But then the panpsychists owe us an explanation of the extremely counterintuitive alleged compatibility of being a tennis ball and being a mental subject.Gertie wrote: ↑August 16th, 2021, 12:29 pmBut you're begging the question. If panpsychism is correct in as much as there is something it is like to be a tennis ball, then that is part of a tennis ball's essence or nature.Consul wrote: ↑August 14th, 2021, 8:08 amSo when you imagine an experiencing tennis ball... there is just an imaginative illusion of real possibility. Panpsychism is guilty of committing ontological category mistakes by ascribing mental properties to things the having of which is incompatible with the things' physical essence or nature, with what kind of things they are.
Panpsychism: credible or not?
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?
"…we can read the definition [of panpsychism] as requiring that all members of some fundamental physical types (all photons, for example) have mental states."
(Chalmers, David J. "Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism." In Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Godehard Brüntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla, 19-47. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. p. 19)
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The problem is that due to the lack of any empirical evidence for their view, any answer panpsychists give to the following question is utterly arbitrary: Which kind(s) of elementary particles have mental states?
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"Panpsychism, the view that fundamental physical entities have conscious experiences, is an exciting and promising view for addressing the mind-problem.
…
[P]anpsychism is subject to a major challenge: the combination problem. This is roughly the question: How do the experiences of fundamental physical entities such as quarks and photons combine to yield the familiar sort of human conscious experience that we know and love?"
(Chalmers, David J. "The Combination Problem for Panpsychism." In Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Godehard Brüntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla, 179-214. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. p. 179)
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Actually, the combination problem consists of several particular problems such as this one:
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"The quality combination problem is roughly: How do microqualities combine to yield macroqualities? Here macroqualities are specific phenomenal qualities such as phenomenal redness (what it is like to see red), phenomenal greenness, and so on. It is natural to suppose that microexperience involves microqualities, which might be primitive analogs of macroqualities. How do these combine?
An especially pressing aspect of the quality combination problem is what we might call the palette problem. There is a vast array of macroqualities, including many different phenomenal colors, shapes, sounds, smells, and tastes. There is presumably only a limited palette of microqualities. Especially if Russellian panpsychism is true, we can expect only a handful of microqualities, corresponding to the handful of fundamental microphysical properties. How can this limited palette of microqualities combine to yield the vast array of macroqualities?"
(Chalmers, David J. "The Combination Problem for Panpsychism." In Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Godehard Brüntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla, 179-214. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. p. 183)
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For example, I know that I am a subject of visual qualia (color qualia) and auditory qualia (sound qualia). Can elementary particles have visual or auditory experiences too despite their lack of eyes and ears, and their lack of a sensory apparatus capable of processing visual or auditory information? – It's absolutely implausible to answer this question in the affirmative. But if panpsychists answer it in the negative, denying that elementary particles enjoy color qualia or sound qualia, then how could my color qualia and my sound qualia emerge or result from aggregates or complexes of noncolor qualia and nonsound qualia had by elementary particles in my brain?
Galen Strawson argues against qualia emergentism/antifundamentalism that it is unintelligible how something experiential could emerge or result from something nonexperiential—as unintelligible as how extension or extended things could emerge or result from nonextension or unextended things. (For example, how could an extended line result from an additive series of unextended points?)
But one can argue against the possibility of a panpsychistic emergence or resultance of "macroqualia" (such as the ones experienced by humans) from "microqualia" that it is no less unintelligible how my color qualia could emergence from other sorts of qualia had by particles in my brain. For instance, how could a combination or fusion of sound qualia result in or constitute a color quale? How can noncolor qualia constitute or generate color qualia? This makes no sense, so the quality combination problem doesn't seem coherently soluble unless the panpsychists affirm—wildly implausibly!—that e.g. my color qualia emerge from or are constituted by other color qualia had by elementary particles in my brain. It might be possible for my color "macroqualia" to emerge from or be constituted by color "microqualia", but it seems impossible for them to emerge from or be constituted by noncolor "microqualia".
On the other hand, if panpsychists affirm that particles have color qualia, then they cannot help also affirming that they have undetectably tiny eyes or photoreceptors enabling to them to see. Chalmers mentions photons as possible havers of mental properties, but it would be preposterous to claim that single photons have photoreceptors enabling them to see and to enjoy color qualia.
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?
"What kinds of E[xperiential] properties do particles have? Galen at one point accepts that they could have ordinary vivid experiences of red, as well as alien subjectivities—certainly not dimmer or fainter or blurrier than our usual experiences. But to provide an adequate basis for the full panoply of human phenomenology they are going to have to be rich and wide-ranging: not just sensory states but also emotional states, conative states and cognitive states—willing and thinking and feeling as well as sensing. How will this work? Will each type of particle possess a wide range of experiences, including emotions and thoughts, or will particles specialize in certain types of experience—electrons doing sensory, protons handling the emotional, neutrinos taking care of the cognitive? Either position seems totally arbitrary and empirically unconstrained. This is a game without rules and without consequences. Is it really to be supposed that a particle can enjoy these kinds of experiences—say, feeling depressed at its monotonous life of orbiting a nucleus but occasionally cheered up by its experience of musical notes?
