So yes, a "system" is a quite specific kind of process. It has hierarchical structure. — apokrisis

I'm not denying hierarchical structure, I am denying that hierarchical structure means that there is a smooth transition from non-mind-like structure to mind-like structure (hence the name of this thread). Processes are not all the same- one is radically different, and that is indeed the sticking point. Triaidic hierarchies in map land vs. triadic hierarchies in experiential land. The thing is though, you are so close to being on the cusp of saying that, like Whitehead, the triadic hierarchies are experiential in their prehension and novelty all the way down (which is NOT the same as saying full blown consciousness all the way down in the animal sense).

Let's at least be constructive. What do we both agree on:

1) Minds are a process
2) Some sort of informational process is happening or interactions of events
3) Disjunctions and integrations occur

to the triadic or hierarchical with time — apokrisis

What is the difference between triadic processing in non-minds and triadic processing in minds in terms of what it is like to be a triadic process? You snuck in another word- "hierarchical". The word soup does not end in trying to explain away how the experience of minds somehow "appear". So you think using the term triadic hierarchy will somehow explain how one type of "process" is different than the rest?

Thanks. So in the same way you can identify that as being identical to conscious experience, can the same not be done for a particular semiotic process? So the phenomenal bit is being identical to that metaphysical process which sees itself as something living in the world. If not why not? — JupiterJess

This is the debate apokrisis and I are having pretty much. How can neurons interacting "be" mental states? Even if they cause them, how are they one and the same- both qualitative and objective? Schopenhauer's theory proposes that all is really Will. The body being objectified Will means that it is a monism with two sides. One side is the inner "thing-in-itself", the other is the body which is its objectification. I'm not really advocating for his view per se though.

At the same time, there is one aspect of the world that is not given to us merely as representation, and that is our own bodies. We are aware of our bodies as objects in space and time, as a representation among other representations, but we also experience our bodies in quite a different way, as the felt experiences of our own intentional bodily motions (that is, kinesthesis). This felt awareness is distinct from the body’s spatio-temporal representation. Since we have insight into what we ourselves are aside from representation, we can extend this insight to every other representation as well. Thus, Schopenhauer concludes, the innermost nature [Innerste], the underlying force, of every representation and also of the world as a whole is the will, and every representation is an objectification of the will. In short, the will is the thing in itself. Thus Schopenhauer can assert that he has completed Kant’s project because he has successfully identified the thing in itself.

Although every representation is an expression of will, Schopenhauer denies that every item in the world acts intentionally or has consciousness of its own movements. The will is a blind, unconscious force that is present in all of nature. Only in its highest objectifications, that is, only in animals, does this blind force become conscious of its own activity. Although the conscious purposive striving that the term ‘will’ implies is not a fundamental feature of the will, conscious purposive striving is the manner in which we experience it and Schopenhauer chooses the term with this fact in mind. — http://www.iep.utm.edu/schopenh/

Well it is only you slapping on "mental" as a term. I questioned your customary division of the phenomenal into the "self" and the "world". — apokrisis

But I will repeat: Not enough words like "integration" "downward causation" or "negentropy" will make the magical fiat go away. Experience not inherent in the system becomes an outright dualism, one that is not accounted for.

How is changing terms going to help? Please explain WHAT mental is compared to physical without magical fiat? I can say "hocus pocus" (downward causation) and say mental states now exist, doesn't mean I explained anything about how qualitativeness exists (aka qualia). Also, the ability to apprehend qualities (even undifferentiated) are not learned. Other animals probably have them too.

This is just repeating the same old shit. What causes mind as we mean it - human minds rather than rock minds - is a physical structure. The evolved complexity of a nervous system doing information processing.

Then "experience" gets slapped on by fiat as the bit of magic which explains why material complexity alone couldn't do the trick.

It is exactly like saying that a living organism is only living because there is all this biological structure. Plus a vital spirit that then ensures the structure has the added quality of animation.

Bonkers. — apokrisis

So in that case, a pox on both houses as where experience is slapped on at the starting point in one, it is slapped towards the end of a process in another. I guess they both suffer the same problem. Not enough words like "integration" "downward causation" or "negentropy" will make the magical fiat go away. Experience not inherent in the system becomes an outright dualism, one that is not accounted for.

Kierkegaard in the above quote seems to signal that the view you hold - that idleness is the root of all evil - is a particularly modern view, one that "we" as a society are accustomed to hold. This is because we associate and cannot differentiate idleness from boredom. So, much like you, we feel that we need to work - to do something, by work I don't mean necessarily earn a living - because otherwise we get bored. Is it possible to escape from boredom completely? — Agustino

Aggressive absurdity would be a world where we are staving off entropy in our species' usual habit (i.e. social learning via cultural institutions) and the restless need to become and never be with goal-seeking. Yet, we cannot trick ourselves forever with goals- we know that it is simply a weigh station for yet more restless needs and wants. We are always needing to do. Why create more aggressive absurdity for the next person? So no, I don't think it can be escaped completely- not through romanticizing our goals, nor by simply taking it easy.

