It “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. To put it mildly, panpsychism is irrelevant and pointless. — Zelebg

If that was truly the case, then panpsychism would indeed be irrelevant and even stupid. However, panpsychism does explain human consciousness. If we stick to its principles, we are forced to conclude that everything has some sort of experience caused by interaction with environment. No one is saying that trees have thoughts or they are aware of their inner mental state or anything like that.

Do you have a point you want to make using the case of such reflex action?

It was originally answer to someone's question, not related to panpyschism.

If we stick to its principles, we are forced to conclude that everything has some sort of experience caused by interaction with environment.

Define "experience".

Feelings and experiences vary widely. For example, I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has. Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. In this broad sense of the term, it is difficult to deny that there are qualia. Disagreement typically centers on which mental states have qualia, whether qualia are intrinsic qualities of their bearers, and how qualia relate to the physical world both inside and outside the head. The status of qualia is hotly debated in philosophy largely because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness. Qualia are at the very heart of the mind-body problem.

Taken from the below entry:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia

Read the entry if you would like to know what we are referring to when we say phenomenal experience or qualia.

Also, 'Mary's Room' thought experiment demonstrates the existence of qualia almost perfectly. The thought experiment is described in the entry. So I do recommend reading it

To put it mildly, panpsychism is irrelevant and pointless. — Zelebg

Like legalising homicide in order to solve the problem of murder, it's sophistry.

Also, 'Mary's Room' thought experiment demonstrates the existence of qualia almost perfectly. The thought experiment is described in the entry. So I do recommend reading it

Instead of definition you gave description. In any case, qualia is just one more thing panpsychism can not address. The brain itself is an obstacle for panpsychism.

It “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. To put it mildly, panpsychism is irrelevant and pointless. — Zelebg

What I wrote certainly doesn't explain anything (in the sense of Chalmers's Hard Problem).

But it does suggest the scope of consciousness in the universe. Which may be of no interest to you, but to me that would tell me a lot about consciousness.

And my hypothesis that all matter and elementary particles possess consciousness does not really say that socks or bubble gum is conscious as a whole. What would be conscious as a whole are assemblages of matter that are highly self-interactive. Which is why I listed some things that qualify: plants, animals, viruses, molecules, atoms, elementary particles, clouds, planets, stars, galaxies. And this works hierarchically as well, so groups of people, flocks of birds, beehives, and even (on a yet higher level of organization) the United Nations are included.

Socks and bubble gum are not completely lacking in consciousness, either — because their components, at some level, have it. In these cases, probably just their molecules.

As for human consciousness, this hypothesis posits that, like all consciousness, it stems ultimately from some kind of nanoconsciousness at the tiniest level of magnification.

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

Yes, well put.

Yes, but those philosophical presuppositions are entirely justified while the presuppositions required for the correction of qualia before it becomes conscious have been widely abandoned — StarsFromMemory

...no? All that part you quoted about the problems of the Cartesian Theater view is questioning the presuppositions that lead to the conclusion that qualia inversion occurs, and therefore supporting my position that it doesn't.

I think the most illuminating part of that paper is the bit about people wearing vision-rotating goggles, where the people who have fully adapted to the upside-down view of the world to the point that they can do all the normal things people can do with right-side-up vision report that the very question of whether they've learned to internally perceive the upside-down view as right-side-up or just learned how to control their bodies to account for an apparently upside-down world is simply incoherent. There isn't a clear distinction between mentally flipping their perception and flipping their body movements to compensate for their flipped perception: it's the same thing, changing the behavioral output is the same thing as changing to perceptual input.

I don't think so

The author accepts the possibility that there might be an inversion, however the author also maintains that the inversion, while possible, does not necessarily follow.

To justify this, the author presents two possibilities based on the following argument :

If p1 and p2 receive different inputs (r-cones in p1 and g-cones in p2) and yet respond in the same way by saying something like 'that is red colour', then the processing of the input must be different on some level.

The two possibilities he presents are :

• The processing is different before the experience of the sensation
• The processing is different after the experience of the sensation

Then the author goes on to say that if the processing is different before the qualia becomes conscious (i.e before the person feels the sensation), then there may be a scope for correction of that qualia in the pseudonormal person. Hence, no inversion will take place and the green sensation p2 was supposed to experience will be converted to red. From then, since the sensation is of red, his output will be the same as p1 (p1 did not require any correction of qualia)

The second possibility means that p2 does experience green sensation itself, however, his behavior is same as p1 (who experiences red) because their higher level processing is different (the processing done after qualia is conscious and felt). In this case, p2 does indeed experience green and yet since the further processing of this sensation is different, he reacts the same way as p1 who experiences the colour red. Hence, in this case, colour inversion does take place and functionalism is challenged.

Hence, the author says that colour inversion does not necessarily follow from the experiment since it could be possibility one.

