Panpsychism: credible or not?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.

Panpsychism is:

Credible/rational
19
43%
Possible
11
25%
Absurd
14
32%
 
Total votes: 44

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Consul
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

Post by Consul »

Pattern-chaser wrote: August 14th, 2021, 9:13 amI can't quite see what you're getting at here. Some kind of attempt at a reductio ad absurdum, perhaps? What is clear is that you have not answered the question. Again. Since I find it difficult to believe that you are unable to answer this simple question, I conclude that you choose to refuse to answer. I am at a loss to see why, though. 🤔
Untestability doesn't entail impossibility, but it makes it even more difficult to make a convincing case for the actual or possible truth of panpsychism.
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

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Consul wrote: August 14th, 2021, 11:00 am Untestability doesn't entail impossibility, but it makes it even more difficult to make a convincing case for the actual or possible truth of panpsychism.
Ah, thank you.

I don't think you can approach panpsychism as a wholly literal thing. For a start, I would be surprised to find anyone who would assert that a rock has a mind that is literally and actually similar to yours or mine. I would be even more surprised to find a formulation of panpsychism that is testable, in the scientific sense in which you mean it. Is any religion (or similar belief system) testable in that sense? I don't think so.


There are many ways in which panpsychism could make sense. Here's one: the universe is one thing, indivisible. It is a living thing, or at least it contains life within itself. Therefore, every feature* of the universe is alive, because it is a feature of a living whole. It is a short jump here from life to mind, but not a literal jump, of course.

I just made that up, but I'm sure it's an argument that has been presented before. I'm equally sure there are many other perspectives that hint at the value or usefulness of panpsychism.



* - I use the slightly awkward term "feature" because the word "part" embraces the odd idea that the universe is divisible, into "parts".
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

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Pattern-chaser wrote: August 14th, 2021, 11:42 amI don't think you can approach panpsychism as a wholly literal thing. For a start, I would be surprised to find anyone who would assert that a rock has a mind that is literally and actually similar to yours or mine.
What kind of minds do rocks or quarks have then?
I'm afraid sincere panpsychists cannot help but assert that those things do have (conscious) minds literally and actually. What exactly it is to have a mind is a contentious issue in the philosophy of mind, but panpsychists cannot avoid describing the kinds of minds rocks or quarks have:

Are they capable of perception, cognition, attention, intellection, recollection, imagination…? Do they have thoughts? Are they capable of reasoning, planning, problem-solving, decision-making…? Do they have propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, etc.)? Do they have sensations (color-impressions, sound-impressions…) or emotions (feelings or moods: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, happiness…)?

If panpsychists reply it's none of these kinds of mental phenomena, then there is nothing comprehensibly mental about the so-called minds they are attributing to rocks and quarks; and then they are fraudulently selling pseudominds as real minds.

The panpsychists can still reply that rocks and quarks (literally) have real, genuine minds that just happen to be psychologically inscrutable and inconceivable by us and our concepts of mind and mentality; but if they are not using the same general psychological terminology as used by non-panpsychists, then they don't know what they are talking about, and their psychobabble is nonsensical.

If panpsychists object that they are using the same psychological concepts like everyone else but metaphorically rather than literally, then they must be able to tell us what those metaphors are metaphors for. And if it turns out that their metaphorical usage refers to entities which aren't properly called mental, then again the "-psych-" part of "panpsychism" is deceiving, and the view had better be labeled "panpseudopsychism".
Pattern-chaser wrote: August 14th, 2021, 11:42 amI would be even more surprised to find a formulation of panpsychism that is testable, in the scientific sense in which you mean it. Is any religion (or similar belief system) testable in that sense? I don't think so.
In this respect panpsychism is a quasi-religious view the holding of which requires a lot of faith.
Pattern-chaser wrote: August 14th, 2021, 11:42 amThere are many ways in which panpsychism could make sense. Here's one: the universe is one thing, indivisible. It is a living thing, or at least it contains life within itself. Therefore, every feature* of the universe is alive, because it is a feature of a living whole. It is a short jump here from life to mind, but not a literal jump, of course.