But you have to come up with something better than demonstrating that the customary definition of "the world" leaves no room for "experience". — apokrisis

Hence panexperientialism/panpsychism. Didn't know you advocated for it ;).

Somehow you know that material integration/emergence is non-qualitative. And yet even Whitehead seems to accept that the claims about differentiation and integration reflect what are usually considered material descriptions of the world. — apokrisis

Again, the ability for occasions of experience to differentiate and integrate means that processes have fundamental "what it's like" aspects- processes are experiential, not just quantifiable.

Otherwise how could we tell a rock isn't integrating information, binding together occasions of experience? Are we to believe its apparent material structure might say its not, but its mental aspects are somehow doing just that despite the materiality not going along on that correlational ride? — apokrisis

No no, they are integrated too, but Whitehead claims it as a "democratic" concrescence rather than a hierarchical one (what you may call integration perhaps). Mentality is there:

The basic unit of reality in Whitehead's system is an event-like entity called “actual occasion,” which is the procedural integration or “concrescence” of processes of data transfer (“prehensions”) into unities that become new data. Each actual occasion is the growing together of the total available information of the universe at that time, according to certain principles, repeating and reinforcing certain patterns (“eternal objects”) and thereby creating new ones. Whitehead's process metaphysics is arguably the most comprehensive descriptive metaphysical framework we have to date — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/#3

Although the system is a monistic one, which is characterized by experience going “all the way down” to the simplest and most basic actualities, there is a duality between the types of organizational patterns to which societies of actual occasions might conform. In some instances, actual occasions will come together and give rise to a “regnant” or dominant society of occasions. The most obvious example of this is when the molecule-occasions and cell-occasions in a body produce, by means of a central nervous system, a mind or soul. This mind or soul prehends all the feeling and experience of the billions of other bodily occasions and coordinates and integrates them into higher and more complex forms of experience. The entire society that supports and includes a dominant member is, to use Hartshorne’s term, a compound individual.

Other times, however, a bodily society of occasions lacks a dominant member to organize and integrate the experiences of others. Rocks, trees, and other non-sentient objects are examples of these aggregate or corpuscular societies. In this case, the diverse experiences of the multitude of actual occasions conflict, compete, and are for the most part lost and cancel each other out. Whereas the society of occasions that comprises a compound individual is a monarchy, Whitehead describes corpuscular societies as “democracies.” This duality accounts for how, at the macroscopic phenomenal level, we experience a duality between the mental and physical despite the fundamentally and uniformly experiential nature of reality. Those things that seem to be purely physical are corpuscular societies of occasions, while those objects that seem to possess consciousness, intelligence, or subjectivity are compound individuals.

b. Perception and Prehension

Every actual occasion receives data from every other actual occasion in its past by means of prehension. Whitehead calls the process of integrating this data by proceeding from indeterminacy to determinacy “concrescence.” Concrescence typically consists of an occasion feeling the entirety of its past actual world, filtering and selecting some data for relevance, and integrating, combining, and contrasting that original data with novel data (provided by the divine occasion) in increasingly complex stages of “feeling” until the occasion reaches “satisfaction” and has become fully actual. Because this process of synthesis involves distilling the entire past universe down into a single moment of particular experience, Whitehead calls a completed actual occasion “superject” or “subject-superject.” After an occasion reaches satisfaction, it becomes an objectively immortal datum for all future occasions. — http://www.iep.utm.edu/processp/

global constraint to organise and create generalised integration. — apokrisis

So given a basic acceptance of this approach to causation, why can't experience be a materially emergent property? — apokrisis

Because integration in every other phenomena that consciousness apprehends (i.e. the physical events) is radically different in its non-qualitativeness. Everything else is quantized. Qualities are emerging from quantifiable mapping, which seems about as magical as it gets in philosophy land. You use the word, integration, how is this not magical fiat where you are getting quality from quantity? How is mapping = to experiential quality other than if the mapping has some quality there to begin with (i.e. Whitehead's logic)?

You haven't yet said why emergence can't explain this, only that you "can't see it yourself". — apokrisis

But I did say how it can't explain it:

Either the processes have an inner aspect, or it is all just "dead" interactions or purely-mapping (i.e.information transfer) if you want to try to be Peircean about it. Now, you are going to make a grand move to invoke DOWNWARD CAUSATION (read that with resounding echoes)- the core of emergentism, and the core of its failings when related to mind-body problem. Downward causation works in physical systems as the radical difference is not there. It is still using the language of math/physics/mapping. Instead now we have experientialness- a completely different phenomena that doesn't speak in quantities and maps, but qualities and first personhood. In other words, as I keep saying, you are getting an emergent phenomenon illegitimately from quantity to quality (what I call magical fiat). I don't think you mean to do this, but you are doing this.

A question that allows for self-delusion. There is no one not to care or to care if there isn't anyone around in the first place. All caring (and not caring) takes place within life. — Agustino

Bingo.

