expense of their mutual entanglement.
I think the difference lies in how much ground is being ceded to formal grounding assumptions underlying both the first and third personal dimensions as they are articulated via the ‘code-based’ think of semiotics. There needs to be a way to close the gap between semiotics and Wittgensteinian contextual pragmatics, which is closer to Varela and Bitbol than to Peirce.
No, I am not a panpsychist or a cosmopsychist but I have a tiny eyebrow twitch towards them.
The idea that the totality of all the individual consciousnesses which exist in the Universe at some time in the very very distant future COULD network/collect/unite/merge/converge/coalesce into a single 'Universal conscience,' has a modicum of plausibility for me. The possibilities of transhumanism add a little more weight to the idea. If human brains could be placed in cybernetic bodies or/and if human conscience can eventually be 'downloaded' to a cloned body or into an electronic existence, then the idea of merging consciousnesses becomes more plausible.
This is no more than my own personal musings based on current sci-fi projections of current technologies, and although I 'give it room' in my head, It is in a space labeled meh! interesting but probably unlikely. Such ability to merge or join individual consciousnesses would have to be demonstrated to turn me panpsychist.
Good job that the particular and the general are a dichotomy and thus a system of mutual constraint then. So first and third person is the division we produce by remarking on the huge difference between being “ourself” as the invariant imposed on the flow of experience vs being “any such self”.
Quoting bert1
Let the dictionary be your friend: "[Reductionism is] the practice of analysing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of its simple or fundamental constituents, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation."
Quoting Harry Hindu
So like I said. Stability is relative to instability. The dichotomy is the mutually constraining one, the mutually "othering" one, of stasis~flux, or being~becoming, or how ever else you might want to capture the essential idea.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Reductionism to the holism of structuralism is different from reductionism to the reductionism of materialism - the fetishisation of Being. And the mechanical works as a combo of material and efficient cause because we humans supply the formal and final cause.
So the holism is there, if you look.
Quoting Harry Hindu
But what does modern physics now reduce these things to? I think you will find it is the maths of symmetry and symmetry breaking. The global Poincare group and the local gauge group.
Nature is reduced to mathematical structure by our physical laws. And the rest is all that is measurable within that scheme.
If something works, we ought to understand why that has become the outcome. Hence ontic structural realism as the recent metaphysical bandwagon,
I see, and that's what you're asserting of panpsychists, that panpsychists think consciousness is a complex phenomenon, fully explained in terms of fundamental constituents, which panpsychists assert are themselves also conscious. Is that right?
What I think I mean, is that there is an objective truth that A=A, that things are what they are, and that would be true in any possible world that came into existence through random happenstance.
A=A, the law of identity, a thing is what it is, is an immutable truth. There are objective truths in this universe, in this reality.
I may have gotten lost there. The content of this thread is way over my head. I'm not really sure if I answered anything or contributed anything valuable to our exchange.
I'm hung up right now though, on this idea that there necessarily had to be something there (a pre-existing mind) that knew how to assemble this information into self awareness. Unless we posit that all of it somehow knew how to do it, as though each piece is a self existent fractal of the whole.
@apokrisis It's a really simple question.
The simple answer is that you don't seem to understand the terms in the usual way.
There's lots of different conceptions of reduction - look at the Stanford article. My usual casual understanding of it is that one thing (the reduced thing) is fully explained in terms of other things (the things it is reduced to). But I'm not an expert on the concept. And I wasn't sure what you meant by it. So that's why I asked, it's odd to think of panpsychism as a reductionist theory, because it is precisely difficulties reducing consciousness to processes, functions, information, whatever, which motivates some panpsychists.
Panpsychism covers a number of views. What most of them have in common is perhaps that consciousness is present in every system. It's problematic trying to get a single definition to cover the variety of views accurately. Are you asking what my particular panpsychist view is?
Anyway, this:
Quoting apokrisis
..is not an answer to this:
Quoting bert1
I'm trying to understand what you're saying. Please will you help? Did I get it right?
I gave you the dictionary definitions. They fit what I was saying. If you think different, show me how.
Quoting bert1
Yeah. So they reduce it to a property of matter ... which may be a fundamentally incoherent metaphysics, but there you go.
Quoting bert1
Really? They all claim consciousness is a universal property of systems, not a universal property of matter?
Was this the version of panpsychism that I was responding to in the OP? Or the more usual dictionary definition?
Quoting bert1
Are you answering any time soon?
According to Aristotelian principles, forms are a manifestation of mind. The forms of things can't be explained in terms of the activities of matter alone, without being 'informed' (and there's the root of 'information'). Aristotle himself was not overtly theist in the later sense - that came with the later assimilation of Greek philosophy into Christian theology in the likes of Aquinas. But the idea of a divine intellect or 'demiurgos' was part of the fabric of Greek philosophical thought.
The problem is that this runs up against the naturalist taboo against anything that sounds theistic - a divine intelligence or intellect or whatever, which is more or less verboten in secular philosophical discourse. It sounds very like intelligent design. (See The Argument from Biological Information.) And that implicit prohibition, I think, conditions a great deal of what is said about this question, even if not articulated explicitly.
Panpsychism attempts to get around this by making the mind (or 'consciousness') an attribute of simple material particulars (presumably atoms or their constituents) - as if it's something that is there all along, like velocity, mass, and the other primary qualities of objects. They interpret the idea of 'consciousness everywhere' in a literal sense - literally distributed throughout the Universe in latent form, existing in a very rudimentary manner even in atoms themselves.
So that kind of makes panpsychism sound naturalistic - but at the cost of introducing an attribute or quality for which critics will say there can't be any direct evidence.
That's what I see as the state of play.
Quoting apokrisis
I didn't even know you'd asked me. You still haven't, but I presume you intended to. I'll answer.
My own view is that consciousness is a property of reality-as-continuum, perhaps space, or the quantum field. I do not think there is any difference in kind between the consciousness of a human being, a snail, a molecule, an Apokrisis, an atom, or the fields they are behaviours of. All are equally conscious, I do not think consciousness admits of degree. I think any arbitrarily defined object is also conscious.
So now I'll ask my question for the third time:
Quoting bert1
Quoting apokrisis
I think so, but it depends what 'matter' means, doesn't it? I tend to think of 'matter' as persistent behaviours of substance. That's what some panpsychists assert as the primary bearers of consciousness (e.g. the IIT theory). Other panpsychists go a step further and assert consciousness as a property of substance. That would include me. If we use 'matter' instead to refer to substance (as many people do), then I'm one to assert that consciousness is a property of matter. The dictionary definition of panpsychism you found is roughly OK, but as you would expect in philosophy, there are distinctions that are glossed over in a simple one-sentence definition.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't know.
As I understood the OP it was asking for clarification of what panpsychism is, rather than clearly stipulating a definition.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't know.
Quoting apokrisis
I'm just asking for clarification, that's all! I wasn't sure what you meant, and it sounded odd to me. The dictionary definitions you offered are not clear to me. I tried to put into my own words what I thought you were saying, and asked if I'd got it right! That's a nice thing to do isn't it? I don't understand why you are making this so difficult.
I think that's quite a good summary.
I think the notion that apokrisis and I take issue with, in different ways, is the depiction of consciousness as a substance or property. What makes this problematic is that it is the tendency to reduce phenomena to physical substance that led to the hard problem to
begin with. If all you have is hammer , then everything looks like a nail, and if your only metaphysics is monistic naturalism, then everything looks like a substance.
But consciousness is neither an object, a substance or a property, but a relational activity.
But consciousness is neither an object, a substance or a property, but a relational activity.
I have always understood, that the naturalist view, is that consciousness is an emergent property. You are saying that it's not a property, but a relational activity. I've never heard that.
OK, thanks. I still don't really understand though, sorry. I'm OK with reducing phenomena to more basic concepts where we can. But I don't regard consciousness, nor extension, spatiality, as phenomena in need of explanation. They seem to be basic concepts that resist analysis, to me at least.
I'm interested in your view of consciousness as a relational activity if you'd like to say more about that.
Right. And this gets us to the nub of the problem. Naturalistic explanations implicitly rely on what is objectively existent. What the panpsychist argument attempts to do is to depict 'consciouness' in naturalistic terms, as an object or the property of objects. But the problem with that is, 'consciousness' or 'mind' never appears to us as an object. It is what objects appear to, or for.
This, as @Joshs knows, was one of the main features of Husserl's critique of naturalism.
Whereas, he goes on to say
But the point is, this is not 'a theory' or 'hypothesis' about 'the natural world' so much as a shift in perspective in understanding the nature of knowledge itself. This shift has to come from a kind of self-awareness of the nature of knowing and being - which is then further developed by the later phenomenological and existential philosophers, including Heidegger, Sartre, and others.
Yes, I think you are exactly right. "Emergentism" is a much clearer and less ambiguous word than "physicalism" or "materialism" or even "naturalism", and better captures people's views. I know I'm not an emergentist. But I can't say for certain that I am not a physicalist, as I don't know what it means.
It can do, but it can also depict it as primarily a property of substance, and then, a fortiori, derivatively, of modifications of that substance as well.
No. You just continue to badger me without addressing the inconsistencies of your own position.
It seems according to you, panpsychists don't mean to reduce consciousness to being another ultimately simple property of matter, like presumably mass and charge.
And you say that panpsychists also can't see how consciousness could reduce to processes, functions, or information.
Yet at the same time, you say panpsychists generally believe consciousness can be reduced to a quality present in every system.
Then your confusion about what you might want to concretely assert in this discussion now reaches its crescendo where you state that your personal reduction would be to "a property of reality-as-continuum, perhaps space, or the quantum field."
And somehow "a snail, a molecule, an atom, a field" are all just essentially the same metaphysical category in your eyes - presumably a system (but a system that has no process or function) ... or a "reality-as-continuum" (with some wild hand-waving towards scientific concepts you don't understand)?
And you say you want clarification from me.... :lol: :rofl: :lol:
I answered all your questions Apo! All I ask is that you answer one of mine. It's polite! Humour me.
Yep. A biosemiotic modelling relation. :up:
Also, there has to be a reason why animal brains are the densest concentrations of structural and developmental complexity in the entire known universe. And why they can afford this in material and energetic terms.
It is not as if - even for the materialist - consciousness could be regarded as some kind of ultimate simple, when it is plainly the ultimate in terms of its material complexity.
You gave a bunch of different contradictory answers to the one question. That's slightly different.
Whilst nevertheless possessing the paradoxical attribute of subjective unity.
Apo, I don't speak for all panpsychists. It's not a single position. There are many types, with different theoretical justifications.
For myself, I assert that consciousness is a fundamental property. But this is not a reduction, it is the exact opposite of a reduction. So we at least have a difference in usage here, or you don't understand the concept.
Quoting apokrisis
Again, you lump all panpsychists together. Tononi, for example, is a panpsychist who does think that consciousness reduces to integrated information. I disagree with him. I can't see how consciousness can be explained in terms of other concepts. That's why I think it's likely fundamental, brute.
Quoting apokrisis
No, these systems have processes and functions, of course. It's just that consciousness isn't one of them.
Quoting apokrisis
I do! Most eagerly. I beg you. Please.
.
Well, I tried. Please would you? I mean, it's not hard. I asked it in such a way as you could say 'yes' or 'no'. So I tried to make it as easy as possible for you, as I did wonder if you have PDA.
One can be a panpsychist, a non-dualist, a pluralist - whatever and be a naturalist, a real one. A real naturalist would limit itself to saying that everything that is, is natural, with no hint of scienticism or "verificationism" or eliminating mental objects and so forth.
This rejects supernaturalism - that there are other forces in the world that aren't natural. This includes much woo, though by no means all.
If God existed or if panpsychism were true or even dualism - for who knows the answers to ultimate metaphysical questions? - then they would be natural, but not for that reason limited to a laboratory, nor less special or extraordinary.
The onus is for someone to explain WHY there need be something other than natural stuff in the universe and provide, if not evidence, then good reasons. Then I might be willing to throw naturalism to the wayside.
In either case, it's not a problem for panpsychism.
The clue would be that it is indeed a "paradoxical" claim unless the unity is the holistic one based on the classical unity of opposites.
In other words, consciousness can't be a simple. It is already complex.
We then need to cash this out as a systems-style causal account, and not a simple-minded monist account which doesn't even work for physics and its models of the "material realm", let alone the semiotic sciences of life and mind.
So from the cognitive neuroscience point of view, we would conventionally start by noting that "consciousness" is a unity in terms of being a balance of integration and differentiation. We need to see the world generally so as to be able to see it as being contrastingly particular. And this indeed is the phenomenological structure we discover on closer inspection - a division of "mindful awareness" into differentiating attention and integrating habit.
Something has to explain how I can both drive a car down busy streets, and yet do so completely automatically to the point I can't even remember the experience if I am too happy in my own day-dreaming.
So yep. Start with the unity, the holism, the global symmetry state. But that only sets the stage for the "other" of its breaking.
The breaking then become the various dichotomies which organise the brain so that it has the right kind of rational structure for making pragmatic sense of the world.
You have motor cortex vs sensory cortex, object-recognition paths vs spatial-relations paths, sub-cortical habits vs cortical attentional process, working memory vs long-term memory, focal left brain attentional style vs vigilant right brain attentional style, etc.
To analyse, the brain must dichotomise. This principle goes right down to the sensory receptors that are switches with two states - on or off.
Then that which is dichotomised must be unified by its synthesis. So the brain is organised by the fact that it divides just as much as it unites, differentiates just as hard as it integrates. The result is a coherence of incoherences, a generality of limitless contrasts.
It is easy to make is sound paradoxical ... until you see this is just what the unity of an anti-reductionist holism is. The irreducible complexity of a reciprocal relation where you go in two different directions at the same time in a way that then produces the third thing of their optimising balancing act.
No. You have just proven yourself to be someone who can't follow arguments and gets very frustrated by that particular shortcoming.
No? OK, go for it one more time then.