I just made that up, but I'm sure it's an argument that has been presented before. I'm equally sure there are many other perspectives that hint at the value or usefulness of panpsychism.

* - I use the slightly awkward term "feature" because the word "part" embraces the odd idea that the universe is divisible, into "parts".
If the extended universe is indivisible in the sense of lacking and not being made up of substantial parts (parts which are themselves independent and separable substances serving as building blocks of the universe), it still has spatial parts called regions. If the universe as a whole is one unitary substance and the only one there is, then all other apparent substances such as organisms are nonsubstantial complexes of attributes inhering somewhere in the one world-substance. Then, organisms aren't substances but complexes of regionally/locally compresent biological attributes (features); and conscious organisms are then complexes of regionally/locally compresent biological-cum-psychological attributes. Given that the only substrate of these attributes is the one world-substance, the world-substance has both biological and psychological attributes. However, the world-substance doesn't have these biological or psychological properties all over, because it doesn't have them absolutely but only relatively to certain regions (spatial parts). For there are regions of the world-substance which are devoid of biological or psychological attributes. That it has these kinds of properties here and there doesn't mean that it has them everywhere. So even if the world is one unitary substance (and the only one there is), it isn't completely (in all regions) permeated by or suffused with vitality and mentality/experientiality. Therefore, in this scenario we have just a partial cosmopsychism rather than a total cosmopsychism, because most regions of the world are totally devoid of mind/consciousness.

By the way, here's a spectacular cosmopsychistic scenario by Colin McGinn, where the entire inorganic matter of the universe is first transformed into organic matter, and then into one conscious living brain: https://www.colinmcginn.net/cosmic-consciousness/
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

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Consul wrote: August 14th, 2021, 8:23 am
Consul wrote: August 14th, 2021, 8:08 am …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.
Interestingly, most panpsychists regard their view as perfectly naturalistic; but their attributions of mental properties to all sorts of physical objects are actually no different from supernaturalistic (occultistic) ways of thinking, because they are equally ontologically counterintuitive:
Yes, these things go both ways. On one hand you have materialists who even today believe that only humans are conscious, just as there are mystics who believe that everything is conscious. Both groups can be safely ignored.

I do not believe that experiencing must stem from brains any more than I believe that all digestion happens in stomachs. I think you treat mentality and consciousness as being exactly the same. While this is the case with humans, it's is not the case generally, and, as always, human consciousness continues to be treated as typical rather than an extreme utrageous outlier.

To understand the basics of consciousness it is necessary to completely discount human consciousness, just as one cannot understand the nature of a grass shack by studying the Burj Khalifa.
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

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Sy Borg wrote: August 14th, 2021, 5:13 pmI think you treat mentality and consciousness as being exactly the same.
In the broader psychological sense there is more to the mind than consciousness/experience, because there are also nonconscious mental states (propositional attitudes), nonconscious mental (cognitive) processes, and nonconscious mental (cognitive) abilities. But the scope of the concept of mentality or the mental is certainly debatable. Nobody denies that there are nonconscious, nonexperiential processes in brains or organisms, but the question is whether any of them are properly called mental.

This question is actually relevant to the definition of panpsychism: Does "psyche" refer to a nonconscious mind or to a conscious mind, or to a mind which is partly nonconscious and partly conscious? If elementary particles are said to have nonconscious minds only, then the good old emergence problem reappears: How did conscious minds emerge from nonconscious minds?

QUOTE>
"The word “panpsychism” literally means that everything has a mind. However, in contemporary debates it is generally understood as the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. Thus, in conjunction with the widely held assumption (which will be reconsidered below) that fundamental things exist only at the micro-level, panpsychism entails that at least some kinds of micro-level entities have mentality, and that instances of those kinds are found in all things throughout the material universe. So whilst the panpsychist holds that mentality is distributed throughout the natural world—in the sense that all material objects have parts with mental properties—she needn’t hold that literally everything has a mind, e.g., she needn’t hold that a rock has mental properties (just that the rock’s fundamental parts do).

