Sure, that's fair enough. But the arbiter of what makes a scientific theory, model, paradigm, or whatever, true or not, is still evidence, which is objective, or at least strongly intersubjective. Scientific theories have a resource that philosophy does not have. When scientists disagree, they typically go over the evidence, or collect more evidence, or reinterpret the evidence, or question the authenticity of the evidence, or suggest that the evidence needs to be seen in a whole new light, or something. Philosophers don't have that. We have internal consistency, consistency with the broad scientific consensus, appeals to common sense, Ockham's razor, introspection, necessary truths, conceptual clarification, etc. Science has all these too, but it has evidence as well.

The scientific method, eventually, forces agreement in a way that the philosophical method cannot. Physical evidence is public, and appears (more or less) the same way to everyone that looks at it. This typically forces agreement, eventually. Even people who don't want to believe what the evidence suggests are convinced. Philosophical theories have no physical evidence that settles them one way or another, indeed that may be what makes them a philosophical theory and not a scientific one. There are still standards that make some philosophical theories better than others, but they are not as public or clear-cut.

It appeals to my panpsychism. I didn't want to mention that as 180 and I disagree sharply on that, and I was enjoying being able to agree with him on something.

But panpsychism aside, it seems to accurately characterise a healthy attitude to one's own existence: to seek to continue it and develop it, to increase the things one is able to do with oneself, increase one's functional efficacy; and also a healthy attitude to others existence: increasing the possibilities of inter-function with others, to aid one another in seeking to persist and grow and develop. Of course, there may be occasions where it is not possible for two creatures to both grow in the way they want to without one interfering with the other. But such abortive relations can perhaps be re-made with adjusted values, so that their purposes and values do not clash. One value we are encouraged to have by Jesus and The Beatles is love. And if we define 'love' as something like the will to develop the possibilities of existence, then that should hopefully result in mutually beneficial relations, whatever forms that takes :).

To live is to evaluate.

In Spinoza's terms, every life seeks to persist in its existence - continue, survive, grow-develop (à la 'will to power'); thus, every life values - is valuable to - herself; and insofar a life recognizes other lives as valuable to themselves, a life enters into reciprocal valuing with and among them, to value and be valued by other lives. Thus, value, or meaning, does not come "out of nothing"; it comes from community - natality, sociality, fatality - and reinforced, or enriched, by communicative practices (e.g. cooperative labors, crafts-arts, rituals, trade, discursive dialectics (e.g. scientific / historical / philosophical inquiries)). — 180 Proof

I like this. Seems intuitively right.

Thank you. :)

Is there a prohibition on any conspiracy theorising, or only on excessive ridiculous conspiracy theorising?

100% There must be big conspiracies. Knowing what they are is the problem.

I may be quibbling here but I think a stressful situation is different than what causes stress. Stress itself begins and ends in biology. — NOS4A2

Ah OK. I see what you mean.

I’m pretty sure the body causes stress, not governments. — NOS4A2

Environmental factors are part of the causal story, no?

GCB nothing to disagree with there. And to answer you rhetorical question, of course they should.

I'll read it. Prompt me if I forget. You won't know if I've forgotten or not but that's epistemology for you.

Have you read any panpsychist literature?

Any developed panpsychist view needs an answer to the combination problem. Micropsychists are particularly targeted: how can lots of individual conscious atoms combine to form a larger conscious entity? Do the individual atoms lose their consciousness? Or are there lots of conscious entities all overlapping? Are their experiences all separate, or do they bleed into one another? As Searle puts it, "What are the units supposed to be?" How is the panpsychist to come up with a plausible story here that isn't just made up and arbitrary?

I like the cover. Looks like it was wrestled from a Lich and you're about to level up big time after reading it.

Also, what is the point of a claim that can not be confirmed in principle and has no explanatory power? — Zelebg

It explains why anything at all is conscious. It might also explain why anything at all happens, if everything that happens is a result of intention. Admittedly these are explanations at the very broadest level possible - you can't get any useful tech out of this, or solve practical moral problems with it.

What differentiates one consciousness from another - leaf, branch, tree, forest... each grain of sand or the whole beach - what is conscious? — Zelebg

Good question. Possibly Tononi's phi. I like to think of the IIT as a theory of identity rather than a theory of consciousness.

If that were the case and consciousness were a property of matter rather than a large, functioning nervous system, then consciousness would persist post-mortem. — Txastopher

It would, but identity would not. The units would change.

