# Panpsychism: credible or not?



## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

What are your views on this philosophical position? Is it credible, absurd, possible?

*Panpsychism*
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/#4.3

*The 'Intrinsic Nature' Argument for Panpsychism*
http://www.scar.utoronto.ca/~seager/intnat.pdf

*Realistic Monism: **Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism*
http://faculty.unlv.edu/beiseckd/Courses/PHIL-352/Dave%20-%20Consciousness%20PDFs/Strawson%20-%20Realistic%20Monism%20and%20Replies/Strawson%20-%20Realistic%20Monism%20Why%20Physicalism%20Entails%20Panpsychism.pdf​


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## hoddesdon (Jul 28, 2011)

I think it is interesting that the first article says that consciousness can not be explained by science.


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

hoddesdon said:


> I think it is interesting that the first article says that consciousness can not be explained by science.


Most scientists feel the same way. It's not clear if future advances in science (maybe physics?) will make any headway in unification. Maybe we're just not bright enough (beyond our cognitive reach) as argued here:


> A naturalistic approach to...mental aspects of the world seeks to construct intelligible explanatory theories, taking as "real" what we are led to posit in this quest, and hoping for eventual unification with the "core" natural sciences: unification, not necessarily reduction. Large-scale reduction is rare in the history of the sciences. Commonly the more "fundamental" science has had to undergo radical revision for unification to proceed. The case of chemistry and physics is a recent example; Pauling's account of the chemical bond unified the disciplines, but only after the quantum revolution in physics made these steps possible. The unification of much of biology with chemistry a few years later might be regarded as genuine reduction, but that is not common, and has no particular epistemological or other significance; "expansion" of physics to incorporate what was known about valence, the Periodic table, chemical weights, and so on is no less valid a form of unification. In the present case, the theories of language and mind that seem best established on naturalistic grounds attribute to the mind/brain computational properties of a kind that are well-understood, though not enough is known to explain how a structure constructed of cells can have such properties. That poses a unification problem, but of a familiar kind. We do not know how eventual unification might proceed in this case, or if we have hit upon the right categories to seek to unify, or even if the question falls within our cognitive reach.


*Language and Nature*
http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/old/class_text_095.pdf


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

So there's no misunderstanding, no panpsychist claims that rocks, electrons, etc. are conscious. What is being claimed is that even at the microscopic level, particles/fields have some proto-mental (subjective or intrinsic) properties which when combined together at the macro-level lead to things like qualia/consciousness, etc. One problem with panpsychism is it also faces a severe problem of understanding how more complex mental states emerge from these proto-mental features if they did occur. ​


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

What do people think of Strawson's micropsychism argument:

Position 1:

Consciousness properties, experience properties, are emergent properties of wholly and utterly non-conscious, non-experiential phenomena. Physical stuff _in itself_, in its basic nature, is indeed a wholly non-conscious, non-experiential phenomenon. Nevertheless when parts of it combine in certain ways, experiential phenomena 'emerge'. Does this conception of emergence make sense?

Position 2 (Strawson):

If it really is true that Y is emergent from X, then it must be the case that Y is in some sense wholly dependent on X and X alone. So that all features of Y trace intelligibly back to X (where 'intelligible' is a metaphysical rather than an epistemic notion). _Emergence can't be "brute"._ It then follows that, experiential reality cannot possibly emerge from wholly and utterly non-experiential reality. Hence some form of panpsychism is true because it seems silly to prefer to attach thought to something of a so-called 'concrete' nature inconsistent with thought and then to wonder where the thought comes from.

