It wouldn't be describable or measurable. It would only be inferred, like with other people's minds. The hard problem is one of subjectivity, which can' be scientifically measured or described. Panpsychism is trying to solve the irreducibility of conscious experience by spreading it out through everything so that it's a building block instead of just mysteriously emerging. — Marchesk

Panpsychism is said to have a “combination problem”. The combination problem does not require the mental to emerge from the physical. Nor does the combination problem require inert, passive, non-experiential matter to at some point become “experiential”. It is a proposed metaphysical (not scientific) solution to dualism or to emergence. It could be termed a dual aspect form of neutral monism. “The emergence of experience from the non-experiential would be sheer magic”

There are plenty of arguments for the hard problem. Basically, no amount of objective explanation gets you to subjectivity. They're incompatible. — Marchesk

Yes, “mary’s room” no familiarity with the scientific description of “red” (wavelengths, optics, neural paths, etc.) is a substitute for the actual experience “seeing red”. Scientific descriptions (verbal descriptions) are always incomplete in some sense and unsatisfactory substitutes for “the experience itself”. We can describe what happens in the “quantum world” we can even “predict in a stochastic probabilistic way” what is possible but we can’t explain it in any way that fits our “commonsense” notions of the world and reality.

Possibly, but the thing emerging is not complex and novel. The thing emerging is conciousness. The whole point of the hard problem is that conciousness itself is taken to be a familiar, obvious fact (otherwise we'd just be rid of the whole thing). It's the mechanism that's mysterious, and we're quite used to mysterious mechanisms. The whole history of science has been the gradual revelation of previously mysterious mechanisms. — Isaac

Allright, let’s approach the problem from the other end. We have “consciousness” this integrated, unified, self-aware, self-reflective form of “experience” or “mind”. We could not do science or philosophy otherwise. At what point in the chain of being “existence” or “life” do you think this ability disappears working your way down. Do higher animals have experience? Ants? Bees? Flowers? And how would you or do you know? What physical test or quantitative measure do you have?

Well, if the world contains both physical stuff and consciousness, but there doesn't seem to be a way for the physical stuff to produce consciousness, then an alternative would be that all physical stuff is conscious. — Marchesk

or the basic “stuff” or units of nature are both physical and experiential (neutral monism).
 

Basically what this is amounts to is that science must posit some kind of monistic physicalism (there should not be any "spooky" things "emerging" that is not physical itself). However, experience itself, though completely correlated with physical processes, itself cannot be explained as to how it is one and the same as the physical, other than being correlated with it. It becomes an epiphenomena of magical dualistic "foam" that is called an "illusion" that appears on the scene (which itself cannot be accounted for). This explanatory gap that is committed to "illusion" status or have its premises assumed in the consequent and becomes something of a thorny issue. The only thing the scientist can do, is keep solving the easy problems. — schopenhauer1

Science deals with the empirical, the quantitative, the measurable, the observable, the physical. Believing in science does not entail accepting the metaphysical view of mechanistic determinism or eliminative materialism. A scientist can be religious, can be a neutral monist or even a panpsychist. Doing science does not entail a strictly materialist worldview. Science tells us important things about the world but not everything.

Try imagining something. Remember an event that happened. Feel sad. Feel joy. These are things that are mental states. P-Zombies presumably don't do that but somehow act as they do. — schopenhauer1

This is the problem with “functionalism”. We can design computer programs (counselors, psychiatrists, etc.) that cannot be distinguished from conversing with a human under controlled conditions but do we think these systems are “conscious, intelligent, experiential”? We can only infer the consciousness of “others” based on similarity, observation and projection. We can reasonably infer some kind of “mind” or “experience” in at least some other creatures as well but why stop there?