Here the persistent panpsychist might retreat to watered-down phenomenology, perhaps imagining faint and blurry qualia, along the lines possibly of those in the nascent mind of a foetus. Galen does not take this weaselly line, to his credit; it obviously makes no difference to the general issue and merely registers the natural unease that the honest-to-goodness panpsychist provokes. Even the faint and blurry is phenomenology too much for the humble electron. The problem is that we can solve the emergence problem only if we credit the ultimates with a rich enough phenomenology to form an adequate basis for a full-bodied human mind, or else we have to suppose input from outside to pump up the volume (and hence relinquish emergence). So we simply can’t scale it back when we come to the basic elements, on pain of resurrecting the old emergence problem. There is really no alternative but to accept that particles have minds in much the same way we (and other animals) do. And please don’t say that the particles are only required to be potentially experience-endowed for panpsychism to be true, since this is common ground for any view of the relation between experience and the wider world—of course matter must have the potential to generate mind, since it patently does (unless we are radical dualists). The whole question is, in virtue of what sort of property—and the honest panpsychist at least has a nontrivial answer, viz. experiential properties. The potentiality move simply says that particles produce minds when combined into brains, and hence have that potential; but that is not a theory at all, just the datum we are trying to explain.
Panpsychism raises what might be called the derivation problem: how are higher-level experiences derived from lower-level ones? Here I think Galen is too sanguine, inviting us to consider how much variety in the spatial world can be derived from exiguous materials at the elementary level. The reason for this fecundity is that there are so many possibilities of combination of simpler elements, so we can get a lot of different things by spatially arranging a smallish number of physical primitives. But there is no analogous notion of combination for qualia—there is no analogue for spatial arrangement (you can’t put qualia end-to-end). We cannot therefore envisage a small number of experiential primitives yielding a rich variety of phenomenologies; we have to postulate richness all the way down, more or less. An easy way to see this is to note that you can’t derive one sort of experience from another: you can’t get pains from experiences of colour, or emotions from thoughts, or thoughts from acts of will. There are a large number of phenomenal primitives. Accordingly, we cannot formulate panpsychism in terms of a small number of phenomenal primitives—say, one for each type of elementary particle—and hope to derive the rest.We have to postulate richness at the basis. It would be impossible, say, to begin with simply an array of faint experiences of shades of grey and then hope to derive all of human phenomenology! For the same reason, we cannot suppose that the particles have an alien phenomenology, perhaps more suitable to their limited and peculiar ‘form of life’ (rattling around a nucleus, subject to powerful electromagnetic forces, in imminent danger of annihilation), because there is no coherent way to derive from such an alien form of experience the kinds of familiar experiences that we enjoy. To suppose otherwise is to fall victim to the kind of magical thinking that the brute emergentist indulges in; there can be no miraculous transformation of one type of experience into some other quite distinct type—as it might be, yellow experiences into the sound of a trumpet (and if anyone mentions synaesthesia at this point I will scream)."
(McGinn, Colin. "Hard Questions: Comments on Strawson." In: Galen Strawson et al., Consciousness and its Place in Nature, edited by Anthony Freeman, 90-99. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006. pp. 95-6)
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?
You could (I'm not saying you should!) postulate a space-pervading "consciousness-field" or different "phenomenal fields"/"qualia-fields" in addition to the physical fields.
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"The philosophy of mind may well lead us to conclude that a purely physical schedule of tropes is insufficient. That is the issue of the adequacy of materialism; the two great stumbling-blocks to a materialist account of mentality are, of course, the intentionality of thought and the qualia in sensation. If, for the sake of argument, we suppose that both these aspects of consciousness resist reduction, we shall be required to add one or more kinds of consciousness tropes to our basic schedule.
But even here, a space-time-filling field kind of trope is an attractive conjecture. For the facts of continuity, among living forms, and in the embryonic development of each individual, invite interpretation on a basis that accords mentality in degrees rather than in any yes-no fashion. And these lower and higher degrees of mentality can be spread through the regions occupied by less-and-more convoluted combinations of the physical fields. The continuity problem, for irreducible mentality, invites a panpsychist solution.
This will add field-like mental tropes to the interpenetrating physical fields. And in keeping with our Platonic insistence on real causal power for all fields, additional non-physical fields will bring with them an at least one-way, and probably two-way, Interactionist view of the mind-body problem."
