Not that that really means much, since it’s such a trivial thing.

E.g. if free will is just the absence of determination then every electron has free will. That makes it clear that that is a pretty useless sense of “free will”, — Pfhorrest

I think one's metaphysical view of the nature of "reality" (worldview) is important. It profoundly affects the way that individual makes decisions and approaches problems.
For example if one attributes feelings, experience and awareness to other creatures one is likely to behave differently towards them than if one regards them as robotic automatons (pure stimulus response systems).
If one regards the world as a creative becoming (a process) with interdependence and interrelationships your approach is different than if one regards the world as inert independent objects with fixed inherent properties ("vacuous actualities" devoid of "any inner experience") (eliminative materialism)) or (mechanistic determinism).
I am not sure adding "free will" (itself a highly controversial term and subject) will be productive, although rejecting the doctrine of mechanistic determinism with respect to nature is important to considering the various forms of panpsychism.

I'm not sure I understand why we even use expressions like "consciousness" or "experience" when speaking of non-living entities. Do the planets have the "experiences" of revolving about the sun? Does a virtual particle - which may only be a mathematical device - have "consciousness" or "experience"? Do quarks have free will? Why is it important for some people to apply these and similar words removed from a context of living beings? — jgill

Actually drawing a bright line between the living and the non living and the experiential and the non experiential is not such an easy task as you imply. It is precisely in attempting to draw such a line that one begins to consider, becoming over being, and process and relationship over being and properties. The task is also what leads some to consider panpsychism over mechanistic and deterministic approaches to nature and reality.

Really thoughtful responses. I have sympathies with Whiteheadian process philosophy as it starts from experiential and/or occasional processes and goes from there.

Actually drawing a bright line between the living and the non living and the experiential and the non experiential is not such an easy task as you imply. It is precisely in attempting to draw such a line that one begins to consider, becoming over being, and process and relationship over being and properties. The task is also what leads some to consider panpsychism over mechanistic and deterministic approaches to nature and reality — prothero

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I think of the "living" having the ability to reproduce. My pet rock can't seem to do the job unless I hit it with a hammer. And then it has a shattering experience.

But I see your point. :cool:

Are mules not alive?

More so than rocks I wager. But equines in general do reproduce. Is a mule an equine?

A mule is an equine, but it can’t reproduce.

Some humans can’t reproduce either. Are they not alive?

Species. :roll:

I joined this forum the other day when I found it by accident while looking for some info about a topic other than consciousness. But panpsychism intrigues me. Or at least, what I think people mean by that term. I run into it a lot with certain people who want to claim that the fundamental fabric of the universe, as it were, is consciousness. I never quite know what that means.

I haven't read this thread in detail - to be honest, most of it goes over my head - but I found it a pretty unsatisfying thread on the whole. Not because those contributing have done so poorly, quite to the contrary, but because I haven't been able to get a clear picture of what anyone is really talking about. This could be my problem of course, but still...

The difficulty I have is that a persistent theme seems to be that consciousness is referred to as some actual "thing", even by those who may be questioning its presence. What is consciousness, the writer asks, and the answer is "experience", or "awareness", or "feeling". When I think about consciousness, which I do on occasion because it is pretty interesting, I can't actually see it anywhere.

When I try to pull it apart, I can't find anything really. I don't mean that I am not aware of things because we all agree that we are aware of things, I just mean I can't actually put my finger on some thing called awareness or experience. I agree that there is something that it is like to be me, so clearly something is going on. But I have to confess it really seems like no more than a particular informational state - that is, consciousness is a concept that stands in for how we use information to model states of affairs. If we start thinking that we are viewing actual objects or having experiences of things, I kinda think we've fallen into the trap of the Cartesian Theatre.

That is why panpsychism seems so untenable - it's explaining some claimed quality of the world that doesn't seem to be there. I can't for the life of me see why anyone would want to say that a rock has some kind of awareness, at least not in the sense we typically mean. Sure, it's aware if we observe there are real physical relationships between a rock and the rest of the world and the rock can be seen to be causally related to the rest of the world, but I am pretty sure that we aren't talking about that. We are really talking about a system abstracting information from the world to model functional processes peculiar to itself. I suppose that is some form of computationalism, though I confess I haven't the background to make that claim.

Perhaps in some sense panpsychism IS true, in that any computational system that models informational entities and relationships will be "conscious", but I feel that is also a bit misleading because we immediately start to think Cartesian actors by saying so...