I'm not talking about engineering, about what systems you would have to have in place in order to produce or emulate a mind. To paraphrase that SEP entry - when you experience a noise and a pain, you are not conscious of the noise and then, separately, of the pain but of the noise and pain together, as aspects of a single conscious experience.
Of course, from a cognitive science or AI perspective you can then analyse the various neural and physiological systems that have to be coordinated, how the nerves transmit the sensations and how they are combined, but that has been shown not to account for the subjective unity of perception '...enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience.'
Right. So any neuroscientific account has to explain both the differentiation and the integration here.
The exact same noise could be painful or exhilarating depending on whether it was heard at a Motorhead concert or blasting out from your neighbours at 2am.
For the synaesthete, the painful noise could also come coloured, while for the autistic person, even turning down the volume might leave the sound feeling unbearable.
Consciousness has a functional unity to the degree that it is neither over-integrating, nor over-differentiating, but doing differentiation~integration just right.
So pain is an attention getter that forces focus on sensations of damage. It helps if that pain is bound to the location of that damage - which might be the speakers at the Motorhead concert. But physiotherapists often find that the pain shooting down your leg is caused by the pinched nerve in the small of your back.
This fact - that neural "information processing" issues are always to be found whenever consciousness appears dysfunctional - ought to be a clue. The kind of seamless flow or unity of a functionally adapted brain is something that we might take for granted as a "substantial simple", but when that unity breaks down, we can see what a dynamical balancing act it truly was.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure. The brain has its topographic organisation that makes it look like a bunch of computational modules. Then something like a central CPU clock - the thalamus beating out its magic binding rhythm - would synchronise all the activity. And then obviously.... well here the computational analogy stalls. In fact it gives no reason why the central synchronisation of a set of distributed components should result in "feeling like something".
But that is why one would only use computer analogies in the most superficial way. Biosemiosis sees organisms as being based on an embodied modelling relation. The nervous system forward-models the organism's world. It is not representations-based - the Cartesian story - but intentions-based, the Peircean and Bayesian Brain story.
So the unity of awareness - as the product of a process of differentiation grounded in integration - is not something input/output computers can give you. You can't just stick together a bunch of data points by making them all fire in different places at the same time.
But a semiotic organism learns to live in an intentional and predictive temporal space. It already has the motor and sensory habits that generally adapt it to its environment. It can form both short-range predictions and long-range intentions.
And it can suppress or erase data just as much as stick it together. It can learn to ignore the world - as the world as it is now was fully predicted just a few moments ago.
So there are a bunch of obvious differences from the Turing Universal Machine notion of how an organism might work. All the issues - like the fact that consciousness is both a unity and a particularity at the same time - are just problems for the computational analogy and its Cartesian representationalism.
Elegant account. With you on most of that.
The idea I'm contemplating is that the organising principle that gives rise to the unity of consciousness in the individual is an analogy for, or instance of, the same organising principle that of the cosmos; whatever it is that puts the 'uni' in 'universe'. Of course, we can't say what that principle is either, but I'm sure that it is real. Tao, dharma, logos - something of that nature. There's a Zen expression, 'the moon in a dewdrop' - the image of the moon being reflected in drops of dew on a clear night.
That would be what I mean by pansemiosis. And all forms of organicism arrive at the same insight. The cosmos is a whole because it is a harmony of its parts.
Without the opposing forces of differentiation and integration, there would be no contrasts to produce anything. There wouldn't even be a void. There would be the less than nothing of a Vagueness, a Firstness, an Apeiron ... a Tao, Ungrund, etc, etc.
:100: :up:
Nec caput nec pedes.
Not yet!
Quoting apokrisis
I wish there were some challenges to my confusions that I could understand. Hence my question to you. Could you please have a go at answering it?
I agree with the general concept of objective truth but I also think its very useful to move from the general to specific examples before attempting to form any 'conclusions.' The law of identity is very old but certainly has value but few systems of logic are built purely on that law alone.
Objectively, colour or sound would be experienced BY THE SAME INDIVIDUAL HUMAN BEING in exactly the same way no matter where they were in the Universe. So the law of identity applies and A = A, for humans when A is colour or sound. It would not matter if god created humans or they came to be due to random chance. But if you think about the proposal above a little more, it suggests 'placing humans as they were formed here,' to any other place in the Universe.'
But A=A would fail for colour and sound if the 'Humans' evolved not here, but in some other place in the Universe. Evolution and natural selection applied at 'some other place in the Universe,' for 14 billion years would produce a lifeform which we would not label 'Human,' if we encountered it.
If they evolved on a planet with a completely different chemistry and biology to the Earth then who knows what different perceptions they would have of WHAT WE LABEL, colour or sound.
They may not be carbon-based lifeforms even. How would a silicon-based lifeform experience what we call colour or sound. So A=A may be an 'objective truth' for humans made here and then placed anywhere else in the Universe but that could almost be a 'well obviously!' comment but its probably not at all true that A=A for colour or sound for A here after evolution and natural selection and A there after evolution and natural selection.
Quoting Watchmaker
So what about my comment that I posted near the top of Page 2, part of it pasted below:
[i]"I find it interesting that information is suggested as being fundamental. In Computing, information is a composite of the labels data and meaning. Raw data has no meaning. 25 is raw data, 25 apples, is data with meaning, and is therefore information. Data is unlabeled, so how can information be fundamental if it is made up of 'parts.'
Perhaps 'data' is fundamental and 'meaning' is fundamental"[/i]
I think this is pretty accurate under the heading of your last sentence.
Quoting Wayfarer
For all scientists who would declare themselves as naturalist however, I would defend against the position you suggest immediately above. I think you are being too harsh here. You almost suggest an irrational theophobia from naturalists towards theists and such generalisations are always at best inaccurate on a case-by-case basis.
Very insightful analysis. Generalisations are often innaccurate case-by-case, that's what makes them generalisations. But I stand by my criticism. You know, when Thomas Nagel's book Mind and Cosmos was published in 2012, he was declared to be a 'friend to creationism', notwithstanding his professed atheism.
Does this definition prevent consciousness from being a result of the combination of smaller quanta?
If it's a relational activity then what are you relating the action too? Brain functionality? and if so are we still not left with brain quantisation?
After this, you went on to type about certain workings of the brain. All good stuff. Consciousness seems to be able to employ un/sub/conscious automation of bodily actions whilst 'focussing' on the 'day-dreaming' state you describe in your example above but is this not in fact 'a lesser attentive' brain state compared to a non-daydreaming state and full focus on the driving. Your day-dream state creates more chance of a car crash occurring compared to your consciousness being more 'focussed' on the busy traffic. So human consciousness is a system with very definite limitations/flaws/capability to make mistakes. For me, these vulnerabilities, provide further (anecdotal) evidence of either limited design ability or the absence of any god.
Do you think a full understanding of the workings of the human brain will be achieved by Neuroscience?
Fair enough, but I think it's important for all of us to continue to struggle to combat inaccurate generalisations even though, as I type this, my inner referee is shouting at me 'practice what you preach mate!' :smile:
Why do you feel the need to add "consciousness" as some further reified being that sits above and beyond the brain processes of attending and habit-emitting?
Why do you say that consciousness "employs" various habits and automaticisms, while it goes off to "focus" on the day-dreaming and not on the road?
What extra work does invoking some further spooky and homuncular Cartesian regress – the "display that is also being watched" - do here?
I prefer a naturalistic account where consciousness just is the sum of everything involved in responding intelligently to the world.
There is always some balance of focus and fringe, attention and habit, noting and ignoring, differentiation and integration. And thus it is this very fact of a dichotomous organisation that is the whole of story.
Consciousness - defined in this sense - becomes as much about how much we can afford to ignore, neglect, fail to remember, etc, as that which all that on which we are focused, noting, carrying forward as working memory, etc.
So you are doing the usual thing of treating consciousness as the central spotlight of attention - the ideal witness who sees all and notes everything. And this becomes something mysterious to the degree one has to admit there is also this whole other side to mental processes - to functioning as a "mind" - that is sub-conscious, automatic, reflexive, and generally just a bunch of dumb physiology or neural information crunching.
But my definition of consciousness includes all that which is ignored, forgotten, emitted without further thought. In fact - as neurological theory, the Bayesian Brain story - it is based on that. The brain is set up to habituate its responses, learn from experience. It sets out to not have to attend ... as then that means attention is saved for the small element of novelty or importance that demands some extra processing effort.
So consciousness has this structure, this dynamic, of attention~habit. And each explains the other. To the degree you can ignore, you don't have to attend. To the degree you can't ignore, you then must attend.
And now we have a proper connection between the phenomenological experience of being a mind in the world, and a neuroscientific account in terms of the necessary structure of any useful world-model.
Consciousness as a Cartesian substance - a mysterious extra glow that attaches itself to all the physical processes - fails so spectacularly to connect with any neuroscientific account that it is no surprise that folk want to chase it all the way down to "quantum information" or "psychic atoms".
But starting the story with a dichotomous structure of attention and and habits, differentiation and integration - the logic of the processing that would be needed so to act as a self in a world - can halt this slithering down the slope of the physicalist fallacy.
We can see how panpsychism isn't even the right kind of thing before we start debating what might be its best theory.
And yet I do think there is a remnant of that Cartesianism lurking in the treatment of affectivity , both on the part of embodied enactivtists like Thompson, and predictive coding types like Barrett. All that’s left of the old inner subject is somatic sensation , the bare registry of positive and negative valence within the body. How pain-pleasure contributes to the organization of motivational relevance and mattering is a complex function of many intertwined aspects of the organism in its total functioning, and yet there remains what for me is an unsatisfying immanence or intrinsicality associated with feeling , as much as it has been embedded within irreducible webs of somatic-cognitive-environmental interactions.
So what about my comment that I posted near the top of Page 2, part of it pasted below:
[b]"I find it interesting that information is suggested as being fundamental. In Computing, information is a composite of the labels data and meaning. Raw data has no meaning. 25 is raw data, 25 apples, is data with meaning, and is therefore information. Data is unlabeled, so how can information be fundamental if it is made up of 'parts.'
Perhaps 'data' is fundamental and 'meaning' is fundamental"[/b] - Universeness
How about meaningful data is fundamental?
If meaning is fundamental, wouldn't that imply a mind?
Only in the sense that sociosemiosis stands back to look at biosemiosis "from the outside".
Our bodies make up their own minds - as organisms organised by genetic and neural information. Then human cultural practice - semiotic at the level of language and even maths - takes its own self-interested and organismic view of what might go in terms of all these affect-driven behaviours.
Humans shift up a gear by having to make socially-constructed sense of what they are feeling. Is Will Smith being courageous or shameful when he gives into his aggressive impulses. What is our social judgement and therefore what do we think he should be feeling about his feelings.
So there might seem an element of Cartesian transcendence or homuncular regress. But nothing more exciting going on here than further - more abstracted - levels of semiosis.
Quoting Joshs
Well that's what you get for being a post-structuralist rather than a structuralist. :smile:
Fundamental implies ‘mind’ all on its own. But ‘mind’ is just relative potentiality, a conceptual structure or prediction. Meaning as existential relation to paradox is fundamental, and data is what is given (as relative value or potential) in any such relation. This paradox or dichotomy in itself could be existentially prior to any meaningful relation, yet this isn’t given. Assumed or denied, its existence is relative to our own.
We keep looking for some kind of singular foundation of certainty or substance to existence, but it could only possibly or relatively exist as such. Any certainty or substance is necessarily triadic.
If all I said is true, the first order of business for consciousness is to create high quality images of the world and that's done by mirrors. I guess what I mean to say here is that mirrors possess a mind-like aboutness (the reflection or image is of/about something). Mirrors could be conscious or, to be conservative, mirrors have taken the first step towards consciousness.
Please note my use of the word "image" is both literal and figurative e.g. creating a mind-apt replica of sounds in one's surroundings is also an image, an acoustic one to be precise.
I don't think it's a coincidence that a synonym for thinking (consciousness) is reflection.
Your post sounds intriguing. I can't really make any sense of it though. Would you mind simplifying all that please? Try to make as simple as you possibly can, as though you were trying to explain it to a 6 year old.
I read before that the mind is a mirror that mirror that mirrors man's mind.
Does that tie into what you're saying here at all?
As Wayfarer keeps mentioning ever so often, a consciousness can't make of itself an object, it being the quintessential subject. Have you heard the Japanese tale of a man who was in the habit of looking at himself in the mirror every morning? One fine day, he looked and saw no head. He was convinced that he'd lost his head and turned the entire room over for his head. He eventually went back to the mirror and there was his head, as round as it had always been (he'd been looking at the back of his mirror). He was looking for his head with his head..
I guess the modern version of self-reflection is the selfie. I just went through my notes on philosophy and here's what I believe is a nugget of wisdom on art: Art isn't a photograph (representationalism only, like it was in the old days), but if you're gonna make any headway in re temet nosce, you better have a photographer who can produce a faithful copy of you rather than an artist who'll distort the image of your self with her own personal eccentricities.
As I mentioned in my previous post, there has to be an internal representation of the world that then can be thought of: The mind is about the world via the image of the world it has, an image created with the aid of our senses and our minds in partnership with each other.
That's all I have...limited panpsychism. Only mirrors or the like, objects that can reflect the world in them, can be conscious and if not that, can be treated as proto-conscious.
Quoting apokrisis
‘The subject’ does stuff like, you know, physics.
This is the situation of 'me' trying to identify what 'myself' is, by asking 'myself,' whilst also trying to identify where the question is coming from. Are all of the actions described in the previous sentence, simply part of the functionality of the human brain that humans have labeled as containing their 'consciousness.'
That's the kind of complicated question Neuroscience is trying to answer, yes?
I currently think that individual human consciousness exists wholly in the human brain and no aspect of it exists externally to the human. So, I don't conceive of consciousness as a particularly concrete entity that exists above or beyond the brain. I think IT IS a brain process that controls focus level when driving and the day-dreaming distraction.
Quoting apokrisis
I like the questions you are asking me here because I can then ask 'myself,' well why do 'you?'