*Realistic Monism: **Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism*
_http://faculty.unlv.edu/beiseckd/Courses/PHIL-352/Dave%20-%20Consciousness%20PDFs/Strawson%20-%20Realistic%20Monism%20and%20Replies/Strawson%20-%20Realistic%20Monism%20Why%20Physicalism%20Entails%20Panpsychism.pdf_​


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

I'm not sure if the intrinscic (ignorance) argument favours micropsychism but I find it interesting. Clearly, there's a difference between identifying the neural correlates of consciousness which may be spatial (in the brain) which are part of the _Easy Problem_ versus explaining how these events actually cause consciousness in the sense of inner experience--the _Hard Problem_. If this inner experience is spatial, where is it? Personally, I think Russell and Eddington had it right with respect to our ignorance of the categorical or intrinsic properties of matter. Russell wrote:
_



Physics is mathematical, not because we know so much about the 'physical world'-and here he means the non-mental, non-experiential world-but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. For the rest, our knowledge is negative...The physical world is only known as regards certain abstract features of its space-time structure - features which, because of their abstractness, do not suffice to show whether the physical world is, or is not, different in intrinsic character from the world of mind.

Click to expand...

_Eddington argues similarly: 
_



Our knowledge of the nature of the objects treated in physics consists solely of readings of pointers (on instrument dials) and other indicators.' This being so, he asks, 'what knowledge have we of the nature of atoms that renders it at all incongruous that they should constitute a thinking object?' Absolutely none, he rightly replies: 'science has nothing to say as to the intrinsic nature of the atom'. The atom, so far as physics tells us anything about it, is, like everything else in physics, a schedule of pointer readings (on instrument dials). The schedule is, we agree, attached to some unknown background. Why not then attach it to something of a spiritual (i.e.mental) nature of which a prominent characteristic is thought (=experience, consciousness). It seems rather silly to prefer to attach it to something of a so-called 'concrete' nature inconsistent with thought, and then to wonder where the thought comes from. We have dismissed all preconception as to the background of our pointer readings, and for the most part can discover nothing as to its nature. 

Click to expand...

_


> _But in one case-namely, for the pointer readings of my own brain-I have an insight which is not limited to the evidence of the pointer readings. That insight shows that they are attached to a background of consciousness in which case I may expect that the background of other pointer readings in physics is of a nature continuous with that revealed to me in this way, even while I do not suppose that it always has the more specialized attributes of consciousness. What is certain is that in regard to my one piece of insight into the background no problem of irreconcilability arises; I have no other knowledge of the background with which to reconcile it...There is nothing to prevent the assemblage of atoms constituting a brain from being of itself a thinking (conscious, experiencing) object in virtue of that nature which physics leaves undetermined and undeterminable. If we must embed our schedule of indicator readings in some kind of background, at least let us accept the only hint we have received as to the significance of the background-namely, that it has a nature capable of manifesting itself as mental activity. _


Maybe the problem of consciousness/qualia has its source as some special feature of consciousness, itself. By having this special access (inner experience) to it that we have to nothing else (and nothing else to us), this may not allow us to see the connection between the stuff physics studies ("matter") and stuff we know exists ('mind"/experiential)? Others have described it like a camera trying to take a picture of itself? I'm not sure?


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## kev (Jan 28, 2005)

I'm not one to discount radical ideas point blank, so I'll say it's possible- but I did not read all the links - I just kind of skimmed. I might bookmark and read them later - they look like interesting reads. 

Is this the same idea as cosmic consciousness or is there a difference?


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

kev said:


> I'm not one to discount radical ideas point blank, so I'll say it's possible- but I did not read all the links - I just kind of skimmed. I might bookmark and read them later - they look like interesting reads.
> 
> Is this the same idea as cosmic consciousness or is there a difference?


I don't know much about "cosmic consciousness" but panpsychism is the view that some proto-mental or proto-experiential element is inherent down at the most fundamental micro-level. It doesn't hold the view that rocks, electrons are conscious as it argues that it takes the right kind of organization/complexity/coherence to form a true individual and thus a unitary consciousness. But it does claim that everything has some proto-experiential property that at a higher level leads to consciousness/subjectivity/qualia. So the brain can't spit out consciousness/qualia/experiential unless there was some proto-mental stuff inherent in all "matter".