However, if panpsychists want to insist that virus are conscious then it is up to them to demonstrate their claim. This they haven't done. — Txastopher

It's right to ask panpsychists for positive demonstrations of course. But it is also interesting to consider what the 'default' position actually is. It is arguably more parsimonious and reasonable to assume panpsychism on the grounds that the only body we know about for sure is conscious, namely my own (and similarly for each of us). So then we have to consider whether there are two kinds of bodies in the world, conscious and non-conscious, or just one, conscious. If all other things are equal, it seems to me that the default position is that there is one kind of body.

Sorry, maybe I've misunderstood. If the exam is the cause and the anxiety is the effect, then the exam is cancelled, then we have an effect without a cause, rather than a cause without an effect.

We now have a cause (anxiety) without an effect. — TheMadFool

I don't think you meant it that way round.

Yes I got one just like that. He quoted some bible stuff at me. I've PMd Baden.

Panpsychism is vague, ambiguous, untestable, without even possibility of ever giving any prediction, confirmation or explanation. — Zelebg

Panpsychism predicts that stuff happens. Things do, verily, happen. Panpsychism is confirmed. If panpsychism were not the case, nothing would ever happen. Things do happen. Therefore panpsychism.

What do you find fruitful about it?

It places consciousness at the only point in reality that doesn't involve insurmountable difficulties, namely, at a fundamental level. The antithesis of panpsychism is emergentism. But emergentism is so problematic that we should reject it. One reason is that consciousness is not a vague concept. There are no borderline cases of it. Emergentism requires borderline cases..

Darwinian materialism — Wayfarer

Does Darwin have an interest in this topic? An what is Darwinian materialism?

Existence is a property, it's just not what is wrong with the ontological argument.

Monarchy - mono archy, or one rules over all.

Oligarchy - Oligs rule (I don't know what an olig is.)

Plutarchy - rule by many (I think... now I wish I never skipped those Ancient Greek Language classes)

Patriarchy - rule by a male originator of the klan

Matriarchy - rule by a female originator of the Klan

Anarchy - rule by nobody (an- is a prefix that negates a noun's meaning.) — god must be atheist

It would have been so easy to look these up before posting.

How is that different from atheism? — jorndoe

This is a rhetorical question.

compositional fallacy — 180 Proof

I've never come across a panpsychist saying a whole must be conscious because some of the parts are (although no doubt there will be such people, I may even be one of them, although I don't recall making an argument of that form). If you are fallacy hunting, wouldn't the fallacy of division be more apt? Namely that the parts must be conscious because the whole is?

I could understand you crying foul in terms of a divisional fallacy. Are you sure that's not what you mean?

Or maybe there is a loving God who isn’t all powerful, because there is an evil God competing with him... — leo

That's another possibility, although it's a non-standard concept of God.

Not quite. When all things move towards unity, from any point of view all things are seen to move towards us. When all things move towards separation, from any point of view all things are seen to move away from us.

Now if you agree that unity is correlated with feelings associated with good (love, happiness) and separation is correlated with feelings associated with evil (hate, suffering), then good and evil aren’t relative, they are absolute. In many situations one can be mistaken for the other, but there are situations in which the two cannot be mistaken because they appear the same from all points of view.

That's interesting, but I think beside the point. I think your theory of good and evil has some merit, but that doesn't stop people taking on self-defeating values, and defining good-for-them and evil-for-them in self-defeating ways. So God might, in a sufficiently revelatory mood, remind us that good is unity and evil is separation, but we can still disagree, no matter how foolishly. And in the act of disagreement, we create our own values. And God himself must value separation, or we would not exist (on the assumption of a creator God of course).

I hope he stays. Best way to react to moderation is to treat it as valuable information about the values of the forum and adjust accordingly. He can still offer his theories if done in a more engaging way that people might want to respond to.

As a regular user I am glad the mods took action. I was considering reporting his stuff.

That is not an uncontroversial claim, and typically it is people leaning more toward theism who are most likely to object to it. People who think there's a God usually also think there's an objective moral standard, and that that standard is God's standard, so on their account if God approves of toddlers getting gang-banged and the toddlers disagree, well the toddlers are just wrong. — Pfhorrest

That's true

I think all but the most fortunate and either self-centered or ignorant people would find that pretty absurd though. — Pfhorrest

No contradiction follows from people having different values though, even if one of those people is God. Evil is always evil-from-a-point-of-view.