I 'seem' to have to reference 'me/myself/I.' by some means so when I am describing one of my brains functions, It seems reasonable for me to use a reference like 'my consciousness employs.' I agree that this is a system referencing itself as if it was viewing its functionality from outside of its domain but I think that is an illusion and that in truth, the brain is quite capable of internally referencing and perceiving its own functionality and individual existence. Possibly, 'employs' was the wrong word to choose as it is too 'deliberate.' Reduction of focus on 'the job at hand' and entering a day-dream state but still managing to perform the job at hand because you have 'built-up' a long term experience of doing the task is simply something the brain can do but it is a less secure situation for the human(s) involved.
I agree with your naturalistic account, I am just trying to find better ways to describe such to others using exemplification and lay terminology. I am obviously not doing so well at this as you have concluded that I have some kind of spooky, homuncular, dualist viewpoint about consciousness.
Quoting apokrisis
I have watched online offerings from Sam Harris and Dan Dennett discussing some of the issues in neuroscience and you seem to know quite a bit about the area, much more than I. I was very interested in the Bayesian methodology/probability they described.
Quoting apokrisis
I can't think of any objections that I have to what you are typing here.
Quoting apokrisis
@Garrett Travers was a strong advocate for the findings of neuroscience as the most reliable source for explaining human consciousness and I found his arguments on the topic quite compelling but I am not convinced that there is NO POSSIBILITY that consciousness is a composite affect of smaller quanta all the way down to 'fundamental ingredients,' as posited by panpsychism and that some future ability to network/collectivise/merge/coalesce individual lifeform consciousnesses into a panpsychism may happen.
But meaningful data = information
Meaning and data only constitute information when they are combined and that which is a combination cannot be fundamental
Not an 'external' mind, no I don't think so because any 'meaning' may only be meaningful to lifeforms like us due to how humans perceive the Universe. I think 'meaning' is fundamental to making any sense of our existence. But it may just be human arrogance to suggest that the Universe had no purpose or meaning, at all, before lifeforms such as humans evolved. This 'meaningless' era for the Universe may well be the majority of the proposed 14 billion years. But I don't see any scientific need to invoke god here or an external mind/purpose. I can understand a human emotional, almost irrational need to invoke such an external mind but I see no scientific demand for it.
Merci beaucoup, monsieur/mademoiselle!
Proto-consciousness cooked your goose, did it for you, oui? :smile:
The human mind looks at an image of a bird and sees a bird. A computer looks at an image of a bird and it sees 1s and 0s, some advanced AI probably can process an image in terms of pixels but that's about it.
Photshop does something really interesting though. It picks out the borders between differently colored pixels, even if irregular and curved. That's in fact the secret behind many photo editing software. It's a start for computers, they can now at least "see" the general shape of objects; rudimentary animal vision, won't you agree?
Something's not quite right, yes?
Hmmm. What would be the great "combiner", then?
I think this is an example of what we must not do, anthropomorphise computers!
Computers do not 'look' or 'see.' An input sensor is a peripheral device, attached to a computer.
A computer has no conception AT ALL. Our best AI systems still can't even pass the turing test in any interesting way yet. A computer cannot even conceptualise 1 or 0. It is simply a device that humans can use to manipulate all possible manifestations of the two binary states. Quantum computing offers more than two states.
Quoting Agent Smith
No, because 'see' requires conception and a computer does not conceive of meaning when it pattern matches a square it scans, with a stored square shape, either bit by bit or using attributes.
Yes, it can output letters such as 'this is a square,' on a monitor. But these are interpreted by us as having 'meaning.' The computer does not connect all the processes it performed from scanning the dark and light pixels from the square on paper, through the pattern matching to the letters output onto the screen. Each coded instruction involved is not connected by the computer towards any cumulative meaning or purpose.
If I understand your question correctly I would say that would be lifeforms such as us, we do the combining.
What/who combined the combiners?
Well, now you are moving towards issues like infinite regression and the suggestion that the whole system collapses without a 'first cause' or prime mover. Probably the best that the theist community has come up with is the Kalam cosmological argument which has been totally debunked by cosmologists, in my opinion. There is no imperative for a first cause or a prime mover which has any significance to our Universe.
If, for example, each individual different Universe is a bounce or oscillation between linear time epochs of the creation to the destruction of a previous Universe then it makes little sense to ask about a 'first cause' that started the bounce or oscillation as no information passes from linear time epoch to linear time epoch. It could also be said that there may have been so many 'bounces' that the number approaches infinity and therefore the system could be called eternal. So the need for a first cause or a first mind or god would be so far back in linear time epochs to be of no significance to our Universe at all, even if some kind of 'trigger' point for the 'bounce' did happen.
This is also true in the many worlds posit, there comes a point in the multi-verse posit that there are so many Universes that the idea of a creator has no significant value at all, beyond that of a simple spark that starts the fire. The spark (if it ever existed) has little or even no importance compared to the effects and existence of the fire.
I thought it was also worth adding that the theists have the same problem as in, where did god come from. An infinity of earlier gods?
Why should we accept their 'special plead' of no the regression stops at god. How is that different from 'you cannot ask about 'before the big bang,' as there is no before time=0.
I can appreciate that. Again, much of this is way over my head. That is a lot to think about!
I'll get back with you next week, Lord willing.
I edited my previous comment to you, just to make it more complete.
Absolutely, we could all do with more time spent thinking, I am no exception to that.
To be continued...next week....providence allowing!
My in-process paper on anger, blame and moral values sketches moral universalist and moral relativist interpretations of anger contexts. I surmise the view of biosemiotics is in close proximity to Prinz’s.
“Let us say that I have been hurt and disappointed by someone I care deeply about, and as a result
I become angry with them. What form might this anger take? If I believe in free will and desert-based conceptions of blame, then depending on the severity of the perceived offense, my anger may include the desire for retribution, payback and revenge(P.F.Strawson). If I eschew a free will perspective in favor of a deterministic moral universalism ( Nussbaum), my anger will not include the desire for retribution but instead will seek to coax the wrongdoer to conform to the universal norm.
Jesse Prinz’s neo-sentimentalist model of emotion occupies a transitional position situated between moral realism and a full-bodied moral relativism. He divides the realm of subjective emotional sentiment from rational objectivity, supporting an “evaluatively neutral” empirical naturalism t the same time that he claims to maintain a relativistic stance on moral values.
Prinz’s dualist division of knowledge and value, subjectivism and objectivism is incoherent from a Postmodern perspective. Empirical investigation gets its sense and orientation from affectively attuned value systems, which means that in judging an empirical result on the basis of factual correctness, one is making a relativistic moral evaluation. Empirical models are aspects of moral worldviews.
Prinz offers that two communities can agree on all the facts pertaining to a morally relevant situation yet disagree in their moral conclusions. To take a postmodern view is to argue that such apparent agreement on empirical facts is an appearance that results from a superficial over generalization of the two parties’ interpretations of the facts of the matter.
In embodied and social constructionist postmodern accounts, no ultimate moral or empirical telos
is assumed to constrain individual motivation and valuative choices. “ In its critical moment, social constructionism is a means of bracketing or
suspending any pronouncement of the real, the reasonable, or the right.…our sense of moral indignation is itself a product of historically and culturally situated traditions. And the constructionist intones, is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within
traditions that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy.”( Gergen)
Constraints impose themselves in the form of pragmatic and contingent reciprocally causal bodily-social practices.I don’t blame in the name of a divine, free-will based moral order, or in the name of an empirical objective order of truth. I blame in the name of temporary discursive practices, which by their changing nature hold all of us guilty.
Is there the third thing of moral pragmatist interpretations?
My position is that there is neither some Platonic absolute, nor that there is utter contingency. Moral codes would always be entrained to the usual forces of development and evolution - the practical need to be rationally organised in a way that underwrites the persistence of the system in question.
So for me, this is just debating a false dichotomy. These two options may oppose each other in the usual way - necessity vs contingency. But the whole point of my pragmatic metaphysics is that such dichotomies must be understood as the limits - the contrasts - that make intelligible organisation even possible. You need both contingency and necessity - as complementary, not rival, poles - to frame a rich spectrum of actual options.
That then sets up a model of the world with the internal variety to be able to intelligently match itself to the facts of the world.
Anger, for example, is neurologically opposed to fear - the fight or flight response. The brain is wired to be decisive - when faced with radical uncertainty about threat and harm. It must quickly decide which of two emergency states to "be in". The worst thing would be to act with indecision and risk neither extreme response to what seems like an extreme situation.
Well, in fact neurobiology adds the third option of freezing. Grafted on top - when faced with absolute indecision as the situation offers neither retreat or attack - an animal can just try the other plan of immobility. Playing dead, stopping still, hoping not to be noticed and confusing its threat.
So the ordinary naturalistic explanation - the one based on the pragmatism of an organism that embodies the desire to survive - works fine here.
And nothing really changes even when we regard humans as linguistic creatures constructing a larger sociocultural level of organismic organisation.
Once we become part of some system, with its own natural desire have persistent existence, then the biological imperatives have to framed within the larger context of the social imperatives. Fear and aggression must be culturally modified in ways that fit the fact that individuals are now the cells of the one collective body.
Quoting Joshs
Sure. Woke and redneck communities could both agree on the fact that the woman who won the swim meet by a mile has a penis. Yet draw the different moral conclusions that best fit their community-sustaining way of life.
Quoting Joshs
Sure. It is also a fact that all facticity is a semiotic construction. Our worlds are Umwelts. Umwelts are how we even exist as the selves that are these selves that exist in the world.
Quoting Joshs
Well in my embodied and social constructionist pragmatic accounts - following the structuralism of the likes of Vygotsky and Luria - neither absolute necessity nor absolute contingency is the issue. It is all about balancing the two tendencies in a way that leads to cybernetic reciprocality. The system must be autopoietic. It has to be able to steer a course by not getting stuck in one or other register.
So on the whole, we try to follow the social rule. And then the creative exceptions are what make that workable. The system needs us to be doing both things. And always decisively as much as we can. It wants us to be obviously either following rules or breaking rules, as that is what gives the larger social organism the requisite variety it can then winnow in terms of its Darwinian success or failure.
Quoting Joshs
Are you arguing towards my pragmatic position then?
The moral constraints are the long-term habits of a society - a society which by definition proves them as the correct habits because it has survived so far by applying them.
But a society that never produces moral variety is soon going to wind up in a dead end as it is not generating the variance with which to continue to adapt to changing circumstance.
So I would see blaming and shaming as discourse aimed at asserting social norms - calling on established collective habit, speaking up for the familiar social order that has stood the test. Call-out culture in practice.
But then tolerance, empathy, forgiveness, etc are the other side of the coin. Functional societies are also pragmatically easy-going about individual foibles and eccentricities. They don't call them out but simply pretend not to notice, or laugh them off.
There are a number of different motivations depending on the panpsychist, I think. Some panpsychists take a very conceptual approach think that it impossible to make sense of the idea of the emergence of consciousness because the concept does not seem to admit of degree. Goff and Antony develop this line of reasoning.
Panpsychism can be motivated by an examination of the various binding problems, when we look for candidates in nature that can fulfil the binding function, we can see that space relates its contents, and fields are also present at every point in space, so perhaps consciousness is a property of space. This has some intuitive appeal for me as it fits with the phenomonology quite well.
Some panpsychists do think that consciousness emerges, and is reducible to a kind of function, it's just that this function occurs in everything, so consciousness is also in everything. The IIT is an example of this. The IIT is a very different kind of panpsychism, and very differently theoretically motivated.
Some panpsychists are motivated by idealism. Timothy Sprigge is one of these. If you think of Berkeley, but take out the role God plays in maintaining the existence of the external world of ideas, and substitute panpsychism - everything exists in a vast web of mutually perceiving and mutually defining subjects, then I think that is close to Sprigge's view.
Some panpsychists are no doubt motivated by spiritual views, they have already come to the conclusion that consciousness is present at the start of everything, and think that everything after that point will therefore also be conscious, as all subsequent existing things are modifications of the original conscious substance.
One can also come to panpsychism by an examination of psychological causation and the problem of overdetermination - the only causation we actually know happens is psychological - we cause out arm to go up, for example. But this seems to compete with other, physical, causal accounts involving neurons firing. One way out of this puzzle is to reduce physical causation to psychological, and assert that what we normally refer to as forces in the world are actually wills, and the behaviour of matter is determined by how it feels. The slogans might be 'matter does what it does because of how it feels' and 'how matter feels is determined by what it does'.
Panpsychism is attractively monistic. If the basic starting properties in a typical physical explanation of the world (e.g. mass, charge, spin, extension, whatever the latest list is) are not enough to explain everything, one way to fix this is to add a starting property, namely consciousness, especially if the alternatives are more theoretically problematic.
Another way to come at panpsychism is by process of elimination. Consciousness either (a) doesn't exist, or at least isn't what it appears to be (eliminativism) (b) emerged (was not around at the start and arrived on the scene later - this is the majority view I suspect), or (c) was here from the start and exists in everything. Pick the least problematic option. This is the Churchill approach - "Panpsychism is the worst theory of conciousness apart from all the others."
And there's more motivations, and many sub-variants...
Well, maybe. When we switch consciousness on and off, are we switching consciousness? Or are we switching identity on and off? How could we tell the difference between non-consciousness and non-existence, phenomenologically?
I understand your intuitive starting point. But can these distinctions be maintained? Philosophers will want answers to the following questions: What are you seeing exactly? And what follows from that about consciousness? Why aren't people and dogs conscious? How do you know? What constitutes evidence for consicousness?
Well, that's very interesting. You have the start of a theory, or at least line of enquiry. I would question whether we can explain their behaviour through non-conscious processes - when we get to the level of forces, we end up saying 'that's just what happens'. But if those forces are wills, we can go, perhaps, one step further into something we can understand - 'because that's what they will'. Conversely, lets take humans. If we can explain bacterial behaviour in terms of non-conscious processes, why can't we do the same with humans? Maybe Apo has an answer - that human behaviour cannot be explained in the kind of bottom-up way that perhaps bacterial behaviour can. And I suspect Apo will say the same about bacteria - there is top down stuff going on there too which is necessary to understand bacterial behaviour. But even if he is right, I don't see how that entails consciousness.