Qualia is brute sensation (e.g. seeing green, hearing noise, etc.). Although imagination, and memories probably rely on qualia, etc. they are not the same as qualia. My point was there are other internal states besides just qualia that one can have. And I don't understand why you would be deflating the issue. The very question regarding the Hard Question is to understand how/why internal states are equivalent to brain processes. Anything else is not the world we live in, but P-Zombie world. That is not ours though, so it is a big deal. — schopenhauer1

There is a one to one correspondence between certain “brain states” and certain “experiences”. There is IMHO no free floating “consciousness”, experience or mind, they are all bound to the physical even while being more than just physical or completely or satisfactorily described by their physical manifestations or counterparts. Human experience, human “consciousness” requires a human brain. It is the complex unified integrated structure of the brain which correlates with the unified integrated complex nature of human mind. Human experience is just one form of mind in nature perhaps the most self-reflective and self-aware but nature is never entirely reducible to its scientific description at any level.

Unless you think all introspection is just sensations, then this is wrong. As I stated before, sensations may be a necessary part of the all introspection, but not sufficient to account for all of it. — schopenhauer1

Can you describe an act of introspection that is not accompanied by "sensations"?

Science deals with the empirical, the quantitative, the measurable, the observable, the physical. Believing in science does not entail accepting the metaphysical view of mechanistic determinism or eliminative materialism. A scientist can be religious, can be a neutral monist or even a panpsychist. Doing science does not entail a strictly materialist worldview. Science tells us important things about the world but not everything. — prothero

True, but for all intents and purposes, science assumes certain premises such that matter/energy and space/time is what is being measured. Thus, the hard problem might be one that is one step out of the grasp being that it might be a more metaphysical problem as you are saying. It is likely that a non-physicalist scientific explanation would be almost a contradiction in how it is based. The closest we can get is maybe ideas of observer-based worlds which posits an observer in the equation as a must?

The closest we can get is maybe ideas of observer-based worlds which posits an observer in the equation as a must? — schopenhauer1

Quantum mechanics is already like that.

The catch is, anything counts as an “observer”.

In other words, something like panpsychism.

Can you describe an act of introspection that is not accompanied by "sensations"? — Graeme M

You are misrepresenting my view. I said it may be necessary but not sufficient. In other words, I don't just imagine "green". I imagine a green object. Something might invoke a feeling like joy, that is not a qualia but an emotion or affective response of some sort. It is the fact that there is an internal-ness in general, whether that be colors, sounds, smells, whole objects, feelings, or even events associated with these things. The experience of understanding new information. Of understanding a piece of art. Of remembering a grocery list. These are more than mere qualia as far as my definition of it goes. I define qualia as sensations, not every internal experience you can have. Some other people might define it in a broader sense. Even if that was the case, that is playing semantics not philosophy per se. In other words, qualia can mean a billion things and it wouldn't change the nature of the hard question, nor its importance in philosophy of mind.

In other words, something like panpsychism. — Pfhorrest

Interesting. Any scientific theories of that sort posit panpsychism as related to observer-dependent quantum theory?

There’s all kinds of stuff on the borders of physics and philosophy that makes all sorts of things out of QM’s observer-dependence. A lot of it is pure woo, that goes on so say everything is conscious in the ordinary way we normally mean because of it. I do identify the kind of “mind” or “consciousness” that my panpsychism is about with quantum observation, but the other way around: quantum observation is no big deal, as most contemporaries physicists will tell you, and I take “phenomenal consciousness” to be nothing more than that, and so likewise not a big deal. All of the interesting stuff that “consciousness” in its usual sense means is handled under the easy problem, as access consciousness.

All of the interesting stuff that “consciousness” in its usual sense means is handled under the easy problem, as access consciousness. — Pfhorrest

That is one interpretation that I think is proposed by Ned Block. However, it may be that A-consciousness is intertwined with P-consciousness. I think it might be more fruitful to make a distinction between pure behavior vs. cognition. Neural networks are behaving, minds are cognizing.

Can you describe an act of introspection that is not accompanied by "sensations"? — Graeme M

This can get pretty far afield of the subject at hand. Are you aware of what happens to the human mind under conditions of "sensory deprivation"?
I don't think it helps to confuse panpsychism with qualia, perception, sensation or functionalism.
Consciousness is the unified integrated presentation of sense data. Perception is a process (causal efficacy, presentational immediacy and symbolic reference). Introspection (self knowledge) is more than sense data.