(Campbell, Keith. Abstract Particulars. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. p. 151)
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(Footnote: By "tropes" Campbell means properties which are particulars rather than universals.)
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?
Why? Are they trying to convince you to adopt their beliefs, or even enforce them upon you? This is like those silly 'onus of proof' discussions we sometimes see. Playground games.
Using you and me as examples: There is no requirement for me to share my beliefs, or the reasons why I have them, with you or anyone else. Why should I? And why would you expect it from me? Or even: how dare you demand this of me?
Panpsychists owe you nothing, IMO.
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?
I agree that saying everything is "intelligent" would be misleading. If everything is intelligent then the word has no meaning.
Intelligence is also relative, so octopuses and dolphins tend to be referred to as intelligent more often than, say, conservative politicians. Despite the rumours, even the dumbest politician is much more cognitively complex than marine creature :)
However, all things are at least capable of processing information. In fact, most things (numerically, if not by mass) can barely avoid it, changing and being changed by other entities in an unbroken chain of connections that we call the cosmic web.
Still, your claim that a slime mould achieves intelligence without qualia is speculative and grounded only in neurocentric orthodoxy. Nature achieves complex processes via various means so I see no reason why sentience would be achieved via only one pathway. Even photosynthesis, which is considered to be a particularly unique, unusual are rare emergence occurred in both plants and microbes, and in different ways (with photosynthesis first being an anoxygenic process). There is also chemosynthesis, where energy is not gained in the form of light, but chemistry.
There are all manner of digestive systems. Do we say that microbes cannot digest material because they lack a stomach or intestine? No. So why can't they feel their lives without a neurons? Given that they are far smaller than a single neuron, cells and microbes use ion channels to sense. They don't need a brain to bring the information together because, being small, all of the information is already together in them - no transporting necessary. After all, what are nervous systems and brains but a transport system and central depot for sensations? If sensations are already nearby and concentrated in one area, there is no need to transport or aggregate them.
What of the brain's ability to filter out most stimuli and only admitting, and amplifying, a minority of inputs? If the senses and lifestyle are simple enough, then there's not the same need for filtering or amplifying of qualia; the raw sensations may be enough to allow simple organisms to survive and reproduce.
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?
Show me ONE {1} thing, object, concept, or anything else that exists without an observer - That exists in and apart of conscious observation
If you can not show me this object or idea - Than conscious observation is fundamental to all and everything that exist.
That is panpsychism - Nothing exists, or at the very least can be proven to exist, without consciousness
And for anyone to state that the consciousness is limited to his psyche and does not extend to what he is observing is a premise without merit - All that is observable is conscious or it could not be observed. Consciousness is everywhere
Again, as the very famous Nobel Prize Winning physicist and founder of Quantum Mechanics, Max Planck stated it:
"“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
― Max Planck
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?
Edited to say only what the evidence tells us:UniversalAlien wrote: ↑August 22nd, 2021, 7:07 am That is panpsychism - Nothing exists, or at the very least can be proven to exist, without consciousness
Nothing can be seen to exist without consciousness.
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?
And I want you to stop using circular reasoning. We can't observe things without observing them, which doesn't mean that there can't be other things outside that.UniversalAlien wrote: ↑August 22nd, 2021, 7:07 am Here is what I want anyone here {in the conceptual matrix of this post} to do.
Show me ONE {1} thing, object, concept, or anything else that exists without an observer - That exists in and apart of conscious observation
If you can not show me this object or idea - Than conscious observation is fundamental to all and everything that exist.
That is panpsychism - Nothing exists, or at the very least can be proven to exist, without consciousness
And for anyone to state that the consciousness is limited to his psyche and does not extend to what he is observing is a premise without merit - All that is observable is conscious or it could not be observed. Consciousness is everywhere
Again, as the very famous Nobel Prize Winning physicist and founder of Quantum Mechanics, Max Planck stated it:
"“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
― Max Planck
The Planck quote won't get you far, in QM it's usually assumed that unobserved things do exist in superpositions. Nor is the "One consciousness" the observer, if it was, then the entire universe would be in collapsed state and QM wouldn't exist, and people like Planck couldn't have made such statements.
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?
"Quantum physics: Our study suggests objective reality doesn't exist"Atla wrote: ↑August 22nd, 2021, 1:39 pmAnd I want you to stop using circular reasoning. We can't observe things without observing them, which doesn't mean that there can't be other things outside that.UniversalAlien wrote: ↑August 22nd, 2021, 7:07 am Here is what I want anyone here {in the conceptual matrix of this post} to do.
Show me ONE {1} thing, object, concept, or anything else that exists without an observer - That exists in and apart of conscious observation
If you can not show me this object or idea - Than conscious observation is fundamental to all and everything that exist.