Indeed.
I don't think panpsychists do lose the distinction. I can conceive of a rock that isn't conscious.The concept of non-consciousness still has meaning, even if I think that nothing is in fact non-conscious.
I haven't read this entire thread, but as far as I saw panprotopsychism wasn't mentioned. I think Bertrand Russell coined the term, meaning that percepts arise from matter at a very basic level of emergence. The matter is not intrinsically conscious, but it is characteristic of matter to evince image (wavelength) and feel (vibration) fragments which complex minds are then built from.
So from an evolutionary perspective:
Basic properties of perception, most generally feeling and appearance, are inherent in matter. When the structure of organic matter evolves towards more complex physiology, percepts also evolve into more complicate forms as an essential facet of this matter’s structure. A more complex brain will ineluctably evolve more complex perceptual forms akin to human imagination, emotion and thought. These are probably not the only types of intellectual percept structures possible, but in this schema matter mutates as a more or less integrated perceptual field, not merely as nonconscious machinery.
So consciousness is neither an epiphenomenon nor a separate realm of substance, both of which are more dubious notions than panprotopsychism I think.
:fire:
Good question! I assume that Panpsychists are probably trying to unify the traditional mind/matter dualisms, by assuming that both are merely emergent forms of a universal "substance" or "essence: Mind, which is best known in its manifestation as Consciousness. I agree with that motivation, but I personally take a slightly different track. A common retort to notions of universal Consciousness is to ridicule the idea of a conscious atom or grain of sand. Another problem, as you noted, is to make a distinction between Conscious & Subconscious mental processes.
So, in my own attempts to understand how conscious Mind could evolve from mindless Matter, I merely reversed order of primacy. Many philosophers have found the notion a universal Mind reasonable. So, to present it as a philosophical principle instead of a religious doctrine, I substitute the more technical-sounding term "Information". The word originally referred to the contents of a human mind in the form of intangible Thoughts & Ideas & Feelings. But Claude Shannon stripped the word of its conscious connotations, and defined it as an empty container for any meaning you want to put into it. That abstract definition works well for the purposes of programming general-purpose computers, but not so good for the self-programming & self-conscious human mind.
My thesis tracks the evolution of the human mind back to the original Singularity (imagined as a creative evolutionary program), and even one step farther to a hypothetical "Programmer", traditionally known by philosophers as the generic "First Cause". And the common "substance" all the way up is generic "Information" (EnFormAction ; the power to enform). Which takes on many real forms along the way : Potential, Energy, Forces, Mass, Matter, and Mind. For those who are not familiar with cutting-edge Information theory -- in Physics & Philosophy -- that scenario will seem even more ridiculous than the mystical-sounding Panpsychism theory. But, I prefer to call it "Information Realism". It retains the distinction between Conscious Minds & insensible Matter, but unifies them as diverse forms of evolutionary emergence back to a common ancestor, the hypothetical Prime Mind. :nerd:
Physics Is Pointing Inexorably to Mind :
So-called “information realism” has some surprising implications
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/physics-is-pointing-inexorably-to-mind/
Consciousness : Emergent or Fundamental?
[i]Most scientific and religious worldviews take the ontological status of Consciousness for granted. But when those belief systems are in conflict, their unstated presumptions are key to resolving the problem. Modern Science typically assumes, as an unproven axiom, that consciousness is an emergent property of physical processes. In other words, the human mind is a product of brain processes. And that hypothesis of mind as mechanical output makes sense from the the perspective of philosophical Materialism. But most religions are based on the principle of Divine Consciousness or Spirit or Will as the primordial creative force of the world. Unfortunately, centuries of debate have shown that it will never be easy to resolve such a stark black & white opposition of opinions.
Philosophy, though, is undaunted by irresistable forces and immovable objects. It thrives on head-knocking controversies. A recent post on the Quora Forum formulated this general topic as a technical question : " is consciousness a fundamental property of the universe like gravity . . . ?" In other words, is mind essential to reality instead of an accidental emergence? Or restated in religious terms, did God create the material world by simply imagining it? Put another way, the question may be posed as "What is the basis of reality, matter or consciousness?" Here, it sounds more like a functional distinction between shape-shifting intangible Energy and stable palpable Matter, or like the difference between Mind and Body.[/i]
BothAnd Blog, post 7
A six year old is never going to grasp this, and any attempt to reduce it so that they can would be analogous at best.
The foundation of existence consists of three aspects, and it doesn’t really matter what you name them. Take away one leg of a tripod, and there is no stable configuration to place one of the remaining legs in relation to the other. We’re not really looking for something ‘fundamental’, so much as a stable, concrete foundation. And we won’t find that kind of stability as a monism or dualism.
There is no central, immoveable aspect to be found, either - we can only assume (without foundation) the potential of our existence in relation to a paradox: the possibility/impossibility of some absolute (logic, goodness, power, etc). And yet, to differentiate this possibility and/or impossibility as complementary in relation to our own mind enables the formation of a stable, triadic relation of reality, inclusive of self.
There is a symmetry here in physics: any ‘real’ object has three (spatial) aspects, and anything less than this is potential or virtual - which is not to say it doesn’t exist at all, or is imaginary, just undefined, unstable as such. An electron is defined by its orbit, or a localised energy potential relative to a nucleus. It is the atom, as a stable triadic structure of electron, proton and neutron (differentiated potentials), which forms a concrete foundation to three-dimensional reality.
A similarly stable, triadic relation can be found at every dimensional level. Ignore one of the three aspects, and the system is uncertain, inaccurate. Give one primacy, and the structure is unstable.
To say that ‘consciousness is fundamental’ would be inaccurate. Consciousness is A) a triadic system in itself with three fundamental aspects to it, and/or B) one of three equally fundamental aspects of a broader system.
In terms of the former, what we consider to be ‘consciousness’ is contingent upon: 1) an ongoing, integrated event, such as life; 2) a differentiated event or consolidation of ‘other’ events; 3) an ongoing, variable structure of relation (ie. interaction, observation, measurement) between 1 and 2. So consciousness is fundamentally irreducible to a measurement or event.
In terms of the latter, ‘consciousness’ exists in necessary relation with ‘non-consciousness’ as perceived limitations relative to a third, variable potentiality. The question is, where does one perceive their own potentiality? As absolute consciousness, or as this third variable? And IF this third variable, then what can we do about that? How do we attain stability at the level of potentiality? The answer is to re-configure conceptual structures until they are reducible to a stable triadic relation inclusive of self, rather than a linear continuum (a la Peirce).
There's a passage about Lee Smolin as follows:
There is also mention of Rovelli's relational model:
Not mentioned in this article, but Andrei Linde says elsewhere:
What occurs to me, then, is that it is actually the perception of time which introduces an irreducibly subjective element to scientific observation. It is the mind that provides any sense of connection between two temporal events. Even though there are countless objectively-existent temporal events - from the orbits of the planets to the half-life of elements - nevertheless the awareness of the temporal duration between events seems always to be brought to the picture by the observing mind, because it requires memory and expectation, which can only be provided by the mind - they're not inherent in the observed phenomena. Absent mind, there is no time, because there's no perspective, and hence no scale in terms of which the concept of duration is meaningful. (cf. also Kant metaphysic of time.)
So - time enters the cosmos via consciousness, but for that reason, it is not solely objective, as it is mind-dependent, so it can't be empirically defined in absolute terms. It's a strong argument for transcendental idealism, in my view.
The alternative to Panpsychism is pansemiosis. So all we really require for time to have temporal structure is that physical reality boils down to a Peircean story of constraints on possibilities.
The past is the Cosmos’s memory in being everything that has definitely happened and so a history of all the possibilities eliminated. That is very mind-like - for any neuroscientist - in that it accounts for the past as an accumulation of behavioural habits.
Then the future, by definition, is all the possibilities that remain. The future is the continuously updated space of the possible - what can happen next given all that has happened already.
This is George Ellis’s evolving block universe theory, for example.
It is mind-like in a general pansemiotic way, but - like a biosemiotic view of consciousness - doesn’t then dive headlong into Cartesian substance dualism and all the confusion that results from doing that.
Note this from Info Philosopher's profile page on Pattee:
And so what I'm saying is that this is also the manifestation or appearance of mind, or "the subject", albeit in rudimentary form. And that the subject can't be accounted for in physical terms, it doesn't emerge from the physical and is not constituted by it.
The confusion that results from Cartesianism is purely and simply the problem of treating 'res cogitans' as an object or substance, a literal 'thinking thing' and then wondering where or what it could be. But that is the error of 'objectification' or reification. So in addition to the biosemiotic view, another perspective is required, which I think is provided by non-dualism or idealism. (Shouldn't forget that Peirce was an objective idealist.)
Sure. But from the pansemiotic view, both matter and mind - realism and idealism - are each just as much a construct of modelling as each other. And the trick is to turn that Cartesian duality into the reciprocality of a modelling dichotomy.
Hence Peirce being objective + idealist. That expresses the idea that all these familiar dualities - such as objective and subjective, real and ideal, etc - are the reciprocal limits of the one larger ontic relation.
So when a physicist talks about particles or the dimension of time, that is just as much a "pragmatic fiction" as when others talk about minds, intentions, feelings, subjectivity, selves.
But at least physicists more or less understand this is the game they are playing.
So what pansemiosis has to account for is neither the physical reality, nor the mental reality, but instead, the deeper reason why this has emerged as the opposing extremes of the general discourse about reality.
Reality makes the most sense when we divide this way - the Cartesian split.
And yet then that doesn't make any sense if your metaphysics doesn't also show how the two sides to reality are in fact complementary halves of the one larger story.
That is what is missing from your account. And that is what I say semiosis was designed to fix.
which is alive already.
And anyway - that's not the point. The point I was making was about the subjective nature of time itself, how it is not something that exists inherently in the universe independently of any mind.
The 'correlation' approach that I associate with this is ‘the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other.' I find it plausible enough to consider. Maybe the universe-in-itself (if you could peel back all our models and see it naked) is doomed to be a point-at-infinity. Perhaps the 'pure witness' is a similar construction.
In the quote above, there's (1) a neglect of intelligent non-human life and (2) a neglect of gradations of consciousness. Presumably 'aliens' and cockroaches, with their differing nervous systems and cultures, would experience the universe differently than we do. But it's the same universe? Right? So it's hard to get around some kind of 'substrate' or 'raw stuff' which is mediated by 'consciousness.' Let's imagine that humans accidentally destroy themselves in a nuclear war, so that all intelligence life in the universe is gone for a few million years, till a species elsewhere attains enough 'consciousness' to do physics. Let's say they discover records of our own physics and translate them successfully. In what manner did the record of our physics exist between our extinction and their achievement of culture (in the absence of consciousness? ) We could easily sharpen this thought-experiment so that all life is temporality absent from the universe.
How could you make a comparison? How could you assume a perspective that can see from all those completely different perspectives at once, so as to compare whether they’re seeing ‘the same thing’? You’re operating from inside ‘the naturalist assumption’. That is what needs to be called into question - which is a difficult thing to do, I acknowledge.
I think it's basically an extension of the grammar we already use between humans. Other humans are different enough already to see the world differently. Note that I don't expect the experience of the aliens or cockroaches to be similar, and I agree that consciousness is grammatically uncheckable, so I'd operationalize it in terms of indicators of intelligence, but that's a tangent.
All I'm saying is that if we picture the universe to contain intelligent non-human life, then of course their nervous systems are reacting to or interpreting the same universe. A cockroach on the sidewalk, if it has consciousness, is even more obviously experiencing the same little piece of spacetime as me.
I think my position is more general than that. I'm willing to put all current physics on the side of the model. Let's say that 'electron talk' is the mediated content of consciousness, a product perhaps of an unknown-stuff-mediating brain. Where is the 'real' brain? That one that dreams an image of itself? If there's no stuff 'out there,' then it's hard to explain the apparent synchronization of our 'dreaming.'
I can see how temporal structure rendered as a linear continuum would simplify the ideas you’re navigating here.
But there’s a more complex dimensional structure to block universe, panpsychism and other ‘universal consciousness’ theories that often either gets reduced relative to temporal events, or extended to the notion of unconstrained possibility, with ‘mind’ as an unexplained mediating factor. But few venture to suggest what this mind consists of. Peirce talks about a habit-taking tendency to events, and the interaction of actualising qualities into facts, after somehow transitioning from dimensionless to determined potentiality.
This article explores the idea of a numerical order to events in space, regardless of time. It fits with the idea that mind, consciousness, a block universe, semiotics (even the quantum realm) are all composed according to perceived or calculated value/significance/potentiality - as five dimensions of relational structure.
I didn't see where it claims 5D relations. But anyway, it doesn't sound a promising approach.
Sure. I agree that 4D spacetime is just advanced accountancy. But then that applies to the three spatial dimensions as much as the one temporal dimension. If time is reduced to a numerical sequence that represents Planck units of change, then space likewise is a numerical sequence of Planck unit of location. I don't see that leading anywhere for the usual reason - one has to include Planck energy in this picture as well.
Space is our measure of locatedness - a local lack of energetic change, or degree of energy conservation. Time is our measure of global change. It is the backdrop rate at which the cosmos cools and expands - the prevailing temperature of the cosmic microwave background - that gives us our "fixed" yardstick for the amount of change potential, or energy, that might be represented in any localised concentration of warmer mass.
So space sees energy conservation. Time sees energy expenditure, or entropy dissipation.
In the intuitive metaphysical view, spacetime is all tied to the third thing of its energy contents rather than something mathematically abstract like numerical sequences.
That doesn't mean the Sorli, Fiscaletti, Klinar paper you linked might not offer a model of spacetime that has advantages for some purposes. It may prove a useful way of looking at things.