Theists fall all over themselves to make excuses for why the world can be as shitty as it is and yet God can still somehow be all-knowing, all-powerful, and most of all all-loving. — Pfhorrest

Whatever exists that seems evil to us must be good from the point of view of an all powerful being, otherwise it wouldn't exist. No comfort there for us, but it's consistent. This entails that the theist must embrace the fact that from God's point of view, any kind of suffering is good. It's hard to love God, if loving God is even a coherent concept.

On the subject of philosophers disagreeing, I guess there is no method that forces agreement, except perhaps the 'logical method' but that's a bit patchy, as you need clear premises that everyone agrees on. In science, agreement is eventually forced by a consistent build up of more and more evidence, and the success of technology based on scientific theory, and even then some people still hold out.

Is this a question about law? If so moderate proselytising is warranted in most countries where human rights are respected AFAIK.

I think people should be free to try to persuade others of anything at all, as long as they don't do it in an overly coercive or abusive way. And they obediently fuck off when told to.

180, are you approving of Pfhorrest's panpsychism or of his functionalism regarding the content of consciousness? Or both?

A human whose brain has been removed has lost its identity, and therefore cannot be a subject, it seems to me. I think identity is what comes and goes, the units change.

What evidence are you referring to? Things like someone getting knocked out, psychoactive drugs changing experience by acting on the brain, that kind of thing?

I don't think it is right to say phenomenal consciousness is located in the brain, but I think identity very likely is. It seems to me that when people say 'consciousness' they are sometimes confusing it with identity.

Pigliucci's article is a poor one IMO. I would probably have asked him about a premise to a different argument for panpsychism (which he doesn't address in the article). The assumption is that consciousness does not admit of degree, is not a vague concept. I would ask something along the lines of 'Does the concept of phenomenal consciousness admit of degree? Can a being be in a state in which it is indeterminate as to whether it is conscious or not (compare baldness)?'

To address some of what he says in the article:

panpsychism seems to me both entirely unhelpful and a weird throwback to the (not so good) old times of vitalism in biology. — Pigliucci

No modern panpsychist I'm aware of is motivated by a liking of vitalism.

Nagel, therefore, saw panpsychism as possibly “the last man standing” on the issue, winning by default, though it isn’t clear why what is essentially an argument from ignorance (science at the moment hasn’t the foggiest about how consciousness emerges when matters organizes in certain ways, therefore science will never know) should carry any weight whatsoever. — Pigliucci

Winning by default is not the same thing as an argument from ignorance.

Either A B or C.
Not A
Not B
Therefore C

Where there is no consensus, it is perfectly rational to settle on the least problematic theory, whatever that happens to be. As Churchill said, panpsychism is the worst theory of consciousness apart from all the others.

Does that mean that the iPad on which I’m typing this is (partially) conscious? What about the coffee that I just drank as part of my morning intake of caffeine? What about every single atom of air in my office? Every electron? Every string (if they exist)? — Pigliucci

These are good questions from Pigliucci.

Okay, then, let us consider the “genetic argument” first. The “ex nihilo, nihil fit” bit is so bad that it is usually not taken seriously these days outside of theological circles (yes, it is a standard creationist argument!). If we did, then we would not only have no hope of any scientific explanation for consciousness, but also for life (which did come from non-life), for the universe (which did come from non-universe or pre-universe), and indeed for the very laws of nature (where did they come from anyway?). — Pigliucci

I share Pigliucci's view here of the inadequacy (as he quotes it) of this argument. However just pointing out that emergence happens in general is not enough to show that consciousness specifically can emerge from brain function. Every case of putative emergence must be judged on its own merits, and there are reasons why the emergence of consciousness is particularly problematic.

Surely. I’m not positive if my physicist friends would agree that physics is the study of structural form but not content — whatever those two terms actually mean in this context. But if so, then this is simply an argument for the incompleteness, as a science, of fundamental physics. Which, of course, is why we have a number of other sciences that study “content,” chiefly — in the case of consciousness — biology. — Pigliucci

I don't think he has grasped Eddington and Russell's ideas here, but I'm not totally sure I have either, so I'll just move on.

Consciousness, so far as we know, is an evolved property of certain kinds of animal life forms equipped with a sufficiently complex neural machinery. There is neither evidence nor any reason whatsoever to believe that plants or bacteria are conscious, let alone rocks, individual molecules of water, or atoms. — Pigliucci

This is just philosophical ignorance, unfortunately.

Moreover, since at the very bottom matter dops not seem to be made of discrete units (there are no “particles,” only wave functions, possibly just one wave function characterizing the entire universe), it simply isn’t clear what it means to say that consciousness is everywhere. Is it a property of the quantum wave function? How? Can we carry out an experiment to test this idea? — Pigliucci

These are good questions to ask the panpsychist.