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

I thought this was an interersting PhD dissertation that this guy is doing. I'm not sure that this is panpsychism (it seems more like panprotopsychism to me), but he seems to be arguing against treating consciousness as a genuine macroscopic emergent phenomena suggesting that information at the micro-level leads to consciousness at the macro-level: 



> A central problem in the mind-body debate is the generation problem: how consciousness occurs in a universe understood as primarily non-conscious...I argue that the generation problem stems from a non-critical presupposition about the nature of reality, namely, that the mental is an exception in the universe, a non-fundamental property. I call this presupposition mental specialism...I argue that consciousness emerges from proto-consciousness, the fundamental property that is disposed to give rise to consciousness. Proto-consciousness is not an arbitrarily posited property; following an important contemporary approach in neuroscience (the integrated information account), I understand proto-consciousness as information. The thesis that consciousness emerges from proto-consciousness elicits a fatal problem with panpsychic theories, the combination problem. This problem is how to account for higher order conscious properties emerging from proto-conscious properties. I solve the combination problem by adopting Giuolio Tononi'e Integrated Information theory of Consciousness and demonstrating emerging higher order conscious properties just is a system integrating information. *Thus information is the fundamental property that, when integrated in a system such as a human being, is consciousness. Proto-consciousness is thus a natural property and the formulated panpsychic theory based upon information is a naturalized panpsychism. *


*Naturalized Panpsychism: An Alternative to Fundamentalist Physicalism and Supernaturalism*
http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1207&context=dissertations_mu


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

This is another interesting paper taking a neutral monist position as advocated by Russell and trying to interpret the physicists' Bohm's/Hiley's concept of _active information_ as the intrinsic ground underlying the micro-level that ultimately leads to consciousness/subjectivity/qualia at the macro-level: 



> Hiley frequently expresses the distinction between _active information_ and _Shannon information_ as the latter being 'information for us' whereas the former is 'objective information' . Shannon information is 'for us' in the sense that we must always interpret the information structures or 'signals' in terms of some meaning we interpretively impose on some physical process. But at some level, interpretation must give out. That is, Shannon information requires some intrinsic grounding. Active information can thus be seen as playing the role of the intrinsic ground for the purely structural features of Shannon information. What exactly active information is remains somewhat mysterious. The quantum potential is the direct structural reflection of it in our world but that-of course-says little about its intrinsic nature. It is tempting to link active information with consciousness, if only for the reason that conscious states seem to carry meaning intrinsically (as intentional content), and nothing else we know of does so.





> In opposition to the speculations of Hiley and Pylkkänen, it also can accommodate mental causation in a way that does not require mysterious downward causation, or bizarre interpositions of non-physical effects in the brain. Instead, it sees the role of mind as providing the fundamental intrinsic features which allow for there to be the kinds of relations in the empirical world we categorize in causal terms. Appreciation of this last virtue means that I would be further inclined to take the lesson of active information to be trying to tell us that in some way mentality is a fundamental feature of the world which provides the intrinsic nature required for the Russellian monist view. This avoids the worry that the 'neutral' is totally mysterious and of necessity completely inscrutable to us.


*Classical Levels, Russellian Monism and the Implicate Order*
http://www.springerlink.com/content/0253782470826522/fulltext.pdf?MUD=MP​


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## TobeyJuarez (May 16, 2012)

its certainly interesting


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## ACCV93 (Sep 6, 2012)

Sounds very interesting. I've actually thought about this before. Didn't know there was a name for it.


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## Metrodorus (Nov 22, 2012)

Define mentality.


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## Daktoria (Sep 21, 2010)

Panpsychism is justified on the basis of "people" deserving the benefit of the doubt. 

If "people" do exist everywhere, then it's nobody else's entitlement to judge them in expecting them to behave in a particular manner.

This doesn't mean panpsychism is necessarily correct, but that we're obligated to believe in it unless we're willing to let others boss us around for doing the unexpected.


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

Metrodorus said:


> Define mentality.


Which is harder to define "the mental" or "the physical"? I'm guessing you are suggesting the latter? So define the physical/material.


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## Metrodorus (Nov 22, 2012)

This is one of the chief problems of this theory, is the assumption of a basic definition of Mentality that nobody seems capable of actually defining or describing.


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

Metrodorus said:


> This is one of the chief problems of this theory, is the assumption of a basic definition of Mentality that nobody seems capable of actually defining or describing.