So have you decided what you are defending? Is it correlationalism or panexperientialism? — apokrisis

Panexperientialism. So, are you going to address the last post? I'll repost it for you:

As odd and disconcerting as it seems to have mind being there like "turtles all the way down", your informational theory does not work without that concept. You exhort me to not think in nouns but "processes" and I agree and give you some details with Whitehead's ideas as a basis. But then, you don't like the idea of processes being experiential. But this is where your hidden dualism lies, because eventually one process is going to be experiential (i.e. mental events/ minds) and you will to have explain WHAT that is compared to the rest of the processes. Either the processes have an inner aspect, or it is all just "dead" interactions or purely-mapping (i.e.information transfer) if you want to try to be Peircean about it. Now, you are going to make a grand move to invoke DOWNWARD CAUSATION (read that with resounding echoes)- the core of emergentism, and the core of its failings when related to mind-body problem. Downward causation works in physical systems as the radical difference is not there. It is still using the language of math/physics/mapping. Instead now we have experientialness- a completely different phenomena that doesn't speak in quantities and maps, but qualities and first personhood. In other words, as I keep saying, you are getting an emergent phenomenon illegitimately from quantity to quality (what I call magical fiat). I don't think you mean to do this, but you are doing this. — schopenhauer1

Who decided that no person needs to be born at all? — Harry Hindu

Would anyone care if there was no anyone there?

The starting point of Kojève’s Master-Slave dialectic is the suicide of the Master. The Master in embracing death dislodges his attachment to the world. Whatever his triumphs, the Master is already dead and has already exited the stage of history. The world already belongs to the Slave. The only Freedom is death, thus the Free Master is already dead. It is the absolute freedom of suicide “which obviously distinguishes man from animal”. (IRH 248) The animal is a thing and thus determined entirely by natural laws. Man is free and autonomous precisely to the extent that he is not a thing. It is man’s power to embrace the nothingness, to be the nothing that makes him genuinely human. Contra Carnap, Kojève reveals that there is nothing more philosophically meaningful than Heidegger’s “nothing which itself nothings”. Man is the no-thing that nothings. In death the purely negative nature of man is revealed. Man is not a part of nature; he is a problem and question to nature.

Man creates himself as Man by the choices he makes with the limited amount of time he has. Death is the end of Time.

And in contrast to “natural,” purely biological death, the death that is Man is a “violent” death, at the same time conscious of itself and voluntary. Human death, the death of man and consequently all his truly human existence- is therefore, if we prefer, a suicide.” (IDH 151) Kojève intentionally uses the Christian language of incarnation, to express the manner in which Christianity is implicitly Atheism, the worship of Death itself. The Christian doctrine of Incarnation is the worship of God as Man’s mortality. The truth of Christianity is that it finds the Godhead, in a Man who voluntarily takes upon himself mortality. Christ as the Incarnation of God, is an allegory for the Truth of Man as the Incarnation of Death. — site

Death only adds to the absurdity in that it gives us the first step- survival. Through what means though? Linguistic brains that are socialized to learn habits of survival in a historico-cultural setting. So we are enculturated to pick up habits- first of language (I, you, they, object, subject, emotions, coordinated intention, goal-seeking, learning any cognitive skill in general), then of economy, lifestyle, and navigating the larger social context etc. in order to maintain our bodies and comfort levels. One ironic habit is to pretend work has value in itself (a good way to keep people from questioning or going into despair). Hence, like good cultural caretakers, psychologists and self-help gurus want to make sure you find "the right job" that fits your temperament and personality.. It's all quite individualized now and neverending in its snowflakness. Anyways, this is supposed to make up for the fact that the entropy of keeping yourself, and the social unit alive is a given that must be dealt with (i.e. is a given burden) saddled on the next generation that is born.

But even if survival wasn't a thing, as we agreed upon, the underlying restlessness is there keeping us unsatisfied and doing, doing, doing. Always becoming and not being. We can't be, we must become until death- the final not be for our little socially-constructed selves that once existed and had to do all that doing! So why do we need to create more socially-constructed selves to view the world and run around restlessly? There is none. It is creating more doing socially-constructed selves for the sake of it. This is aggressive absurdity that has to be enacted through incarnation of yet another individual who has to take the mantle of living an aggressively absurd life of instrumental doing. I'm not sure if this is making sense.

As usual, when you are under pressure to defend your claims, you divert to ad homs like eliminative materialism. Telling. — apokrisis

As odd and disconcerting as it seems to have mind being there like "turtles all the way down", your informational theory does not work without that concept. You exhort me to not think in nouns but "processes" and I agree and give you some details with Whitehead's ideas as a basis. But then, you don't like the idea of processes being experiential. But this is where your hidden dualism lies, because eventually one process is going to be experiential (i.e. mental events/ minds) and you will to have explain WHAT that is compared to the rest of the processes. Either the processes have an inner aspect, or it is all just "dead" interactions or purely-mapping (i.e.information transfer) if you want to try to be Peircean about it. Now, you are going to make a grand move to invoke DOWNWARD CAUSATION (read that with resounding echoes)- the core of emergentism, and the core of its failings when related to mind-body problem. Downward causation works in physical systems as the radical difference is not there. It is still using the language of math/physics/mapping. Instead now we have experientialness- a completely different phenomena that doesn't speak in quantities and maps, but qualities and first personhood. In other words, as I keep saying, you are getting an emergent phenomenon illegitimately from quantity to quality (what I call magical fiat). I don't think you mean to do this, but you are doing this.

