"why is the evidence that I have for my consciousness different than the evidence others have for my consciousness?" — Harry Hindu
When an idea gains traction, proponents of competing ideas must retreat, consolidate, and reassert themselves in ways that might even compromise the original point of their ideas. When evolution was put on even stronger theoretical ground by genetics, competing ideas re-emerged as intelligent design. When modern cosmology made a compelling argument for a godless genesis, we got the fine-tuning argument. And look what came after America's first black President. — Kenosha Kid
Panpsychism -- a retreat to an old idea that competes with reductionism and thus is attractive to anyone uncomfortable with reductive explanations for consciousness (which is where the evidence is now pointing) -- is an encouraging symptom of the fact that neuroscience is making good progress. We might not have predicted that panpsychism specifically would enjoy a resurgence, but we ought to have predicted that some such anti-reductionist theory of consciousness would. — Kenosha Kid
Then how can you say the YOU are conscious if you can't tell if anyone else is conscious, and there is no theory of conscious? — Harry Hindu
We haven’t even figured out how to explain chemical bonds form purely out of quantum mechanical principles, and it may be a type of emergent phenomenon where doing so is not possible. There’s still decades and centuries in the future to figure out how far we can do it successfully, — Saphsin
just adds more confusing assumptions — Saphsin
If you think there’s no details that you can empirically confirm I’m conscious and tease out the manner in which I am so, and it’s just an unfounded inference, you don’t even need panpsychism. — Saphsin
settling for a non-explanation. — Saphsin
You're saying that people who are open to panpsychism are "uncomfortable" with the facts. I think this is in line with csalisbury's view that the characters on the stage include:
1. A strong, intrepid physicalist, courageously facing the wilderness of truth, simultaneously defeating both panpsychism and nihilism.
2. A weak, muddleheaded boy, plaintively pushing magic on the world, in need of pummeling. — frank
Towards what exactly? — khaled
the best thing to do is pat them on the arm, tell them to have a good night, and escape. — Kenosha Kid
Doesnt anyone want to agree with Deacon that it's quantum theory? — frank
If you don’t need it, if it doesn’t explain anything, then I don’t know why you’re wasting your time with it — Saphsin
all this time you’ve been speaking as if it’s replacing the role of the failure of known forms of scientific explanation — Saphsin
So, in this context, toward a neurological basis of psychology. — Kenosha Kid
So now you’re going in circles and that we need panpsychism, and your previous comment was a total deflection. That was the target of my last comment. — Saphsin
When I say panpsychism doesn’t explain anything, I meant exactly that. I didn’t mean its explanations are unsatisfying because it fails to get to the root of the mystery, but that it’s just label switching and has no positively contributing content or description. And I’m utterly confused why you think it does. — Saphsin
↪khaled
So it’s just word play that brings comfort by the appearance of internal coherency, it doesn’t explain anything or help us grapple with the real world, in line with my first comment. Personally I don’t want to waste my time with that. — Saphsin
Right. And this may mean that the emergence of life happened first, as a prerequisite for the emergence of consciousness among certain living species. It would follow that we be unable to understand consciousness without first understanding life, and its emergence from inanimated matter. — Olivier5
We rightly celebrate the success of physical science, but it has been successful precisely because it was designed, by Galileo, to exclude consciousness. If Galileo were to time travel to the present day and hear about this problem of explaining consciousness in the terms of physical science, he’d say “Of course you can’t do that! I designed physical science to deal with quantities, not qualities.” And the fact that physical science has done incredibly well when it excludes consciousness gives us no grounds for thinking it will do just as well when it turns to explaining consciousness itself. — Phillip Goff
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