But as I say, it looks to be moving away from what it purports to describe, rather than towards it. What I look for as the next natural step in time modelling is nailing the connection with energy in a formal way.
Quantum mechanics already treats time and energy as complementary variables linked by the Heisenberg uncertainty relationship. The maths works. But also QM still uses a Newtonian absolute time in that maths. So the relation is heuristic rather than a formal part of the maths. Only the spatial side of QM is nailed down as a purely relational deal - a reciprocal dichotomy - that is the location~momentum uncertainty of events.
Quoting Possibility
So what I was highlighting in mentioning the evolving block universe approach was the way that passing time - history - removes energetic free possibility. The exponential cooling and spreading of the universe since the Big Bang fast limits local possibility. The future is steadily being shrunk to its last unspent degrees of freedom by the universe's generalised entropification.
We tend to focus on all the hot and complex action that is still possible on the surface of lump of rock orbiting a furnace radiating at 5800 degrees K. Given that the Sun pours out all this energy, and the average temperature of deep space is down to about 3 degrees K, that is a steep entropy gradient to exploit. A drop of 5797 degrees.
But the time that matters in the bigger picture is the rate at which the universe itself cools - the drop from the Planck temperature to the absolute zero of the Heat Death.
So temperature, rather that numerical sequence, is the issue.
I agree that this accountancy is applied to all four dimensions - that’s kind of my point. These three aspects (location, change and energy), all reduced to number sequences, presents a prediction at the Planck scale - a mathematical variation to be applied from one four-dimensional structure to another. That application, in my understanding, relies on a five-dimensional structure.
I agree with you that the fourth dimension is change, structured according to time/effort/attention, and is all about energy/entropy, the direction of temperature, etc. What I’m suggesting is that what enables us to explore and understand this four-dimensional structure at all is by reconfiguring reality according to value/significance/potentiality.
I’m not sure I understand what form you think this extra dimension takes. It sounds like a larger embedding dimension for GR - such as a brane. Or it could be a compactified internal one. Or even a fractal internal one.
That is to say, the whole Euclidean/Newtonian conception of a dimension is up for grabs once we get to the bleeding edge of physics these days.
Quoting Possibility
Well my view is that the thermodynamic finality driving the show is what needs to be built into the physics. And quantum decoherence is one of the ways that is being done, as is the de Sitter cosmology that builds in a conformal spacetime geometry - a holographic closure that brings an end to effective space, time and energy.
So Peirce can be said to have envisioned the Cosmos as a dissipative structure. And Big Bang cosmology is cashing out that metaphysics as physics.
The difference is obviously that the Heat Death does not seem such a triumphant cosmic achievement from a human self-centred view.
It would be puzzling that all of history would be so marvellously organised to eventually result in … us. But now the future only holds the relentless onwards project of finishing off the infinite nothingness of a cosmos that is its fully matured condition as a universalised heat sink.
As I’ve said before, my approach to this is qualitative, so I agree that classical conceptions of ‘dimension’ don’t work at this level, but the quality or idea of dimensionality does rationally subsist, regardless of form. So, in all honesty, I don’t think it matters.
Quoting apokrisis
This view is still constrained by a linear, anthropocentric relation to a four-dimensional universe. So it’s effectively a similar heuristic reduction to the one we made in forming our initial, naive understanding of time. The future of Heat Death you describe IS the most probable - mathematically speaking and given an essential perspective of cosmology that renders itself invariable.
But the truth is that our perspective as such is neither essential, nor invariable, and this numerical order we rely on is a value structure we have only arbitrarily applied to our statistically variable measurements/observation of the world. It’s a paradigm shift the likes of which we haven’t encountered since Copernicus - and he at least had mathematical values to rely on.
In The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli documented the dismantling of our assumptions in relation to what we call ‘time’, and reconfigured this four-dimensional reality, not as objects in a linear relation to time, but more accurately as interacting events. There’s no reason we can’t do the same with the order of ‘value’. Particularly if we differentiate it as a triadic relational structure: value, significance and potentiality. But I get that physics doesn’t venture this far without a lifeline that assumes, for instance, that value IS significant... to us.
But there is a very obvious reason.
Any claims about quality have to be qualified by quantification. And that is both the scientific method and Peircean pragmatism.
We can’t ignore the fact that theory and measurement go together as a system of mutual constraint. That is the basis of universal reasonableness which Peirce recognised himself.
Hell, his job was to define the standard metre - with all the metaphysical sophistication that such an idea represents.
He had already foreseen the possibility that the geometry of space was non-Euclidean by arguing measuring the angles of a very large triangle would reveal if it did not add up to 180 degrees and so was curved.
He co-wrote a pioneering psychophysics paper that looked at people’s ability to judge fine differences in small weights.
The last person you could cite in support of an unmoored metaphysics of value, quality or idea would be Peirce. His whole thing was about how any claim about qualities hat to be, in practice, supported by acts of quantification.
While we are at, his theory of perception follows the naturalistic evolving block universe approach.
The guy just didn’t miss a trick, did he? :lol:
Quoting apokrisis
In practice, sure, and likewise with claims about quantity to be supported by acts of qualification, ie. observation. And yet theoretical physics. Objectively, there is no primacy here: there is quality, logic and form. And whether we quantify quality by measurement or qualify a quantity by observation, potential information is subject to the same level of constraint in practice.
But prior to quantifying quality (applying it to reality), we can consider it as potentiality in the form of a paradoxical relation. Quality in a formal relation to logic. We’re not ignoring anything here. Qualitative potentiality, prior to application, is no less reasonable than quantum potentiality.
Eventually, yes, it does interact with a logical form, just as quantum potentiality interacts with a qualitative form, a measurement device. This doesn’t preclude theoretical physicists from generating unqualifiable theories about the logic of reality. So speculation on unquantifiable theories about quality would be no less reasonable, despite the sense of it being ‘unmoored’. The key is to find a logical system that supports variable quality without constraining potentiality. Mathematics is not that system.
The Tao Te Ching is an example of what I’m thinking of. The extent of quantification is in the individual Chinese characters as qualities, ideas, which have a variable meaning in relation to each other within the language. To a self-conscious observer in formal relation to the language as a logical structure, the ideas make sense and the theory is supported in practice. But it’s quantifiable ONLY in this linguistic configuration. When we try to translate the text into English, the theory becomes uncertain and subjective. It is no longer configured as quality in potential relation to a logical form. There are parallels to be drawn here with the many interpretations of quantum physics.
It is Peirce’s triadism that can help to ground what may seem ‘unmoored’, by insisting on a relational structure of three aspects where only one or two are argued.
Hey. That’s my argument! :grin:
Quoting Possibility
But mathematics models the relation.
Metaphysics arrives as its ultimate qualities via the dialectic or dichotomy, which is a reciprocal or inverse relation. So in Yin-Yang fashion, this is a self-quantifying approach to qualities. Thesis and antithesis meet synthesis in the degree to which each it’s not its “other”.
To be discrete is not to be continuous. And vice versa. And this dichotomisation of possibility is mathematically expressed as a reciprocal relation. Discrete = 1/continuous. And continuous = 1/discrete.
Each is the limit on its other. Each is the unit which is thus the basis of measurement or quantification in regard to that other.
I can measure discreteness in the world to the degree I can measure no continuity. And vice versa. And that is expressible as the simplest mathematical relation.
Quoting Possibility
Note how the mathematical expression requires the three things that include the unit 1 as its identity element or swivel. It represents the symmetry that connects and which then gets broken.
If we write it out in full, it becomes clearer.
Discrete/1 = 1/continuous. The unit 1 as the symmetry breaking pivot that inverts the relation is present on both sides, but switches sign from being the denominator to the numerator.
Try this reciprocal function on any metaphysical dichotomy that takes your fancy and see how it works.
The familiar ones are chance-necessity, matter-form, flux-stasis, whole-part, one-many, infinite-infinitesimal, atom-void, local-global, rotation-translation, digital-analog, figure-ground, signal-noise, and so on an on
It is the universal trick that allows measurement. We can only ever ground an act of measurement in terms of a claim of what is, within the context of all that it is thus not.
No, mathematics reduces the relation. It aims to reduce any relation to one dimension: a numerical order. And measurement is an act of quantification that reduces the complexity of experience to this linear relation. Which is fine, as long as you recognise the qualitative complexity of the relation you started with.
These ‘ultimate qualities’ are limited by the finite time, effort and attention of an observation/measurement event. We talk about energy as if it’s continuous, but it’s not really. We talk about protons as if they’re discrete, but they’re not really. The variable quality of an event is relative to the limitations of the observer: the event horizon is no more than a reflection of ourselves.
Yin-yang is not about ‘dark’ and ‘light’, ultimate qualities, but about the indivisible whole: the potential/apparent lightness in dark and darkness in light that reflects the conscious observer. It’s about recognising our own perceptual limitations in relation to quality, rather than imposing them as limitations on reality.
Time is how one event measures change in relation to another. It’s a linear relation of variable change. The qualitative structure of time, however, is four-dimensional. Whenever you go from the maths to application, you need to reconfigure it as an event or act: a four-dimensional distribution of effort and attention.
Numerical order is a linear relation of variable significance, or how one structure of potentiality measures value in relation to another. But now we’re talking about five-dimensional structures. In application you’re reconfiguring predictions, measurement devices, conceptual systems, languages, ideologies, etc.
This linear relation of value - like the linear relation of time - is an heuristic device, a simplistic, mathematical model. And Peirce draws attention to the third aspect of any linear continuum: a reflection of the observer as the source of any limitations in the system.
So the limit of each ‘ultimate quality’ is not the other, but the qualitative structure of the identity element, the unit or symmetry breaking point. It represents the lack of symmetry in any dual relation - the missing third aspect.
Quoting apokrisis
I think we can more accurately ground an act of measurement in the limitations of the device/observer.
Err, extracting the qualitative simplicity of existence would be the entire point of metaphysics.
Some folk just reduce it to unmeasurable momisms - god, mind, spirit, whatever - rather than the reciprocal relations that justify some scheme of measurement or observation.
Quoting Possibility
Yes. And how do we know that? Our measurements have told us at energy is not continuous except as a bulk view that doesn’t see the Planck grain, and protons are merely hadronic blobs confined by their strong force.
Quoting Possibility
And yet the indivisible whole is also divided in some dichotomous fashion at every available turn.
Quoting Possibility
Being the modeller with the pragmatic purpose certainly imposes limitations on how the world gets modelled. But also science is human inquiry doing its level best to transcend the limits of this subjectivism.
It can’t of course remove itself from the world entirely. But it has been making exponential progress for some time now.
Quoting Possibility
Again, if you think this is “Peircean”, you would have to explain what the heck he was doing when employed in tasks like producing a better working definition of the standard yard for the US weights and measure service. He came up with the diffraction grating approach that could provide accuracy to parts in a million - https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.3273015
No - the point of metaphysics is to extract the holistic simplicity of existence, which I think you and I can agree is triadic.
Quoting apokrisis
They’re just different ways to describe or configure reality in relation to a limited observer. What matters is the qualitative structure of the observer in relation to the measurement, not so much the measurement itself, which doesn’t speak.
Quoting apokrisis
Heuristically, sure.
Quoting apokrisis
Not without serious ethical missteps. Removing oneself from the world seems to me a self-destructive purpose...but, that has been the trajectory of science as a whole for some time now...I think human inquiry has to reconsider aspects of its methodology if it wants to succeed in transcending the limits of subjectivism without annihilating itself. That’s my humble view.
Quoting apokrisis
No, I don’t necessarily think this is Peircean (hence ‘I think’). I consider Peircean metaphysics to be a useful and logical starting point, and a meaningful space for our discussion, but I don’t consider my own approach to be limited by Peirce’s view. I think his approach enabled him to recognise the limitations and then improve on the accuracy of measurement systems - to change the device on which we ground an act of measurement.
In a triadic relation, there is no need for ‘ground’ as such. It is the triadic interchangeability of ground that ensures the accuracy and stability of the system. That’s what symmetry is, after all.
Sure. Out of the monism of unconstrained potential (Firstness) comes the mutually constraining reciprocity of the dichotomy (secondness). And from there arises the triadic relation which is a hierarchical structure (thirdness).
Quoting Possibility
What matters is that the observer has some concept in mind that feels measurable - such as some spectrum of possibility defined by its dichotomous bounds, like whether the observable tends more towards the discrete or the continuous.
I don’t really subscribe to this Peircean sequencing as such. Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness suggest ordinality as a fundamental assumption, but quantum non-individuality disputes this. I consider ‘unconstrained potentiality’ to reflect the possibility/impossibility of pure relation - the ‘alpha-omega’, so to speak. So, there is no one-way relation of identifying reciprocity that would suggest ‘secondness’ at all here, objectively speaking. And a triad exists a priori in this variable potentiality of relational possibility/impossibility.
Quoting apokrisis
Which is arbitrary, subjective. The grounding here is feeling, affect. This is the identity element: the inaccuracy or fuzziness of any genuine question, the scarcity of a scientist’s resources (attention, effort, time). Not merely 1, but 1/ and-or /1.
So you don’t really subscribe to his naturalistic view of a developmental cosmos and thus not really to Peirceanism at all? Ah, well.
Quoting Possibility
Subjective idealism rather than objective idealism? Ah, well.
I think it has merit as a philosophy that is grounded in an affected preference for mathematical logic. I don’t disagree with it, as such, I just think there’s a more objective position. One that takes into account the (hidden?) symmetry of an interchangeable triadic grounding: logic, quality and form.
Quoting apokrisis
Leaning more towards ontic structural realism, if we have to label it.
If you say so. But then your inclusion of affect or observers makes even less sense to me.
Affect refers to a four-dimensional structure of relation. Conscious observers are five-dimensional. Non-conscious observers are four-dimensional. I tend to lose people when I start talking this way.
The one difference is I would substitute "intelligence" for "consciousness."
That is, intelligent systems do not have to have consciousness, but consciousness is always a process of intelligence.