As I see it, consciousness as we experience is what it’s like (phenomenal consciousness) to be a reflexively aware (access conscious) thing of the type that we are. Since everything has some what-it’s-like on my account, it’s the being-a-reflexive-thing part that matters.

Since everything has some what-it’s-like on my account, it’s the being-a-reflexive-thing part that matters. — Pfhorrest

What do you mean by "what-it's-like" vs. "being-a-reflexive-thing"?

Reflexive means self-referential. Reflexivity is what access consciousness is all about: having access to information about your own mental states, self-awareness in a functional, behavioral way. “What it’s like” is what phenomenal consciousness is about: what the subject first-person experience of being a certain kind of thing is. I’m saying consciousness as we ordinarily think of it is just what it’s like to be self-aware. The “what it’s like” part isn’t special to humans though; only the self-aware part is.

Reflexive means self-referential. Reflexivity is what access consciousness is all about: having access to information about your own mental states, self-awareness in a functional, behavioral way. “What it’s like” is what phenomenal consciousness is about: what the subject first-person experience of being a certain kind of thing is. I’m saying consciousness as we ordinarily think of it is just what it’s like to be self-aware. The “what it’s like” part isn’t special to humans though; only the self-aware part is. — Pfhorrest

Got it. People just don't like the idea of "drops" or "occassions" of experience. To them, brains are either online or offline. No brain, no online. No certain parts of the brain, no online. This raises a whole bunch of other problems, but they rather those problems than experience being primal. The main interesting point of Whitehead was the idea of "corpuscular societies" vs. "compound individuals.

]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. — IEP, Process Philosophy

Similarly, Tononi has very similar ideas in his integrated information theory:

(f) Aggregates are not conscious
‘Take a sentence of a dozen words, and take twelve men and tell to each one word. Then stand the men in a row or jam them in a bunch, and let each think of his word as intently as he will; nowhere will there be a consciousness of the whole sentence’. This is how William James illustrated the combination problem of panpsychism [110]. Or take John Searle: ‘Consciousness cannot spread over the universe like a thin veneer of jam; there has to be a point where my consciousness ends and yours begins’ [117]. Indeed, if consciousness is everywhere, why should it not animate the United States of America? IIT deals squarely with this problem by stating that only maxima of integrated information exist. Consider two people talking: within each brain, there will be a major complex—a set of neurons that form a maximally irreducible cause–effect structure with definite borders and a high value of Φmax. Now let the two speak together. They will now form a system that is also irreducible (Φ > zero) due to their interactions. However, it is not maximally irreducible, since its value of integrated information will be much less than that of each of the two major complexes it contains. According to IIT, there should indeed be two separate experiences, but no superordinate conscious entity that is the union of the two. In other words, there is nothing-it-is-like-to-be two people, let alone the 300 plus million citizens making up the USA.13 Again, this point can be exemplified schematically by the system of figure 5a, right panel. While the five small complexes do interact, forming a larger integrated system, the larger system is not a complex: by the exclusion postulate, only the five smaller complexes exist, since they are local maxima of integrated information (Φmax = 0.19), while the larger system is not a complex (Φ = 0.03). Worse, a dumb thing with hardly any intrinsically distinguishable states, say a grain of sand for the sake of the argument, has no experience whatsoever. And heaping a large number of such zero-Φ systems on top of each other would not increase their Φ to a non-zero value: to be a sand dune does not feel like anything either—aggregates have no consciousness. — https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2014.0167

Got it. People just don't like the idea of "drops" or "occassions" of experience. To them, brains are either online or offline. No brain, no online. No certain parts of the brain, no online. This raises a whole bunch of other problems, but they rather those problems than experience being primal. The main interesting point of Whitehead was the idea of "corpuscular societies" vs. "compound individuals. — schopenhauer1

When I refer to "consciousness" as unified integrated experience with self knowledge it is to this kind of "society" I refer. It takes a certain kind of organizational structure to have such forms of experience. There are many different ways to describe the concept in language, I just prefer Whitehead because of some passing familiarity with his terminology and that because he creates his own terms they do not carry all the alternative meanings of some other descriptive terms. We have trouble defining mind, psyche, experience, awareness, consciousness, etc. much less indicating how we feel they differ from each other.