I don't think mental is that hard to define. I have thoughts. I consider my thoughts to be mental stuff. I know I have them as I'm sure you do. I can't literally "feel"/"see" your thoughts and you can't mine as they are private. One may find a correlation between thoughts and some brain pattern but there's more to a thought/thinking/consciousness than just the stuff that's measured in some brain scan as there is a qualiative feel, subjectivity, etc. Personally, I think the major problem with panpsychism is that it must also resort to some form of emergentism and this has led even more "panpsychist-friendly" philosophers to be critical of panpsychism. For example, Goff writes:


> ...between panpsychist emergentism and physicalist emergentism, the physicalist version is preferable for reasons of ontological economy...


So, basically one of the advantages of panpsychism doesn't appear as an advantage, although there have been some attempts to solve this "combination problem" :

*Panpsychism, Aggregation **and Combinatorial Infusion*
http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~seager/panagg.pdf​
*Mental Chemistry: Combination for Panpsychists*
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1746-8361.2012.01293.x/pdf​
But others question the whole basis for this "distinction/mind-body problem": 



> The mind-body problem can be posed sensibly only insofar as we have a definite conception of body. If we have no such definite and fixed conception, we cannot ask whether some phenomena fall beyond its range. The Cartesians offered a fairly definite conception of body in terms of their contact mechanics, which in many respects reflects commonsense understanding...[However] the Cartesian concept of body was refuted by seventeenth-century physics, particularly in the work of Isaac Newton, which laid the foundations for modern science. Newton demonstrated that the motions of the heavenly bodies could not be explained by the principles of Descartes's contact mechanics, so that the Cartesian concept of body must be abandoned.
> 
> In other words, when we think of causation in the natural world as Descartes did - that is, as involving literal contact between two extended substances - then the way in which a thought or a sensation relate to a material object becomes mysterious. Certainly it cannot be right to think of a thought or sensation as making literal physical contact with the surface of the brain, or in any other way communicating motion in a "push-pull" way. But when we give up this crude model of causation, as Newton did, the source of the mystery disappears. At the same time, no systematic positive account of what matter as such is has ever really been put forward to replace Descartes' conception.​
> There is no longer any definite conception of body. Rather, the material world is whatever we discover it to be, with whatever properties it must be assumed to have for the purposes of explanatory theory. Any intelligible theory that offers genuine explanations and that can be assimilated to the core notions of physics becomes part of the theory of the material world, part of our account of body. If we have such a theory in some domain, we seek to assimilate it to the core notions of physics, perhaps modifying these notions as we carry out this enterprise.​
> ...


*Chomsky on the mind-body problem*
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2010/06/chomsky-on-mind-body-problem.html


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## Curmudgeon64 (Dec 5, 2003)

hoddesdon said:


> I think it is interesting that the first article says that consciousness can not be explained by science.


Okay, I know I made a fool of myself by not knowing what "zombie" meant last time I participated in a string about conciousness, but I'm still sticking with the idea that conciousness is an emergent property of biological systems. http://www.nature.com/scitable/topi...ty-and-integrative-levels-of-organization-468 Although physics, chemistry, and even neurology thus cannot explain conciousness, Darwin's Theory of Evolution suggests that conciousness may exist simply because it is the most efficient means of dealing with the problems animals encounter in day-to-day existence.

The other day, for example, I smelled something foul. I searched the kitchen for the source of that smell. It was not the coming from first thing I checked, nor the second. What could it be? Then I realised I had forgotten to put away the pot of soup cooling on the stove a few days ago! Embarrassing, yes, but also enlightening: for without conciousness, how could I have found the source of the smell?

Conciousness is a model of the universe. It allows us to deal with that universe without floundering about randomly. It's not like we are concious beings looking at that model; rather, the model itself, when running, is our conciousness. That is why we are not always concious of everything. It is how we can dream and even be unconcious at times. Likewise our sense of self is simply that part of our model which refers to self. Perhaps the conciousness of many kinds of animals does not include a sense of self.

On this head, as Darwin might say, we have neither a mind-body problem nor a conflict between predetermination and free-will. We are, perhaps miraculously, the sum of our parts.


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## Curmudgeon64 (Dec 5, 2003)

Kon said:


> What do people think of Strawson's micropsychism argument:
> 
> Position 1:
> 
> ...