However it is a functional logic that is agnostic about whether it is applied either to the "mental" or the "physical". It is prior to the kinds of dualistic pronouncements that reductionist thought is wont to make. — apokrisis

This to me is an empty statement. How is this answering the question? A tap dance around the hard problem I am sure.

You have already decided reality is ontically divided into two disconnected categories. — apokrisis

I don't think disconnected. Clearly connected. All us occasions of experience. Experience that interacts and prehends other experience is just what we call the objective, duh ;)!

There could be a holistic understanding of causality - one that is triadic, and indeed semiotic - which avoids the strife that dualism creates. — apokrisis

But with words such as dissapative, downward causation, etc., you have never proved much to solve the problem. What are mental states then? Oh that's right, you are going to follow the Daniel Dennett routine of denying that mental states exist, but then never explaining the illusion itself. Of course!

So Whitehead is annoying just for his strangulated language. But he is grasping after a systems causality - just like many others were in his day. However he then just slapped dualism all over this half-articulated picture. — apokrisis

Because without the so-called "dualism" the problem is not even dealt with. Either your version of Peircean logic is simply magical mental fiat, with leprechauns and all with their magic "illusion" making, or you think information is somehow experiential, which is more Whitehead's approach.

Before I answer your questions, can you first read the quote I had earlier to T Clark about Whitehead's process philosophy. I'd like to know your take. It is probably a better explanation that one I would give regarding similar subject matter. Here it is again:

When Whitehead calls actual occasions “drops of experience” great care must be taken not to be mislead by his choice of language. Ordinarily we think of experience as something restricted to living and sentient beings. Experience here refers to the way a sentient being receives the world. For Whitehead– and I think this is one of the least meritorious dimensions of his metaphysics —all entities are drops of experience. Whether we are speaking of a rock, a subatomic particle, or a human being, these actual occasions are drops of experience. Objectiles are drops of experience not for us, but for themselves. That is, just as a human being might be said to be the sum of their experiences, a rock is the sum of its experiences. “…In the becoming of an actual entity, the potential unity of many entities in disjunctive diversity… acquires the real unity of the one actual entity; so that the actual entity is the real concrescence of many potentials” (22).

“Disjunctive diversity” refers to a set of existing objectiles or actual occasions independent of one another. Whitehead remarks that

[t]he ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction. The novel entity is at once the togetherness of the ‘many’ which it finds, and also it is one among the disjunctive ‘many’ which it leaves; it is a novel entity, disjunctively among the many entities which it synthesizes. The many become one, and are increased by one. In their natures, entities are disjunctively ‘many’ in process of passage into conjunctive unity. (21)

Concrescence refers to the manner in which things grow together to form a unity. Consequently, in the case of a tree, we can see how the manner in which the tree is a conjunctive unity of a disjunctive diversity belonging to the field that it inhabits or in which it becomes. The disjunctive diversity relevant to the becoming of the tree consists of photons of light, water, carbon dioxide, minerals in the soil, etc. These photons of light, molecules of water, carbon dioxide, and minerals are themselves actual occasions. The tree itself is a concrescence or assemblage of these other actual occasions producing a conjunctive unity that is itself a novel entity. The tree is “built” out of these other elements, but is also something new in relation to these elements.

It is here that we get Whitehead’s famous doctrine of “prehensions”. The term “prehension” refers to relations among objectiles or actual occasions or the manner in which one objectile draws on aspects from another actual occasion in its becoming or process. “…[T]wo descriptions are required for an actual entity: (a) one which is analytical of its potentiality for ‘objectification’ in the becoming of other actual entities, and (b) another which is analytical of the process which constitutes its own becoming” (23). When Whitehead speaks of “objectification” he is referring to the manner in which some aspect of another actual occasion is realized or integrated in another actual entity. Thus, for example, the tree becomes or continues its adventure in space-time through a prehension of light, but in prehending photons of light it transforms these prehensions through photosynthesis. Thus Whitehead will say that, “…every prehension consists of three factors: (a) the ‘subject’ which is prehending, namely the actual entity in which that prehension is a concrete element; (b) the ‘datum’ which is prehended; (c) the ‘subjective form’ which is how the subject prehends the datum” (ibid.). The ‘subject’ prehending in my above example is the tree, the datum prehended are the photons of light, and the result of photosynthesis is the ‘subjective form’ this datum takes in the becoming of the tree. — Objectiles and Actual Occasions blog by larvalsubjects

You almost admitted to the causal link - in saying the mental is somehow "wrapped up" in the physical, and therefore more than merely just some "correlation". Now you have to rescue your ghost in the machine by a hasty retreat. — apokrisis

But this wrapped up could be the very experientialness of matter itself, perhaps. I don't see how it can be wrapped up in any other way other than being a strict dualist- the mystical kind you don't like. If you claim that mental is always there, then you are either a panpsychist or you are a dualist. Dualism means that there is some sort other stuff outside of nature. Panpsychism, to use a word you like, is "immanent" in nature at the least, as its equated with it and not transcendental or some other realm.