We can distinguish various forms of panpsychism in terms of which aspect of mentality is taken to be fundamental and ubiquitous. Two important characteristics of human minds are thought and consciousness. In terms of these characteristics we can distinguish the following two possible forms of panpsychism:

* Panexperientialism—the view that conscious experience is fundamental and ubiquitous
* Pancognitivism—the view that thought is fundamental and ubiquitous.

According to the definition of consciousness that is dominant in contemporary analytic philosophy, something is conscious just in case there is something that it’s like to be it; that is to say, if it has some kind of experience, no matter how basic. Humans have incredibly rich and complex experience, horses less so, mice less so again. Standardly the panexperientialist holds that this diminishing of the complexity of experience continues down through plants, and through to the basic constituents of reality, perhaps electrons and quarks. If the notion of “having experience” is flexible enough, then the view that an electron has experience—of some extremely basic kind—would seem to be coherent (of course we must distinguish the question of whether it is coherent from the question of whether it is plausible; the latter will depend on the strength of the arguments discussed below).

Thought, in contrast, is a much more sophisticated phenomenon, and many doubt that it is correct to ascribe it to non-human animals, never-mind fundamental particles. The traditional view in analytic philosophy is that thoughts are mental states that can be modelled as psychological attitudes towards specific propositions: believing that Budapest is the capital of Hungary, hoping that war is over, fearing that there will be another Global Financial Crisis. Panpsychism is often caricatured as the view that electrons have hopes and dreams, or that quarks suffer from existential angst. However, whilst there have been some defenders of pancognitivism in history, it is panexperientialist forms of panpsychism that are taken seriously in contemporary analytic philosophy. From now on I will equate panpsychism with panexperientialism."

Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/
<QUOTE

The question is whether panexperientialism can be true and pancognitivism (cognitivist panmentalism) can be false, i.e. whether it is possible for there to be experiences which are cognitively totally unaccessed and independent of any mental information-processing responsible for cognition, perception, attention, intellection, recollection, or other mental capacities. Can there be conscious minds which aren't integrated into cognitive minds?

I doubt that you can have a pure panexperientialism without pancognitivism. The authors of the above-linked SEP entry define panexperientialism in terms of conscious experience, but what is that if it is not experience of which its subject is conscious (or aware)?! Transitive consciousness or awareness of experience is definitely a manifestation of a cognitive or intellectual power, which means that there is no phenomenal consciousness without cognitive consciousness of it.
Sy Borg wrote: August 14th, 2021, 5:13 pmTo understand the basics of consciousness it is necessary to completely discount human consciousness, just as one cannot understand the nature of a grass shack by studying the Burj Khalifa.
I'm sure you won't find "the basics of consciousness" outside the animal kingdom.
Anyway, "to completely discount human consciousness" is to completely renounce any understanding of nonhuman consciousness, because…

QUOTE>
"The concept of phenomenal consciousness is given to us through our introspective first-person awareness of our own mental states. And it seems, then, that anything we are introspectively aware of (provided it has fine-grained nonconceptual content) is a definite instance of that concept. This is a claim that will prove important when we turn to consider phenomenal consciousness in other species."