In scientific terms I think "actual occasions" are best understood as space time events of duration or quantum events with relations as opposed to quantum particles with inherent properties. Traditionally in language we describe a world of independent objects with properties but that is actually not correct. We describe a wall as "solid" which it is to our bodies but to xrays, neutrons and many other entities the wall is mostly empty space, so "solid" is a relationship not a property. Those objects that appear stationary and inert are really activities (quantum events, whirling atoms, etc.)) so again those "properties" are relationships not inherent to the object alone. In fact there are no independent objects or inherent properties. All properties are relationships. All objects are becoming (repetitive events) dependent on the world in which they exist and to which they relate.

In a temporal world what is responsible for continuity?. Where does novelty and creativity and intensity of experience come from?. These are metaphysical not scientific questions. So the fundamental question is the role of mind in nature. For a panpsychist experience is ubiquitous in nature (not consciousness like we humans possess, a special kind of experience or mind) but relations to other events, to the future and novelty (creativity) and to continuity with the past.

For a panpsychist experience is ubiquitous in nature (not consciousness like we humans possess, a special kind of experience or mind) but relations to other events, to the future and novelty (creativity) and to continuity with the past. — prothero

Process theory essentially comes down to the idea that durational events themselves are experiential and this is odd to most people. However, it is only as odd, or maybe even less odd than dualistic Cartesian Theater "experience foam" that just "arises" from "integration" events as a latecomer on the scene. Pick your poison.

Panpsychism from a materialist perspective is absurd, unless you consider an amputated thumb to be as human as the rest of the body. I've been re-reading Hegel again. Saying you believe you are God but don't believe in God seems like a rather odd position to hold, but many say that too. Hegel did say you are "all reality" and an "universal infinite principle". In his Philosophy of Mind he specifically rejects that consciousness "receives and accepts impressions from outside, that ideas arise through the causal operations of external things upon it" ect. Hegel says everything is alive because, as he says in the Philosophy of Mind, German idealism arose from a Jew, Mr. Spinoza, and the whole world is an "accident" of the Substance that is the Lord. "Be Him" says Hegel. Don't be lost in trying to find consciousness in a rock, although there is an ancient Chinese tradition that does that

Panpsychism from a materialist perspective is absurd, unless you consider an amputated thumb to be as human as the rest of the body. — Gregory

I think the panpsychists on this thread have gone out of their way to try to explain the nuances of their views often misrepresented by such statements as these. I'm honestly not quite getting what you're getting at with this post. It seems more than a bit odd. Perhaps @prothero wants to take a swing at the thumb comment? And what does "Be Him" mean? Are you agreeing in some way via Spinozan pantheism or Hegelian idealism that all things are experiential to some degree?

At what point in the chain of being “existence” or “life” do you think this ability disappears working your way down. — prothero

Somewhere below Primates, Cetaceans and possibly Elephants.

At the moment we know that people do not report self-awareness, nor do they have any memories which result from self awareness if their rostral dorsolateral pontine tegmentum is damaged together with the left ventral, anterior insula and the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex. Every single person so far who's had fMri scanning in vegetative states has has disruption in the network between these three areas.

The anterior cingulate cortex has a lot of specialized neurons called spindle cells, which are found only in primates, cetaceans, and elephants. Thus animals less evolved than these would seem to be lacking a structure in the brain which has been experimentally shown to be required for self-awareness. It seem reasonable to conclude, for now, that this would mean animals who don't have this functional area are not self-aware.

It's possible, of course that other animals simply use different cortices for the purpose, certainly the root of consciousness itself (as in awake, as opposed to knocked-out) is in the rostral dorsolateral pontine tegmentum which is a feature of the brainstem, something shared with all other animals with a brain of any description. This would still exclude insects, however.