Mind and matter can travel in the same bus, eat in the same restaurants, but never actually be found in the same section of those places. There must be no actual mixing of the races. — apokrisis

Actually that is the opposite- if panpsychism has it, they are a neutral monism of sorts.

Naturally immanent and not transcendently supernatural. — apokrisis

And I think that panpsychism is immanent. To propose mental events comes on the scene magically seems to be mystical mysterious theory. That is something you would not want to get on board with I'm sure, but unintentionally, you may be doing just that.

As a side note, you should read that quote I provided in the last post to T Clark. I think its closer to your Pericean logic than you might think.

Don't tree-occasions, grass-occasions, snake-occasions, and all the other related occasions in a body produce, by means of a network of plant, animal, and mineral interactions, an ecosystem. Or am I misunderstanding what you're trying to say. — T Clark

I couldn't begin to answer this in a style that would do justice to Whitehead's process philosophy so I'll quote from this website https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/objectiles-and-actual-occasions/:

When Whitehead calls actual occasions “drops of experience” great care must be taken not to be mislead by his choice of language. Ordinarily we think of experience as something restricted to living and sentient beings. Experience here refers to the way a sentient being receives the world. For Whitehead– and I think this is one of the least meritorious dimensions of his metaphysics —all entities are drops of experience. Whether we are speaking of a rock, a subatomic particle, or a human being, these actual occasions are drops of experience. Objectiles are drops of experience not for us, but for themselves. That is, just as a human being might be said to be the sum of their experiences, a rock is the sum of its experiences. “…In the becoming of an actual entity, the potential unity of many entities in disjunctive diversity… acquires the real unity of the one actual entity; so that the actual entity is the real concrescence of many potentials” (22).

“Disjunctive diversity” refers to a set of existing objectiles or actual occasions independent of one another. Whitehead remarks that

[t]he ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction. The novel entity is at once the togetherness of the ‘many’ which it finds, and also it is one among the disjunctive ‘many’ which it leaves; it is a novel entity, disjunctively among the many entities which it synthesizes. The many become one, and are increased by one. In their natures, entities are disjunctively ‘many’ in process of passage into conjunctive unity. (21)

Concrescence refers to the manner in which things grow together to form a unity. Consequently, in the case of a tree, we can see how the manner in which the tree is a conjunctive unity of a disjunctive diversity belonging to the field that it inhabits or in which it becomes. The disjunctive diversity relevant to the becoming of the tree consists of photons of light, water, carbon dioxide, minerals in the soil, etc. These photons of light, molecules of water, carbon dioxide, and minerals are themselves actual occasions. The tree itself is a concrescence or assemblage of these other actual occasions producing a conjunctive unity that is itself a novel entity. The tree is “built” out of these other elements, but is also something new in relation to these elements.

It is here that we get Whitehead’s famous doctrine of “prehensions”. The term “prehension” refers to relations among objectiles or actual occasions or the manner in which one objectile draws on aspects from another actual occasion in its becoming or process. “…[T]wo descriptions are required for an actual entity: (a) one which is analytical of its potentiality for ‘objectification’ in the becoming of other actual entities, and (b) another which is analytical of the process which constitutes its own becoming” (23). When Whitehead speaks of “objectification” he is referring to the manner in which some aspect of another actual occasion is realized or integrated in another actual entity. Thus, for example, the tree becomes or continues its adventure in space-time through a prehension of light, but in prehending photons of light it transforms these prehensions through photosynthesis. Thus Whitehead will say that, “…every prehension consists of three factors: (a) the ‘subject’ which is prehending, namely the actual entity in which that prehension is a concrete element; (b) the ‘datum’ which is prehended; (c) the ‘subjective form’ which is how the subject prehends the datum” (ibid.). The ‘subject’ prehending in my above example is the tree, the datum prehended are the photons of light, and the result of photosynthesis is the ‘subjective form’ this datum takes in the becoming of the tree. — Objectiles and Actual Occasions blog by larvalsubjects

So in one breath, you seem to accept physical to mental causality, but say emergence as a mechanism feels too mysterious. — apokrisis

Um, since when did correlation mean emergence? You'd have to explain that bit of straw man.

Well that's a good place to start I would say as I agree that "emergence" of the reductionist "pop out global property" kind is rather too simplistic and magical. — apokrisis

We agree on something.

That is exactly why I then take a systems science or semiotic approach to accounting for the causality involved. — apokrisis

Though you do not account for mental events, just how their physical correlate interacts in its realm. Or you jump over the gap and presume the very thing to be explained, thus conveniently skipping that hard part.

But then in the next breath you are quite taken by panexperientialism, an utterly different ontology. — apokrisis

I don't think so. Actual occasions would be the experiential aspect of what is measured.

It allows you always to deny any attempt to provide a deflationary account of "the mind" as you reserve the right to invoke mystical being at any point. — apokrisis

What do you mean by deflationary? Reductionist?

