I think it highly unlikely, but if the panpsychists can come up with some experiments & proof? That would be very cool.

But once you have theorems, experiments, and reproducible proof - then you are following the scientific method. — EricH

Yes, for now panpsychism is, in my opinion, just a proposal to people to analyze things from another perspective, it is more like an alternative appeared in a time when for an increasing number of people materialism seems to have reached its limits.

If we (mankind that is) can succeed in not destroying civilization, then perhaps 100s or 1000s or millions of years from now we will get to the bottom of things (that's a metaphor of course). — EricH

I've seen this way of thinking in many materialists like Sean Caroll, but what they don't want to admit it's that this is not a matter of gathering more information, it is a matter of principle, and in this regards, materialism has already set its final statements:
1. either consciousness do not exist
2. or physical manifestations = pain, happiness, love, etc. and absolutely nothing else.
The problem with this is that while materialists see this as a final victory, the rest of the world perceives it as a limitation of the materialistic view.
Materialism has another huge issue: it cannot explain their super-argument of emergence - they want consciousness to be made of things that have no conscious properties, but somehow, like magic, they add up and form consciousness. They try to build first person experience with things experienced within our first person experience.

Panpsychism in all of it's variants seems like a religion to me. — EricH

Well, this is exactly the problem of materialism - anything that leaves a small open door for spirituality is automatically invalidated. Materialism is not science, it is an idelogy meant to refute absolutely anything that could somehow give a chance to spirituality.
Panpsychism has nothing to do with religion, it is more like a view of reality that makes more sense than purposeless unconscious atoms forming a purpose-driven conscious being. As Chalmers put it, ''emergence'' is like a magic word for things that we really don't understand. Indeed, panpsychism has to move fast and come up with more well-defined theories, theorems, experiments, and some proofs. I personally see panpsychism being in its infancy and very different from what it will be in 30 years from now.

But I was talking about computers brought up by accident, combinations of atoms, not by intelligence.

I have exactly the same issue: "maybe i'm missing something here". But to be honest, I think it is more likely the case of defending belief at any cost.

Ok, maybe I've made wrong assumptions, but I cannot simply go around and give explanations for commonsensical things. If one goes to the doctor and says ''My head hurts'', I assume the doctor won't ask him what is ''to hurt, to feel bad'' and so on.

I'm not a professional philosopher. :smile: In fact I'm not even an amateur philosopher - I'm just stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out what's going on. — EricH

I am sorry but I cannot take that seriously. I truly believe you perfectly know what I and @bert1 are talking about. I truly believe that no explanation will do - if I say ''everything you feel'' you will ask me ''What is to feel? I searched that on google and I couldn't find anything.''. I am not a philosopher either, but I am versed enough to realize that when you don't accept something obvious, the only thing you can do is to find ways to escape that reality. So by asking me so many questions you are basically trying to obtain more information, because where's a lot of information maybe there are some flaws as well that you could take advantage of and turn the argument in your favor. Another possibility is to make ''feelings'' or ''personal experiences'' look like empty concepts.
Anyway, this is more about debating tactics, not about the truth.
It is no problem if you don't want to answer my question.

:up:

I am not a native speaker, but by first person experience I mean absolutely any experience one can have.

m a reasonably intelligent person and I've been polite to you. — EricH

That you were.

But if you cannot explain yourself clearly to a reasonably intelligent person, then you're never going to convince anyone that your position is correct. — EricH

I think there is no one to convince in cases where things are so obvious. It's just chatter, a poor tactic to stretch the conversation with explanations hoping you'll find a soft spot to take advantage of.

At this point in time the burden of proof is on you. — EricH

To proove what? That a feeling is not the same thing as an atom?

I would like to ask you something, but please be 100% sincere. Do you really believe that your feelings are exactly the same thing and nothing more than a certain movement of atoms yes/no?

Of course it is a fiction. Materialism is the only real thing.

I did about a 5 minute search on the phrase "first person experience". Nothing in wikipedia, Britannica, Stanford, etc — EricH

So you need to search that on wikipedia and Britannica. Do you have personal experiences? If no, keep searching.

