The only objection to panpsychism that one needs is that there's no good reason to believe it. There's zero evidence for it. Making shit up to solve something that's seen as a theoretical problem isn't a good reason to believe anything. — Terrapin Station
So it seems to me that the only path to -- rationally at least -- shrugging off pan-psychism is through rejection of the hard problem of consciousness in the first place (insofar that said rejection is based on reason, too, rather than simple frustration with what sounds like some ridiculous ideas). — Moliere
Well, there's many options, but I would just say that you can't simply shrug off pan-psychism, is all. That "there is no good reason to believe it" -- you may find other solutions to the problem more convincing for x, y, or z reasons, or you may find the problem to be not a problem in the first place, but pan-psychism isn't just proposed for the hell of it, I'd say. — Moliere
Well, 'completelly failing to understand something' is not an argument against it. — Wayfarer
Panpsychism is refuted by the knowledge argument. — tom
The Fundamental Problem is the problem of the creation of (explanatory) knowledge. — tom
The only hard problem is folks' inability to reconcile their not very well grounded, often religious-based views with [my view]. — Terrapin Station
that matter "knows how" to follow the laws of nature — Metaphysician Undercover
Balls don't know how to roll downhill. If there's a hill, balls will roll down it. It's not as if they can do anything else. Your comment more or less reinforces the notion that panpsychism is anthropomorphic, or attributes intention to inanimate objects. One can well explain the motions of objects without any reference to intention; the problem that panpsychism is trying to solve, is how some 'configurations of matter', like the brain, 'produces' consciousness. — Wayfarer
You seem, on the other hand, to be suggesting that the fact that it's common justifies it. I don't agree with that. — Terrapin Station
But if the explanation is itself just a description "gravity acted on the ball", we will never have a complete explanation because there will always be a further "how" or "why" question. The description represents what is the case, and does not provide us with an explanation for this. — Metaphysician Undercover
Well, perhaps that's why science is not omniscient! But I think you've made a valid point, and one often forgotten. Maybe that is why Aristotelean physics, though obviously incorrect in fundamental ways, wished to arrive at a more holistic understanding which includes the reason that things happen - in a teleological sense, rather than just because of a chain of efficient causation. In leaving that out, perhaps much else is left out besides. (Check out this book.) — Wayfarer
Under arguments like final cause, people make the mistake of thinking of the whole as a part. They try to understand it as a distinct state that can be named, that sets efficient causation in motion. People don't take the time to realise the whole must be more than this, something which cannot be grasped in terms of a part at all, extending beyond any point (including "final" ) of causation or state. — TheWillowOfDarkness
although I believe logical behaviourism dissolves the hard problem in the third-person (how can it not???) I don't see how logical behaviourism alone can be used to dissolve the hard-problem of the first-person. — sime
As for how to dissolve the first-person hard problem, it is presumably a simple matter of deflating "second order" talk of first-person experience, that includes an alleged subject of experience, to "first order" observation sentences that refer only to the contents of experience. — sime
In short, error appears, and it can be explained only by supposing a self which is fallible ... At the age at which we know children to be self-conscious, we know that they have been made aware of ignorance and error; and we know them to possess at that age powers of understanding sufficient to enable them to infer from ignorance and error their own existence. — CP 5.234-236, 1868
Rather than a deductive conclusion, Peirce's take was that the initial recognition of one's own existence as a subject of experience is a retroductive conjecture prompted primarily by the unpleasant surprise of being (repeatedly) mistaken:
In short, error appears, and it can be explained only by supposing a self which is fallible ... At the age at which we know children to be self-conscious, we know that they have been made aware of ignorance and error; and we know them to possess at that age powers of understanding sufficient to enable them to infer from ignorance and error their own existence.
— CP 5.234-236, 1868 — aletheist
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