Position 1 makes more sense to me. For what reason must a property be metaphysically traceable back to its components? Is the Mona Lisa traceable to the pigments used in its paints?

It is no sillier "to attach thought to something of a so-called 'concrete' nature inconsistent with thought" than to suggest that the force responsible for objects falling to earth also keeps them in stable orbits far above the earth.


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

Curmudgeon64 said:


> On this head, as Darwin might say, we have neither a mind-body problem nor a conflict between predetermination and free-will. *We are, perhaps miraculously, the sum of our parts*.


But we are not the sum of our parts. In fact, matter itself as currently understood by physics (Bell's theorem, entanglement in quantum mechanics) isn't the sum of its parts:


> The classical picture offered a compelling presumption in favour of the claim that causation is strictly bottom up-that the causal powers of whole systems reside entirely in the causal powers of parts. This thesis is central to most arguments for reductionism. It contends that all physically significant processes are due to causal powers of the smallest parts acting individually on one another. If this were right, then any emergent or systemic properties must either be powerless epiphenomena or else violate basic microphysical laws. But the way in which the classical picture breaks down undermines this connection and the reductionist argument that employs it. If microphysical systems can have properties not possessed by individual parts, then so might any system composed of such parts...
> 
> Were the physical world completely governed by local processes, the reductionist might well argue that each biological system is made up of the microphysical parts that interact, perhaps stochastically, but with things that exist in microscopic local regions; so the biological can only be epiphenomena of local microphysical processes occurring in tiny regions. Biology reduces to molecular biology, which reduces in turn to microphysics. But *the Bell arguments completely overturn this conception*...


*For whom the Bell arguments toll*
http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/H/James.A.Hawthorne-1/Hawthorne--For_Whom_the_Bell_Arguments_Toll.pdf


Curmudgeon64 said:


> Embarrassing, yes, but also enlightening: for without conciousness, how could I have found the source of the smell?


Why do you need consciousness to find the source? That's the whole point of the "zombie argument": you would find the source and do everything the same except there would be no consciousness.


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

Curmudgeon64 said:


> Position 1 makes more sense to me. For what reason must a property be metaphysically traceable back to its components? Is the Mona Lisa traceable to the pigments used in its paints? It is no sillier "to attach thought to something of a so-called 'concrete' nature inconsistent with thought" than to suggest that the force responsible for objects falling to earth also keeps them in stable orbits far above the earth.


I'm not sure about the answer but just to be clear there is a difference between _*panprotopsychism*_ versus _*panpsychism*_. The former attributed to Russell and Bohm does not claim that the fundamental entities are imbued with mentality/consciousness but only with intrinsic protophenomenal properties; that is, they ground the phenomenal. A good summary can be found here with the relevant quote:



> We will refer to properties (if such there be) that ground the physical structure/relations physics describes as _inscrutables_. By definition, inscrutables have natures that are not fully characterized by structural/relational descriptions. We will also refer to _protophenomenal properties-_properties that, though not themselves phenomenal, result in phenomenal properties when combined in certain ways... Such physical properties would be special in that they would have natures that are not exhausted by the sorts of properties found in physics...


*What is Russellian monism?*
http://www.yujinnagasawa.com/resources/Russellian.pdf​
But why must we even resort to such claims? Because of stuff like Jackson's "Knowledge argument", etc. arguing for an epistemic gap between the physical and the phenomenal, perhaps even with future revisions of physics:​
*Knowledge argument*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/


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## hoddesdon (Jul 28, 2011)

Curmudgeon64 said:


> Okay, I know I made a fool of myself by not knowing what "zombie" meant last time I participated in a string about conciousness, but *I'm still sticking with the idea that conciousness is an emergent property of biological systems*. http://www.nature.com/scitable/topi...ty-and-integrative-levels-of-organization-468 Although physics, chemistry, and even neurology thus cannot explain conciousness, Darwin's Theory of Evolution suggests that conciousness may exist simply because it is the most efficient means of dealing with the problems animals encounter in day-to-day existence.
> 
> The other day, for example, I smelled something foul. I searched the kitchen for the source of that smell. It was not the coming from first thing I checked, nor the second. What could it be? Then I realised I had forgotten to put away the pot of soup cooling on the stove a few days ago! Embarrassing, yes, but also enlightening: for without conciousness, how could I have found the source of the smell?
> 
> ...


