I was referring to a dichotomy of views. Apparently you haven't noticed this: — Janus
Sure, but the dichotomous alternative to panpsychism is panzombieism or pandeadism. — Janus
So, the alternative scenarios (ignoring dualistic substance ontologies) as they are usually conceived are;
matter is alive and intelligent
matter is dead — Janus
You admit that there is a brain. Whose brain?Time for a quick recap. I started with an analogy of brain to mirror, and mind to reflected virtual image, thereby suggesting that looking for mind in the substance of brain is a bit like looking for the reflected image behind the mirror. Doomed to disappointment, that is. — unenlightened
But the model is part of you. No one is saying that you are a post. You are a human being writing a post. Human beings have brains/minds. Brains are the model/representation of minds.But here's a problem; I am not present to you. Everything I present to you in the previous paragraph is not me, but the model of me that forms part of the model of the world I am offering for you to use as you wish or chuck in the bin. So I am inscribing on this model, 'the model is not the world, the word is not the thing, I am not my post'. Lest I be accused of nonsense. — unenlightened
But I was addressing the form of your particular ontic claim here - that reality is composed of a substance that is either intrinsically alive/aware or, instead, dead/inert ... whatever that could truly mean. — apokrisis
If instead you are saying panpsychism and eliminative materialism are pretty equivalent in their degree of essential incoherency, then maybe yes — apokrisis
This is the either/or fallacy. There are more options. You are just ignoring them because they don't fit the presumptions you've made in this thread.Accordingly, I think I have only two options left; either some version of incarnation of soul from a spiritual realm, or some version of emergence from particular structures of matter and energy - so far at least, universally structures of living matter. — unenlightened
Right. So we ignore certain facts in order to leave open a question that shouldn't be asked in the first place because it is nonsensical.The theory of evolution seems to speak for the latter option, but my approach here is to leave that question open for the moment, and just look at what I can see and anyone can see, and try to describe it as carefully as I can. — unenlightened
This is the either/or fallacy. There are more options. You are just ignoring them because they don't fit the presumptions you've made in this thread. — Harry Hindu
Well that's what I am saying anyway, because what I want to mean by 'consciousness', whatever else I want to say about it, is that it is something that I see in myself when I am awake, and definitely don't see when I am on the operating table, thank anaesthetics, and see in other people and to varying degrees in animals, and not at all in rocks and plastic spoons. — unenlightened
Do you notice a difference between what you "see" as consciousness within your self, and what you "see" as consciousness within others? — Metaphysician Undercover
So I don't see that my own case is any different at all. — unenlightened
I apprehend my own consciousness in a way different from the way I apprehend another's. — Metaphysician Undercover
So these thoughts appear to have come from my brain, but are actually more or less distorted reflections of the world... — unenlightened
Take the example you gave, telling us to imagine a poplar tree by the lake. I would classify this action of yours as initiative rather than responsive. I perceive you starting this thread as an initiative rather than as a response.
It may be the case that you perceive these conscious actions as responses rather than as initiatives, but I'm not privy to this information, which makes you view the op as responsive rather than as initiative. — Metaphysician Undercover
Again, the way I am describing things sounds a bit like inputs and outputs, and it is a bit misleading. Seeing the coffee cup is an action and drinking the coffee is a sensation, there are not really inputs and outputs that are different kinds, but everything is both and neither, everything is integral, in the same way that a response integrates the creative initiative with what is already there as provocation. — unenlightened
I sort of wonder which way you're leaning. Nothing is conscious or everything is. Or there is this thing called consciousness and there is also the world. — Moliere
Perhaps physics is missing something. — unenlightened
A response includes an element of initiative, as you put it, or as I put it earlier an element of imagination. So my op is hopefully a creative response to various bits and pieces that I have come across and most of the responses at least have been similarly creative, at the same time as they are relevant to the op. — unenlightened
It is rather more radical though to claim that the internal world, memories, models, thoughts, are not conscious either, but are also only more contents and provocations. I mentioned earlier that model time is not real time. You can probably replay the events of yesterday in a few minutes at most, and re-present the past to consciousness. Re-membering, re-presenting is now, all of it is present, or else it is absent. Memories might be 'there' in the brain, just as there is crap behind the sofa that I cannot see, but these things are not 'here' in consciousness. — unenlightened
I locate consciousness in the present; it is presence, it is the now. I can describe the contents from the senses, the computer is on my lap, a cup of coffee steaming to the right, the armchair is red, and I am typing with two fingers. Also, the contents are memories, that I just made the coffee, that I made a post yesterday, and models, that if I scroll up I can read it, that I am intending to continue an exploration in this thread. — unenlightened
So until Harry Hindu or someone else sets forth the alternatives that I haven't thought of, I am left with emergentism, but emergence from "brainy-bodies-in-environments". — unenlightened
Physics has the film 'in the can', but consciousness is watching and acting in that same film. Perhaps physics is missing something. — unenlightened
What if I say your model of consciousness is wrong? There is no such thing as the present, so it is impossible that consciousness is located in the present. The present is an imaginary division which separates the temporal duration of the past from the temporal duration of the future. This is just an artificial boundary, a point which separates two contiguous durations of time, like "noon" separates morning from afternoon. But there could be absolutely nothing there, so it's impossible that consciousness is there. — Metaphysician Undercover
Emergence is a kind of answer to the main question of dualism, "How do these two substances relate?" --but without a real answer other than "Well, this one makes the other one somehow" — Moliere
Re-read my posts.So until Harry Hindu or someone else sets forth the alternatives that I haven't thought of... — unenlightened
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