Imagine you had a brain cancer tumour that is huge. A big mass. Maybe even dwarfing the brain itself. Would that add anything to your "consciousness". — apokrisis

Indeed no. You are right to point out this problem with my analogy which is so in-apt I wish I hadn't used it. Matter of course admits of quantity, whereas consciousness does not, I suggest.

Panpsychism is an argument that piggybacks on conventional materialistic reductionism. — apokrisis

Is it? Could you elaborate?

The problem with this panpsychism is that the weight of neurobiological evidence suggests that the processes are everything. — apokrisis

Do you identify consciousness with processes?

Great question! :)

My view is the exact inverse of Gnomon's (if I have read them correctly). Our identity is constituted by all those processes, and when they stop, we no longer have a unitary identity, or at least much less of one. Consciousness, a bit like the total quantity of matter, is unaffected. I think this is a more coherent fit with the concepts of identity (vague and mutable) with consciousness (sharp and unchanging).

Here here, friend. — JerseyFlight

Where where? Hear hear!

I've listened to quite a few JP vids, interviews and whatnot. I'm no expert on him. I agreed with some of the stuff he said, disagreed with some and thought some was a bit wacky. Do we have to be either fans or anti-fans? Am I allowed to agree with some of it? Can I cherry pick? Or is it like the Bible: I have to either swallow it whole or reject the lot?

God as the answer to any unanswered question. — Banno

I didn't think you were religious Banno.

How are you so sure?
— Shawn

Did you have an example of one? — apokrisis

@Shawn, you could try asking the question again.

Ditto most of the comments, but I'm also sympathetic to the OP. Stoicism can easily seem trite and a justification of oppression. It might be helpful to distinguish personal philosophy from social policy. Stoicism makes sense as personal philosophy, but it could be perverted and incorporated into social policy, persuading people that they cannot change the systems, class structures, wealth inequalities etc they live in so they may as well accept them and like it.

Yeah he was annoying.

That's an advanced position though. You first have to understand the objective as a realm completely beyond access, realize that therefore everything supposedly objective is therefore merely intersubjective, and then conclude that if the objective is inaccesible, we might as well cut out the middleman and equate intersubjective and objective. — Echarmion

Indeed, you put that better than I was about to do. Not everyone will be happy with collapsing the distinction like this, and in characterising others' positions, I would maintain the distinction they maintain. (Says me in a high-minded "I never mis-characterise others" way)

It seems to me Pfhorrest is a meta-ethical relativist, as long as he thinks that everyone has, in fact, the same terminal goals such that rational argument can always in principle result in agreement.

To a moral relativist, what is the purpose of morality? — Tzeentch

Getting other people to do what you want them to do.

As a panpsychist, I might go as far as to say that reality (the way the world is) is at bottom, negotiated. I used to think that ethics was the last area of philosophy we should study, and is the most derivative. After being influenced by The Great Whatever, I now think it might be foundational.

It's sort of the moral equivalent of people who believe things uncritically, just because they heard someone say it or read it somewhere and it seemed truthy to them. That seems to be most people, and doing what feels like the moral thing to do because they feel like it seems to be most people too, but both of those seem like a very shallow, fragile, easily corrupted and highly fallible ways to go about deciding what to think and what to do, in contrast to, you know... actually reasoning about these things critically. — Pfhorrest

Moral reasoning is still possible for the meta-ethical relativist (hope I've got that right). We just have to find common terminal goals (as opposed to instrumental goals, to put it in AI terms). Then we can argue about how best to achieve those goals. Rational argument ceases to be possible when people have divergent terminal goals. Then it's just a fight. It may be that, as a matter of fact, all people have convergent terminal goals (I believe that, or at least think it likely). But even if so, this does not make meta-ethical relativism false. It just makes it look like objectivism. Just like intersubjectivity is not objectivity, but seems like it.

At the moment I see human morality more or less in the same way as the guy in this video thinks about the orthogonality thesis regarding Artificial General Intelligence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUO6pjwFOo

Ethical claims invoke a move such as that from "I choose not to eat meat" to "you should choose not to eat meat". The move from what I chose to what others should choose.

If that is so, it is difficult to see how moral relativism could count as a coherent ethical position. — Banno

I agree moral claims are about others. But they are about getting other people to do what you want them to do, not what they should do in any objective sense.