My feeling is that life is pointless and absurd, and every day I newly commit to life all the same, — mcdoodle

Besides not eating/maintaining your body or outright suicide, is there any other way?

I can't imagine arriving at a philosophical position where I have a right to judge other people's valuations any more than in the service of affable conversations that may mean little, 'phatic communion' is a nice little phrase for such talk that I just found in a very old Malinowski essay that I like - Other people will go on being Other, but maybe our talk will make things a bit clearer to each other — mcdoodle

I think you probably do it all the time, and don't suspect it. Certainly creating other people is presuming a right to think for another, and now there is a new person who was affected by your act. Anyways, it is not so easy to not have judgements when judgements are what commits one to actions, coordinating with other humans in a society. Actually society has made judgements for you- what country have, what economic system, what production opportunities there are, etc. So you are being moved by forces that others have judged necessary to enact and that you must now live in. You cannot avoid it. Judgements, and convincing others of one's own judgements are a part of being a social creature and it has REAL consequences. In the case of anti-natalism, the actual creation of a new person that was deemed necessary to exist, for example.

As for a jumping off point for the existential condition- it is absurd in the sense that it surviving and restlessness are the two main driving factors. Our preferences based on our situatedness/enculturation in a particular historico-cultural setting just shape the nuances of how those to forces play out in our linguistic-social surroundings. Why this needs to be carried forth by people in the first place, again is absurd.

Such terms only apply to goals and how they are either helped or hindered by certain situations. Minds are the only things in the universe with goals and to project those goals onto the rest of the universe is a mistake and creates this confusion that you are experiencing.

This is why you can't find an objective answer to your question. It is a subjective answer, which is what I've been trying to tell you since I joined this discussion. Only YOU can determine if YOUR life is still worth living. There is no objective answer out in the universe that determines whether or not yours or anyone else's life is worth living, or why we live in the first place. The universe has no goals and therefore no purpose. It just does what it does and we are along for the ride. It is your choice whether or not it is "good", "bad", "right" or "wrong". — Harry Hindu

I think you are misinterpreting what I'm saying. What is it about the human experience that a new person has has to be born to experience it? A parent usually does not have an absurdist reason but some actual reason, however garbled or misconstrued. Well, if the basis of life is surviving and dealing with restlessness, it becomes absurd to put more people in that situation in the first place. Why is it necessary for a new person to survive and deal with restlessness when no person needs to be born at all? Somehow experience itself is cherished, which then still begs the question, and so on.

The difference perhaps is that I'll confess my own "myth" is ultimately groundless. I don't pretend to prove it in terms of objective or pre-established criteria. Personality is a risk.Your last line paints me as someone hiding from an important truth, yet this important truth grounds the necessity-for-you of what amounts to mass suicide (anti-natalism). Is it not equally plausible that you're "stuck on" a seductive idea? That rather than having the idea the idea has you? I've been "had" by the idea myself. In my most nauseated moments I have wished out of pity and disgust for the whole species to be wiped out. In retrospect I was thinking and judging from a narrowness of experience and thought. — t0m

That's fine, but in the end, my pre-established criteria does not lead to another life which passes on the issue. Rather, I let dead dogs lie. The existential situation rests on me alone to deal with.

In my view, all this cause-seeking is secondary to the "raw experience" of desire itself. My first-person experience of desire is an "absorption" in the object (her face in the room or in my imagination.) All conceptual talk falls away and is scattered like dead leaves in that bittersweet anguish. I want her to look at me or talk to me in a certain way. Life is narrowed down to only this in a moment of intense desire. — t0m

I agree we can get caught up by something, but the root of it is a restlessness that needs to be relieved. Perhaps boredom is too narrow a word. I have used restlessness in the past, and may employ that again here. I don't deny pleasure exists and humor and other forces that we are positively driven towards based on our preferences. However, there is root restlessness at the bottom of the need for these preferences. We don't like to be at the level of restlessness, but rather in the midst of this or that pursuit/thought/goal.

But wait ... This very presumption of an obtainable peace for Will through the obtainment of nonbeing all of a sudden makes the very absurdity of brute being no longer absurd: for it now has an escape from its predicament of brute being, a tangible salvation, and, thereby, a potential purpose worthy of pursuit. This same exit clause then renders the very absurdity of brute being null and void. — javra

Yes, I've had a similar idea. The idea of non-being being preferable to being is only had if one is being.

Hey, you know why many of us don’t like addressing this topic, why it’s so taboo, in other words: it can easily result for too many in the conclusion that suicide is the only exist. I get that’s not what you’re saying. Then again, there’s now a worry in me that some kid somewhere will become the next 007 villain by living his life trying to bioengineer that enzyme I was talking about.

All the same, we may not fully agree on all of this. Like others, still hoping we can at least find some common ground. The absurdity of being is. What are we going to do about it is the issue that we may still find disagreements on. — javra

I agree, it seems very taboo, even in forums where taboo topics abound. I think the more the topic is addressed in everyday life the better. I wonder what gets in the way of existential thinking? Hmm, all the goals and desires related to survival and boredom. A lot of distraction and ignoring.

