lancek4 wrote:So pantheism - oops, I mean panpsycim- suggests that there is some aspect of 'rockness' that exists of the rock in itself and also in the mind as 'rock-mindstuff' ?
I personally don't like the terms pan-psychism or mindstuff as it has the effect of distracting some people from the actual argument and encouraging ridicule as a poor substitute for criticism.
What would you prefer?
Is it not the case that it is in fact that theory that is ridiculous and not just the words used to describe it?
Chaz: Consciousness is the consequence of neuronal activity. That is an answer complete. It describes the universe as we find it.
MGL: I am surprised at your lack of curiosity. Are you not the least interested in HOW consciousness is the consequence of neuronal activity? How can you not be puzzled as to how firings of neurons can produce the conscious sensation of redness?
=========
Chaz: Now YOU tell me - How can a rock have mindfulness?
MGL: the fact that you are asking this question suggests to me you have not understood what I have said. First, pan-psychism does not claim that a rock has mindfulness. It claims that it is made up of particles that have properties, one or some of which are proto-qualia, the sense data of mental content. At most one could say that a rock is made up particles which exist with a primitive form of consciousness.
This is based on a reductionist view that all phenomena are ultimately reducable to primitive properties of the fundamental consituents of matter and energy. Now I can understand how most macroscopic events can be reduced to sub-atomic ones. I can understand how our behaviour can be reduced to neuronal activity. However, I cannot understand how sensations of redness can be reduced to neuronal activity unless there is already some primitive property of matter that the neuronal activity employs. If you do now how one phenomena emerges from another in a non-reductionist way then please share your insight.
Chaz: What would you prefer? Is it not the case that it is in fact that theory that is ridiculous and not just the words used to describe it?
MGL: if it is ridiculous, then I would prefer an explanation of why it is ridiculous that consists of more than just ignoring the hard problem of consciousness that pan-psychism offers to resolve.
Chaz: Consciousness is the consequence of neuronal activity. That is an answer complete. It describes the universe as we find it.
MGL: I am surprised at your lack of curiosity. Are you not the least interested in HOW consciousness is the consequence of neuronal activity? How can you not be puzzled as to how firings of neurons can produce the conscious sensation of redness?
Indeed I am and there are a lots of studies that delve into this in great detail. None of them include your non explanation.
=========
Chaz: Now YOU tell me - How can a rock have mindfulness?
MGL: the fact that you are asking this question suggests to me you have not understood what I have said.
TO be honest you have not really said anything much. I'm summarising.
First, pan-psychism does not claim that a rock has mindfulness. It claims that it is made up of particles that have properties, one or some of which are proto-qualia, the sense data of mental content. At most one could say that a rock is made up particles which exist with a primitive form of consciousness.
There is no such quality as a proto-quality. A thing either has a quality or it does not. It is surely the case that matter and energy has the potential to generate what we like to call consciousness, but you don't need panpsychism to tell you that. A dull lump of iron ore has the eventual potential to carry electricity in a circuit - but until it is processed you don't get a shock off it.
"made up particles which exist with a primitive form of consciousness." Duh - yeah exactly what I said.
So does a lump of marble have a "primitive sort of" statue of Athena inside it just because it could be made into a sculpture?
This is based on a reductionist view that all phenomena are ultimately reducable to primitive properties of the fundamental consituents of matter and energy.
Which is bankrupt on a whole host of levels. Do you believe in Homeopathy as well?
Now I can understand how most macroscopic events can be reduced to sub-atomic ones. I can understand how our behaviour can be reduced to neuronal activity. However, I cannot understand how sensations of redness can be reduced to neuronal activity unless there is already some primitive property of matter that the neuronal activity employs. If you do now how one phenomena emerges from another in a non-reductionist way then please share your insight.
You avoided answering my questions, I noticed.
How does a rock have a primitive form of consciousness please?
MGL wrote:Chaz: What would you prefer? Is it not the case that it is in fact that theory that is ridiculous and not just the words used to describe it?
MGL: if it is ridiculous, then I would prefer an explanation of why it is ridiculous that consists of more than just ignoring the hard problem of consciousness that pan-psychism offers to resolve.
Well why not try and find some words to describe it that are not ridiculous, and then we can talk about your theory which at this particular moment in time you do seem to find ridiculous.
Please show how Panpsychism "resolves" a problem.