As for the rest, I have been polite so far and I have tried tooffer you very simple arguments for obvious things. But I simply don't find productive to waste my time explaining the obvious more than I already did: pain is not the same with a punch in the face or toany other movement of atoms starting from your nose to your brain. If you don't like that, it's your problem.

And if you think that asking me tons of questions hoping you'll somehow find a crack in my argumentation that you could explore, you're wasting your time.
I know that no matter what logical commonsense arguments I'd bring, even in obvious areas, you wouldn't admit the reality.
Notice I used "admit" and not "convinced".

I tried googling "first person experience" and did not find anything useful in the standard philosophy sources. — EricH

Try more

Agree

Can you expand on this a bit - what do you mean by "first person experience" and "mental process" - and in what way(s) is a first person experience NOT a mental process? — EricH

Ok, let me make it simple. Saying mental processes (moving of atoms inside your brain) is the same with pain for example is like saying a punch in the face is the same thing as pain. A punch in the face creates some atoms moving in certain ways and that movement creates pain. Pain is an experience, which is produced by a movement of atoms, which in turn is not the same, but produced by a punch. I think I've made it clear now. They are not the same thing.

No, it's first person experience.

There is good news in this debate: a clear line has been drawn - on one hand, we have materialists reaching their limits and now the only thing they can claim is that there is nothing more about consciousness (if there is something at all), and this is exactly what they're doing, and on the other hand, we have the rest of the world who is simply not satisfied with this attitude, and this is not because people don't like certain things, it is simply because a materialistic view can describe some correlations, but it cannot describe consciousness itself.
Consciousness is NOT the mental processes, but how these mental states feel like.
So it is not a matter of complexity, as many materialists claim, it is a matter of principle.

I wasn't making an argument, just pointing out what is obvious to many philosophers. If you close your eyes to the obvious, and deny it when someone points it out to you, what type of philosophy are you engaged in? A philosophy of exclusion? — Metaphysician Undercover

It is exactly my problem with a part of philosophy. It is like an athlete who stops in the middle of the raceand say ''I won! That was the finish line!'' and the rest of the world is saying otherwise.

Just because something is infinite it does not mean that it contains all possibilities. You can have an infinity of integers without one fractional number in it anywhere. — A Seagull

I actually agree with you. But apparently, it's just the two of us who believe that. So I personally believe that even if the universe is infinite, you will get only a set of things.

:up:

Logic (i.e. sound inferential reasoning) to start. — 180 Proof

Kenosha Kid wouldn't agree with that. He says that the universe does not necessarily follow logic or common-sense.

As for 2, all I'm going to say is that there's no need to posit something non-physical — TheMadFool

Ok, I respect that, but then there's the issue of what is physical. Is consciousness fundamental, is it part of matter, is it part of the laws of nature? Or it simply emerges from purposeless, non-conscious, blind matter?

So, you agree that there's nothing wrong with materialism then? After all, the way you argued your position, everything depended on explanations having to evoke the experiences the explanation was about. — TheMadFool

Not so fast my friend!
First of all, observing how things work and not what they are is called science, not materialism, and that I have nothing against it.
But I do have something against materialism:

then it's nothing more than the neurons connected to a certain subcategory of retinal cones being activated. — TheMadFool

That's not consistent with

One is providing causal basis for a certain phenomena, evidently distinct from the phenomena themselves. — TheMadFool

So finding correlations is not the same thing with consciousness itself. So science', and not materialism, is the one that finds correlations between certain first person experiences and physical manifestation.
Materialism says that either:
1. Things with no purpose, no will, no first person experience cannot create something with first person experience, therefore consciousness doesn't exist - STUPID
2. Things with no purpose, no will, no first person experience can create something with first person experience - good luck explaining that!

I think your issue is that you don't make the fundamental difference between science and materialism.

To think an explanation is the same thing as that which is being explained is preposterous. One is providing causal basis for a certain phenomena, evidently distinct from the phenomena themselves. — TheMadFool

Exactly!!!

