A great example is the idea of "God" or "supernatural". Those ideas have so many implications that most people ignore that they end up having an inconsistent world view, and if your world view is inconsistent, and you don't give a damn that it's inconsistent, then what is the point of discussing anything with you? — Harry Hindu

Could you give an example of someone having a belief in something supernatural that leads them to an inconsistency with other beliefs that you think they would probably have?

It's generally taken for granted that physical things exist and everything else has to prove its existence. — The Great Whatever

Yes, I think that's about right. But I'm not sure what physicalists think non-physical things are, except the set of things that don't exist. I suspect that when the existence of a non-physical thing (like a ghost or a number or a law) is 'proven' (by some standard) it is declared to be physical after all. Which is fine but that just renders physicalism a non-interesting all-encompassing monism.

In the context of philosophy of mind, I think physicalism is emergentism. That consciousness is dependent on complex structure and function, and that non-conscious structure and function exists (ontologically and temporally) prior to consciousness. Emergentism is a better word as it better captures what I think physicalists want to claim.

If it could know it is in a particular state, then what stops it knowing anything? — tom

I don't know. It's not necessary to know one is having an experience in order to have an experience is it?

Do dogs experience hunger do you think?

There is no evidence, nor reason to suppose animals have consciousness. — tom

I usually attribute some kind of feeling akin to excitement or pleasure to a dog when it wags its tail and jumps around in circles. Do you think that is unreasonable?

Single celled organisms? Awareness? — tom

What is your explanation of the behaviour of, say, an amoeba?

Has anyone ever reported being a dolphin in a human body to the extent that they want surgery? If someone actually did, and we respected that, s/he wouldn't be eligible for the Olympics because s/he would be a dolphin.

Panpsychics have no clue how the subjectivity imputed to individual fundamental particles might combine to form the unified subjectivity of a person. — tom

It's certainly a good question. I do think there are possible answers though. I do not agree with the IIT theory of consciousness, but it might be a very good theory of what determines the complexity of a conscious individual, and also determines what separates one individual from another. A theory of mental identity, I guess. So the answer would be that there is only one consciousness, as there is only one substance (and one version of panpsychism is that substance is conscious) but mental individuals are distinguished by what they are aware of, and this is determined by the local differences in how much information is integrated in different parts of the universe. I probably haven't explained that very well, I'm in a hurry.

I feel so guilty after I know myself that I have to do it again for punishment. After a while it becomes a very slippery slope.

How did you form your maybe just maybe opinion Hanover?

I am well aware of what a Ds relationship can look like and I said "IF" he was craving/looking for in a sexual experience not that he WAS craving/looking for a sexual experience. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Well, I'm jolly glad we understand each other. :)

This is the best plan of action or non action that I have read you say in this whole thread. Hanover's guidance is priceless, listen to what he is saying. My feeling is that if dominance is something you are craving/looking for in a sexual experience, which is very normal, then hire it for yourself. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Nah, his advice isn't very good. Better not to hire if you don't need to, and not all DS relationships involve sex.

Plank's Length — Banno

Indeed. I do not see the relevance of being 5'11", unless as part of an argument to say that Max Planck was infinitely tall or something, or couldn't grow, and was born fully formed.

Some of you scare me and wonder what philosophy has taught you. — Question

One thing that philosophy has taught me is that we only start to think when we stop getting what we want.

I identify with you I think. But you know your situation better than I do. I suppose I partly want to give you permission to do what you want. Sometimes that's what people are looking for, even from a stranger.

"Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." William Blake - The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Dominant women are rare. Let her have a go on you. I was toyed with by a dominant woman for a while. It was great. Didn't come to anything unfortunately. You might be luckier. :)

EDIT: I'd like to add that this was one of the most profound, formative and important experiences of my life.

I could, I suppose, list the various differences between plants and people in order to point out how the former lacks the behavioral manifestations of consciousness, but I'd not be proving anything that isn't already fully accepted, and I don't feel like performing a mindless academic task. — Hanover

I actually think this would be an interesting exercise. I struggle to maintain the distinction that apparently seems so clear to you, namely between behaviour which is evidence of consciousness and behaviour which is not. I'd be very interested in your method for placing a behaviour in one category or the other.

There be dragons. — jamalrob

Dragons with victim mentalities

What andrewk said. A post is less ambiguous. A downvote could mean a number of different things: 'badly written', 'I don't like you', 'I disagree with what you say but I like you anyway', 'you're a cunt', 'I downvote all your posts as a matter of policy because you are Mars Man' (I plead guilty to this one), 'I don't understand what you are trying to say', 'I am offended by this but don't understand that I should be reporting it as offensive rather than downvoting it' etc etc...

Pillars of Eternity is what I'm playing now. Very good it is.

Other fave games:
Baldur's Gate
Master of Orion 2
Battle for Wesnoth
Total Annihilation

I'd be Bitter Crank in that case instead. — Terrapin Station

So you could be Bitter Crank, at least logically, or perhaps grammatically. You've just said so.

Is your body YOU?
— Bitter Crank

Yes.

