Ontology of Mind
Posted: August 13th, 2017, 8:21 pm
The Ontology of Mind
[C]onsciousness, however small, is an illegitimate birth in any philosophy that
starts without it, and yet professes to explain all facts by continuous evolution.
If evolution is to work smoothly, consciousness in some shape must have been
present at the very origins of things” (James 1890/1950, 149).
According to Brüntrup and Jaskolla, “panpsychism is the thesis that mental being is an ubiquitous and fundamental feature pervading the entire universe,”
https://platofootnote.wordpress.com/201 ... npsychism/
The genetic argument is based on the philosophical principle ‘ex nihilo, nihil fit’ – nothing can bring about something which it does not already possess. If human consciousness came to be through a physical process of evolution, then physical matter must already contain some basic form of mental being. Versions of this argument can be found in both Thomas Nagel’s Mortal Questions (1979) as well as William James’s The Principles of Psychology (1890).”
Sir Bertrand Russell who noted in his Human Knowledge: Its Scope and its Limits (1948): ‘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 world is, or is not, different in intrinsic character from the world of mind.’ (Russell 1948, 240)
Sir Arthur Eddington formulated a very intuitive version of the argument from intrinsic natures in his Space, Time and Gravitation (1920): ‘Physics is the knowledge of structural form, and not knowledge of content. All through the physical world runs that unknown content, which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness.’ (Eddington, 1920, 200).”
Mathews puts it: “the materialist view of the world that is a corollary of dualism maroons the epistemic subject in the small if charmed circle of its own subjectivity, and … it is only the reanimation of matter itself that enables the subject to reconnect with reality. This ‘argument from realism’ constitutes my defense of panpsychism.” (Mathews, 2003, 44)
OUP post:“Panpsychism paints a picture of reality that emphasizes a humane and caring relationship with nature due to its fundamental rejection of the Cartesian conception of nature as a mechanism to be exploited by mankind. For the panpsychist, we encounter in nature other entities of intrinsic value, rather than objects to be manipulated for our gain.”
“Whatever consciousness is, it is a process, not stuff or the momentary configuration of stuff or knowledge of the way stuff is arranged or even knowledge of what process is being done.”
Plato:This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.[6]
Strawson “Physicalism Entails Panpsychism”
“Experiential phenomena are emergent phenomena. 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’. Ultimates in themselves are wholly non-conscious, non-experiential phenomena. Nevertheless, when they combine in certain ways, experiential phenomena ‘emerge’.
Does this conception of emergence make sense? I think that it is very, very hard to understand what it is supposed to involve. I think that it is incoherent, in fact, and that this general way of talking of emergence has acquired an air of plausibility (or at least possibility) for some simply because it has been appealed to many times in the face of a seeming mystery
I finish up, indeed, in the same position as Eddington. ‘To put the conclusion crudely’, he says, ‘the stuff of the world is mind-stuff’—something whose nature is ‘not altogether foreign to the feelings in our consciousness’. ‘Having granted this’, he continues,
the mental activity of the part of the world constituting ourselves occasions no surprise; it is known to us by direct self-knowledge, and we do not explain it away as something other than we know it to be—or, rather, it knows itself to be. It is the physical aspects [i.e. non-mental aspects] of the world that we have to explain.[54]
Eddington puts it as follows. ‘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,
”the idea that phenomenal consciousness emerges from an utterlyinsentient physical background. Neo-panexperientialists maintain that carefulscrutiny reveals that such radical emergence—a complete breach of ontological continuity, the sudden appearance on the scene of something wholly unprecedented, devoid of any primitive forerunners, and of which no traces can be detected prior toits ultimate surge—is hopelessly unintelligible.
When does experience, mind, consciousness, first appear in nature?
Does consciousness not require evolution in nature, just like the evolution of physical structure?
Should mind not have first appeared as some primitive form of non-conscious experience followed by increasing degrees of complexity and self-awareness?
Could matter, if entirely devoid of sensation, feeling or experience, give rise to thinking feeling creatures?
What is you notion of the first appearance in nature of “mind” of mind like qualities and of its subsequent evolution and development?
