parts are conscious because a whole is, nor that wholes are conscious because their parts are — bert1
Do you know what a contemporary panpsychist would say about selfhood? If there are tiny consciousness units or vast waves of it, where is knowledge of self? Is selfhood emergent? Or is it in the tiny bits? — frank
You would have to say, as per the panpsychists' claim that everything has a soul/mind, that the original piece of wood has both 2^n souls/minds (the 2^n parts) AND 1 soul (the original piece of wood as a whole) and that's a contradiction. — TheMadFool
Sure but on the macro level the uncertainty principle becomes irrelevant so prediction should still be possible as far as I know. — khaled
You have to explain *why* science cannot explain, which means describing its properties such that they aren't amenable to scientific modelling. — Kenosha Kid
The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience. — David Chalmers
...Cosmopsychism, which could be called 'biggism' I suppose. This says we start with the universe as a whole as the primarily conscious entity. — bert1
God, according to the Stoics, "did not make the world as an artisan does his work, but it is by wholly penetrating all matter that He is the demiurge of the universe" (Galen, "De qual. incorp." in "Fr. Stoic.", ed. von Arnim, II, 6); He penetrates the world "as honey does the honeycomb" (Tertullian, "Adv. Hermogenem", 44), this God so intimately mingled with the world is fire or ignited air; inasmuch as He is the principle controlling the universe, He is called Logos; and inasmuch as He is the germ from which all else develops, He is called the seminal Logos (logos spermatikos). This Logos is at the same time a force and a law, an irresistible force which bears along the entire world and all creatures to a common end, an inevitable and holy law from which nothing can withdraw itself, and which every reasonable man should follow willingly (Cleanthus, "Hymn to Zeus" in "Fr. Stoic." I, 527-cf. 537). — New Advent Encyclopedia
Ātman, (Sanskrit: “self,” “breath”) one of the most basic concepts in Hinduism, the universal self, identical with the eternal core of the personality that after death either transmigrates to a new life or attains release (moksha) from the bonds of existence. While in the early Vedas it occurred mostly as a reflexive pronoun meaning “oneself,” in the later Upanishads (speculative commentaries on the Vedas) it comes more and more to the fore as a philosophical topic. Atman is that which makes the other organs and faculties function and for which indeed they function; it also underlies all the activities of a person, as brahman (the Absolute) underlies the workings of the universe. Ātman is a reflection of the universal Brahman, with which it can commune or even attain union. — Encyclopedia Brittanica
Yes but maybe it can’t be ascertainable for most cases. — khaled
Incorrect. Ascribing it says something. — khaled
You’re starting as if there is this word “consciousness” that means nothing that we then ascribe meaning to by specifying some capacity or other. But I would say that consciousness already has a well defined meaning. It is whether or not something can have experiences. — khaled
Which assumes that thinking is ethereal, i.e. the mind is a closed system and anything that goes on inside it is completely transparent to outside interrogation. — Kenosha Kid
what neuroscience sees is the opposite: we can see you think. — Kenosha Kid
What remains is a difficult classification problem: how we identify a particular neurological activity with a particular mental activity. — Kenosha Kid
.....no science is at all possible that has no relevant thought antecedent to it, of which consciousness itself is an integral member.
— Mww
What is the claim here, that since thinking involves consciousness, we cannot start to think about consciousness? It simply doesn't follow. — Kenosha Kid
He penetrates the world "as honey does the honeycomb" (Tertullian, "Adv. Hermogenem", 44), this God so intimately mingled with the world is fire or ignited air; inasmuch as He is the principle controlling the universe, He is called Logos; and inasmuch as He is the germ from which all else develops, He is called the seminal Logos (logos spermatikos). — New Advent Encyclopedia
No problem. I had some ideas that needed a sounding board; I suppose you had similar intentions. I'll leave the discussion now, much wiser than I was when I joined in. Thanks. Good day. — TheMadFool
...Cosmopsychism, which could be called 'biggism' I suppose. This says we start with the universe as a whole as the primarily conscious entity. — bert1
Tantalising hint from ancient philosophy:
"He penetrates the world "as honey does the honeycomb" (Tertullian, "Adv. Hermogenem", 44), this God so intimately mingled with the world is fire or ignited air; inasmuch as He is the principle controlling the universe, He is called Logos; and inasmuch as He is the germ from which all else develops, He is called the seminal Logos (logos spermatikos)." — Wayfarer
You have to explain *why* science cannot explain, which means describing its properties such that they aren't amenable to scientific modelling.
— Kenosha Kid
David Chalmers does that in 'facing up to the hard problem', to wit:
The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.