Is there any evidence for this?


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

While I don't agree with these author's (Sara Imari Walker/PCW Davies) claim that "downward causation" is strictly a biological phenomenon, they nevertheless, present another interesting argument that _information_ is the key property that distinguishes life from non-life:



> A landmark event in the history of science was the publication in 1859 by Charles Darwin of his book _On the Origin of Species_ , affording for the first time in history, a scientific framework unifying all life on Earth under a common descriptive paradigm. However, while Darwin's theory gives a convincing explanation of how life has evolved incrementally over billions of years from simple microbes to the richness of the biosphere we observe today, Darwin pointedly left out an account of how life got started in the first place...Although it is notoriously hard to identify precisely what it is that makes life so distinctive and remarkable, there is general agreement that *its informational **aspect is one key property, perhaps the key property.* If life is more than just complex chemistry, its unique informational aspects may be the crucial indicator of this distinction. The manner in which information flows through and between cells and sub-cellular structures is quite unlike anything else observed in nature.


*The Algorithmic Origins of Life*
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.4803v1.pdf


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## frank81 (Dec 1, 2011)

I think the most unbelievable thing is that my head is spinning just trying to understand that term itself.:yes


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## Curmudgeon64 (Dec 5, 2003)

Kon said:


> Why do you need consciousness to find the source? That's the whole point of the "zombie argument": you would find the source and do everything the same except there would be no consciousness.


I'm positing that any physical structure capable of doing everything the same as a concious person inevitably would have acquired conciousness. Maybe the very processes involved in thought constitute conciousness and therefore create a subjective experience. Could it be?


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## Curmudgeon64 (Dec 5, 2003)

hoddesdon said:


> Is there any evidence for this?


I don't have any, except to ask whether it wouldn't explain things in the most parsimonious way. Sleeping and waking, for instance. You are concious, and then you aren't, and then you are concious of things that don't really exist, and then you are concious of the world around you again. It kind of makes sense if conciousness, subjectivity, qualia are identical to high level functions that our brains can perform. I can't prove it, of course ... but somehow I am failing to see any contradiction inherent in such a view.


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## fredbloggs02 (Dec 14, 2009)

I didn't wade through all the links. The first sentence interested me, so I skimmed through. I haven't met these terms before but some of the philosophers I could probably say something about. Plato and Leibniz I know something about, Kant interests me, as do nineteenth century philosophers who asserted that there will always be something of the individual in any experience of the world. Hopefully something interesting comes of the discussion.

From what I gathered, unless there were some intrinsic consciousness to what the individual experiences, there would be no intrinsic.. nature discernible to the individual? The way the ideas were interpreted and compiled there obfuscate their instrinsic sense to me- I couldn't build a picture from those pieces.


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

Curmudgeon64 said:


> I'm positing that any physical structure capable of doing everything the same as a concious person inevitably would have acquired conciousness.


I agree with this. I think one could always argue against Chalmer's "zombie argument" on these grounds; that is, if a system was similar in structure/chemistry to us, it would have to be conscious. It's harder to dismiss Frank Jackson's "knowledge argument" though, I think.

Personally, I don't think the "combination problem" is as problematic for panpsychists or panprotopsychists, as has been argued. I think the stronger argument against panpsychism is the one pointed out by Stoljar: we simply don't know enough about the physical/matter (e.g. physics has not ended) to make the claim that sentience/subjectivity/consciousness cannot possibly emerge out of wholly an insentient physical/material background. Especially given that we know so little about the "intrinsic" properties of matter as per Russell's/Eddington's arguments.

But others like Nagel/Strawson would disagree by asserting that no matter how much a future physics changes it will never be able to tell us to how subjectivity/consciousness can emerge out of stuff that is not conscious or at least doesn't have simple forms of mentality (proto-psychism) at the most fundamental level.


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