At what point in the chain of being “existence” or “life” do you think this ability disappears working your way down. Do higher animals have experience? Ants? Bees? Flowers? — prothero

Excellent question.

Somewhere below Primates, Cetaceans and possibly Elephants. — Isaac

My vote, FWIW... where human infants acquire competence in pointing symbols (including samples) at things, so that a red thing is perceived as an example of red things.

My vote, FWIW... where human infants acquire competence in pointing symbols (including samples) at things, so that a red thing is perceived as an example of red things. — bongo fury

Really? So get a newborn, poke it with a sharp stick, does it feel anything?

Really? So get a newborn, poke it with a sharp stick, does it feel anything? — bert1

Feel consciously, I'm prepared to doubt. Not firmly. Just casting a preliminary vote.

If it might elicit a vote from you (because you weren't a panpsychist) I might ask you whether a snail poked with a sharp stick (and hardly lacking in responses quite rightly earning our sympathy) feels consciously.

By 'feel consciously' do you mean 'undergo an experience'?

By 'an experience' do you mean 'a conscious experience'?

I was going to add: ... or the kind of experience a sock can undergo?... but I gather that cuts no ice.

My vote, FWIW... where human infants acquire competence in pointing symbols (including samples) at things, so that a red thing is perceived as an example of red things. — bongo fury

What Whitehead would call perception in the mode of symbolic reference which comes after causal efficacy and immediate presentation.

If it might elicit a vote from you (because you weren't a panpsychist) I might ask you whether a snail poked with a sharp stick (and hardly lacking in responses quite rightly earning our sympathy) feels consciously. — bongo fury

And this is why using "consciousness" (self knowledge, self reference, self awareness) as a synonym for "experience" creates a problem. You can read about unconscious ontology (whiteheads) or non conscious experience but no one is asserting that the experience of a flower, tree, snail is of the same degree or intensity or self knowledge as that of a human. Consciousness is a special kind of experience but without the lower orders of experience there would be no consciousness.

Panpsychism from a materialist perspective is absurd, unless you consider an amputated thumb to be as human as the rest of the body. I — Gregory

If you find bones in the forest you might ask if they are "human". Same for any isolated body part. No one however is claiming an amputated thumb has "consciousness" of the same order, degree, intensity, unified, self aware as that of the intact human organism (society if you will).

The main interesting point of Whitehead was the idea of "corpuscular societies" vs. "compound individuals. — schopenhauer1

I’m a big Whitehead fan, and I like to take this individual-society metaphor in the other direction too. I analogize a society’s educational and governmental institutions to the mind and the will, a kind of societal self-awareness and self-control. And likewise I say that both epistemic and deontic authority are spread diffusely through society in a way that is negligible at the individual level, much like mind and will are diffused throughout the universe in a way that is negligible at the atomic scale. But in both cases, the right kind of functional structures built up out of those constituents can integrate that negligibly diffuse stuff together into something significant: consciousness and free will as we ordinary think of them in humans on the individual scale, and some semblance of academic and political authorities on the societal scale. At both scales, the important feature of this kind of view is that the “novel” thing that’s built up by the end is just a refined form of something normal that’s everywhere, and isn’t actually something wholly new that at some point suddenly starts happening in a way discontinuous with that what was already going on before.

This is one of the kinds of things that I think my Structure of Philosophy helps highlight or draw attention too:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8303/the-structure-of-philosophy

What Whitehead would call perception in the mode of symbolic reference which comes after causal efficacy and immediate presentation. — prothero

Sounds cool. Will drink.

And this is why using "consciousness" (self knowledge, self reference, self awareness) as a synonym for "experience" creates a problem. — prothero

My point exactly. Please read the context.

Consciousness is a special kind of experience but without the lower orders of experience there would be no consciousness. — prothero

This is obvious, but is also what lulls people into the sleep from which this consideration,

It [panpsychism] “explains” why my socks and bubblegum are conscious, even though no one thought they were, but it doesn’t explain why the human brain is conscious the way the human brain is conscious, which is what we actually want to know. — Zelebg

... really ought to rudely awaken them.