I am left with just one question: why would anyone take any of this seriously at all? — Pigliucci

Because there are reasons Pigliucci has not engaged with.

I get it, panpsychism allows us to feel at one with nature because consciousness is everywhere, and that will make us better shepherds of nature itself. — Pigliucci

This observation is philosophically irrelevant, even if true (which it isn't - it's perfectly possible to be a panpsychist and not care one whit for vegetable and mineral welfare.)

I got news: Nature is mind bogglingly bigger than humanity, and it will be here for eons after humanity will be gone. — Pigliucci

Who is he talking to? Who doesn't know this?

Pigliucci has made a whole lot of assumptions about panpsychists ('New Agers') rather than engaging with panpsychism as a philosophy.

Wayfarer might be making a distinction between being and being-something. Unformed vs formed substance, or something like that. I prefer not to use 'being' in that way (because it's confusing) but I know some do.

I agree, and I think that this is analogous to the situation with incompatibilist free will. Incompatibilists insist that free will means being undetermined. Okay, electrons are undetermined, according to contemporary physics. So electrons have free will? Sounds like kind of a useless definition of free will then. But hey look over there, those compatibilists have a much more useful definition of free will according to which humans sometimes have it but electrons don't... it just has nothing to do with (in)determinism.

Likewise, phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness. — Pfhorrest

This interesting, and I think I understand your point. In the analogy, phenomenal consciousness is like incompatibilism - a coherent and meaningful idea, but not useful or particularly interesting. And compatibilism is like access consciousness - it's actually interesting and useful to be able to talk about the particular capabilities, powers and limitations of the mind in question.

I half agree with you. I'd be interested in your views on overdetermination. I eat because physical events in my brain cause, in law-like ways, my muscles to pick up food, put it in my mouth and chew it and swallow it. And presumably these causal pathways are in principle traceable. But I also eat because I feel hungry. And I wouldn't eat if I didn't have that feeling - the physical story is not the whole story of why I eat. So we have two causes (don't we?), and the question is, what is the relationship between them? There is a problem, because when we speak about machines which we presume are not conscious, an account of the physical processes is taken as sufficient to explain the behaviour of the machine. But in humans it's not enough, and we then have to try and explain why the situation is different in humans. My panpsychist answer is to say that it is not ultimately different. The problem is resolved if we can reduce one explanation to the other. Attempts to reduce will or consciousness to physical explanations have so far failed, but I think the reverse reduction can perhaps be made. Physical explanations refer to laws, causes, forces, all of which are presumed to be insentient. But these are just made up ways to refer to what things just do. To illustrate this, consider a crude analogy. Imagine an alien race of giants who discover humans. However they see only our behaviour and have no idea we are conscious. They design a light switch (admittedly a rather crap design, but bear with me). They put a giant 100m rocker switch like a see-saw on the ground. 20 humans are placed on one end and the whole lever is enclosed in a cage so that the humans can't escape. Now they wait a bit. To operate the switch they put some bags of food at the other end. The hungry humans move to the other end to get to the food, and the switch tips over and is operated. Now we know that the switch depends on phenomenal states to work, because we know what it is like to be a human experiencing hunger. But the giant aliens, who are not like us at all, presume that we do not possess consciousness, because we are very different from them. So Prek the alien giant observes this behaviour very carefully and invents Prek's law, namely that human particles follow a four-hour cycle of attraction to carbohydrate particles which are then absorbed by the humans particles. This is just taken as a fundamental law which 'just is', and it works. It successfully predicts the behaviour of the switch. (Yes, I know it is a really crap switch). We know Prek's law is a made-up law, because it is just a stand-in for the real cause, which is the phenomenal state of hunger. And the panpsychist thought is to simply extrapolate this to everything, so when we look at the behaviour of a system, we are looking at conscious things following their will. And mechanism can emerge from this, and predictable results can be exploited which are not intended or understood by the constituent entities. Any time we appeal to a force in a physical explanation, I suggest we are referring to the phenomenal states of the entities involved. And if we remember that entities are really persistent doings themselves, even the very existence of anything depends on will. This is of course problematic and raises a lot of questions. But it seems to me that reducing physical explanation to will is a much more hopeful project than reducing will to physical explanation. So I am an emergentist after all, but not about consciousness, but about mechanism. If we think 'reduction' is a dirty word then we are the stuck with the problem of the relationship of the mental to the physical. Do you find this at all plausible?