So your argument here says the physical parts can evolve complexity. We have the functional circuitry that is a brain connected to sensory organs and muscle systems. A machinery that is "computing" in some general sense we can understand. And then the mental is just there as a correlation? It is not caused by any of the functional goings-on, but it somehow completely mirrors them in a non-caused fashion? — apokrisis

I'll be willing to say that the mental is "caused" by the physical, but the question is, what is this mental that is being caused? That is what does not make sense. It is correlated with such-and-such interactions, but to say that "thus mental emerges from interactions" is tantamount to a magical process of dualism is going on.. Something you would seem to be against if you were scientifically minded.

So now we have Whitehead. Isn't this a claim about emergence? If there is organisation of the actual occasions of experience, then this gives rise to full consciousness. And if there is instead disorder and conflict, then emergence does not take place, as fulll consciousness depends on a further global level of integration. — apokrisis

Correct, some emergence may be going on here, so I guess it does answer the question "do mental events have emergent properties?" But notice, mental events don't just "come on the scene" based on non-mental interactions- they are there to begin with, so the emergence is happening at the mental level with the mental substrate being his idea of "actual occasions". There is some sort of experiencing regarding the non-hierarchical arranged actual occasions. What a non-hierarchical "democratic" arrangement is like in its experiential nature, I have no idea of course.

From my point of view, it looks like a change in vocabulary. Does it look like something else to you? For instance, does it help you answer the question why there's something it's like to be a bat but not something it's like to be a rock? (Assuming there isn't.) Do we say it's because the constituent occasions of bats and rocks are organized differently? That looks to me like saying the sleeping potion works because it has a soporific power. — Srap Tasmaner

I am not completely satisfied with the answer, but again, at least it accounts for mental occasions and does not get it from magical fiat. Thus, though fantastical in one way, it is more plausible in relative comparison. Like I said, I'd rather an elegant physical theory, but just because I want it, does not mean that it must be so. I do think the radical difference in categories of mental events and physical events makes it incoherent to have mental events emerge from physical without there being some sort of "sleight of hand" where mental is really not accounted for- it just "shows up on the scene" with enough physical interactions going on.

There will never come a time when you can say, here's something with B organization, let's see if it's got a soul. — Srap Tasmaner

Correct. It's speculative metaphysics. I don't necessarily expect it to be tested.

Is "panexperientialism" going to include, say, rocks? Clouds? Neutrinos?

Supposing it does, does that solve your problem? Maybe you allow something "experience-ish" to be attributed to a grain of sand. Fine. What about the "what it's like to be an X"? Are you extending that to everything, or still reserving that to some smaller class? — Srap Tasmaner

Good questions. I don't know. If Whitehead was anywhere near right with his speculation, it might be something like this (from http://www.iep.utm.edu/processp/#SH1b):

Although the system is a monistic one, which is characterized by experience going “all the way down” to the simplest and most basic actualities, there is a duality between the types of organizational patterns to which societies of actual occasions might conform. In some instances, actual occasions will come together and give rise to a “regnant” or dominant society of occasions. The most obvious example of this is when the molecule-occasions and cell-occasions in a body produce, by means of a central nervous system, a mind or soul. This mind or soul prehends all the feeling and experience of the billions of other bodily occasions and coordinates and integrates them into higher and more complex forms of experience. The entire society that supports and includes a dominant member is, to use Hartshorne’s term, a compound individual.

Other times, however, a bodily society of occasions lacks a dominant member to organize and integrate the experiences of others. Rocks, trees, and other non-sentient objects are examples of these aggregate or corpuscular societies. In this case, the diverse experiences of the multitude of actual occasions conflict, compete, and are for the most part lost and cancel each other out. Whereas the society of occasions that comprises a compound individual is a monarchy, Whitehead describes corpuscular societies as “democracies.” This duality accounts for how, at the macroscopic phenomenal level, we experience a duality between the mental and physical despite the fundamentally and uniformly experiential nature of reality. Those things that seem to be purely physical are corpuscular societies of occasions, while those objects that seem to possess consciousness, intelligence, or subjectivity are compound individuals.

But there's not something it's like to be sawgrass, right?

Is there something it's like to be E. Coli? — Srap Tasmaner

I entertain the notion of panexperientialism such as Whitehead's notion as experience does not seem to come de novo from physical parts but seems in the mix all along. I don't necessarily like the answer, but it is only one that seems to work to solve that problem without getting experience from magical fiat.

So now you are saying the mental is "wrapped up" in the physical. But somehow, that ain't causal?

So where are we headed? Mondalogy? Correlationism? And could that even work in a post-determinism physicalism where the physics is not clockwork any longer?

Define what it is to be "wrapped up". — apokrisis

I'm not sure about causal- mental events perceive the causal. I guess it could be a correlationalism. Mental events are correlated with physical. Physical can build up into more complex parts, meanwhile, mental is not accounted for. As I said before, the radical difference of experience from other phenomena makes it so that it is nearly impossible to bridge that gap of how objects cause experience. Though they are correlated.