In all fairness, my proclivities are process philosophy, neutral monism and panexperientialism (a form of panpsychism).
[C]onsciousness, however small, is an illegitimate birth in any philosophy that
starts without it, and yet professes to explain all facts by continuous evolution.
If evolution is to work smoothly, consciousness in some shape must have been
present at the very origins of things” (James 1890/1950, 149).
According to Brüntrup and Jaskolla, “panpsychism is the thesis that mental being is an ubiquitous and fundamental feature pervading the entire universe,”
https://platofootnote.wordpress.com/201 ... npsychism/
The genetic argument is based on the philosophical principle ‘ex nihilo, nihil fit’ – nothing can bring about something which it does not already possess. If human consciousness came to be through a physical process of evolution, then physical matter must already contain some basic form of mental being. Versions of this argument can be found in both Thomas Nagel’s Mortal Questions (1979) as well as William James’s The Principles of Psychology (1890).”
Sir Bertrand Russell who noted in his Human Knowledge: Its Scope and its Limits (1948): ‘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 world is, or is not, different in intrinsic character from the world of mind.’ (Russell 1948, 240)
Sir Arthur Eddington formulated a very intuitive version of the argument from intrinsic natures in his Space, Time and Gravitation (1920): ‘Physics is the knowledge of structural form, and not knowledge of content. All through the physical world runs that unknown content, which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness.’ (Eddington, 1920, 200).”
Mathews puts it: “the materialist view of the world that is a corollary of dualism maroons the epistemic subject in the small if charmed circle of its own subjectivity, and … it is only the reanimation of matter itself that enables the subject to reconnect with reality. This ‘argument from realism’ constitutes my defense of panpsychism.” (Mathews, 2003, 44)
OUP post:“Panpsychism paints a picture of reality that emphasizes a humane and caring relationship with nature due to its fundamental rejection of the Cartesian conception of nature as a mechanism to be exploited by mankind. For the panpsychist, we encounter in nature other entities of intrinsic value, rather than objects to be manipulated for our gain.”
“Whatever consciousness is, it is a process, not stuff or the momentary configuration of stuff or knowledge of the way stuff is arranged or even knowledge of what process is being done.”
Plato:This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.[6]
Strawson “Physicalism Entails Panpsychism”
“Experiential phenomena are emergent phenomena. 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’. Ultimates in themselves are wholly non-conscious, non-experiential phenomena. Nevertheless, when they combine in certain ways, experiential phenomena ‘emerge’.
Does this conception of emergence make sense? I think that it is very, very hard to understand what it is supposed to involve. I think that it is incoherent, in fact, and that this general way of talking of emergence has acquired an air of plausibility (or at least possibility) for some simply because it has been appealed to many times in the face of a seeming mystery
I finish up, indeed, in the same position as Eddington. ‘To put the conclusion crudely’, he says, ‘the stuff of the world is mind-stuff’—something whose nature is ‘not altogether foreign to the feelings in our consciousness’. ‘Having granted this’, he continues,
the mental activity of the part of the world constituting ourselves occasions no surprise; it is known to us by direct self-knowledge, and we do not explain it away as something other than we know it to be—or, rather, it knows itself to be. It is the physical aspects [i.e. non-mental aspects] of the world that we have to explain.[54]
Eddington puts it as follows. ‘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,
”the idea that phenomenal consciousness emerges from an utterlyinsentient physical background. Neo-panexperientialists maintain that carefulscrutiny reveals that such radical emergence—a complete breach of ontological continuity, the sudden appearance on the scene of something wholly unprecedented, devoid of any primitive forerunners, and of which no traces can be detected prior toits ultimate surge—is hopelessly unintelligible.
When does experience, mind, consciousness, first appear in nature?
Does consciousness not require evolution in nature, just like the evolution of physical structure?
Should mind not have first appeared as some primitive form of non-conscious experience followed by increasing degrees of complexity and self-awareness?
Could matter, if entirely devoid of sensation, feeling or experience, give rise to thinking feeling creatures?
What is you notion of the first appearance in nature of “mind” of mind like qualities and of its subsequent evolution and development?
In all fairness, my proclivities are process philosophy, neutral monism and panexperientialism (a form of panpsychism).