— David Chalmers — Wayfarer
The eliminativist claims that it is possible in principle to provide an account of the nature of experience in third-person terms, continuous with the other sciences; in other words, the first-person sense of experience can be eliminated without loosing anything essential to it. — Wayfarer
I try to avoid the misleading term Panpsychism, due to its implication that bees and atoms are conscious in a manner similar to human awareness. This may sound anthro-centric to some, but human-self-consciousness is in a whole separate category from bee-awareness. There is indeed a continuum of Information complexity from atoms to humans, but it's still a hierarchy, with silly self-important humans on top. — Gnomon
Yes. But the categorical difference between our own and chimp/dolphin consciousness, is that human self-awareness has created a whole new form of Evolution : Culture. The evolutionary process has accelerated since humans became the dominant species. Unfortunately, human Morality has difficulty keeping up the pace with Technology. :smile:It may not be anthropocentric to say that human consciousness is categorically different to bee consciousness. A more telling comparison would be a chimp or a dolphin. — Kenosha Kid
But the categorical difference between our own and chimp/dolphin consciousness, is that human self-awareness has created a whole new form of Evolution : Culture. — Gnomon
If one accepts both a) the primacy of awareness in one form of another, together will all that this entails (e.g., goal, and thereby telos, driven behaviors), this as an idealist would; and b) the logical necessity that life - and, thereby, the first-person awareness it can be deemed to necessitate - evolved from nonlife; what other conceivable, logically consistent inference could one arrive at other than that of panpsychism? — javra
But the categorical difference between our own and chimp/dolphin consciousness, is that human self-awareness has created a whole new form of Evolution : Culture. — Gnomon
There is indeed a continuum of Information complexity from atoms to humans, but it's still a hierarchy, with silly self-important humans on top. — Gnomon
So, since, as per panpsychism, only things have mind/souls, a part can't have one since, after all, it isn't even a thing to begin with. — TheMadFool
Sorry but I can't see your point. Begin from any point in an organized system - bottom-up or top-down, you're eventually going to have to make a jump from a whole to its parts and wherever, whenever, this happens, you're at risk of commiting the fallacy of composition/division. — TheMadFool
No jump is required — Metaphysician Undercover
Premise 1: Everything has a soul (panpsychism)
Premise 2: Everything about a car (its parts and the car whole) is a thing
Conclusion: The parts of a car have souls. The car, as a whole, has a (one) soul. The car has many souls (parts) and the car has one soul (the car as a whole) [CONTRADICTION!!] — TheMadFool
So that makes a hierarchy with a sharp division. The foundation is a brute material world of entropy flows and the structures and patterns that must produce. Then the further thing is the evolution of semiotic mechanisms - truly informational substrates like membranes, genes, neurons, words, numbers - to support a world of self-interestedly entropifying organisms. — apokrisis
Again, panpsychism is a theory that is "not even wrong" as whether it is the case or not, makes no difference. Panpsychists still explain atoms vs amoeba vs chimps vs humans in terms of genetic information, neural information and cultural information. — apokrisis
Either you are talking about the car as one unified entity, or you are not talking about a car, but a bunch of separate things, existing independently which could be used to make a car. — Metaphysician Undercover
The car cannot have one soul as "a car", and also many souls as "a bunch of independent parts", at the same time, because it cannot fulfill these two distinct descriptions at the same time. — Metaphysician Undercover
Okay. But I'm not locking anyone out or fortifying against new, anticipated, arguments for the proposition. I'm just calling it out as an incoherent concept fallaciously arrived at. Like saying 'the atoms of strawberries taste like strawberries'. :nerd: Feel free is dispel the analogy and correct my criticisms. My "fortress", csal, is the wide open wild spaces of where sound inferences roam free ... like apex predators. :smirk: — 180 Proof
Okay. But I'm not locking anyone out or fortifying against new, anticipated, arguments for the proposition. I'm just calling it out as an incoherent concept fallaciously arrived at. — 180 Proof
Meriones gave Odysseus bow, quiver and sword and over his head he set a helmet made of leather. Inside it was crisscrossed taut with many thongs, outside the gleaming teeth of a white-tusked boar ran round and round in rows stitched neat and tight - a master craftsman's work, the cap in its center padded soft with felt. The Wolf Himself Autolycus lifted that splendid headgear out of Eleon once, he stole it from Ormenus' son Amyntor years ago, breaching his sturdy palace walls one night, then passed it on to Amphidamas, Cythera-born, Scandia-bound. Amphidamas gave it to Molus, a guest-gift once that Molus gave Meriones his son to wear in battle. And now it encased Odysseus' head, snug around his brows"
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