All you have done is deferred the problem somewhere else.
How does a rock have a primitive consciousness?
Empedocles wrote: Panpsychism does not claim that rocks have mind or are conscious. It claims that the elemental constituents of which rocks are composed do have an experiential aspect as well as a physical aspect.
I might use the word 'experience' in the following sentence: "A free-floating steel needle experiences a force that causes it to align itself with a magnetic flux.' I don't mean to imply that the needle actually 'feels' anything whatsoever. I just mean that the needle 'behaves' in the only way it can 'behave' under a particular set of circumstances.
Do you claim that the 'experiential aspect' of matter is something more than I am implying when I use the term 'experience' in this way?
Chaz:How does a rock have a primitive form of consciousness please?
MGL: What are you asking here?
How does a particle acquire a primitive form of consciousness? It does not aquire it, it is simply a property of the particle.
What is this primitive form of consciousness like? I would not know, just as I would not know what it is like to be a bat.
How does one come to to the conclusion that there is a primitive form of consciousness? Simply from the absence of any better theory to explain how consciousness could emerge or be produced by matter that lacks proto-qualia\primitve forms of consciousness.
====================
Chaz: There is no such quality as a proto-quality. A thing either has a quality or it does not. It is surely the case that matter and energy has the potential to generate what we like to call consciousness, but you don't need panpsychism to tell you that. A dull lump of iron ore has the eventual potential to carry electricity in a circuit - but until it is processed you don't get a shock off it.
MGL: I did not say proto-QUALITY. I said proto-qualia. This is a term used by philosophers to denote the components of conscious experience.
A dull lump of iron has the potential to carry electricity in a circuit because its property of conductivity can be reduced to the arrangement of electrons at the atomic level. The shock is a macro-scopic event reducable to the flow of electrons. If you want to explain consciousness in a similar way you need to explain how the sensation of redness is reducable to the firings of neurons. I don't mean simply correlating the sensation of redness, but reducing it, in the same way the macroscopis behaviour of the electic discharge is reducable to the flow of electrons. These electrons are not magically created by the discharge. They exist already and it is their existence that explains the potential of a dull lump of iron to conduct electricity. How can you reduce the sensation of redness to the firing of neurons if there is no primitive property of redness already in the matter and energy involved in the firing?
==========
MGL: This ( pan-psychism) is based on a reductionist view that all phenomena are ultimately reducable to primitive properties of the fundamental consituents of matter and energy.
Chaz: Which is bankrupt on a whole host of levels. Do you believe in Homeopathy as well?
MGL: As far as I am aware the scientific view of the world is a reductionist one. Can you suggest a scientific theory that is not reductionist? Is there anything in the universe that is not made up of the fundamental particles of physics? I'm not sure why I would believe in homeopathy just becuase I believe in reductionism. Its credibility depends on its empirical success which I understand is not that high.
1) as I hope you agree the universe is reducable to particles of matter and\or states of energy.
2) panpsychism suggests every particle will have some kind of existence akin to a very primitive mental state, but not a complete conscious mind.
3) energy and particles combine and interact in many different ways.
4) A certain complex state or process of particle\energy combination would have the effect of merging the previously separate proto-mental states into a single unified mental state - what we would understand to be a conscuous mind.
this sounds like a kind of pagansim, or animism, where every thing has a correspondant spirit.
It also tends toward a post-modern generation; "a certain complex state..would have the efect of merging the previously separate proto-mental states" ??? what the F?
Oh so the basic elements of the universe were instilled with what could be called aspects of consciousness which came together finally in humans, and possibly other creatures in thier ways, to form consciousness.
How 80's new age.
Maybe we should go out into the wilderness and less lose some primal screams and let these elemental pieces of consciousness come through.
What this suggests to me, I think in line with Chaz, is that the axial factor is consciousness, its ability to make meaning.
In the same way that a rock 'does' rockness, human consciousness 'does' human consciousness
but in that this rock is 'meant' by consciousness, it merely argues the latter, that consciousness merely makes meaning for sense, just that same as touch 'touches'; there is no reflection of essential actuality except as it contributes to our basic survival.
The question I would pose to these pantheists -- oh sorry: pan psychists -- is how is it possible for consciousness to attain a suffieicent distance from itself in order to observe its essential mechanisms?
It seems to me that consciousness just "makes sense". that what is does. It takes whatever Objects may be of the universe and takes sequential experiences of these things and constructs sensibility.