That is what my thread is about, what does it mean or what would it mean if morality is relative? — Judaka

Perhaps it means that what we should do is negotiated rather than discovered. Not sure.

Besides descriptive relativism, there are also meta-ethical relativism, which is what Carlos is talking about (the truth or falsity of moral claims is relative) — Pfhorrest

I'm one of those...

but also normative moral relativism, which is what Judaka mentions here (we ought to tolerate behaviors that our morals say are bad because our morals are just relative). — Pfhorrest

...but not one of those.

Thanks for the concepts.

That's an argument, but as a reductio it doesn't quite reach the solid ground of contradiction. bert1 could have been unenlightened (if he had registered the name in time) and not-bert1 could've been unenlightened (and as it happens is). Either of us could have been, but only one of us is. — unenlightened

I took schop to be talking about people with all their non-name-dependent features rather than switchable name-bearers.

"I am not bert1" by the way, does not (fortunately) entail that I am everyone who is not bert1.

:) Indeed. It depends where one puts the brackets I guess. "I am (not-bert1)" means you are everything that isn't bert1. "I am not (bert1)" means just that you are not the one thing that is bert1, but you might or might not be one or more other things.

(Not that I agree with Schop's OP just for the record. I think there are two senses of 'you' in play that are not distinguished. I don't think statements like 'I am bert1' and 'you are unenlightened' are always straightforward statements of identity. I assumed they were in my rendition of Schop's argument to be charitable).

EDIT: removed double-negative

Definitions are just to see if your on the same page regarding a word. — Asif

This is not to be sniffed at. Very important thing sometimes in philosophy.

It's like a game of tennis. — apokrisis

This is a revelation.

...trying to make a table...

Not sure if this will help. Bit messy but it might be what schop has in mind.

1) I am bert1
(assumption)
2) I could have been unenlightened
(target assumption for reductio)
3) bert1 could have been unenlightened
(Substituting "bert1" for "I" from 1,2. Not sure what this move is called in logic (switcheroo?) but it seems valid to me if 1 is a simple statement of identity)
4) NOT bert1 could have been unenlightened
(assumption based on bert1 and Un necessarily being different objects/processes or whatever)
5) bert1 could have been unenlightened AND NOT bert1 could have been unenlightened
(& intro 3,4)
6) Therefore, NOT I could have been unenlightened
(RAA 1,2,3,4,5)

That'll have to do. I'm sure this forum must have a way to set out arguments like this in a clearer format on the page. Am I supposed to use LATEX or something?

... democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time ...

Yeah, this is frequently misquoted. What he actually said was:

... panpsychism is the worst theory of consciousness except for all those other theories that have been tried from time to time ...

Leaving aside the "victim" language which again paints rhetoric as an entirely bad thing: yes in a way, if you enjoy some music, the musician has successfully used some broadly-speaking rhetorical device on you to successfully evoke that reaction in you. — Pfhorrest

Fair enough. If you take the negative connotation out of it. In my ignorance I thought rhetoric and sophistry were more or less the same thing.

Rhetoric is an art, sure. It's not foundational to art generally, though. If I enjoy some music, am I really a victim of rhetoric?

This has probably been pointed out already somewhere in this thread, but the point of starting an argument by stating definitions is to clarify which of multiple possible uses one means by a word. — Pfhorrest

What Pfhorrest said.

The question to hand is "which is to be the master?"; and my answer is, the use is the master of the definition. — Banno

Qualified assent. Dictionaries are compiled by people who pay careful attention to use, at least one hopes. And the definitions they write deserve some respect, and should not be dismissed because one does not perceive or recognise one's own usage in some of the senses listed in the dictionary. I'm talking about 'consciousness' here, obviously.

There must, therefore, be a way of understanding a word that is not given by providing its definition.

Now this seems quite obvious; and yet so many begin their discussion with "let's first define our terms". — Banno

There is no dichotomy between a definition and usage. The way of understanding a word is by understanding how to use it. And one way to understand how to use it is to look in a dictionary at its definition. That is because dictionary definitions are derived from observing usage. Offering a definition, at least in part, is informing people of how a word is intended to be used.