If you wish to explore "consciousness" as an information problem you might check out Tononi and this article from Scientific American would be a good start
/https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/can-integrated-information-theory-explain-consciousness/
Also the existence of mind or "consciousness" in nature would seem to be the one thing we can hardly doubt because of our immediate "awareness" and self reflection. It is what allows us to question and think in the first place. With that as a given one can begin to inquire what and who else has some form of awareness, experience, mind or consciousness. I think these terms actually have different meanings but get conflated in discussions such as this. The mental like the physical comes in various forms and degrees but not a difference in metaphysical kind.

Actually nature is filled with self organizing and self sustaining systems in physics, chemistry and biology. One can view the entire planet as a self organizing and sustaining system (gaia theory). The classic example often put forth are viruses and the self replicating molecules of RNA, DNA, etc. I think that is thinking on too small a scale. No process, system, or form of life exists in isolation, there are strong inter dependencies and interrelationships that make the assertion "this is alive" and "that is not" questionable as a philosophical proposition. No living thing can exist outside of the environment (universe) from which it has arisen and on which it depends, it is "process" all the way down.

prothero

What is the difference between protoconsciousness and consciousness?

As I stated when I started I do not want a dispute about the meaning of words as opposed to ideas. You and I have many areas of agreement but we disagree about the best way to present panpsychism and favor different versions of the basic notion. I know a lot of philosophers use the term "consciousness" in the broader way you prefer.

I think "consciousness" as commonly used and understood by a wider audience refers to the kind of self reflective, self aware, unified, integrated, intense experience or mind of which we humans are "aware" when we are awake (not asleep, not in a coma, not "knocked out", etc.). I think most people object to the notion the "experience" or "mind" of anything other than the highest and most complex animals is "conscious" in the sense in which we usually use and perceive the meaning of the term.

There are lots of other terms to use: mind, experience, awareness, prehension, etc. Perhaps fundamental to the way I present my view of "panpsychism" are terms like "mind in nature" or "panexperientialism", "non conscious experience" , "mentality", "psychialism". I think saying things like "electrons are conscious" loses a great number of any audience that might be listening.

We can probably agree there is some fundamental aspect of nature which is "subjective or internal, what it is like" that is not measured by physical science and which is present in various forms and degree throughout nature but which is the same metaphysical kind or category, or not?

Tononi's theory seems to make a lot of sense, though I think it probably better describes a particular kind of consciousness. I haven't read it in depth though so may be mischaracterising it. The problem that always remains is how is it we or some other creature can be "conscious" - how is it that there is something it feels like to be me.

What I am suggesting is that we are mistaken when we claim that consciousness exists because we are aware of it. You say that consciousness is what allows us to think and question, but it would seem theoretically possible for us to design a machine that can do relatively the same things. After all, it really is our brain thinking and questioning. Any system that can compute information from its own data store and produce responses that indicate it has just done so would seem to be conscious on that view. I would agree. So too does Graziano. But that doesn't mean that consciousness is some quality of the world.

If consciousness is the feeling of the world, what exactly does that mean? It seems to me that when we think we are experiencing things (or seeing an object or hearing a sound), I suggest we have have just fallen into the Cartesian Theatre. We can never explain that so long as we believe "we" are participating in an experience.

I am not sure where to go with that.
One can simulate intelligent behavior with AI but I doubt there is the kind of "subjective or interior experience" there that we usually attribute to ourselves.
One can doubt many things but the "reality" of our own inner feelings, awareness and thoughts (I think therefore I am) would not seem to be a productive start. Descartes started right but went wildly wrong when he came to dualism as a conclusion.
We try to eliminate the "subjective" from our scientific "objective" study of the world, but the separation is hardly entirely complete or successful and something seems missing from entirely objective descriptions of human experience (love, sadness, joy). Who is doing the investigation and making the observations anyway.
We try to communicate our inner experience with language but verbal descriptions are never complete descriptions of the "actual event or occasion".
We attribute "inner experience or subjective experience" to other humans on the basis of observation, behavior, similarity and verbal and other types of communication but we are never actually privy to the entire content of anyone else's "mind". There seems little point to seriously doubt it.
That there is mind in the world seems to be a first principle. What other entities have some form of "mind" would seem to be the reasonable question and area of philosophical speculation.

I don't think I am denying subjectivity, if by that we mean a privileged point of view. I am also not denying that we take in information from the world and use it to model functional responses - the results of which we observe in behaviours. Or that we can report on how we do that (to a limited extent, anyway). The problem seems to be when we take that a step further and imbue the modelling as a discrete reality. But it isn't, how could it be?