Such sensibility has no essential truth or grand purpose because this thing we call consciousness is likewise a thing of the universe.
It is so much a pantheism because you are proposing that our 'thingness' is priviledged, as if we can rise up out of the mere existance and be able to apprehend and comprehend the universe from an essentailly objective position.
Or is it that the universe has vested within us this ability?
How utterly pan-pagan-theistic.
And inso much as it proposes itself from a science as opposed to a religion: how utterely metaphysical.
It may be only now that (at least some of us) consciousness is beginning to see its propensity to propose privivledged truth, metaphysical propositions which function within and by the same formula, and as each of these metaphysical propositions of truth work out to be mere phantoms of truth, the process may reveal itself and change our understanding of the universe and how we interact with it.
But I doubt it.
Humans got to have thier essential truths.
We got to have a 'purpose' based in 'truth'; it is all about mere activity: it is just what we do. And if someone can do something which gathers interest for what others may do, then the human has been human, and has done what it does.
Hmmm, but if we bring the ethical human into play, well, then we might have some things to say about what might actually be true, because we wouldnt want to have ideologies which compromise anothers right to life, liberty and the right to pursue what makes him happy (pursual of untrue truths??)
What this suggests to me, I think in line with Chaz, is that the axial factor is consciousness, its ability to make meaning.
In the same way that a rock 'does' rockness, human consciousness 'does' human consciousness
but in that this rock is 'meant' by consciousness, it merely argues the latter, that consciousness merely makes meaning for sense, just that same as touch 'touches'; there is no reflection of essential actuality except as it contributes to our basic survival.
The question I would pose to these pantheists -- oh sorry: pan psychists -- is how is it possible for consciousness to attain a suffieicent distance from itself in order to observe its essential mechanisms?
It seems to me that consciousness just "makes sense". that what is does. It takes whatever Objects may be of the universe and takes sequential experiences of these things and constructs sensibility.
Such sensibility has no essential truth or grand purpose because this thing we call consciousness is likewise a thing of the universe.
It is so much a pantheism because you are proposing that our 'thingness' is priviledged, as if we can rise up out of the mere existance and be able to apprehend and comprehend the universe from an essentailly objective position.
Or is it that the universe has vested within us this ability?
How utterly pan-pagan-theistic.
And inso much as it proposes itself from a science as opposed to a religion: how utterely metaphysical.
It may be only now that (at least some of us) consciousness is beginning to see its propensity to propose privivledged truth, metaphysical propositions which function within and by the same formula, and as each of these metaphysical propositions of truth work out to be mere phantoms of truth, the process may reveal itself and change our understanding of the universe and how we interact with it.
But I doubt it.
Humans got to have thier essential truths.
We got to have a 'purpose' based in 'truth'; it is all about mere activity: it is just what we do. And if someone can do something which gathers interest for what others may do, then the human has been human, and has done what it does.
Hmmm, but if we bring the ethical human into play, well, then we might have some things to say about what might actually be true, because we wouldnt want to have ideologies which compromise anothers right to life, liberty and the right to pursue what makes him happy (pursual of untrue truths??)
I trust this nonsense is an intentional parody of post-modernism or New-Agism and is not intended as a serious attempt to mean anything. If not, I apologise for jumping to conclusions and just ask you to make yourself a little clearer, as I am having trouble seeing anything that relates to anything I said.
The only point I understand sufficiently to feel I can respond to is your question: how is it possible for consciousness to attain a suffieicent distance from itself in order to observe its essential mechanisms?
Why is this a problem for pan-psychism rather than any other attempt to explain consciousness? pan-psychism is offered as an explanation for the hard problem of phenonenal consciousness. It is not offered as an explanation of self-awareness\higher order thinking which is more like a capability of a conscious mind.
So I gather panpsychism is an attepmt to explain how consciousness may be excluded as a phenomenon? An explanation of how itself (the analysis) is possible?
lancek4 wrote:So I gather panpsychism is an attepmt to explain how consciousness may be excluded as a phenomenon? An explanation of how itself (the analysis) is possible?
I am afraid this is baffling me further. I have no idea what you are trying to say here. What does it mean to exclude consciousness as a phenomena? Are you trying to say panpsychism is just an explanation of how panpsychism is possible?
MGL wrote:Chaz:How does a rock have a primitive form of consciousness please?