That is panpsychism - Nothing exists, or at the very least can be proven to exist, without consciousness
And for anyone to state that the consciousness is limited to his psyche and does not extend to what he is observing is a premise without merit - All that is observable is conscious or it could not be observed. Consciousness is everywhere
Again, as the very famous Nobel Prize Winning physicist and founder of Quantum Mechanics, Max Planck stated it:
"“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
― Max Planck
The Planck quote won't get you far, in QM it's usually assumed that unobserved things do exist in superpositions. Nor is the "One consciousness" the observer, if it was, then the entire universe would be in collapsed state and QM wouldn't exist, and people like Planck couldn't have made such statements.
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-quantum-p ... oesnt.html.........This experiment therefore shows that, at least for local models of quantum mechanics, we need to rethink our notion of objectivity. The facts we experience in our macroscopic world appear to remain safe, but a major question arises over how existing interpretations of quantum mechanics can accommodate subjective facts.
Some physicists see these new developments as bolstering interpretations that allow more than one outcome to occur for an observation, for example the existence of parallel universes in which each outcome happens. Others see it as compelling evidence for intrinsically observer-dependent theories such as Quantum Bayesianism, in which an agent's actions and experiences are central concerns of the theory. But yet others take this as a strong pointer that perhaps quantum mechanics will break down above certain complexity scales.
Clearly these are all deeply philosophical questions about the fundamental nature of reality. Whatever the answer, an interesting future awaits.
Of course nothing changes the fact that some type of observation, even theoretical and hypothetical observations has to be made inside the framework of a conscious matrix - and you can not say there are 'unconscious' elements inside this paradigm and outside the matrix is unknown and may or may not exist. This is not to say a conscious Human mind is the same as say an observable rock - But because the rock is part of the same matrix it is considered as conscious, different though it is.
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?
Outdated sensationalist lie, if you scroll down you'll find the trick:UniversalAlien wrote: ↑August 22nd, 2021, 4:13 pm"Quantum physics: Our study suggests objective reality doesn't exist"Atla wrote: ↑August 22nd, 2021, 1:39 pmAnd I want you to stop using circular reasoning. We can't observe things without observing them, which doesn't mean that there can't be other things outside that.UniversalAlien wrote: ↑August 22nd, 2021, 7:07 am Here is what I want anyone here {in the conceptual matrix of this post} to do.
Show me ONE {1} thing, object, concept, or anything else that exists without an observer - That exists in and apart of conscious observation
If you can not show me this object or idea - Than conscious observation is fundamental to all and everything that exist.
That is panpsychism - Nothing exists, or at the very least can be proven to exist, without consciousness
And for anyone to state that the consciousness is limited to his psyche and does not extend to what he is observing is a premise without merit - All that is observable is conscious or it could not be observed. Consciousness is everywhere
Again, as the very famous Nobel Prize Winning physicist and founder of Quantum Mechanics, Max Planck stated it:
"“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
― Max Planck
The Planck quote won't get you far, in QM it's usually assumed that unobserved things do exist in superpositions. Nor is the "One consciousness" the observer, if it was, then the entire universe would be in collapsed state and QM wouldn't exist, and people like Planck couldn't have made such statements.https://phys.org/news/2019-11-quantum-p ... oesnt.html.........This experiment therefore shows that, at least for local models of quantum mechanics, we need to rethink our notion of objectivity. The facts we experience in our macroscopic world appear to remain safe, but a major question arises over how existing interpretations of quantum mechanics can accommodate subjective facts.
Some physicists see these new developments as bolstering interpretations that allow more than one outcome to occur for an observation, for example the existence of parallel universes in which each outcome happens. Others see it as compelling evidence for intrinsically observer-dependent theories such as Quantum Bayesianism, in which an agent's actions and experiences are central concerns of the theory. But yet others take this as a strong pointer that perhaps quantum mechanics will break down above certain complexity scales.
Clearly these are all deeply philosophical questions about the fundamental nature of reality. Whatever the answer, an interesting future awaits.
Of course nothing changes the fact that some type of observation, even theoretical and hypothetical observations has to be made inside the framework of a conscious matrix - and you can not say there are 'unconscious' elements inside this paradigm and outside the matrix is unknown and may or may not exist. This is not to say a conscious Human mind is the same as say an observable rock - But because the rock is part of the same matrix it is considered as conscious, different though it is.
So it's circular reasoning, if you assume to have the free will to change reality, then you have the free will to change reality. Nowadays it's better to think that we live on a shared classical entanglement island within a "superpositional" wider reality, reality isn't subjective for idividual humans and not non-existent. In other words the mistery is different but also deeper than that.The theory, however, is based on a few assumptions. These include that the measurement outcomes are not influenced by signals travelling above light speed and that observers are free to choose what measurements to make. That may or may not be the case.
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