(Carruthers, Peter. Human and Animal Minds: The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. p. 23)
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

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Consul wrote: August 14th, 2021, 8:36 pmI doubt that you can have a pure panexperientialism without pancognitivism. The authors of the above-linked SEP entry define panexperientialism in terms of conscious experience, but what is that if it is not experience of which its subject is conscious (or aware)?! Transitive consciousness or awareness of experience is definitely a manifestation of a cognitive or intellectual power, which means that there is no phenomenal consciousness without cognitive consciousness of it.
When I ask myself what it is like for me to be in a state of which I am not conscious or aware, then my answer is that there is nothing it is like for me. If I am in a state of which I am not conscious or aware, then I am not in any way subjectively affected or impressed by it. And there is no reason to believe that the situation is different in the case of nonhuman experience. If quarks or rocks lack the mental or intellectual power to become conscious or aware of experiences, they don't have any experiences either. So panexperientialism includes pancognitivism!
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

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Consul wrote: August 14th, 2021, 8:36 pmThe question is whether panexperientialism can be true and pancognitivism (cognitivist panmentalism) can be false, i.e. whether it is possible for there to be experiences which are cognitively totally unaccessed and independent of any mental information-processing responsible for cognition, perception, attention, intellection, recollection, or other mental capacities. Can there be conscious minds which aren't integrated into cognitive minds?
The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines "anoetic" as "not involving or subject to intellectual or cognitive processes", so the question is whether there is such a thing as anoetic consciousness/experience.
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

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Consul wrote: August 14th, 2021, 10:38 pm
Consul wrote: August 14th, 2021, 8:36 pmThe question is whether panexperientialism can be true and pancognitivism (cognitivist panmentalism) can be false, i.e. whether it is possible for there to be experiences which are cognitively totally unaccessed and independent of any mental information-processing responsible for cognition, perception, attention, intellection, recollection, or other mental capacities. Can there be conscious minds which aren't integrated into cognitive minds?
The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines "anoetic" as "not involving or subject to intellectual or cognitive processes", so the question is whether there is such a thing as anoetic consciousness/experience.
This may (or may not) be the case with microbes and plants, although I would phrase it, "Can there be a sense of being in the moment which is not cognised".

It's a rather "alien" state to try to imagine - completely mindless being, just sensing. In this, I resist the metaphor of "biological machines", which is a common default response to such a state of being. That's just a third person observation of functionality that does not consider potential internal states or subtle variations in what appear to be consistent, programmed responses.
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

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Consul, an interesting video about the intelligence and sensory capabilities of slime moulds:


Particular striking was the analogy between the actions of slime moulds and the actions of the brain, the passage from 8m 40s or so, and especially from 9:25. It's said that the slime mould achieves intelligence with a hydrodynamic system whereas brains use an electrochemical system.

The implications are that, if intelligence can be achieved in different kinds of systems, then the electromechanical system of AI may be able to achieve actual sentience, just as long as the configurations are right. Fingers crossed :)
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

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Sy Borg wrote: August 15th, 2021, 5:10 amConsul, an interesting video about the intelligence and sensory capabilities of slime moulds: …

Particular striking was the analogy between the actions of slime moulds and the actions of the brain, the passage from 8m 40s or so, and especially from 9:25. It's said that the slime mould achieves intelligence with a hydrodynamic system whereas brains use an electrochemical system.

The implications are that, if intelligence can be achieved in different kinds of systems, then the electromechanical system of AI may be able to achieve actual sentience, just as long as the configurations are right. Fingers crossed :)
Yes, slime moulds are fascinating creatures; but whether they are intelligent depends on what intelligence is. Given the below-quoted definition, intelligence is adaptive competence, with adaptive competence being an organism's fitness-enhancing capacity for solving its central life problems (survival and reproduction) through adaptive flexibility/plasticity.

Given this definition, organisms lacking a (C)NS such as slime moulds may well be called intelligent. However, it is intelligence without sentience! Adaptive competence doesn't require any subjective, experiential dimension.

By the way, below Nicholas Thompson is quoted as saying that "intelligence is a teleonomic (i.e. goal-directed or purposeful) concept." The bioteleological concept of teleonomy (teleonomic processes or behavior) mustn't be confused or equated with the psychoteleological concept of future-directed (conscious) mental intentionality or (conscious) mental intentions.

QUOTE>
"What Gardner is saying, as have others, is that basically, intelligence is the capacity for problem solving.