Panpsychism is said to have a “combination problem”. . . . It could be termed a dual aspect form of neutral monism. “The emergence of experience from the non-experiential would be sheer magic” — prothero

The "Combination Problem" of Consciousness raises the question of how invisible metaphysical mind-stuff could add-up to visible physical matter-stuff. About 15 years ago, a simple observation by a quantum physicist suggested to me a solution to the Mind/Body paradox. He said, "a Virtual Particle is nothing but Information". He was merely noting that VPs have no measurable tangible material physical properties, they only have mental intangible mathematical metaphysical qualities : formalized as statistical probabilities. Mathematical definitions, such as the Wavefunction do not exist in actuality, but only in potentiality. Yet they are meaningful to rational receptive minds. (i.e. how would a dog conceive of a wavefunction?)

That's when it occurred to me that Matter & Information might be different forms of the same underlying essence : the power to be, and to cause. Einstein had long ago equated Energy with a strange malleable property of Matter that varies with speed relative to Light : Mass. But neither Energy nor Mass are material substances. They exist only as ideas in minds capable of perceiving relationship patterns in spatial or temporal arrays of objects.Those rational patterns may be called mathematical "Facts" by definition, but they are not material "Things". Instead, they are various forms of general Information about things, and how things are related to each other. So this hypothetical universal Mind-field (pan-informationism) is omni-potential. Whose Mind? Whose Potential? Those are not scientific questions, in that they imply super-human minds & powers. But philosophers over the ages have given tentative labels to that great unknown Rational Force : Logos, Demiurge, God, Anima Mundi, Great Spirit, etc. What would you call the ultimate source of all Causes and Effects in the world?

Chalmers : Nevertheless, panpsychism is subject to a major challenge: the combination problem. This is roughly the question: how do the experiences of fundamental physical entities such as quarks and photons combine to yield the familiar sort of human conscious experience that we know and love.

Information : 1. facts provided or learned about something or someone.
2. what is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things.
[ Note : an "arrangement" is a pattern that is meaningful to a mind ]

The bottom line of this line of reasoning is that, --- just as Energy is measured as a ratio (or Proportion) between Hot & Cold, or High or Low, or to positive/negative poles of wavelength --- Mind is also measured in Reasons (Latin - rationes decidendi). Ratios and Proportions are not real physical things, but mental ideas about things. Hence, Energy is nothing but the Idea of Causation, which Hume noted is merely the attribution of creative power to a prior event. So Matter is a product of the "creative power" of the mental ratios that, in other contexts, we call Reason. Therefore, all things in the world are emergent forms of Generic Information : Panpsychism -- all Is Mind. Enformationism -- all is Information. This theory is a 21st century version of ancient Idealism, but it does not deny Realism.

Causation : discovery of relations between objects of comparison. ___Hume

Information : knowledge of relations between things
"knowledge is power"

Enformationism is based on the "dual aspect form" of Energy/Matter, or Body/Mind. Hence it's a type of "neutral monism". Reality is neither all mental (Spiritualism), nor all material (Materialism), but all Potential (Enformationism). Monistic Information is the power to Enform, to create both material objects and mental ideas.

Neutral Monism : What distinguishes neutral monism from its monistic rivals is the claim that the intrinsic nature of ultimate reality is neither mental nor physical. [ it is instead both physical and metaphysical[/i] ]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neutral-monism/

Reason is mind stuff : Reckoning, account, reason, rationale, judgement, consideration, system, manner, method, intention

From this new perspective, "the emergence of experience from the pre-experiential" would be completely natural and evolutionary. Hence, Reality is all Information all the time. it seems to have begun as the creative Potential of the original Singularity, which manifested at first as a prototype of normal Energy & Matter (Quark Gluon Plasma). Unless you believe in magic, all things & events & experiences in the current world originated in that creative event, via emergent phenomena, and phase transitions. Sorry, all this is tricky techy, but I go into even more detail in my blogs. :nerd:

Big Bang's invisible plasma : https://www.space.com/31517-entire-universe-squeezed-one-image.html