Does a person with dementia have no consciousness?
I am not a doctor. Don't have any knowledge of the neurology of dementia.
Do you really think demented people have no feelings?
I am not a doctor.
[i]I thought it was also worth adding that the theists have the same problem as in, where did god come from. An infinity of earlier gods?
Why should we accept their 'special plead' of no the regression stops at god.[/i]- Universness
Hi Universeness. To further our conversation:
You can ask where did God from from, but as you say, that invokes an infinite regression. I personally think that an Eternal, self existing Mind, that is the very essence of Being, is far more parsimonious.
However, I have just recently had the thoughts of the infinite regression of the things this Being has done, and has thought. So even within a theistic framework, there is no way to escape an infinite regression of sorts. Either we have an infinite regression of this God made this God made this God ad infinitum, or we posit One self existent God with an infinite regression of the acts, thoughts (i.e. what was the first thought God had...what was His first act?) I am not so sure that I am looking at this correctly though. I guess the question for me has become: which infinite regression is most simple, sensible?
Relating all this to Panpsychism, it would seem that whatever view one has, consciousness in some form, is fundamental. Even from a purely physicalist/naturalist perspective, the mere fact that it happened, that consciousness and self awareness (identity) emerged from the cosmic soup, means that the materials needed already existed (which is obvious, right?). It is also obvious that these materials arranged in some configuration to give rise to consciousness. If these materials are void of any raw conscious property, then to me, it just makes intuitive sense, that no possible arrangement could have brought forth such a reality. The nature of consciousness just strikes me as so fundamental, so irreducible, that it has the same status in my map of reality as does existence. Something self existed...I think we all would agree with that, whether that was God or the quantum vacuum. Whatever the ultimate, transcendent reality is, the stuff of thought was mixed in there. Even given trillions and trillions of epochs and aeons, I can't see any reason as to why consciousness would have necessarily sparked unless it is eternally entwined in the fabric of space time, perhaps a space/time/consciousness continuum, if you will.
What do you mean that it's a process? That it's a byproduct, or an emergent?
A pleasure to do so.....
Quoting Watchmaker
I think many theists take this position. They reject the infinite regression or 'first cause' problem by claiming that god is 'outside of time,' and 'outside of causality.' I think this is just the same as saying 'you can NEVER approach the concept of god using a mere human mind, the scientific method, and empiricism.
My counter is that I personally, therefore, have no need for god, AT ALL.
I further suggest that the need for such an entity is down to human primal fears.
This is the basis of my atheism and I have so far, come across, no contrary concept which I have found compelling or can even challenge that position in any way I would find at least interesting apart from musings about 'projecting panpsychism,' to an emergence of a very distant future state that suggests that, if all the lifeforms in the Universe ever answer all questions and can collectivise/merge the consciousness of individuals in some way or form, then perhaps such a 'collective consciousness,' would satisfy the omnis and could be declared god, although I see no reason why we could not just as accurately label it 'Archie,' or 'Betty,' etc as god is such an overcooked label.
Quoting Watchmaker
I think so yes. I don't think an early or first cause version of Tinkerbell sprinkled some 'consciousness fairy dust,' over one of the homo-sapiens wanderings about the Serengeti and named it Adam before transporting it to a pretty walled garden and giving it a set of do's and don'ts to adhere to.
Cosmic ingredients can do a great deal it seems, if you cook for 14 billion years and allow very large varieties in very large combinations. We don't need the supernatural when the natural is so super.
Quoting Watchmaker
Sounds reasonable to me, It has also been suggested that if connected/networked life within a Universe can as a totality, satisfy the omni criteria for godhood then what would it do then? Well, it might try to reproduce itself by seeding a new singularity and starting the whole process all over again so this Universe might be an attempt by a previous 'god,' or 'Archie,' or 'Betty,' emergence to reproduce, but this would not be any god as described in any current or ancient human religion.
For me however, it is the only god concept, that I would raise an eyebrow of every so slight interest towards and it would have nothing to do with preserving life after death. Technologically driven transhumanism is the only real hope for significant lifespan longevity in my opinion.
The need for such an entity is to give a non scientific reason or meaning to life and the universe it's in. Science can neatly describe the universe and the life in it. But the reason or meaning of it can't be explained scientifically.
We don't need one imo.
Quoting Haglund
Yes it can, in time.
God will show himself. In time... :grin:
But then, from where comes the stuff used in the explanation?
I hope so, we can then throw it in jail forever for abandoning its responsibilities for so long.
Quoting Haglund
I don't know, need more time. If you give your god more time to appear then give your fellow humans more time to figure out the origin story of the Universe. At least we can appear to each other, which is more than your puny gods seem able to do.
Or maybe they show us how not to ruin the planet.
Quoting universeness
But when the final explanation is there?
We already know how to do that in my opinion, it involves getting global politics correct.
Quoting Haglund
Then we will understand why the god posit was wrong.
You and I have absorbed about 2500 years of scientific thought in a half lifetime. Say the current supposed ToE, string theory is it (which I don't think). Then from where comes the string landscape?
That's a big claim friend. I would say I know a small slice of the past 2500 years of data/information garnished from the application of the scientific method and most of that is rather rudimentary. I defer to those in the current science community (cosmology in particular) and many other able people who are on the periphery of that group for any 'new or improved,' personal insight. I don't turn to theists for anything new as they rarely have any new thoughts to offer.
I am most attracted to string theory and I think it is the correct path but cannot yet offer itself as a convincing ToE. Cosmology does have some musings about the 'string landscape,' such as Mtheory but nothing demonstrable or verifiable yet. I see no reason for trying to fill such gaps with something as lazy-minded as the god posit.
Interesting that you cite ‘human primal fears’ as the basis of a need for god - where do they fit into your list of ‘human mind, the scientific method, and empiricism’?
I’m with you that maximising awareness, connection and collaboration is most likely to lead us to what could satisfyingly be called ‘god’. I also think this question of whether or not we need this ‘god’ would have no objective answer, even at that point. It will always be a personal relation - but then, that’s kind of the idea. It’s the relation that matters, that renders ‘god’ existent (even in the distant realm of possibility/impossibility) - not need or any other quality, as such.
Well I think that the Darwinian facts related to human evolution and jungle rules such as 'survival of the fittest,' and the reality we see every time we watch David Attenboroughs reports on the animal world demonstrate a very unattractive story that does not match the theistic stories of an omnibenevolent deity.
If any of the animals I see getting chased down by lionesses, hyenas, wolfs etc have any capacity to feel then they must be f****** terrified. Just like we were as we hid in our caves at night in ancient times. OF COURSE, we invented gods to give us hope of some ultimate protection against such terrors.
I think all animal species would do the same, once they understand the rules of natural selection.
From the standpoint of naturalism and natural selection/evolution, I see why terror was and is necessary.
You need to be motivated to run and survive or kill your attacker, the fight or flight instinct.
As our triune brain system developed we gained a cerebral cortex and we could 'reason' at a much more nuanced level. We developed high levels of emotional intensity.
We could laugh/cry/empathise/love etc etc in very intense ways.
This was contrary to 'life in the caves,' so we used our new intelligence level to leave the caves and invent technologies to defeat the 'laws of the jungle.'
So again, OF COURSE, we added to embelished our god stories into religions, to attempt to make sense of the primal fears we inherited from natural selection and to explain our range of intensity of myriad emotions, which conflict, as they originate from a three brain system. The Rcomplex, the Limbic system and the Cortex. These three separate systems can work together but they do not merge harmoniously.
So OF COURSE, we seek superhero gods to take ultimate responsibility for our inner conflicts, our salvation and our fate after death. So we made gods to sate our primal fears and our fear of death/oblivion.
It's time to face our primal fears and realise that we have defeated all the scary creatures outside the caves and the only things that can make us extinct now are our own behaviors and natural disasters. So we must concentrate on those threats. We must rely on science and transhumanism to provide future lifespan longevity CHOICES and provide us with the ability to leave this planetary nest and reduce the possibility of extinction through natural disaster.
We must see that WE MADE GODS, they never existed, they just help many of us cope with life's terrors much better but they are illusions and no more than a crutch and something to scapegoat when things are bad.
We must see death as merely a harbinger and offer of change/termination. If your personal suffering in life has overwhelmed its wonderment to you then death/oblivion is a release from such. It's a friend, not a terror. I personally don't seek death or suicide and I would recommend against choosing it over living as I am convinced that If I did choose death then really cool stuff would happen afterward and I would f****** miss it.
Fear/bad/evil etc are nothing more than unpleasant human brain states that have no objective reality.
Bad stuff can happen to you, sure, and yes you can suffer and have a crap life but things can also change and get better and you can have some wonderful times, especially if we all work together if we all become humanists for the well-being of all.
In my opinion, this is where the solutions to our current global problems and individual suffering reside. We all have the solutions to each other's problems. Uniting together and combatting/converting nefarious b******* is the way to go.
We must finally learn to let go of the god scapegoat, take personal responsibility and 'boldy go where we have never gone before!'
You do realise that all of this is interpretation. Even Darwinian evolution and this notion of ‘survival of the fittest’ are constructed according to assumptions (fears) and preferences (desires). There is no ‘of course’ about it. We like to think/hope that science and transhumanism will enable us ALL to gain control over death, but this is no less a bedtime story than religion is. Science is motivated by answers to questions and pays zero attention to humanity when left to its devices. And frankly, transhumanism smacks of self-interest masquerading as philanthropy, tbh.
In the end, I think all these interpretations of who we intend to be as humans point towards a fundamental question we need to ask ourselves: if it came down to a choice between living and loving, which would I choose? And if the answer is ‘it depends’, then perhaps we still have need of god, after all - if only as as a framework for our understanding.
Interpretation is YOUR choice of label that does not make it appropriate for what I typed. It's in the judgment of others to decide if they agree with any 'interpretive,' element YOU judge as present in what I typed
.
Darwinian evolution is fact, it is not an interpretated construct. Natural selection is also fact.
Survival of the fittest or those that develop the most successful survival strategy is evidenced by the fact that we have more control over our fate compared to any other species on the planet.
Quoting Possibility
My 'of course' is valid in my opinion. Are you saying that the god posit is a surprising/unexpected one, given the ignorance within which it was first suggested by the ancients?
Quoting Possibility
Well I understand what you are saying but its similar, in my opinion, to me chiseling on a clay tablet addressed to you 1000 years ago that I think that in 1000 years we will be able to communicate with another human anywhere on the Earth, using machines and my words will reach you seconds after I despatched them, no matter how far away from me you are on the Earth.
I am sure the response of many, would be:
'We like to think/hope that future science will enable us ALL to communicate so quickly but this is just a bedtime story.'
Quoting Possibility
Is that YOUR interpretation? If so then fine you are entitled and welcome to it but I disagree.
The most significant science on this planet is performed only by humans so in what way are these human scientists ignoring their own humanity?
Transhumanism satisfies both, unashamedly! self-interest and philanthropy. Nothing wrong with that is there?
Quoting Possibility
So don't accept the answer 'it depends,' exclaim an imperative to balance between both in all judgments and don't exclude either.
'Need of god' is only still true for those who still have little control over their primal fears and need god the superhero to reassure them when they are alone or scared or close to death.
I have not completely conquered my own fears, primal or otherwise, nor would I want to, but I have made enough progress to not need a god fable to help me when I am in trouble. I would rather rely on fellow humans. If I am in pain, I will turn to medical personnel, not useless prayer.
If I am close to death, I will revel in the fact that I am going to disassemble and become part of that which I came from, universal raw materials. I am content with that.
You have said this many times already. That god comes from nothing but primal fear. That's not true. I know it's not so for me. Well, maybe fear of thinking that science has the answers. That's a bed time story all the same. "Don't worry child, the big bang made it all for you. Although it knew nothing, the stuff back then was completely ignorant, it still brought itself into existence. So now shut the fuck up and go to sleep!"
Quoting universeness
That's indeed not what god should be used for. What I mean is, if you have found the final theory, the one describing how the universe functions at the fundamental level, what caused the stuff and rules it obeys into existence? Say, strings, branes, their tensions, and the Calabi-Yau manifolds, or 26 dimensions. You can offer logical arguments for the numbers of dimensions but why strings and dimensions exist in the first place is not answered by string theory (which btw, on closer inspection turns out to be a mathematical fantasy, for which you only have to look at the original Kaluza-Klein theory on EM).
Yes, I have, and I intend to keep doing so until it's proven demonstrably incorrect.
I don't know what your personal god does for you or why you need it but I cannot compare it to any of my own conceptions of what primal fear is until you can clearly express what your god does for you and why you need it. If you claim that it's simply your logical conclusion for the creator of the Universe then we are at an impasse, as I think that is just an incorrect conclusion, that theists repeat at least as often as I repeat my primal fear reasoning. At least I don't repeat from a window in the Vatican or from an authoritative pulpit position.
Quoting Haglund
Why not 'random happenstance?'
Quoting Haglund
Not yet but I suspect the answer will be random chance, not deliberate intent (by a god or any other system capable of intent).
I think that the need for gods is not always involved in explanations of natural phenomena. There are other reasons (so not moral or explicative) reasons to believe in gods. Like providing meaning or reason. I think this is what Dawkins and other new atheists don't understand and have fear of because it threatens their images and icons. And fighting theism shows that one is commited to science, which inflates their chances to rise in the hierarchy of important figures in science, though it actually shows their lack of genius for which they try to make up by attacking the non-scientific.
That doesn't provide a reason to live. At least, not for me. I can live without gods. But when it comes to the meaning or reason of life, I don't accept the evolutionary approach, saying that we live because evolution shaped us and we live to pass on genes or memes or are accidental outcomes of random particle movements at the beginning of each big bang. Which is all true, but descriptive only. I mean, we do pass on genes and memes, there were random particle distributions, etc.
Quoting Haglund
Sounds like you are on a quest for a personal meaning or reason for your own existence and hoping that the answer you find will be a 'universal truth.' Perhaps THEE Universal truth. Even better than science's attempt to find a ToE. Your best personal answer so far is god but I would ask you the following question.
