Well, sure, most people in the thread are making assertions, claims, guesses about ontology. — Coben
It seemed that way. But I think simply labeling something woo is rude and contentless.And I was urging against that kind of response to the OP. — bongo fury
I think that could have been shortened to 'I think consciousness emerges in human infants and not in any simpler organisms.' In my posts here I have been arguing that the people I responded to were reacting to various cognitive functions, memory for example, that may or may not correlate with experiencing. It is not woo to point this out. I was not asserting that viruses must be conscious or a pantheism. So, thank you for finally actually describing your views, even if you have failed so far to actually respond to my posts in any substantive way. And using 'metaphysics' as a pejorative, to me, doesn't seem to fit with the kind of intelligence you just showed in this last post. I know a lot of people use metaphysics as a pejorative - not realizing that everyone has metaphysical positions - but that last post tells me you must know better. Most of what is happening in this thread is speculative. I was raising an issue about what might be being (problematically) assumed, especially given our history of bias in relation even to mammals. You disagree with me. Fine. This 'I was urging against that kind of response' is a fancy way of saying you don't want people to disagree with you or who approach the issue another way to post their opinions. Using 'woo' is lazy ass posting and rude. Tossing metaphysics in after that was poor use of the term, since it is a blanket pejorative use for a whole area in philosophy that even you have assumptions within. On your third post, you can't even bother to respond to my arguements, but presume I should have noticed your earlier desire in a post of yours in the thread I was not responding to. You'll have to forgive me if I ignore any further posts of yours in the thread.As it happens, though, doing ontology, in the straightforward sense of inferring domains of objects to serve as the potential targets of our word-pointing, i.e. doing semantics, would be my suggestion for roughly where to look for the emergence of consciousness in (e.g.) human infants. — bongo fury
Actually nothing in what you wrote implies that consciousness is the result of evolution. Because certain things can be the result of evolution does not mean all things are. — Coben
And scientists, after long bias, are beginning to consider that plants are conscious, despite the lack of nervous systems. They have memory, react to pain, communicate, even across plant species, make choices (albeit much slower than we do in general, but not always), and have across whole plant reactions that look very much like nervous system reactions despite not having one. There is absolutely no reason to assume they are not conscious. Note my wording. — Coben
Panpsychism must be true in some way because it’s maximally vague and ambiguous. Consider emergentism, the opposite of panpsychism, and yet if true, panpsychist could still say the possibility of emergence was built-in throughout the fabric of the universe all along, and that would be truth, but useless truth. Too general to the point of being meaningless, like stating “everything is universe”. It’s far more reasonable to say “consciousness is a program”, because, at least in some way, that’s what it is. — Zelebg
The functionality of things is what groups them. The way information flows through systems, the causal connectedness or isolation of them.
And phenomenalist panpsychism had the same usefulness as naturalism: it ends up purporting that a completely trivial property belongs to everything (naturalness/first-person experience) sure, but in the process of denying that a property that would be absurd if substantiative applies to everything. — Pfhorrest
Emergentism claims that consciousness is more than the sum of its parts. Or put another way, that the parts are a necessary, but not sufficient condition for (self) consciousness.
Panpsychism claims that the parts (or a part) are sufficient for consciousness, but in order to make this claim its proponents need to redefine consciousness as two different things; phenomenal and access. Phenomenal consciousness being a necessary condition of access consciousness. Or, put another way Access, or self-consciousness, emerging from phenomenal consciousness.
Put this way there seems to be little or no difference between the two positions apart from the convoluted terminology required in order to argue for panpsychism. — Txastopher
Doesn't emergentism also argue that a new property emerges from simply the combination of matter in such a way that we can never predict such an emergence from simply looking at all the physical property of the constituent matter. — StarsFromMemory
proto-consciousness is a part of all particles and when those particles come together, full blown consciousness emerges. — StarsFromMemory
There is nothing exactly new emerging here nor something that cannot be predicted if we know about what this proto consciousness is. — StarsFromMemory
I'd take issue with your use of 'never'. Sure, we don't understand it at the moment, but never predict it? — Txastopher
Emergentism doesn't hold that any trace of consciousness is already present in fundamental particles but when they combine in a certain way, out of nowhere, a non-physical property arises. We cannot thus deduce how the property arose simply by analysing the constiuents and/or their arrangment. — StarsFromMemory
Do you also think that consciousness is a property of only complex nervous systems and is thus entirely absent in insects,birds and other simpler organisms? — StarsFromMemory
From what I gather, you don't seem to think any form of consciousness other than self-consciousness exists — StarsFromMemory
What do you mean by self-consciousness? Is it simply the awareness of one's existence or does it also include awareness of one's internal mental states and awareness of the external world? — StarsFromMemory
Do you also think that consciousness is a property of only complex nervous systems and is thus entirely absent in insects,birds and other simpler organisms? — StarsFromMemory
What is done cognitively with sensory information appears to depend on the complexity of the nervous system. — Txastopher
it's not necessary whereas in humans it appears to be a useful evolutionary adaptation. — Txastopher
I am unsure that consciousness can be anything but self-consciousness. — Txastopher
You either are aware of your existence, or you are not — StarsFromMemory
Would you please elucidate how being aware of my existence is beneficial to me. Birds, according to you, are not aware of their existence, they seem to survive just fine. — StarsFromMemory
What do you make of qualia then? You can't deny that there is indeed a subjective experience when we look at ,say, a colour. Surely self-awareness alone can't account for this. — StarsFromMemory
On the first point, reflexively, you should be able to answer your own question. On the second, I was unaware that I had opined on birds self-consciousness. — Txastopher
It seems that the writer is trying to imply that since many single-celled organisms respond to light, heat and vibrations, they must havee some corresponding degree of consciousness. (He doesn't claim so but also doesn't deny it) — StarsFromMemory
If behavior is all we have access to and we do, continually, infer consciousness from it when it's other humans then what reasonable objection could be raised against inferring consciousness from the "behavior" of other organisms?
That said, consciousness may not be an all/nothing phenomenon but may come in degrees; bacterial consciousness may not be at the same level as human consciousness. — TheMadFool
I think we should consider that consciousness is a product of information integration by a complex nervous system. I am not really convinced by this but it can be seen as a source of consciousness.
What would it mean for a human to be more conscious than other organism? Like someone rightly pointed out, only the degree of sensory input can vary, however consciousness seems rather same that is, there is nothing to say that birds have less intense experience than us, less detailed perhaps, but not less intense. Again someone else in this thread pointed this fact out. — StarsFromMemory
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