If only all questions were that easy to answer. — Terrapin Station

But couldn't you be a different one? Why aren't you Bitter Crank?

I heartily agree with the OP. We can be social, without being obsessed with fitting in. Check out:

https://angryautie.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/the-institute-for-the-study-of-the-neurologically-typical/

What about time? — tom

I think time is more about reality-as-discontinuum. In time one thing happens after another, change and differentiation is essential for time. By contrast with space, I can't make sense of the idea of time as the experiencer.

What does "reality-as-contunuum" mean? — tom

Intuitively, space is the nearest physical concept I have. I'm not sure but perhaps quantum field or some other concept like that would do just as well or better. I'm happy to use the philosophical concept of substance as well but I know many don't like that concept. I share the OP's intuition that only something indivisible or continuous can be conscious. It seems to me to simply follow from the phenomenology. Any experience involves the unification of a number of different elements. And when I look in nature for something that can accomplish this binding of the various elements of an experience, it is immediately obvious that any appeal to a complex entity (such as a brain) begs the question because that entity itself is constituted of parts. So when I think about what relates all the parts of a brain together, again I fairly quickly see that ultimately it is the space that the brain occupies, or the field that it is a behaviour of, or the substance that it is a modification of, that unifies all its elements. And so when looking for the correct place for consciousness in nature, it must be at this very fundamental level of the unifying continuum.

Hi Weeknd

I'm a panpsychist and you raise some interesting points in your OP. However I'm not clear from your OP how exactly panpsychism seems in contradiction with the laws of physics. Please could you spell it out? I tried to put it in my own words (the bit about indivisibility of consciousness) from your OP but couldn't.

So what really is our soul, if you assume the panpsychist view? — Weeknd

From my panpsychist point of view it is reality-as-continuum (as opposed to reality as plurality of discrete bits) that is the experiencer.

Is there something it is like to have a dream? Of course. So we are conscious at least in that sense.

Loud Hands, a collection of bits and pieces by autistic self-advocates, including the famous one by Jim Sinclair Don't Mourn for Us

It's heartbreaking because the kid is cute. Forget about the kid and people you can't help. Find some obnoxious shit who needs to learn some lessons about compassion, like me for instance, who you have a real relationship with, and help him instead.

If by apt you mean the most irreparably destructive and philosophically regressive force of the last 2000 years, then sure. Hiding a noxious resentment of reality - generally coupled with a healthy hatred for the body, manual labour, temporality, and women (whatever doesn't reek with the stench of socio-economic privilege really) - behind a slogan doesn't make it any less venomous. — StreetlightX

Blimey!

I would add pornography to the list of the Internet's ills. Its effects, especially on young people, I think are being greatly understudied and underestimated. — Thorongil

I've studied pornography quite a lot. I haven't yet gathered sufficient data to form any reliable conclusions, though.

#5 in mine

Nice truck-murderer — Wayfarer

Didn't seem very nice to me.

I agree it is laboured and awkward, but it is quite evocative too. It might be that I would get used to the style and it would seem less laboured and awkward the more I read. On the other hand I might not get used to it and I would stop reading. The punctuation is a bit like the 200m hurdles, you think you've jumped them all after 110m, but find, unaccountably, that you still, have more, to go. Maybe that's deliberate to create some kind of clever effect.

As you like it. — Hanover

Thanks, but what play was it?

Regarding definitions of consciousness, looking in a dictionary and deciding which one you want to talk about might be a good way to avoid simple misunderstandings.

I really like the 7 mile bridge one. Cavacava does some really nice impressionist stuff.

...

In reply to OP:

Yeah. I got very upset at university when compatibilism came up. It was plainly just a (not very) special case of determinism and seemed like an abuse of language to me.

Anyway, one might be able to defend a notion of degrees of freedom. Total freedom is, arguably, only possible after death, as to exist is to be constrained and differentiated in some way, and perhaps non-existence is just total lack of constraint. So no existing person can be free. But one person can be more free than another. While no one is free from the need to eat, for example, some people are free from the need to eat nothing but millet every day. Consider also that relative to a particular decision, some people are free while others are not. Someone who doesn't give a shit about politics, for example, is therefore free with regard to what party to vote for, whereas the person who gives a shit is constrained to vote for the party that is conducive to his shit giving.

EDIT: I guess also that one could take the non-shit-giving to its logical conclusion. We don't give a shit about anything and act totally arbitrarily for as long as we lived, which wouldn't be that long, as it is highly unlikely that any food or drink would happen to go into our mouths by accident. I guess this is the closest approximation to free will we could have without ceasing to exist.

Perhaps Michael could embrace a kind of linguo-idealism, whereby the existence of anything is language-dependent. (At times Banno seemed to espouse such a position.) Perhaps Michael could profitably deny TGWs repeated assertions that we can't change rabbits into horses by changing the meaning of words.

He certainly was special.

A hole needs ground around it to be a hole. — Moliere

I guess a realist might argue you could have a hole in a hole. Just because we cant tell where the bigger hole stops and the smaller hole starts, it doesn't mean it isn't there.