Do dogs have souls? How about the most recent common ancestor of dogs and us? Yes? What about spiders? What about the most recent common ancestor of us, dogs, and spiders? Or the most recent common ancestor of us, dogs, spiders, and sawgrass? — Srap Tasmaner

I don't know, but I'm sure at least all the animals you mentioned have a "what it's like aspect", a subjective point of view which I guess is mind or at least experiential.

But these others things are just as significant. For instance, you reduce human motivations to a flight from pain and boredom. Of course these are actual and important motivations among others. But is human desire in general negative? When a young man has a crush on a young woman, for instance, is this unsatisfied desire only pain? Or does it not light up the world with a sweet anguish? — t0m

Why did the young man have a crush to begin with? Perhaps a sense of longing for something pleasurable and a companion. Why a companion? Loneliness is not desired? Why? Boredom. Loneliness is one step away from boredom in my opinion. Boredom rules the non-survival aspects of our motivations (and discomfort). The positive joy of anything is at root, riding a wave of secondary goals that sprang forth from a general angst of not falling into a state of boredom. Keep yourself entertained long enough to not even give yourself a chance to see the root of the cause.

But back to my question. Is emergence something that happens on the mental side of your equation or not. If so, how? If not, why not?

Help us understand what you mean by "mind" here. — apokrisis

No, as I said, mental is wrapped up in physical. I can say green is a certain wavelength of light. It is measured as this, I can measure it, quantify, it explain its math, but the concept of wavelength, light, and the actual experience of green is mind.

So does emergence work from the mental to the mental I wonder. Perhaps you can say how, or why not? Tell me more about the nature of this "mental". — apokrisis

Subject is wrapped up in object so intrinsically that there is no one without the other. But this does not say anything in favor of physicalism. In fact, if anything, it works against it.

In other words, nothing really emerges unless it is simply constructed out of pre-existent things. The notion of emergence in any other sense implies that something comes out of nothing, which is impossible. — Agustino

I tend to agree. The horse seems to be put before the cart. Saying that downward causation is true, does not mean emergentism, it is a consequence of a more complex event affecting its constituent less complex parts, but the more complex event does not have to be discrete from its cause.

And like I said, just stating the claim is not informative or productive. "Mental," "physical" - these are just words that don't stand in relation to anything in particular, until you unpack them and show how you use them in ways to which we all could relate. It's quite possible that, given your meaning, the claim is true, and even banal and self-evident. And then there would be no argument, because those who think that mental could emerge from physical obviously mean something else. — SophistiCat

From "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?" article about Thomas Nagel's theory: Nagel begins by arguing that the conscious experience is widespread, present in many animals (particularly mammals), and that for an organism to have a conscious experience it must be special, in the sense that its qualia or "subjective character of experience" are unique. Nagel stated, “An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism - something that it is like for the organism to be itself.”[1]

Mental is thoughts, qualia, perception, concepts, first person (subjective) point of view. Physical is matter/energy, force, and their interactions. Neural firing patterns is physical. The thought of neural firing patterns is mental.

Sure, I have a longer post typed out, but I think this can be understood in fewer words.
How would your namesake express the identity of consciousness? It it identical to a particular manifestation of the Will? — JupiterJess

More-or-less yes. According to Schopenhauer, Will is an undifferentiated (striving-like) principle. The flipside of this is the world of representation which is mediated by time/space and the fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason which has the condition of causality of events. Platonic Ideas are in his theory too, free from the PSR, mediating Will into objects (a bit vague how that really enters the picture), and then the world of appearances is the world of time/space and essentially the tragic playground where the principle of Will fights against itself. So, short answer, yes.

The analogy simply expresses that big things may come from smaller things. If you don't see even the possibility of a larger event such as a thought coming from smaller events, It's fair to assume you don't believe in atoms, or evolution, or stars. — Frank Barroso

No man, that is not the claim. I already expressed my agreement on emergence of physical-to-physical events. It is physical-to-mental that becomes the issue, being that they are so radically different. Mental is experiential- a subject, where all other phenomena are not mental, are object, or so it seems.

NOT see the static of particles, lets call this reality B.
Our whole lives we walk around in reality B. It's the level that we see it, the level that our brains can reliably create experience out from.
Is it wrong to say that reality A isn't real? — Frank Barroso

So how is this relating to the problem of emergence of mental events? Your thought experiment there just keeps proving my point that physical-to-physical events can be described in emergentist models, but physical-to-mental events cannot be. The very act of "seeing" A or B needs mental to presume any claim to begin with.

The problem I immediately see with this, when applied to philosophy of mind, is that we see emergentism in physical-to-physical systems. It's quite a different thing to say there is emergentism in physical-to-mental systems due to them being two different kinds of things. Which is why the materialist has to hold that the mental, just kidding!, isn't actually really mental but simply a physical state. — darthbarracuda

I am very much in agreement here. The radical difference has to be minimized (read ignored, denied, or miscategorized) in order for the chasm to appear to be bridged, when in fact nothing was bridged. The key here is the difference between a physical-to-physical system, and a physical-to-mental system.