• intrapersona
    579
    I think there are other ways to recognize the primacy of consciousness other than by objectifying it in this way.
    — Wayfarer

    such as? are you seriously saying that you know a way that can better rectify the problem of consciousness than panpsychism yet still keep a subjective/objective or purely subjective dichotomy in place?
    intrapersona


    This is a great talk about the primacy of consciousness btw:

  • intrapersona
    579


    I did ask you what a better alternative to evolutionary reductionism is in this case and you said it would be a moral philosophy, yet I said how absurd that is and you agreed and confirmed that is what you thought all along.

    So what is a better alternative to the OP's evolutionary reductionism?
  • Moliere
    4.6k
    I don't know, man. I've only ever seen people arguing over the existence/non existence of altruism use arguments that are riddled with biases and objectively inapplicable.Weeknd

    I'm not sure what you're saying with this. My closest guess is that you're saying that you can only argue about altruism from a subjective viewpoint, and so your argument is not fallacious.

    But I'm just using a common standard for pointing out fallacies in informal logic -- by showing how the form of the argument can both support and refute the same conclusion. So, subjective or not, your argument would still be fallacious by that standard.

    Hence why I'm not sure what you are saying.

    However, in spite of how "ugly" I find the egoist position, I've seen absolutely no good counter arguments, and any example of altruism can be explained away by an egoist as a counter example. This is what forced me into my current position.

    Here again --

    "However beautiful I find the altruistic position I've seen absolutely no good counter arguments, and any example of egotism can be explaiend away by an altruist as a counter example. This is what forced me into my current position"

    You're basically just shifting the burden of proof to the other side of the argument.

    IMO a good reason for the illusion of altruism is the innate human desire for socialization and companionship, which were most definitely necessary for survival as well as satisfaction earlier but arguably are somewhat less necessary nowadays, so we now "see", due to self reliance and isolationism, that what we used to call altruism were just means of fulfillment of one's own desires, securities and moral contentmentWeeknd

    A good reason for the illusion of egotism is that people perform acts of altruism. ;) But if you discount the counter-example then you won't perceive them.

    I think this is a confused bundle, in truth though. For one, you're assuming that our desires today are the same as what they were, and that our desires today are related to the desires of some unknown biological past as well as to our ability to survive as a species.

    But even for traits which are straightforwardly understood to be biological, such as hair color, don't fit this model. Not every trait that an individual animal has is even related to evolution, and traits which a species have are often vestigial or simply "tag-along" with other traits that were selected for.

    Then what is this "we now see"? What is self reliance and isolationism that makes us see?

    I would say these latter are more related to society than either psychology (desire) or biology (reproduction).
  • Wayfarer
    22.3k
    So what is a better alternative to the OP's evolutionary reductionism? — Intrapersona

    Well, I like Peter Russell! I've had the pleasure of meeting him once or twice, and interacted via email a couple of times. And that is very much what I had in mind.
  • Moliere
    4.6k
    On the latter point -- that's how I feel. I tend to think that this line of thinking is more a cultural product than anything.

    On the former -- yup. It's not just for you, but evolution is about populations and not individuals :D It bottoms out at species, after all -- so even larger than populations, since a species persists over several populations.
  • Weeknd
    18
    Why would pansychism derive egoist organisms? It would be more intuitive to think the opposite, that all organisms are one and therefor have no need to serve a segregated and individualized egoist motive.

    Have to admit, "egoism" wasn't really the best term to use here, or anywhere in OP. What I really meant was hedonism (in the philosophical sense of the word), and the innate preference of beings towards stimuli that create inner "positive" sensations
  • Weeknd
    18
    It seems "positive experience" is hard wired in to every single living thing on earth. For trees, the sunlight is positive experience because it provides energy. Sounds ridiculous doesn't it? But you are the one talking about inert matter needing to have "positive inner experiences".

    The essence of panpsychism is that consciousness is an irreducible property of the universe, and I'm of the belief that everything, literally everything, in existence has some degree of qualia attached to it, and the physical complexity of beings enriches the "quality" of inner experience, so you may never know what sunlight or anything else feels to a leaf or a branch or a tree but there's a possibility its not nothing, experience of "nothing", imo is an imaginary construct, I mean, if you think about it, even in your deepest, dreamless sleeps you have some internal sensation going on, and that enables you to tell (approximately) how long you've been asleep
  • Weeknd
    18
    It's not about persuasion as much as facts and arguments
  • Wayfarer
    22.3k
    I am sympathetic to the idea that 'mind is everywhere', but I think you have to be very careful not to try and 'objectify' the mind. What does that mean? Our senses are attuned to the detection and dealing with 'objects of experience', whatever they may be. Science itself starts with the perception of objects and then seeks out the underlying patterns and regularities which connect them. There's no problem in any of that. But the problem is that 'mind' or 'consciousness' is of a radically different nature to any kind of object. When we say that 'we know the mind', we're not saying it is something that we encounter as an object of experience. Rather, it is the subject of experience, that to which experiences occur. So we know it in a very different way to the way we know an object; it is only 'an object' in a metaphorical sense. The knowledge of our own mind is not like knowledge of something, or even the experience of something; the mind is prior to knowledge and experience of anything whatever (which is the basic point of Descartes' 'cogito'.)

    So positing 'mind' as a 'degree of quaiia attached to everything' is an attempt to locate that or situate it objectively. Basically it is a naturalist approach, but it seeks to extend the parameters of naturalism to include something it has designated as 'qualia'. And I am very sceptical about that effort. I have read Galen Strawson's well-known paper on panpsychism, and while I recognise that it is very cleverly argued, and also recognise that it is basically an anti-materialist argument (which makes it a good thing), I am unpersuaded by the fundamental approach. And that is because I believe we never know mind as an object of perception or cognition at all, and that whatever we say about it basically amounts to a kind of projection.

    So that view, or rather, attitude, leads to a completely different way of understanding the issue, one that doesn't seek to naturalise or 'explain' the mind or subjectivity at all.

    //edit// I recommend taking the time to look at the Peter Russell video above.//
  • Harry Hindu
    5.1k
    I think Richard Dawkin's book, The Selfish Gene, addresses many of these issues.

    The most fundamental form of altruism is the process of procreation. Females devote a lot of energy to giving birth and raising the offspring. Males devote a lot of energy to attracting mates and in the actual act of sex. If this fundamental process didn't exist, then genes, and life in general, wouldn't exist. Altruism is a fundamental aspect of the behavior of all organisms. In order for the species to continue to exist requires that they interact with other members of the species.

    If panpsychism is true then we need a better explanation as to why thoughts about things, like filling a glass with water, are different yet similar to actually doing something, like filling a glass with water. Thinking about filling a glass with water isn't the same experience as actually filling a glass with water. If everything is mental, then both acts would be the same thing and be experienced the same way, but it isn't. Either words mean something, like "thinking" as opposed to "doing", and doing is something that other minds have access to, while what you think other minds don't have access to. Other people won't know you filled a glass with water with your thoughts, but they will know it if you actually do it. If panpsychism is true, then why is there any different at all? Why would thoughts, which are only mental, be private, yet actions, which aren't mental, be public?
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