Dictionaries describe usage, no? They're useful when there is confusion over different usages, as in the various senses of 'consciousness'.

Indeed, but they are both smart and interesting. It doesn't bother me so much if a poster has little of interest to say.

Disagreeing with either Banno or Apo quickly leads to the conversation crashing. It's frustrating and annoying. It's interesting watching them interact with each other.

@apokrisis what do you think of Banno's post?

Could you give an example of a property of space other than the mind? — Daniel

Not sure. Extension. Stretchability. Self-movingness.

Now, if you think the mind occupies a space, what would you say its limit is? — Daniel

Not sure. Maybe a mind is the space that a brain occupies.

I am asking this because it seems that everything that occupies a space is limited (i.e., it has a shape/form/limit). — Daniel

Nearly everything yes. But maybe fields occupy all of space, without limit.

I think it's a property of space, so I'd go for 'yes', as space occupies space.

In a healthy democracy, the rule of law one hopes, which one hopes reflects the values of the populace. In any case there are many more kinds of power than military and police. Corporations influence the law rather heavily don't they?

Thus he uses his vast wealth “to build narratives and to pass laws that will require all the other rich people to pay taxes and pay their workers better”, thereby increasing state power at the expense of private property and wealth. — NOS4A2

Isn't 'state power' the only thing that protects people from corporations? Power has to be somewhere. Where do you want it to be?

Descartes expressed his opinion that only humans are conscious, while animals only appeared to be sentient. But modern science has discovered signs of consciousness in almost all animate (self-moving) organisms. Unfortunately, we still have no way to detect consciousness directly, so we rely on inference from behavior. Even primitive bacteria seem to interact with their environment as-if they are sentient beings. But, since inanimate objects have no observable self-propelled behavior, they are presumed to be non-conscious. Therefore, it appears that Life is a necessary precursor to Mind. — Gnomon

Thanks, that's good. Inference from behaviour is an interesting way to resist panpsychism and has some force. This line of thought leads to possible issues of overdetermination. A narrow examination of this argument by analogy with humans would be worth a thread of its own I think.

I don't know why some Panpsychists believe that crystals are conscious. — Gnomon

Indeed, that appears to be the case.

Consequently, my Enformationism thesis assumes that Sentience is not a fixed property of the universe, but instead an emergent evolutionary process. My guess is that It began as something like a mathematical algorithm (information) in the pre-big-bang Singularity, and has gradually complexified over the eons into Energy, Matter, Life & MInd. If so, then we can assume that Self-Consciousness, as found in humans, is the current pinnacle of Evolution. Who knows what comes next --- artificial consciousness? Of course, this is a philosophical hypothesis, not a proven scientific theory. :nerd: — Gnomon

I'd need more information to understand this properly. Do you think consciousness is identical with a certain kind of information processing?

I think the ancient metaphors of Animism were good guesses in pre-scientific times, but we now have a better understanding of how the world works, and how unique Consciousness is to living things, and Self-consciousness to reasoning things. — Gnomon

Cool! I'm clearly out of date. What are the latest findings on which things are conscious?

That is what I call the "New Age" notion of Consciousness — Gnomon

I call it the 'dictionary' notion of consciousness.

In popular usage, this term is taken to mean that even stones and atoms are conscious in the same sense that humans are. But that’s nonsense. In my theory it only means that the potential for emergent consciousness is included in the energy & information that constitutes those elementary Objects. — Gnomon

I part company with you there Gnomon. I think everything is conscious in exactly the same way, according one sense of the word.

↪bert1 ↪Eugen
I'll try again. I get that you folks feel that materialism does not - and will never - offer an explanation of consciousness. But beyond that I'm not getting what your positions actually are - and please don't say it's obvious - or toss out words like "feeling" and "experience". — EricH

I won't do that! The thing Eugen and I are talking about as so obvious (albeit apparently only to us and some other people) is not a theory but the thing that the theories are about. The easy bit should be identifying and agreeing on the phenomenon to be explained (e.g. What actually is a Star?) and the hard bit should be explaining it (Maybe it's a hole in the firmament? Maybe it's the soul of a dead person? Maybe it's a lamp? Maybe it's a ball of burning gas?). Unfortunately with consciousness, isolating exactly what it is we are talking about is also the difficult part, as there is nothing external and public to point at.

