What I said was that experience 'can't be known in the third person' — Wayfarer
Three ideas define the basic shape (‘cognitive architecture’) of Kant's model and one its dominant method. They have all become part of the foundation of cognitive science.
1. The mind is complex set of abilities (functions). (As Meerbote 1989 and many others have observed, Kant held a functionalist view of the mind almost 200 years before functionalism was officially articulated in the 1960s by Hilary Putnam and others.)
2. The functions crucial for mental, knowledge-generating activity are spatio-temporal processing of, and application of concepts to, sensory inputs. Cognition requires concepts as well as percepts.
3. These functions are forms of what Kant called synthesis. Synthesis (and the unity in consciousness required for synthesis) are central to cognition.
These three ideas are fundamental to most thinking about cognition now. Kant's most important method, the transcendental method, is also at the heart of contemporary cognitive science. — SEP
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.
You also can't throw me the ideal gas law, but I think you'll have a hard time convincing folks that the ideal gas law can't be an object of cognition. — Aaron R
Insofar as transcendental psychology gives a positive account of the faculties of the knowing subject, and insofar as we want to maintain that the knowing subject just is the transcendental subject, then the transcendental subject simply cannot be identified with the noumenal subject of metaphysical speculation, on pain of contradiction. — Aaron R
But I don't think you really want to try to understand any of this, because it doesn't square with your notion that Kant's philosophy is a decisive ally in your holy war against naturalism. — Aaron R
You also can't throw me the ideal gas law, but I think you'll have a hard time convincing folks that the ideal gas law can't be an object of cognition. — Aaron R
Isn't it simpler to suppose that these are properties are all actual or potential properties of matter. — Cavacava
If you don't agree with panpsychism then I think you ought to be able to explain how intentionality and thought floated into the world from nowhere.
Isn't it simpler to suppose that these are properties are all actual or potential properties of matter. Perhaps 'human exceptionalism' is not nature's radical departure, but rather part of nature's natural progression. — Cavacava
It makes sense to seek an expanded form of understanding [of nature] that includes the mental but that is still scientific — i.e. still a theory of the immanent order of nature.
That seems to me the most likely solution. Even though the theistic outlook, in some versions, is consistent with the available scientific evidence, I don’t believe it, and am drawn instead to a naturalistic, though non-materialist, alternative. Mind, I suspect, is not an inexplicable accident or a divine and anomalous gift but a basic aspect of nature that we will not understand until we transcend the built-in limits of contemporary scientific orthodoxy.
[Nagel] plays with panpsychism – the theory that mind is somehow in everything – but does not find this kind of metaphysical theory very useful. His preferred tentative solution is what he calls ‘teleological naturalism’, meaning the theory that the natural order is biased in some way towards the emergence of life and consciousness, as more-than-likely directions or potentials of development. He does not develop this theory but merely indicates that it might at least be along the right lines.
If you don't agree with panpsychism then I think you ought to be able to explain how intentionality and thought floated into the world from nowhere. — Cavacava
Isn't it simpler to suppose that these are properties are all actual or potential properties of matter. Perhaps 'human exceptionalism' is not nature's radical departure, but rather part of nature's natural progression. — Cavacava
Not sure I agree with electron's inner life, but an electron as well as all other matter must have a history, and perhaps history is all that matter as such can relate to us. — Cavacava
Panpsychics have no clue how the subjectivity imputed to individual fundamental particles might combine to form the unified subjectivity of a person. — tom
Panpsychics have no clue how the subjectivity imputed to individual fundamental particles might combine to form the unified subjectivity of a person.
Here's the thing, fundamental particles don't have a history. Electrons are not even distinguishable in principle.
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
So the answer would be that there is only one consciousness, as there is only one substance (and one version of panpsychism is that substance is conscious) but mental individuals are distinguished by what they are aware of, and this is determined by the local differences in how much information is integrated in different parts of the universe. I — bert1
Panpsychics have no clue how the subjectivity imputed to individual fundamental particles might combine to form the unified subjectivity of a person. I'm also slightly concerned that they might be forced to declare SuperStrings are conscious in the near future. — tom
The only objection to panpsychism that one needs is that there's no good reason to believe it. — Terrapin Station
non-human animals should also have had some form of consciousness, — Nerevar
f consciousness only requires awareness of something, then cells are aware of their environment, and plants are aware of the location of the sun, and so forth. — Nerevar
At some level, there is no difference in kind between a life form colliding with an object and changing course with an atom colliding with another atom and changing course. — Nerevar
At some level, there is no difference in kind between a life form colliding with an object and changing course with an atom colliding with another atom and changing course. Both behaviors are probabilistic, even if one is more predictable than the other. One may make the argument that the life form has far greater mind than the atom, but it is incorrect to say that the atom has no mind at all, unless mind is defined to have specific characteristics such as the criteria for biological life. — Nerevar
I don't think anyone here disputes that. The point about panpsychism is that it says electrons have some form of consciousness. — Wayfarer
I agree the single-celled organisms demonstrate some traits of awareness but I don't know if it is generally agreed that members of the plant kingdom exhibits awareness. Besides 'stimulus and response' might not equate to 'awareness' although it's probably a tricky distinction. — Wayfarer
There are good arguments for panpsychism, one of them being that since humans have consciousness and humans evolved from non-human animals, these non-human animals should also have had some form of consciousness, albeit perhaps more rudimentary. — Nerevar
There is no evidence, nor reason to suppose animals have consciousness. — tom
Single celled organisms? Awareness? — tom
I usually attribute some kind of feeling akin to excitement or pleasure to a dog when it wags its tail and jumps around in circles. Do you think that is unreasonable? — bert1
If animals could create "what-it-is-like-to-see-red" knowledge, then what is to stop them creating knowledge of any kind? They don't create knowledge of any kind. — tom
hose who say there is a reason to believe it, will argue that materialism can't or won't acknowledge the fundamental issue at stake, which is the explanatory gap. — Wayfarer
Single celled organisms? Awareness? — tom
There is no evidence, nor reason to suppose animals have consciousness. — tom
Whatever state a dog happens to be in, it cannot know it is in that state. If it could know it is in a particular state, then what stops it knowing anything? A conscious being - i.e. a person - knows what state it is in. — tom
I am inclined to regard corvids' memory of where they have stashed their food - the most able can remember up to 500 locations - as 'knowledge'. Just as a for instance. Wouldn't you call that knowledge? — mcdoodle
I don't know. It's not necessary to know one is having an experience in order to have an experience is it?
Do dogs experience hunger do you think? — bert1
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