However, is problem solving any different to adaptation? By adaptation I mean an acquired modification in any organism that enables them to survive and reproduce better. Adaptation is a term applicable to any organism. Adaptation has two forms. We can consider an organism adapting to its environment by behavioural modifications (adaptive plasticity) or we can reference adaptation as a heritable part of the phenotype (heritable adaptation). The first meaning is the one that is considered here and this form of adaptation improves fitness. The second is probably some behavioural change acquired long ago in the past and now heritable through genetic assimilation. This form is what we mean, when we say birds are well-adapted for flight.
Adaptive plasticity is induced as a result of a problem faced by the organism in question and is a partial solution. Those that provide the better or quicker solution are the more intelligent, are the more skilled, have adapted better, and are therefore fitter."
(p. 194)

"Legg and Hutter (2007 ["A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence"]) list 70 definitions of intelligence and provide the following summarizing conclusion.

Intelligence:
* Is a property that an individual agent has as it interacts with its environment or environments.
* Is related to the agent’s ability to succeed or profit with respect to some goal or objective.
* Depends on how able the agent is to adapt to different objectives and environments.

Putting these key attributes together produces an informal definition of intelligence. ‘Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments. Features such as the ability to learn and adapt, or to understand, are implicit in the above definition as these capacities enable an agent to succeed in a wide range of environments’ (Legg and Hutter 2007). Earlier chapters in this book have indicated how plant behaviour in many different environmental circumstances and thus plant intelligence, agrees with this description. The measure of intelligence is the ability to change."
(p. 195)

"Again ‘a capacity to solve problems’ is a short descriptor of intelligence and encompasses both environment and organism. Thompson (1990 ["Why Would We Ever Doubt that Species are Intelligent?"]), another psychologist, directs this descriptor into adaptation.

Intelligence is the apt application of information, technique or structure to the situation of the individual. Adaptation is the apt application of information, technique or structure to the situation of a phyletic individual. Intelligence is a teleonomic (i.e. goal-directed or purposeful) concept. To say that an individual is intelligent is to make a value judgement concerning the quality of the design of its behaviour. We judge the intelligence (adaptability) of an individual by watching it apply its knowledge to the various situations it encounters. If it repeatedly applies the appropriate technique from its repertoire to each situation it encounters, we say its behaviour is intelligent (adapted). Intelligence is well-designed behaviour . . . Adapted behaviour is well-designed behaviour.

This definition forms the basis of plant intelligence. It is adaptation of the individual solving its local problems by phenotypic plasticity and if we could monitor is sufficiently well, metabolic and genomic plasticity, too."
(p. 196)

"The conclusion in this book is that intelligence is quite simply the capacity for problem solving. Capacity reflects variability in its aspect between individuals. The means of solving the problem is determined by the capabilities that evolution has provided, but eliminating the human bias is fundamental. All organisms act intelligently within their environment. If they did not, they would not be here, but for plants, different timescale and greater emphasis on the molecular in behaviour have always been a barrier to the ready recognition of both behaviour and intelligence in these organisms."
(P. 197)

(Trewavas, Anthony. Plant Behaviour and Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.)
<QUOTE

QUOTE>
"Teleonomic processes in living nature. Seemingly goal-directed behavior by organisms is of an entirely different nature from teleomatic processes. Goal-directed behavior (in the widest sense of this word) is extremely widespread in the organic world; for instance, most activity connected with migration, food-getting, courtship, ontogeny, and all phases of reproduction is characterized by such goal orientation. The occurrence of goal-directed processes is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the world of living organisms.