If we remove god as your answer for a moment. Does your life lose all meaning? What would change?
If your answer is that I would feel less......what? secure?....more what?......more meaningless?
Then ask yourself why do I feel (as in me, Stephen!) that my life is full of meaning and reason.
How is it possible for me to feel that without any god(s) playing any role at all in my life?
If you think they/it are/is so fundamental then how come I exist very happily without it/them?
Are you sure you need god so much? I can confirm you have vital meaning and reason to live.
You are needed to look at the Universe in awe and wonderment, without you or the like of you, THE UNIVERSE has reduced meaning. You have things the wrong way round. You don't need god to give you meaning and reason. The universe needs you to give it meaning and reason.
I'm always looking for what it all means and why we're here. Knowing that we're here for a reason, so not because what the scientific story tells us, gives a kind of liberated feeling.
So am I yet I don't accept god as the answer. How come I can do that if god is so essential/fundamental to any meaning or reason in life as you suggested earlier. The burden is on you to explain anomolies such as me in your god posit.
Quoting Haglund
I feel liberated but still no god required!
I think that's because I think that I found the answer of the riddle of the origin of the universe, and the preceding, etc. The fact that it's all there, including all life, makes it look meaningless, just being there without reason. Which can be nice, I know what you mean. But for me that's not enough. Somehow life is more fun if I know the universe and all in it is a copy of heaven with life in it. That truly has no reason. That just is and we and all life in the universe life the life once lived in heaven. If I squeeze my love in the toe it makes it somehow truly heavenly (she has her feet on my lap right now!). Dunno why, but it does. Like that, no one can give a scientific explanation for it, maybe.
What you typed is very human. No god involved, just you and the woman you love.
If you abandoned god now would your 'squeeze' have less meaning to you?
I am glad I need no god to provide me with moments of 'heaven.' I can create them for myself and between myself and others. I can experience any level of happiness and contentment you can and I don't need any acknowledgment of non-existent gods to do so.
Because then it could be explained by science. In principle.
No - natural selection is fact, Darwinian evolution is a theory, and ‘survival of the fittest’ is an interpretation. The idea that we evolved to be the best at species-level ‘survival’ is a ridiculous contrivance - we evolved into the most highly variable organism, enabling us to maximise awareness, connection and collaboration.
Quoting universeness
I’m saying that you’re assuming this is how the god posit was first suggested, when there is no evidence to confirm this. The story sounds believable, sure, but it’s just a story - a way of arranging the information so that it makes sense. This is what I mean by interpretation.
Quoting universeness
Sure, and saying we should therefore focus on building machines rather than fashioning writing implements or training horses would be presumptuous, don’t you think?
Quoting universeness
That’s right - science requires humanity not just as a conscious observer, but a self-conscious, ethical participant. When we pursue science for it’s own sake, we tend to pursue our own destruction. And when we pursue it purely for our current interests, we whittle away at our future. Science is as destructive when carelessly handled as it is useful. There is a framework needed here, and transhumanism doesn’t appear to be it.
Transhumanism doesn’t account for the inevitable hierarchical distinction between self-interest and philanthropy, let alone between ‘some’, ‘most’ and ‘all’ humans. Nor does it hide its anthropocentric priority. It harks back to the wide-eyed enthusiasm for Humanism, and all the marketing hype that hits us right in our primal fear, promising the world...
Quoting universeness
In other words, talk as if loving but act as if living, and pretend you offer the ‘best’ of both - just like every other religion. You’ll pardon me if I don’t buy it...
Quoting universeness
I’m not talking about a god or superhero fable, but a logically qualitative framework to help us reasonably determine what is potential/valuable/significant from what’s possible, given our current limitations as variably affected, fearful humans. We don’t need reassurance that something else is in control - we just need confidence in the accuracy of our next move. That’s all we’ve ever needed.
It depends what level of explanation you want but I am sure a neuroscientist could satisfy you, if you really need to know whats going on in your brain mechanistically, what processes are involved and which emotions, intensity levels, and chemicals are involved, when you lovingly reacted to squeezing your partner's toe.
My whole point is that science can't explain it like that. It can describe what's going on, in an evolutionary, chemical, neurological, cosmological, biological, physiological, mathematical, or even lovological way what's going on, but it can't explain why we're here in the first place, and I squeeze her. Knowing we're just doing what the gods were once doing defies every explanation. The gods are eternal, mysterious, a riddle.
The evidence for the evolution of species is strong enough to be fact in my opinion and I think that is a majority opinion, in the absence of equally strong evidence of an alternate origin.
So what is the alternate theory(s) that you currently have under consideration?
Quoting Possibility
What do you mean by 'variable?' There is more variety in dog type or bird type than human type.
If you are saying that we have more variety in actions then this is part of the evidence which supports:
Quoting Possibility
as are:
Quoting Possibility
Which further supports 'best at species level survival.' You provide support for this 'ridiculous contrivance.'
Quoting Possibility
Yet you offer no alternate view of why the god posit was initially formed. If not from human primal fear then from what human thought processes/needs, do you suggest god formed from? or do you think it was in direct communication with the ancients?
Quoting Possibility
Where did I suggest abandoning horses or pens because we have cars or computers? I advocate prioritising new tech over old but old tech can be very useful at times. The point you make is trivial.
Quoting Possibility
I agree.
Quoting Possibility
Not a viewpoint I share. We are creatures that ask questions, that is our prime directive. We are incapable of stopping our need to question, in my opinion. We must be wise, yes, we must tread carefully and consider the consequences of what we do and why we are doing it but we must not become too afraid to do anything. If taking a chance is the only alternative to stagnation then I vote for taking the chance. I would be content to die in pursuit of new knowledge but I would also be devastated if others died because of my decision to take the chance and I would have to live and die with that decision but I would still understand why I made it. No one has ever said life is always easy.
Quoting Possibility
I agree, this would be a wise approach.
Quoting Possibility
So you are basically a pessimist then? or at least as far as the possibilities offered by transhumanism go. I don't agree.
Quoting Possibility
Ok, pardon granted. You have the right to vote against.
Quoting Possibility
Then, it is the responsibility of those in control to reassure you or explain to you that despite your objections they are going to 'take the chance,' anyway but I would support you if those in control do not have a democratic mandate to 'make the next move,' you are concerned about.
I think you are talking about life, not gods. I think you just use the god label because you like a little woo woo in your life and it has the extra benefit of sating your primal fears, even though you deny it.
When your god posit is just based on, n my opinion. pure irrational emotional need, we are left with nothing but an exchange of opinion.
There can only be woo woo with gods. Then all of life becomes woo woo. Woo woo! Science can't explain woo woo. You can invent all kinds of labels or rationalizations, like a primal fear (no doubt I have them), but it will indeed stay your opinion that gods don't exist.
Fear, bewilderment, awe, wonder, excitement, thrill, all rolled into one! Holy shit! Oh my God! Holy mother of God! Holy cow! It's that simple and yet, not!
Re Aporia & Ataraxia.
Grandma of JC! Could it be that God Himself fertilized the egg from which He sprang? Could we call it an immaculate conception? Retro-Sex maybe? In Vitrus Sanctus?
There is insufficient evidence to assume that ‘survival’ is the purpose of evolution, just because it happens to be a result of natural selection. Natural selection explains how diversity occurs, not why it occurs.
Soft, porous skin, very little body hair or armour, forward-facing eyes, external auditory structures, extremely versatile and malleable brain structure, Humanity has evolved high variability (sensitivity) in relation to environmental factors, such that our offspring (if left alone) are among the most vulnerable of all the animal kingdom upon birth. It’s not about ‘type’, but development. Our potential for survival is contingent upon, and often takes a back seat to, our capacity for awareness/ignorance, connection/isolation and collaboration/exclusion, maximised by developing education, socialisation and communication with other humans. Altruism, unconditional love, youth suicide, curiosity, invention, art, mathematics, music, literature, etc are all insufficiently explained by Darwinian evolution theory.
Quoting universeness
The notion of god or gods can just as easily develop from curiosity as from fear, even from a combination of both. From our imaginable possibility, some things are more likely to happen, and some things are not. There has to be a structure to this we can’t quite figure out yet - some source or system of power and knowledge out/up there. It’s only natural to want to relate to this personally, to ask questions, to try and find a way to connect what you do to this system of power and knowledge. Trial and error until something seems to work. And if, by chance, this attempt to connect appears favourable, naturally others will be curious as to what or who you’re getting this increased value/potential from. And how is that fair, or what if they tried it too?
It seems to me that the favourable relations would develop into gods of religion more often than unfavourable ones; natural selection, and all that.
Quoting universeness
The point I make is analogous to claims that we should focus on prolonging life and getting off this planet, as if they’re the answer.
Quoting universeness
Not denying this (it fits with what I wrote above) only pointing out that science is a tool, and our current interests are motivation - neither should be mistaken for a purpose or goal in itself.
99% of all species that have ever existed on the Earth are extinct. This is an estimate but is based on fossil evidence etc. http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/viewtopic.php?id=556
Pretty strong evidence if you ask me. I think the why is simply 'they couldn't do what humans can,' but we can of course still go extinct due to our own behaviour or if we continue to exist only on this planet.
Quoting Possibility
Oh come on! did you really expect it to explain the list you mentioned? and for you, the fact that it does not explain the contents of the list you typed means it might be wrong about the events it does cover?
Einstein didn't explain the origins of human altruism or unconditional love either does that devalue his theories as well?
Quoting Possibility
Sure, you can combine primal fears with any other human emotion/intuition/instinct you like to get to the origin of the god posit but primal fear is the foundation.
Quoting Possibility
What do you mean by 'THE answer?' I suggest that they are AN answer, a way to improve the range of human choice when it comes to our individual termination and a way to decrease the chance of going extinct.
Quoting Possibility
I have no problem with declaring my wish/purpose/goal to increase the pace of scientific breakthrough, discover new technologies, improve the human condition, and the range of choices each person has.
I advocate for better/wiser/immune to nefarious ba******, global politics as well as much more focus and support of scientific endevours, without ignoring the everyday needs of people and planet and all flora and fauna on it.
I declare it loudly and proudly but I don't advocate a 'blunderbuss' approach at all. I agree with a cautious approach which must have democratic majority mandate before it can be actioned.
Very true! Killing the planet, the natural world, getting rid of other species and cultures is not seen in the natural world.
A nice dream. But just look what technology brought us. What's so special about technology and its advancement? It's time humanity turns away from it and acknowledges the so-called scientific progress is a dead end road and looks for new more natural ways of life. Only like that we'll survive. And let's be honest. We know how the universe came to be, we know the particles in it, we know about evolution, and now it's time we should resume a path from which we digressed about 3000 years ago, to take the path of knowledge while not knowing shit. Except for some isolated pockets.
Yep we are capable of all of that but we are not responsible for the vast majority of the 99% of all species that have gone extinct. As I have said before, we didn't wipe out the dinos for example.
Why are your god's such bad designers? The Universe seems to be filled with useless dead lumps of rock and pointless gas clouds that we 'intelligent,' lifeforms will never encounter or need. Why all the failed species and pointless superfluous space and material in the Universe. I wouldn't trust your gods to build a sandcastle they are incompetent idiots. If the Kuiper belt disappeared tomorrow it would have no effect of any universal significance so why did your dimwitted gods put it there?
Backwards is not our path!
Aye! God was/is genuine as for as motherf**ckers go.
The dino gods had their fair share! Once in a while there are mass extinctions. But life always keeps flourishing on the deads of the past. Ìf technology keeps inflating and inflating the future looks dim. The way people change the surface of the Earth is a different way from natural extinctions (of course it wouldn't be bad if we destroyed an asteroid potatoe if we knew it would hit the Earth!) happened. It's a continue pressure on nature, which is growing. You can try to escape with a spaceship (it only takes 2 months to the nearest star). FF and repeat...
God, the Holy MF...
Mater Irrumator Praetor
Holy MIP!
That’s evidence of diversity, not of ‘survival’ as the reason for diversity. The question isn’t ‘why are all these other species extinct?’ It’s ‘why has evolution led to our particular arrangement of systems and structures?’ This myth that survival, dominance and procreation are the prime directives - you know that’s not true. I believe we will go extinct only if we keep insisting that this is the plan.
Quoting universeness
Einstein’s theories aren’t being used to try and explain these; Darwinian evolution theory is.
Quoting universeness
I respectfully disagree. Our prime directive is to ask questions - you said so yourself.
Quoting universeness
That all sounds noble, I’m just cautious of the attitude. There’s a lot of competing needs there, and it seems like all your confidence is placed in science tempered by common sense and democracy. I wish I had your confidence in this combination at the moment, but I don’t.
This is a very skewed logic in my opinion and It makes very little sense to me.
Quoting Possibility
So we both ask questions but we don't agree on the answers. We have a little common ground but not much.
Quoting Possibility
Well I appreciate you giving me a little room as maybe having genuinely beneficent intentions.
I applaud and approve of your skepticism. You would perhaps make a good scrutineer of those who have been trusted enough, to be given a position of power. I am an advocate of powerful checks and balances fully established and representative of the people who are being represented.
You are right not to trust what people say, only trust what they do and demonstrate. We must insist that if a person holds a significant position of power and influence then their actions must be in the full view of everyone they represent. No autocracy/plutocracy/aristocracy/cult of personality/cult of celebrity/religious doctrine etc should ever be able to gain and hold power at any significant level of society.
From the website you cited: “Zooming out to look at the bigger picture this means that everything living today is the result of an unbroken sequence of ancestors that goes back at least two billion years. You, me and everyone else on this forum are part of a lucky chain of survivors going back countless generations. Many others didn't make it (even very large groups that are abundant in the fossil record such as the dinosaurs, trilobites, ammonites, graptolites etc.) and most scientists agree this is more to do with luck than some inherent superiority of modern forms.“
If most scientists agree that survival is more luck than superiority, then the notion that they’re extinct because ‘they couldn’t do what humans can’ is unfounded. So, too, the notion that the purpose of evolution is survival, dominance and/or procreation. That, and ‘natural selection’ is a misnomer borrowed from the practice of pigeon breeding - the fact that some variations survived while others didn’t is circumstantial, not by deliberate selection (teleological). Not to mention the fact that our own ‘survival’ over the last 160,000 years is, relatively speaking, a minuscule achievement so far. Nothing to write home about next to so many species that have survived unchanged for many millions of years.
