We either suppose that the intrinsic nature of fundamental particles involves experience or we suppose that they have some entirely unknown intrinsic nature. — Philip Goff
How does my experience of being a human, in a world, emerge from individual particles (that have experience as part of their nature). Is my conscious experience physically located throughout the particles within my brain, only some of them, or is it an emergent entity and exists somewhere else entirely? — dukkha
If we can only know experiences through having them, then we can't attribute them to others. But clearly we can attribute experiences to others,so why not to electrons?
I wonder whether there's a conflation here of different senses of 'subjective'. Experiences are 'subjective' in the sense that they're attributes of a subject. But facts about experiences are still perfectly objective facts about reality. — Philip Goff
I don't know if 'foot' would be a possible body-part to genuinely feel you are identified with, but I don't see a reason to exclude it either if, in fact, body-part identification is something you learn from the culture you're born into. — Moliere
Strictly speaking, they are just as special. Experience emerges from feet just as it does the brain-- and the same is true each atom, protons and electron, neutron, etc., In this context, there isn't just one "mind" to a body, but billions upon billions, where everything from a single electron to the whole body syestem has a mind of its own. In one person, there are more experiencing individuals than humans on Earth. — TheWillowOfDarkness
Reason we learn to identify consciousness with our heads is because all the evidence correlates with the brain and not the foot. — Marchesk
But if panpsychism is true, then neurons (and only neurons in certain regions) in the skull shouldn't be special when it comes to consciousness.
Each hair has its own subjectivity. — TheWillowOfDarkness
The nature of volition is unclear. If a bacteria or virus evolves there is most probably some impulse somewhere that is creating that change. — Rich
Panpsychism (as he argues in his major work, The Vindication Of Absolute Idealism, 1983), has an ethical upshot - enabling, and requiring, us to empathise with other humans and animals. It "bids us recognise that what looks forth from another's eyes, what feels itself in the writhing of a worm . . . is really that very thing which, when speaking through my lips, calls itself 'I'."
Now, if experience also involves self-awareness, then the jury is out. What we can say is that humans have self-awareness as a general rule, some more than others. Beyond that it is simply a guess probably based upon some brain bias of some sort. — Rich
Why is my subjectivity unaffected when I have a hair cut? — tom
Secondly, assuming each hair has its own subjectivity, we don't know what that entails. It might be hairs don't feel pain or are rendered unconcious by the approach of cutting tools. It might well be hairs are, in terms of a manifestation in their own experience, unaffected by being cut. — TheWillowOfDarkness
...roughly, the view that fundamental entities are proto-conscious, that is, that they have certain special properties that are precursors to consciousness and that can collectively constitute consciousness in larger systems...' — Chalmers"
I think this is a more attractive view, in that it allows for an evolutionary 'moment', as it were, when hominids 'became' conscious, without landing every fragment of fallen hair with a complex intrinsic nature. — mcdoodle
First of all, 'panpsychism' is the belief that 'everything has mind' in some fundamental sense - electrons , other particles, material objects, and so on, have mind, or are in some sense capable of intentional action. This is proposed to solve, or dissolve, the fundamental dichotomy between 'mind and matter' by saying that mind is 'everywhere' (one meaning of 'pan'). All we're seeing with conscious beings is a highly differentiated form of matter, but matter itself is intrinsically conscious.
I think his mistake is to believe that 'experience' is something that can be known in the third person. In other words, experience is not an object of cognition, in the way that an electron or particle or other object can be. We don't know experiences, we have experiences; so any experience has an inescapably first-person element, that is, it is undergone by a subject. So we can't objectify 'the nature of experience' in the way we can the objects and forces that are analysed by the natural sciences. — Wayfarer
it seems to me that consicousness, by its very nature, is not analysable in the way that materials are into atomic units which tell us why they are as they are — Moliere
Doesn't seem to get round the "robot problem" - i.e. to grant a robot qualia requires a change in its programming, not its matter. — tom
I guess if you are a monist then "everything has mind [even though I am not quite sure what "mind" means] seems appropriate, I am not sure this entails that everything is "in some sense capable of intentional action." — Cavacava
According to panpsychism, the smallest bits of matter – things such as electrons and quarks – have very basic kinds of experience; an electron has an inner life.
There’s no middle ground here that I can see, but perhaps you could take a stab at explaining how your claims about experience are possible if experience literally can’t be known. — Aaron R
Here, you are advocating panpsychism. — Wayfarer
So I'm guessing, you don't agree with it.
If experience can’t be the object of knowledge, then you can’t make any claims about it. Full stop. There’s no middle ground here that I can see, but perhaps you could take a stab at explaining how your claims about experience are possible if experience literally can’t be known. — Aaron R
If "mind" is some sort of potential latency in matter, I think how that is worth exploring, but I don't understand what the inner life of an electron could possibly mean without anthropomorphization. — Cavacava
If consciousness is inherent in matter, and is just a fundamental aspect, like space and time, then it solves a lot of problems, — Wosret
Would you agree that we can have subjective knowledge concerning experience? — Metaphysician Undercover
But the question of whether time and space really are objective realities is a deep philosophical problem in it's own right. Recall that Kant saw both as part of the 'conditions for experience' rather than 'objects of experience'. — Wayfarer
If consciousness is inherent in matter, and is just a fundamental aspect, like space and time, then it solves a lot of problems,... — Wosret
Your missing the point. Under panpsychism, it's not only the entire system from which conciousness emerges. It does so from every state. Each hard drive and memory stick, for example, has their own subjectivity. — TheWillowOfDarkness
In the given robot, there is not one instance of an experiencing subjectivity, but billions (the entire system, each hard drive, each memory stick, each atom that makes up every part, every electron, etc.). — TheWillowOfDarkness
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