For the last 15 years or so the term 'teleonomic' has been used increasingly often for goal-directed processes in organisms. I proposed in 1961 the following definition for this term: 'It would seem useful to restrict term 'teleonomic' rigidly to systems operating on the basis of a program, a code of information' (Mayr 1961). Although I used the term 'system' in this definition, I have since become convinced that it permits a better operational definition to consider certain activities, processes (like growth), and active behaviors as the most characteristic illustrations of teleonomic phenomena. I therefore modify my definition, as follows: A teleonomic process or behavior is one which owes its goal-directedness to the operation of a program. The term 'teleonomic' implies goal direction. This, in turn, implies a dynamic process rather than a static condition, as represented by the system. The combination of 'teleonomic' with the term 'system' is, thus, rather incongruent.

All teleonomic behavior is characterized by two components. It is guided by a 'program', and it depends on the existence of some endpoint, goal, or terminus which is foreseen in the program that regulates the behavior. This endpoint might be a structure, a physiological function, the attainment of a new geographical position, or a 'consummatory' (Craig 1918) act in behavior. Each particular program is the result of natural selection, constantly adjusted by the selective value of the achieved endpoint."

(Mayr, Ernst. "The Multiple Meanings of Teleological." In Toward A New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist, 38-66. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. pp. 44-5)
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

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Consul wrote: August 15th, 2021, 10:22 am …Given the below-quoted definition, intelligence is adaptive competence, with adaptive competence being an organism's fitness-enhancing capacity for solving its central life problems (survival and reproduction) through adaptive flexibility/plasticity.
If panpsychism is defined as the view that all material objects are intelligent, then it is definitely false, because single particles, atoms, and molecules do not exhibit any intelligence qua adaptive competence.
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

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Consul wrote: August 15th, 2021, 10:35 am If panpsychism is defined as the view that all material objects are intelligent...
I don't think it is defined in that way. I just scanned several dictionaries, and none of them offer a definition even vaguely close to that.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy wrote:Panpsychism, strange as it may sound on first hearing, promises a satisfying account of the human mind within a unified conception of nature - Link to full SEP entry.
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

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Pattern-chaser wrote: August 16th, 2021, 5:52 am
Consul wrote: August 15th, 2021, 10:35 am If panpsychism is defined as the view that all material objects are intelligent...
I don't think it is defined in that way. I just scanned several dictionaries, and none of them offer a definition even vaguely close to that.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy wrote:Panpsychism, strange as it may sound on first hearing, promises a satisfying account of the human mind within a unified conception of nature - Link to full SEP entry.
It seems all or at least most contemporary panpsychists equate panpsychism with panexperientialism (panempirism), the view that all (material) objects are subjects of experience (phenomenal consciousness).

However, what is more, they don't take "pan-" literally, because what they're saying is that all (material) objects have parts which are subjects of experience, which doesn't entail that all (material) objects are subjects of experience themselves.

In ordinary usage, parthood is regarded as a non-reflexive relation; that is, nothing is (a) part of itself; but in academic mereology it is regarded as reflexive, so everything is (a) part of itself. Given the academic conception of parthood, the above definition of panpsychism is sufficient, because it is equivalent to this one: All material objects are subjects of experience (themselves) or have parts which are subjects of experience.

Mereology is the formal study of part-whole relations, with "meros" being the Greek word for "part". There is a corresponding prefix in English—"mero-"—, so we can form the neologism "panmeropsychism" and use it to refer to the restricted version of panpsychism: Panmeropsychism =def Everything has parts with mental properties. (Or: Panmeroempirism =def Everything has parts with experiential properties.)

Strictly speaking, pan(mero)empirism is true in Berkeley's immaterialistic universe, because all objects therein have (parts with) experiential properties. But they are all immaterial/nonphysical objects or substances (pure souls), and most contemporary panpsychists are materialists about the objects or substances in the universe. So it seems yet another label is necessary in order to express their view precisely:
"panphysiomeropsychism"/"panphysiomeroempirism".

Panphysiomeropsychism =def All physical objects/substances have parts with mental properties.
Panphysiomeroempirism =def All physical objects/substances have parts with experiential properties.