I think the trouble with consciousness is probably language - by creating terms to describe our internal experience we have given concrete existence to something that isn't really there. We report that we "see" things, that "we" feel emotions, that the subjective perspective of our corporeal selves is somehow a separate entity.

Now, I am no scientist nor philosopher, so I guess I don't know the detail enough. But I disagree with your suggestion that it is unlikely that an AI can have a "subjective or interior" experience. As I read that, I get the feeling you are saying that inside us, there is some thing. An entity, perhaps, or some qualitative essence. And taken as such we are in trouble because how could we ever measure such an unphysical phenomenon? And how could a mere machine of all things also have this inner essence?

The answer is, I suggest, that it cannot. Nor can we.

Taken in that wise, panpsychism cannot be a real description of anything. Information on the other hand is a real description of a real, physical quality of the universe. And it is always available to the right kinds of agents to exploit. Whether it is you, me, a crocodile or an AI. But not rocks, I am willing to wager.

I think the trouble with consciousness is probably language - by creating terms to describe our internal experience we have given concrete existence to something that isn't really there. We report that we "see" things, that "we" feel emotions, that the subjective perspective of our corporeal selves is somehow a separate entity. — Graeme M

Well language is always a problem being imprecise and subject to interpretation, but I think the difference is more than that.
You seem to imply the psychic, mental or experiential is not "real" "existent" somewhat like eliminative materialism might imply.
One response is that (in my case anyway) there is no separate or free floating consciousness. Human experience requires a functioning intact human brain. It is that "reality" is more than what can be objectively observed, measured or quantified. There is a physical correlate to any experience but merely looking at the material or physical fails to captures the totality of the "event". Merely describing the region of the brain which is active, the neurotransmitters, the neuronal network, etc does not give a complete, adequate or entirely satisfactory description of the event (love, hate, sadness, joy) . Much like talking about your trip is no substitute for actually having made the trip and describing the infrared in scientific terms fails to create warmth.

I think it's more than simple ambiguity. I think it's a sort of fundamental misinterpretation. I should emphasise again that I am not saying that what we call inner experience doesn't exist, but rather that we are mistaken in how we think it exists.

So I am not implying that the "mental" as it were is not real - there must be some actual thing happening - but that the qualities of the mental are not genuine physical qualities. Instead, they are descriptions of process. Red for example isn't a real property of the world. It's a description of how a physical quality of the world affects my body. Perhaps it might make more sense to say that the objects of mind are logical/informational objects - they represent relationships between cellular responses.

I suggest that if we move from thinking that our experience is a representation of the world and view it as the state of internal information manipulation, we no longer need to explain "consciousness". If this were so, then qualia for example aren't really actual entities that somehow emerge from neuronal interactions, rather they are distinctions, differences, equalities that are grounded in genuine physical states (you will see from this that red doesn't have to be an experiential quality that can be defined on those terms - so long as any population is reliably agreed about when something is red, then "red" as a descriptor is reliably observed). In the end, the world we inhabit (as opposed to the world without) is an abstracted model, perhaps something like Graziano's attension schema. WE are a model, if you like.

So, while information is ubiquitous in the universe, I think computing agents (information processors) are not. That's why I think panpsychism fails. It's trying to describe a process as a thing.

Perhaps fundamental to the way I present my view of "panpsychism" are terms like "mind in nature" or "panexperientialism", "non conscious experience" , "mentality", "psychialism". — prothero

Wiki: Mentality may refer to:
1. Mindset, a way of thinking
2.The property of having intelligence
3. Mental capacity, a measure of one's intelligence, the sum of one's intellectual capabilities

Present your definition of mentality, please. The Stanford article on panpsychism refers frequently to mentality, but I couldn't find a clear definition of the word in that context. Being a math person I prefer an intelligible presentation of basic definitions.

Is this what you mean: "self organizing and self sustaining systems in physics, chemistry and biology." ?

Can we state that awareness is not self-awareness if we do not yet understand what awareness is? — Jonathan Hardy

No, I don't think we can. But we (or at least I) do understand what awareness is.

But all of those still follow a nothing to something jump. A good example of the confusion might be the following. Dichromatic vision to Trichromatic vision is not a step up in the gradient of chromatics. It is dichromatic or not dichromatic, or trichromatic and not trichromatic. — Jonathan Hardy

That's interesting. Let's say that's true, that phenomenologically, there is a sharp distinction between dichromatic and trichromatic experience. And let's also assume that these phenomenologies are closely correlated with biological systems. I don't really know the biology of sight at all, but can we find a similarly sharp distinction in the biology with which to correlate the phenomenology? Or can we find borderline cases of the physical biology?