I am not rejecting your ideas out of hand. I am not criticizing you personally or attacking you for not being able to express your ideas clearly. These are difficult topics. What I am asking for is some reference. Is there some philosopher and/or some philosophical school of thought out there who you agree with?

I'm a panpsyschist, but I'm an unusual kind of panpsychist. I think most modern panpsychists are micropsychists, that is to say, they don't think, say, that half a sausage with a stick through it has a single consciousness. They think that sub-atomic particles, or perhaps atoms, are conscious. Then maybe some organic chemistry. Then maybe a cell, or something. They have a difficulty in specifying exactly what the conscious units are supposed to be.

I'm a much more radical panpsychist. I think that any arbitrarily defined object whatever is a unified centre of consciousness. So take half a German sausage, three paving stones from Aberdeen and 25% of the Andromeda galaxy, that is a single conscious entity. Exactly what it is conscious of as that entity is almost nothing. I'm not completely wedded to this very odd view, in fact I'd rather like to come up with something less weird, but at the moment I think it is the most likely thing to be true. I need to think more about ways to define conscious objects, and an adaptation of the Integrated Information Theory might be a good way to do that.

Regarding references, a recent panpsychist philosopher who is worth having a look at is Philip Goff. I think my views might be quite close to his. I can't remember if he is a micropsychist or not.

Just for example, here is someone who talks about how Idealism explains consciousness. In this discussion he makes it clear that he does not agree with the Idealists but he gives a clear explanation of their thinking.

I used to be a subjective idealist following Berkeley. I may still be an idealist, but for somewhat different reasons. I certainly think that mind is fundamental. But I also think that spatiality may also be fundamental as well, along with will (the ability to self-move). Not sure exactly. I think substance might have more than one fundamental property which are mutually irreducible to one another, and jointly sufficient for all the phenomena that occur.

https://thepsychedelicscientist.com/2017/02/13/solving-the-hard-problem-with-idealism/

Please read this - it's a quick read - and get back. Does the author give a good explanation of your thoughts? if not, can you supply a link that gives a reasonably accurate summary of your position?

I'm not sure he actually gives his own view. Maybe I missed it. I might be an idealist, but it's more informative to say I'm a panpsychist.

I must admit I don't really know what's going on. I just can't be the case that so many people are just lying or wilfully ignorant or something. Maybe I don't see what they see.

I truly believe you perfectly know what I and bert1 are talking about. — Eugen

I believe EricH. I think the misunderstandings, differing assumptions, differing definitions and perceptions are so deep and difficult to sort out in the philosophy of mind, that people are frequently completely baffled as to what others mean. I used to be like you, what could be more obvious than consciousness? Surely everyone who has reflected on the issue for even a moment will share the same concept as me! It's just not true.

It's a redundancy. Philosophers use 'first person point of view' and 'experience' often enough, and this expression just mixes them. Depending on exact formulations it means either and both. Other synonyms might be subjectivity, sentience, consciousness, the capacity to feel, the capacity to experience. You're right that it doesn't appear in Stanford, but I'm pretty sure any professional philosopher would instantly know what Eugen meant. It least as much as they know what any of the expressions related to consciousness means.

I personally prefer to separate the word 'experience' from these other synonyms, as an experience implies content (that which is experienced) which these others, strictly speaking, do not. It's clearer to abstract consciousness from its content so that we can distinguish different senses of 'consciousness'. Sometimes people mean the capacity to feel abstracted from what is felt. Other times people mean the totality of what is felt, as in 'The realisation entered his consciousness' (crappy example).

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=first+person+experience&t=brave&ia=web&iai=r1-2&page=1&adx=sltb&sexp=%7B%22v7exp%22%3A%22a%22%2C%22sltexp%22%3A%22b%22%2C%22rgiexp%22%3A%22b%22%7D

The expression is used. The concept is not obscure at all, at least to me. I'm not a great fan of this particular formulation, as it appears to be an amalgam of 'first person point of view' and 'experience'. The former being a grammatical point of view of the narrator in fiction. Experience is necessarily 'first person' in a sense as one always only ever has one's own experiences by definition, so adding 'first person' is redundant.