What's so special about "redness"? If materialism is true then it's nothing more than the neurons connected to a certain subcategory of retinal cones being activated. — TheMadFool

It is special because materialism cannot explain it. It is fundamentally different from the rest of things. Stating it isn't doesn't mean it isn't. It's just the confirmation of a fundamental limit of materialism.

Imagine an alien race having a feeling called zappiness, zappiness being a feeling only those aliens can experience. You could come up with tons of equations and neuron movements, you won't be able to really know what zappiness is.
This hurts materialists so much because their nice sand castle will be destroyed.
I totally understand your frustration, but you only confirm my affirmation:

1. These questions have no meaning, I have already shown you everything.
2. There is nothing intrinsic, it's all an illusion. — Eugen

In just a matter of few replys, you went from 1 to 2 and you will be stuck there forever.

What is this "intrinsic nature of consciousness"? Also, once the "how" has been answered, the explanation of consciousness in terms of the physical is complete, no? — TheMadFool

That's the point. No.
X#7366$€÷77_÷3663%#%#_77#_6#6# like equations or description of atom movemnts will never explain the "redness" of red. Just get over it and accept this reality.

Presumably all conscious aspects that were evoked by EBS were 1st person experiences related to the experimenters by the subject. — TheMadFool

That makes absolutely no difference in terms of the hard problem. See, this is the problem with materialism. They postulate all kind of information that's never really related to the core issue, but they claim it is. It isn't. Other times they simply say there is no hard problem.
Again... if materialism is true, absolutely every question can be theoretically answered by physics. The problem is that your EBS and any other futuristic ultra-sophisticated technology will be able to answer only "how" things happen at the level of atoms and fields. But when asked about the intrinsic nature of consciousness, or why supposedly non-consciouss matter produces 1st person experience, or how is to feel something, etc., materialists have 2 answers:
1. These questions have no meaning, I have already shown you everything.
2. There is nothing intrinsic, it's all an illusion.

This is why I think materialism cannot go too far.

if EBS shows anything it's that many aspects of what we call consciousness can be elicited physically. What do you think this means for the nature of consciousness? — TheMadFool

It shows that we will be able to find out how consciousness arises, dissapears, and correlates with phisicsl states, it tells nothing about the 1st person experiences and it cannot explain how some electric signals or whatever they find can have a 1st person experiences.

So what you're looking for to accommodate your need for your personal feelings on the matter to be investigated thoroughly and failure admitted when they are not resolved, is a therapist,not a scientist. — Isaac

If I find a therapist like you who denies consciousness, he'll need a surgeon to fix him )))

The fact that the gap between what is believed by materialists, and what is believed by idealists, continues to widen, is clear evidence that progress has not been made. The fact that the materialists ignore this evidence to claim that progress has been made, is simple denial. So the materialists float off in their self-induced bubble, further and further from the idealist perspective, while all the time claiming progress is being made in closing the gap between them. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly! I am an outsider when it comes to philosophy and ideologies and I can say that I am shocked by the difference between my expectations and reality. I thought people who claim that they are lead by science are objective, open-minded, and ready to admit their failures. I was so naive.

Floats your lil rowboat but not mine. I'm interested in the grounds for doubt or belief, not "proof" (ultimate or otherwise). — 180 Proof

Grounds are an illusion, they don't exist. It's a word invented by you and you don't exist, therefore ''grounds'' doesn't exist.
180 Proof - ''I am not interested in ''proof'' '' :rofl:

I just love when people simply want to debate the undebatable simply because they don't like the outcome. Materialists are like if Brazil, after losing 1-7 to Germany, went out and celebrated telling everyone they won the game. ''Reporter: You lost 7 to 1! Neymar: We are interested in the ''grounds'' of such an affirmation!'' :rofl:

Dear materialists, keep up with your wonderful adventure of finding arguments that consciousness does not exist, you are really good at it. Meanwhile we, the rest of the world, will focus on other things.

The issue ''could have done otherwise'' is deeply flawed in so many aspects. I may open a discussion regarding this.