MGL: What are you asking here?
How does a particle acquire a primitive form of consciousness? It does not aquire it, it is simply a property of the particle.
Duh - oh very duh
If you ask how does a person have consciousness, and are not satisfied with the answer. Then It seems fair that I can ask the same question of you.
What I am telling you is that Grey matter has the property of consciousness when it is energised. AND what is more I can DEMONSTRATE that. That is the special property of brain matter.
Now you are trying to tell me that a rock is also conscious in some mysterious way and yet you have no way to demonstrate this. All you say it "IT IS JUST SO"
Well you are just blowing wind if you cannot demonstrate it.
You argument seem to be limited to IT JUST IS. Where on my part I can show you what I claim.
What is this primitive form of consciousness like? I would not know, just as I would not know what it is like to be a bat.
How does one come to to the conclusion that there is a primitive form of consciousness? Simply from the absence of any better theory to explain how consciousness could emerge or be produced by matter that lacks proto-qualia\primitve forms of consciousness.
i.e. you do not know what you are talking about.
====================
Chaz: There is no such quality as a proto-quality. A thing either has a quality or it does not. It is surely the case that matter and energy has the potential to generate what we like to call consciousness, but you don't need panpsychism to tell you that. A dull lump of iron ore has the eventual potential to carry electricity in a circuit - but until it is processed you don't get a shock off it.
MGL: I did not say proto-QUALITY. I said proto-qualia. This is a term used by philosophers to denote the components of conscious experience.
I was being kind. YOu do not understand the term qualia either. The concept of qualia has nothing to do with this issue.
What you also said was proto-consciousness, as consciousness is a quality then I was generalising your failed point.
A dull lump of iron has the potential to carry electricity in a circuit because its property of conductivity can be reduced to the arrangement of electrons at the atomic level. The shock is a macro-scopic event reducable to the flow of electrons.
Indeed and a ROCK does not. Grey matter that is energised with neuronal activity has consciousness, a rock does not
If you want to explain consciousness in a similar way you need to explain how the sensation of redness is reducable to the firings of neurones.
I do not need to explain anything - I only have to demonstrate it. You can neither explain how a rock as a 'psychic' quality nor can you demonstrate it.
I don't mean simply correlating the sensation of redness, but reducing it, in the same way the macroscopis behaviour of the electic discharge is reducable to the flow of electrons. These electrons are not magically created by the discharge. They exist already and it is their existence that explains the potential of a dull lump of iron to conduct electricity. How can you reduce the sensation of redness to the firing of neurons if there is no primitive property of redness already in the matter and energy involved in the firing?
If you insist that dead matter has consciousness then explain how.
==========
MGL: This ( pan-psychism) is based on a reductionist view that all phenomena are ultimately reducable to primitive properties of the fundamental consituents of matter and energy.
Chaz: Which is bankrupt on a whole host of levels. Do you believe in Homeopathy as well?
MGL: As far as I am aware the scientific view of the world is a reductionist one. Can you suggest a scientific theory that is not reductionist? Is there anything in the universe that is not made up of the fundamental particles of physics?
Reductionism in the study of consciousness has not seen fit to bother rocks and pieces of dog shit with investigations as the the quality of consciousness - I wonder why that is?
I'm not sure why I would believe in homeopathy just becuase I believe in reductionism. Its credibility depends on its empirical success which I understand is not that high.
It is a quality for which there is no demonstrable effect, yet relies on the same specie of argumentation that you are putting forward for panpyschism.
I still say that what panpsychosis is suggesting that basically there is some sort of physics-ical 'quaila -particle-element' that runs between mind and matter such that mind can know of it.
So you are attempting to prove that there is an actual out there thing in-itself but are basing the analysis upon the assumption that there is such an it-itself thing.
Thus I ask you how you are capable of separating yourself from existence sufficiently to do this?
You deny existence for the purpose of your privileged transcendent position. You pantheistic faith allows you to deny there is a problem with your whole effort. I would think Sartre's ideas are philosophy 101. I mean that is unless you admit that you are actually more concerned with discussion within your religious dogma, then I would respect that and take I different tact.
Chaz: The concept of qualia has nothing to do with this issue.
MGL: Either you don't understand the concept of qualia or you are completely missing the point. How can anything be conscious if it there are no sensations\qualia - imagined or experienced?