QUOTE>
"So whilst the panpsychist holds that mentality is distributed throughout the natural world—in the sense that all material objects have parts with mental properties—she needn’t hold that literally everything has a mind, e.g., she needn’t hold that a rock has mental properties (just that the rock’s fundamental parts do)."

Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/
<QUOTE

QUOTE>
"Roughly speaking, panpsychism is the view that mentality is a fundamental feature of the world which exists ubiquitously throughout the world. The relevant kind of mentality is the most puzzling and strangest phenomenon in the entire universe: consciousness. The fundamental form of consciousness posited by panpsychism is presumably very remote from that of human consciousness and possessed of a primitive and unutterably simple nature. At a very basic level, the world is awake."

(Seager, William. Preface to The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, edited by William E. Seager, 1-11. New York: Routledge, 2020. p. xi)

"The world is awake. That can stand as a slogan for panpsychism: the view that I will understand here as holding that consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous in nature. This does not mean that everything is conscious. Whether a particular non-fundamental entity is conscious will depend upon the arrangement of its fundamental constituents given some presumed laws of ‘mental chemistry’ which govern the emergence of complex forms of consciousness. So in bare outline panpsychism presents a familiar picture of fundamental features interacting in ways to generate more complex forms, it’s just that the catalog of the fundamental includes consciousness. Nor does panpsychism entail that sophisticated, high-level, human-like consciousness is ubiquitous. The term ‘consciousness’ is notoriously hard to define and the victim of multitudes of more or less well motivated (re)definitions. I aim for a minimal conception. For contrast, compare this expansive notion of consciousness, plucked merely for illustrative purposes from Aaronson (2016): ‘displaying intelligent behavior (by passing the Turing Test or some other means) might be thought a necessary condition for consciousness’. On the minimal conception, consciousness does not at all require that ability to pass the Turing test. Feeling pain (or any other sensation) alone is sufficient for consciousness; consciousness implies only sentience. It’s worth noting this because there is a somewhat pernicious ambiguity lurking here, that between a property and the evidence we have for ascribing it. Although still inaccurate, Aaronson’s dictum is closer to the truth if we change the final phrase to ‘a necessary condition for the ascription of consciousness’. But note that we can have theoretical reasons for ascribing a property without there being any direct observational evidence for the ascription. So, the kind of minimal consciousness in question is not ‘self-consciousness’ or ‘transcendental subjectivity’, or awareness of the self as a subject, or awareness of one’s own mental states, or the ability to conceptualize one’s own mental states as such. Consciousness is simply sentience, or the way things are present (to the mind)."

(Seager, William. "Introduction: A Panpsychist Manifesto." In The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, edited by William E. Seager, 1-11. New York: Routledge, 2020. p. 1)
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Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

Post by Consul »

Consul wrote: August 16th, 2021, 10:49 am"…So, the kind of minimal consciousness in question is not ‘self-consciousness’ or ‘transcendental subjectivity’, or awareness of the self as a subject, or awareness of one’s own mental states, or the ability to conceptualize one’s own mental states as such. Consciousness is simply sentience, or the way things are present (to the mind)."

(Seager, William. "Introduction: A Panpsychist Manifesto." In The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, edited by William E. Seager, 1-11. New York: Routledge, 2020. p. 1)
So what he and his panpsychist friends presuppose is that minimal (phenomenal) consciousness qua subjective sentience/experience is independent of any cognitive access to it, of any transitive consciousness or awareness of it. That is, they reject all higher-order theories of consciousness as false. But are they (all) false? If phenomenal consciousness depends on cognitive "access consciousness", then panempirists cannot help but assert that phenomenally conscious particles, atoms, or molecules have higher-order cognitive capacities—which is wildly implausible.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Gertie
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Joined: January 7th, 2015, 7:09 am

Re: Panpsychism: credible or not?

Post by Gertie »

Consul
So 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.
But 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.

If it acts in a field-like way interacting with all matter for example, we could then call experience a fundamental physical property of the universe if you're attached to physicalism, we'd just have to expand the standard model.
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