Basically if what we ‘experience’ - our ‘experiencing’ - is what we call consciousness, — I like sushi

That's not what I would call consciousness. I'd call what we experience the content of consciousness, i.e. what we are conscious of.

I think language is important and I try to avoid using terms like “consciousness” in ways that violate the common uses and understandings of the term. Language is imprecise and it is important to try to agree on definitions lest discussions become more disputes about usage of words than about ideas. — prothero

I agree. However, I think philosophers of mind, including me, do use the word 'consciousness' in a perfectly normal sense. Indeed, it is the sense often first listed in a dictionary.

Rocks as simple aggregates would not be expected to have any unified experience. I think calling a rock "conscious" is part of what makes "panpsychism" seem silly to a lot of people. Asserting the individual constiuents of rocks "quantum events" have some form of non-conscious proto-experience is an entirely different matter. — prothero

There are different versions of panpsychism. You're a micropsychist (only constituents of rocks are conscious), I'm something else (not sure what to call it). I think any object at all, however defined, has a unitary experience. My view is much weirder than yours.

Why is it important for some people to apply these and similar words removed from a context of living beings? — jgill

Because they think it is true, presumably. Things that seem strange sometimes turn out to be true. Then after a while it doesn't seem strange any more.

I think saying things like "electrons are conscious" loses a great number of any audience that might be listening. — prothero

Yes, but there is little value in saying things that people can interpret to fit their own view if what you intend to do is disagree with them. But maybe you are a more agreeable person that I am, and maybe you will keep people interested long enough to have a conversation with them that I will miss out on.

That is why panpsychism seems so untenable - it's explaining some claimed quality of the world that doesn't seem to be there. I can't for the life of me see why anyone would want to say that a rock has some kind of awareness, at least not in the sense we typically mean. — Graeme M

They'd want to say it because they think it's true, presumably what you mean is that you can't think why anyone would think it was true that a rock was aware.

Human experience requires a functioning intact human brain. — prothero

Yes, human experience requires a functioning human, just as canine experience requires a functioning dog, snail experience requires a functioning snail, and rock experience requires a functioning rock.

What I am suggesting is that we are mistaken when we claim that consciousness exists because we are aware of it. — Graeme M

What does the word 'aware' in this sentence mean? It can't mean 'conscious' because you're implying that awareness exists but saying that consciousness does not exist.

So I am not implying that the "mental" as it were is not real - there must be some actual thing happening - but that the qualities of the mental are not genuine physical qualities. Instead, they are descriptions of process. Red for example isn't a real property of the world. It's a description of how a physical quality of the world affects my body — Graeme M

I am perfectly happy to describe the “mental” as a process. The corollary to that concession is that IMHO the entire universe is a process “Process and Reality A.N. Whitehead”. I have a process-relationship view of nature versus an object –properties view. The most fundamental units of nature are “spacetime events, occasions”. These spacetime events for the type of panpsychist that I represent are not purely physical in nature but also possess a “experiential or mental pole, Whitehead used the term “prehension”. This for me is a type of “neutral monism”. I like the parsimony of monism versus any form of dualism or other plurality ontology or metaphysics. The physical and experiential are inseparable components of all processes and events
.
When you say “red isn’t a property of the real world” you engage in what Whitehead would call an “artificial bifurcation of nature”. We are part of nature, our perceptions are part of nature. The division of the world into primary and secondary qualities per Locke is an artificial one that leads us into many of our philosophical difficulties. I don’t want to get sidetracked into a discussion about the nature of perception or sensation (how well our perceptions represent “the real world”. We are part of nature, we arise from nature and thus our perceptions are as “real” as any other part of nature.

I suggest that if we move from thinking that our experience is a representation of the world and view it as the state of internal information manipulation, we no longer need to explain "consciousness — Graeme M

Again this takes us into the philosophy of perception and will sidetrack the notion of “panpsychism”. Just for reference I like Whitehead on this subject as well, with his theory of perception “causal efficacy, presentational immediacy and symbolic reference”. A good introduction by Steven Shaviro http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=1274 who I find in general to be a good interpreter of modern philosophy (some writers speak to me, others do not ).

In the end, the world we inhabit (as opposed to the world without) is an abstracted model, perhaps something like Graziano's attension schema. — Graeme M

I think our perceptions represent the world to us well enough for us to function. Granted our perceptions are limited and may mislead us regarding the nature of reality and science has shown many of our perceptions or common sense notions to be incorrect. For me this includes the notions of the larger world being inert, mechanical and deterministic and devoid of any form of “will, psychical, mental or experiential qualities”.