Well I have direct (personal) experience of the 17 gods who created our world. Is that an 'ultimate proof' of my 17-god theology? — Yellow Horse

It's the ultimate proof for your consciousness. You know, I asked a question on this forum on why so many deny consciousness and many people argued that this is not the case and that nobody actually argues about that. Well, reading some comments here shows they were wrong.

The hard problem is understood by some precisely so that progress can't be made (so that nothing could count as progress.) — Yellow Horse

That sounds like a poor excuse for the incapacity of materialism.

There are entire fields of study dedicated to this that are pretty mature now. — Kenosha Kid

All of them with some success for the easy problem and 0 success on the hard problem. Again, the hard problem has been avoided and even denied, but ultimately it has remained untouched by materialism.

And you have the grounds for questioning (doubting) "there's an outer physical world" or grounds for taking-as-given (certitude) that "there's an 'inner' mental world"? Please elaborate. — 180 Proof

I have a direct experience, that's an ultimate proof. Anything trying to prove it more or deny it it's simply a waste of time.

Interesting theory. But I wonder if it merely pushes the problem one more step, instead of explaining it. A condition to accept a property as being physical is that it must be observable by physical instruments (I think). Physical instruments have not observed such a property in particles; and so even if particles had such a property, it still would not be correct to call it "physical". Note that when it comes to our own consciousness, although we can observe our own individually, it is not observed by physical instruments either.

What do you think? — Samuel Lacrampe

Many scientists and philosophers are struggling to show us there are rational scientific physical explanations for everything. Sometimes they provide tons of information, complicated statements, and high-flown phrases with a supposed deep meaning. You asked me what I think: either I am not capable to understand those super-complex explanations, or those super-complicated explanations are simply long complicated senseless phrases that are intended to make ordinary people like me that ''scientists know the truth, but it's complicated'' when in fact there is only the impotence of the materialistic view of the reality.

But again, that is just me and I take very seriously the possibility of me being incapable to understand some things. I am a simple guy and for me anything that is more than simple logic sounds bad.

On the other hand, do you mean a galaxy literally made of computers? Like it's a galaxy, but instead of stars and planets space dust, it's entirely filled with mainframes from the 1960's, IBM PCs from the 80s, eight-inch floppy disks, last year's iPhones? An entire galaxy where obsolete computer hardware goes to simply orbit a black hole for eternity? Once beloved and then abandoned by a fickle market that always wants something newer? — fishfry

This type. But it seems our telescopes show us only stars and planets, no other type of galaxyes.

The old monkeys and Shakespeare thing. If the probability of something happening is 10^-20 does that mean it could happen? But who or what assigns even that probability?

The universe is a jungle, folks. :gasp: — jgill

Yes, but there is one thing: the monkey has to use its hands in a way it won't limit itself to hitting the keyboard in the same patterns over and over again, otherwise infinite won't help much.

Until they come up with a viable scientific experiment, nothing is going to be revealed by panpsychism. It's a pretty much useless theory as it stands. — Wheatley

I don't see it like this. Yes, it is just a theory and it does not claim it is more than that. Even if it has no empirocal evidence yet, it has a strong logic behind.

For example if consciousness is fundamental.

Panpsychism is complete speculation. — Wheatley

Yes, but that doesn't mean it has no potential to reveal truths.

As to the possibility of consciousness beyond human level consciousness, there doesn't seem to be a legitimate domain, apart from the inner and outer worlds, to expand awareness into. However, some may be of the opinion that advancing toward, what some claim, the true nature of reality which will probably include perfect understanding of the outer and inner worlds, qualifies as progressing through different levels of consciousness. — TheMadFool

Your argument makes sense and I admit I haven't thought about this so far. Thank you!

If we knew we could tell if a rock is conscious! — Pop

I think this is a trap! I think panpsychism sees a rock as a non-consciouss entity, but rather a physical object made of many elementary entities, each one containing consciousness properties. But the material that makes a rock doesn't have ''conductivity'' properties, so the consciousness of each elementary pparticle does not connect with other in order to form something bigger in that sense,