=======================
MGL: If you want to explain consciousness in a similar way you need to explain how the sensation of redness is reducable to the firings of neurones.
Chaz: I do not need to explain anything - I only have to demonstrate it. You can neither explain how a rock as a 'psychic' quality nor can you demonstrate it.
MGL: As we are discussing panpsychism as a solution to the hard problem of consciousness then I am afraid you DO have to explain how the sensation of redness is reducable to the firings of neurones if you think panpsychism is wrong. If that is not what you are discussing then everything you have said is probably irrelevant
========================
Chaz: What I am telling you is that Grey matter has the property of consciousness when it is energised. AND what is more I can DEMONSTRATE that. That is the special property of brain matter.
MGL: I have no doubt that it can be demonstrated that the brain has the property of consciousness when it is energised, but to suggest that this is a special property of brain matter requires an explanation. Certainly brain matter has the special property of producing a conscious mind, but the hard problem of consciousness is how it produces the phenomenal content of consciousness, the redness etc. If you cannot explain this then at least find a fault with the panpsychist argument that does not just rely on a declaration of incredulity. I am quite aware of how bizarre the consequence of the panpyschist argument is, but until you can offer a better explanation for phenomenal consciousness my money is on panpsychism.
============================
Chaz: You can neither explain how a rock as a 'psychic' quality nor can you demonstrate it.
MGL:
Of course panpsychism cannot explain how a particle has a 'psychic' quality any more than physics can explain why a particle has a mass or a spin. Its part of the theory that it is a primitive property of matter.
Of course it cannot be demonstrated that a particle has this quality in the same way it can be demonstrated a particle has mass or spin. This quality has only been inferred from the argument for panpsychism, which, if you disagree with, then you have to provide an explanation of how phenomenal consciousness emerges from special properties of the brain.
MGL wrote:Chaz: The concept of qualia has nothing to do with this issue.
MGL: Either you don't understand the concept of qualia or you are completely missing the point. How can anything be conscious if it there are no sensations\qualia - imagined or experienced?
Exactly
=======================
MGL: If you want to explain consciousness in a similar way you need to explain how the sensation of redness is reducable to the firings of neurones.
Chaz: I do not need to explain anything - I only have to demonstrate it. You can neither explain how a rock as a 'psychic' quality nor can you demonstrate it.
MGL: As we are discussing panpsychism as a solution to the hard problem of consciousness then I am afraid you DO have to explain how the sensation of redness is reducable to the firings of neurones if you think panpsychism is wrong. If that is not what you are discussing then everything you have said is probably irrelevant
Then explain how a rock has this quality.
Stop avoiding the question.
Now demonstrate THAT a rock has this quality.
You can do neither. You cannot advance the is theory further. It does not work. It has no function.
All examples of conscious activity are the special characteristics of living nervous matter. It is not found anywhere else.
Your theory explains nothing. All you have done is to defer any problem to another position.
Now tell me how is it a rock can have this occult quality of which you speak and can you demonstrate it?
========================
Chaz: What I am telling you is that Grey matter has the property of consciousness when it is energised. AND what is more I can DEMONSTRATE that. That is the special property of brain matter.
MGL: I have no doubt that it can be demonstrated that the brain has the property of consciousness when it is energised, but to suggest that this is a special property of brain matter requires an explanation.
Which your theory can neither demonstrate nor can it explain.
Certainly brain matter has the special property of producing a conscious mind, but the hard problem of consciousness is how it produces the phenomenal content of consciousness, the redness etc. If you cannot explain this then at least find a fault with the panpsychist argument that does not just rely on a declaration of incredulity. I am quite aware of how bizarre the consequence of the panpyschist argument is, but until you can offer a better explanation for phenomenal consciousness my money is on panpsychism.
You are putting your money on a meaningless theory.
============================
Chaz: You can neither explain how a rock as a 'psychic' quality nor can you demonstrate it.
MGL:
Of course panpsychism cannot explain how a particle has a 'psychic' quality any more than physics can explain why a particle has a mass or a spin. Its part of the theory that it is a primitive property of matter.
DUH!
Of course it cannot be demonstrated that a particle has this quality in the same way it can be demonstrated a particle has mass or spin. This quality has only been inferred from the argument for panpsychism, which, if you disagree with, then you have to provide an explanation of how phenomenal consciousness emerges from special properties of the brain.