And our relative ‘success’ in terms of dominance and procreation have come at the cost of this ecosystem that sustains us. You said yourself that our prime directive is to ask questions: so what does ‘winning’ really look like? If we do manage to get through this, do you honestly think it will be because of a focus on maximising our individual/species survival, dominance and procreation, or on maximising awareness, connection and collaboration - ie. with the ecosystem/cosmos and each other?
And if we look at a broader, cosmic evolution of structures of existence, a slightly different pattern emerges to the one Darwin saw. A minority of collaborative, homeostatic systems with high variability arise as the foundation for cosmic development at every level, including atomic structure, a carbon basis to life, natural selection, DNA and sexual reproduction, neural networks, social value structures, etc. The high variability in each system enables awareness, which in turn enables connection, which opens the door to collaboration... it seems the cosmos has a trajectory with or without us. So, do we go with the flow, or stick with our own plan?
Quoting universeness
No problem - I sometimes get caught up in arguing over the little things, and forget to credit the ‘big picture’ thinking going on.
Quoting universeness
While I do believe in speaking truth to power, my approach is not so much top-down, but more about encouraging a groundswell that leaders will eventually be unable to ignore, isolate or exclude - even if democracy fails. I can really only determine what I think, say and do, after all. If I can’t start there, what hope do I have to change the world?
No it's not. Scientists often try to communicate with the public in less 'elitist sounding scientific terminology.'
It's the same idea as saying the Earth is in the 'goldilocks,' zone.
So yes, humans are lucky to be here and not be extinct but the reason they are still here is due to their evolutionary path.
Quoting Possibility
Evolution has no 'purpose,' it is what happens when vast variety combines in a vast number of ways.
Evolution is ongoing and always will be.
Quoting Possibility
Pigeon breeding is deliberate selection yes, natural selection is not a deliberate selection it's a natural selection there is no misnomer. the natural world does entail 'circumstances' within which some survive and some don't so your point is trivial here. Would you prefer the term 'circumstantial selection?' is that the big point you are making here?
Quoting Possibility
Don't blame the many for the actions of those few who nurture wealth, power and personal status over nurturing people, the planet and all the flora and fauna on it. Join the fight against the nefarious.
Quoting Possibility
I think we can and must do both. I don't advocate for an uncontrolled human population explosion that cannot be adequately catered to.
Quoting Possibility
What are you referring to here? stars forming from nebulous clouds of hydrogen? acretion disks producing planets? galaxy formation?
Quoting Possibility
I think it might be easier to understand what you are typing about if you offer one or two real-world examples to illustrate the points you are trying to make rather than offer a list of generalities.
For example, carbon-based lifeforms are all we know of yes but I don't see what that's got to do with your attempted downplay of the facts of evolution. There may be other base lifeforms in the vast Universe. That would not downplay the facts of evolution as they happened on Earth either.
Quoting Possibility
So are these just words in support of a panpsychist viewpoint or are you trying to make some other rather esoteric or metaphysical point I am missing?
I certainly don't think there is a self-aware, manifestation of individuality that we can assign to the word 'cosmos,' which has a 'plan,' or a 'trajectory,' that it's trying to ensure happens.
What do you mean 'go with the flow?' Do you mean stagnate? wait for the 'cosmos' to demonstrate its plan whilst we just watch the pretty flowers grow? Is that the alternate choice to 'stick with our own plan?'
Quoting Possibility
This sounds much more hopeful! I don't care whether you go top-down or bottom-up as long as you are part of the solutions rather than part of the problems. You sound a bit downhearted to me and a bit disappointed in your whole species. In my opinion, the majority of human beings are good and strive, damn hard, every day, to give, build, create, embellish, enhance and pass the baton, not take, destroy, control, indulge, use up and wear out, as the nefarious do. I think you are in the majority.
Yes, but that path isn't necessarily determined by genes accidentally mutating in a way that the organism changes and the best adapted survives. That's what the dogma of molecular biology tells, but there is zero evidence for that (which is exactly why it's a dogma).
That's the same heliocentric (or geocentric) worldview all over again. Why should Earth be special wrt the evolution of life. It's more likely it's based on the same stuff everywhere, around every star. And if interaction is important to consciousness, it's likely that dead matter contains the seed of consciousness. Not that the universe contains god, but it carries their imprint. Who knows what's the nature of the basic stuff they created? It's divine! :starstruck:
But the evolutionary narrative is not ‘survival’, as much as we wish it was. The reason humans are still here is due to a series of variably stable structural relations.
Quoting universeness
Agreed. So why configure it as a narrative of ‘survival’, except to allay our primal fears?
Quoting universeness
I’m not downplaying the facts of evolution, only questioning the narrative, and suggesting an alternative. And these are not generalities, but ‘goldilocks’ system structures. The imagined possibility of non-carbon-based lifeforms, for example, is along the lines of alchemy. There is nothing beyond logical possibility and curious fascination to suggest it’s worth pursuing. That doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t find any, but it’s hardly a reason to justify our resources at this stage. And preserving the current evolutionary narrative based on this imagined possibility doesn’t seem reasonable, despite the logic.
The logic behind silicon as the most likely candidate for alternative lifeforms is its similarity to the carbon atom in stable variability. The carbon atom is the ‘goldilocks’ of atomic structure: an optimal relation of stability and variability. Before it on the periodic table are less variable atomic structures, after it are less stable ones. This makes it systematically ideal to maximise awareness, connection and collaboration with everything else.
Quoting universeness
It’s interesting that I say trajectory, and you assume conscious intentionality. No, I’m not supporting a panpsychist viewpoint, or saying that the cosmos is trying to ensure anything in particular happens. It just all appears to be moving in a particular direction, and we happen to be part of that. Evolution, which we agree to be ongoing and without purpose, is also part of that. We can work with this direction, and in doing so maximise our survival with minimal effort, or we can insist that we’re inherently equipped to determine our own survival plan, and continue to wrestle with forces we’ve yet to fully understand.
Go with the flow does not mean stagnate - that should be obvious. But why fight against a natural flow simply because it’s oblivious to us? Does it make us feel weak? This is where the Tao Te Ching talks about wu wei. When you’re caught in an ocean rip, do you struggle against it to get back to shore? Or do you accept that it will move you in a particular direction, and work with that to reach a better situation without exhausting yourself? We don’t own the effort, attention and time we have available to us. It comes to us from the cosmos and we return it, and everything else does the same. When we understand that, it’s no longer so important that WE are the one to achieve anything.
Quoting universeness
I don’t think I am in the majority on a lot of this, but don’t mistake this awareness for disappointment or pessimism. ALL humans retain some potential to increase awareness, connection and collaboration - even the so-called ‘nefarious’. Most just need a particular type of interaction under ideal circumstances...
Yes it is 'necessarily determined,' we have shown how we can MAKE it happen in our genetic manipulation of dogs, sheep, cows etc.
Quoting Haglund
I think you are trying to constantly give the kiss of life to this limited and singular example of the use of the word 'dogma' in a science paper that you have found. You also ignore the fact that dogma is the foundation of all religions. I think the score remains scientific dogmatism:0, Theistic dogmatism: big BIG number!
Quoting Haglund
What??? Please quote where you think I was being helio/geocentric?
We have had no contact from other lifeforms yet. We may be the first but I think that is highly unlikely.
Quoting Haglund
You are one of the most unconvincing theists I have encountered. You are role-playing, for your own reasons. That's the only logical conclusion I can make. I think you just enjoy taking the more esoteric viewpoint. I can't help seeing you try to convince yourself with 'I do believe, I do I do I do believe, I Do I DO I DO. But I am not convinced you do.
The difference being that if we make it happen the organisms aren't determining it for themselves and we are basically playing for god.
Quoting universeness
The point is, it addresses all of life. All! Based on an unproved yes even improvable dogma. It's just stated organisms don't influence genes.
Quoting universeness
Well, here I hesitated to write that actually. But you take Earth life as a comparison. And probably it's everywhere just the same. Which maybe makes me the heliocentrist, but I think it's the same in the whole universe. Why not?
Quoting universeness
What roleplaying? You think I fake to be a theist? To receive votes against it, which is my intention? That would be refined but I don't cos play. In fact I think I'm the toughest theist you have encountered. Dawkins and the likes are so easily de-masked. They just can't understand the concept and by going against theology try to consolidate their position in the church in science.
Your play...
Based on what convincing, scientific, empirical evidence?
Quoting Possibility
Survival is the result of the process. The fact that a result or consequence occurs in the natural world is not evidence of intent.
Quoting Possibility
All you offer is your opinions which is fair enough as on some points I am not offering much more.
I simply disagree with your imo generally pessimistic viewpoints. I think your 'scientific points' are trivial and incorrect.
Quoting Possibility
You type that you don't believe in a Universal intent and then you type that it appears there might be.
Quoting Possibility
So, give us some actual examples of what you think we should stop doing and what you think we should do more of. Don't make any obvious suggestions such as 'stop hurting the planet,' or stop warring with each other etc
Quoting Possibility
Well, you sound like you would be attracted to a more buddhist or tao type approach to life and living. Not for me. I am happy to be labeled anthropocentric in general but not to the extremes of fanaticism.
The point is that it's the worst kind of dogma there is. It projects thing in the real, material world which is just an assumption to fit the ideal. There is absolutely no evidence for it. And there are a lot of different dogmatic views. The Standard Model being one of them.
So, is the theory of evolution dogmatic? Yes...
You can try to rationalize me, because you don't understand... to no avail. I stick with the gods story!
Yeah but unlike the, if existent, then totally vile, gods, we have to understand and accept that with great power comes great responsibility.
Quoting Haglund
No sorry but you are the opposite. You have not even indicated that you engage in any particular theistic daily practices. Do you pray? do you congregate with like-minded theists, do you financially contribute? does your theism manifest or gravitate towards any organised religion? Do/have your god(s) intervened in your personal life? Your polytheism even includes dino gods. You seem to give space to every god ever invented by humans. So, yes, I think your theism is contrived but I don't think you have any malice aforethought. I think your primal fears have manifested in complex ways and you are attracted to passing on responsibility to imagined god(s). I know I am attempting to psychoanalyse you with no experience in the field other than my knowledge of people I have interacted with, in my lifetime.
If my opinion is unwelcome then ignore it. I intend no offense but sometimes offense is inevitable if you wish to speak your mind. Feel free to psychoanalyse me right back!
The other few responses you posted to me above do not add anything new to the dialogue between us and I have nothing more to add based on your addendums above.
Why should you engage in daily practices? That's merely you prejudice speaking. And besides, me living my life is practicing. That's exactly what the gods wants. Life living as in heaven. In heaven there are no churches. Every life on Earth has a god in heaven. I think your god is nodding his head looking at you. The only reason I believe in gods is because it gives me a free feeling. Not from primal fear, whatever that may be, but from the supposed explicative power of the sciences. The only way to explain life is gods who made the universal stuff. Science describes that stuff.
You are just confirming my view of your proposed polytheism.
You're just as dogmatic as Dawkins. There is no escape!
But believe what you like! Thanks for the discussion! :razz:
I do not claim to be 100% atheist, neither does Dawkings but you claim to be 100% polytheist!
You win the dogmatist award.
Quoting Haglund
I do engage in belief systems, yes, but mostly, what I currently accept as true, is based on empirical evidence. I appreciate your permission to continue to do so even though I don't require it.
I wholeheartedly return your thanks for the discussion!
Survival is A result of the process, not THE result. And it’s the one we FEEL is most important, based on our fears. Any intent is in those writing the narrative, interpreting the evidence.
Quoting universeness
Then please point me to evidence that will set me straight. And I do mean evidence, not interpretations or conclusions. You’re not wrong that I offer little more than an alternative interpretation of the evidence, but I don’t think it’s pessimistic - what gives you that impression?
Quoting universeness
Direction is not necessarily conscious intent. It exists without any need for awareness whatsoever of a final destination or purpose, let alone any action or force.
Direction: a general way in which someone or something is developing; a trend or tendency.
Quoting universeness
Choose with every interaction to increase awareness over ignorance, connection over isolation and collaboration over exclusion - despite fears and assumptions. Suffering comes from ignorance, isolation and exclusion, and infects every interaction with more of the same. If I feel excluded, I’m inclined to ignore those who exclude me, or to isolate myself from situations where I might feel this way. The only way to break the cycle is to face any fears we have, put away any assumptions, and choose to increase awareness, one step at a time. The more we learn about something or someone, the easier it becomes to connect, and the more we connect, the easier it becomes to collaborate.
There’s different homeless guys who sometimes sit alone outside my regular shopping centre (I live in a regional town, so we don’t see many). As a young girl growing up it was always drummed into me to “steer clear of strange men, especially if they look ‘dodgy’” - so it’s taken a while for me to work past my own fears and assumptions here, despite knowing how ridiculous they were. Action is more difficult than thoughts. The last couple of times one of them has been there when I walked in, I’ve added a bag of healthy snacks, bottle of juice, toothpaste, etc to my shopping trip and handed it to him on my way out, with a smile. The most recent time I stayed to chat about the weather and ask him where he’s from. It’s such a small thing, and it seems even more so describing it here - but it felt like a big change for me, and if it helps one person to feel a little less ignored and excluded, a little more connected, then it’s a small step in the right direction.
Quoting universeness
I don’t like labels much, and I’m notoriously difficult to define. While I am attracted to both Buddhism and the Tao Te Ching, I wouldn’t place myself within that category.
What would you consider to be extreme or fanatic anthropocentrism? Where would you draw this line?
Good point.