The key point here is that both the possibility are derived assuming 'Cartesian theater theory' because the narrator assumes the following sequence of events :

Input
Low level processing (Either this can be different in brain of pseudonormal people)
Sensation
High Level Processing (Or this can be different in brain of pseudonormal people)
Output


Hence, both the possibility the author derives rests on a widely criticized philosophical presupposition. If the Cartesian theatre theory is not true, then the possibility of qualia correction does not even arise and hence qualia inversion must follow. (if sensations don't accumulate in one place to be processed)

There isn't a clear distinction between mentally flipping their perception and flipping their body movements to compensate for their flipped perception: — Pfhorrest

There should be a distinction. One would mean changing perception to ensure no change in behaviour is required, and the other would be changing behaviour to ensure no change in perception is required.

However, I think what you meant was, that we cannot empirically know which one it is.

That would be accurate but like I argue in my previous post, that first scenario (changing perception back to normal) is only plausible when the behaviours corresponding to the normal perception have already been formed and the normal perception has already been adapted to. The people had already adapted to seeing their world like we do and had formed behaviour patterns for this normal perception. However, when the perception changes to upside down view, it could happen that the brain corrects this upside down perception to the normal perception because the behavioural habits corresponds to the normal view. It could also be possible that the brain changes the behavioural patterns. Both are possible and empirically indistinguisable. It does seem easier to change the behaviour to match perception rather than change the entire perception to match behaviour. Hence, it is more plausible to believe that it is the behaviour that is changing. (Imagine how much inversion at each step is to take place to invert the perception back to normal)

One last question. When a functionalists says that the function of pain is to produce negative thoughts, a flight-fight response etc, on what basis is pain assigned to those particular functions?

Is it simply because we value our own lives and hence those are the functions of pain that aid our survival?

Isn't supposing pain has a function which is to help us know of and escape terrible situations already assuming that I have a inbuilt/hard-coded will to survive?

Would the function of pain in an organism for whom survival is not of prime importance be vastly different than the function of pain in us?

It seems to me we are describing functions of mental states by taking the human viewpoint in which survival is the most important thing.

To justify this, the author presents two possibilities based on the following argument — StarsFromMemory

And then he criticizes that by criticizing the view that there is one particular place somewhere in the causal chain that the experiencing happens, which by the end he seems rather resoundly against with the whole flipped-vision-goggles scenario.

Which you pretty much say here:

The key point here is that both the possibility are derived assuming 'Cartesian theater theory' because the narrator assumes the following sequence of events : — StarsFromMemory

Hence, both the possibility the author derives rests on a widely criticized philosophical presupposition. If the Cartesian theatre theory is not true, then the possibility of qualia correction does not even arise and hence qualia inversion must follow. (if sensations don't accumulate in one place to be processed) — StarsFromMemory

I don't see him making that conclusion, and I don't follow how you can make that conclusion. Qualia inversion is only possible if Cartesian theater theory is true and the second of those two correction-scenarios is the case. If Cartesian theater theory is false, then there isn't any one place in the causal chain where the experiencing happens, and so if beginning-to-end you have the same results, the overall experience is the same. Like the people with the upside-down goggles said: asking whether they're rotating the image in their mind or rotating their body movements to match the upside-down image is incoherent to them, they're the same thing to them.

There should be a distinction. One would mean changing perception to ensure no change in behaviour is required, and the other would be changing behaviour to ensure no change in perception is required.

However, I think what you meant was, that we cannot empirically know which one it is. — StarsFromMemory

No, I'm saying that, according to your article, the people who had fully adapted to wearing upside-down goggles reported that there was no difference between those two scenarios to them. The question of whether it was their perception or their behavior that had adapted was deemed incoherent, by them, who had done the adaptation. Which suggests that Cartesian theater theory is false (there isn't one place in the chain where the experiencing happens), and so qualia inversion isn't actually a thing.

Would the function of pain in an organism for whom survival is not of prime importance be vastly different than the function of pain is us? — StarsFromMemory

Yes, of course. Pain is what I term an "appetitive" experience, an experience of something seeming good or bad (in this case, bad), an imperative experience, one that commands you, rather than an indicative experience, that merely informs you. We have appetites that command us to do things that contributed to our survival and reproduction, because we descend (with inheritance) only from creatures that did likewise, because creatures that did otherwise did not survive and reproduce to leave any successors to inherit those features. If somehow a creature were to come into being through a process other than evolution, so that such features did not preclude such beings from coming to exist as they would an evolved species, then those creatures could in principle have completely different appetites than we do, or none at all. (My computer, for instance, probably doesn't experience anything vaguely like pain, and probably would not, unless we carefully programmed it to).

Okay I apologise, I misinterpreted the article. Thanks a lot of pointing that out.

I get what you mean about inverted qualia being incoherent now.

Functionalism does seem to explain consciousness rather neatly and it also explains the response of the people in the inverted goggles experiment perfectly.

:up: