We only have one point of reference for ‘consciousness’. Anything else in some other time/space is not ‘conscious’ in any reasonably comparable manner unless such a being possesses a host of common features to humans. — I like sushi

So what is consciousness then? The only true and reliable answer is "I am".

Depends what you mean by ‘exist’. In some ways ‘matter’ doesn’t exist and in others it does. Semantics can be pointless trap though.

We know that atoms are mostly ‘empty space’ and what we call ‘solid’ is actually not exactly ‘there’. Either way the experience on the macro level is convincing enough for me to run away from people trying to hack me with axes.

Also, if insects are conscious, then we're getting pretty close to panpsychism. — RogueAI

No we bloody aren't! Insects are individual organisms, if they are conscious then it's them as individuals that are conscious, not the whole universe.

It is a very poorly outlined term that appears to something brains attached to bodies do.

In terms of brain states consciousness takes on many forms including wakefulness and dream states.

To me it is a bit like the problem of defining god. We can only talk about things in the terms we have. At the moment I don’t think we have the kind of concepts needed to get to it properly just like talk of quantum to Aristotle would be beyond his comprehension - due to a lack of modern concepts we take for granted.

You clearly miss the point of what panpsychism is as an idea. It is NOT necessarily about the ‘universe’ being conscious. That is precisely where I feel some people have latched onto the idea and gone away with the fairies.

To talk about ants possibly possessing some rudimentary form of consciousness is in line with panpsychism ideas.

Not all proponents of panpsychism go the whole hog.

My point is that your analogy doesn't stand up.

Panpsychism is the belief that every thing has an internal mental aspect. If you say consciousness is analogous to life in this respect, then you would be saying that every thing is alive.

You clearly miss the point of what panpsychism is as an idea. It is NOT necessarily about the ‘universe’ being conscious. — I like sushi

Panpsychism is the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/

Ubiquitous:present, appearing, or found everywhere.

Panpsychism is the belief that every thing has an internal mental aspect. — Daemon

Not for all proponents of panpsychism! If you don’t get it you don’t get it. The fault may be mine entirely but enough is enough. Sorry.

I suggest you read the entire thing.

My target is not those who believe that consciousness in insects is panpsychism.

It seems odd that folk suppose consciousness to somehow be central to the nature of the universe when it is so easily dissipated in one's lounge chair on a slow Sunday afternoon. Sleep should cure one of panpsychism. — Banno

We've gone over this before. I don't think you are trolling, so I'll just make the same point. There are different senses of 'consciousness' which you prefer to amalgamate, and lexicographers distinguish. There is a sense in which someone asleep is unconscious by definition, that's just what it means. Moving on to the phenomenal definition, which is the one I take to be operative in philosophical discussions of consciousness, there are a couple of panpsychist responses to the challenge of sleep (or being KO'd, drugged etc).

1) The subject remains conscious, but just not of very much, or perhaps even conscious of nothing at all, and they don't remember when they come to, so they have nothing to report.

2) They cease to exist as a functional unit. The total consciousness remains, but the subjective units are different, perhaps. Like the total mass of a car engine remains after it is dismantled, but it no longer runs. If consciousness is like the mass (rather than the function) then it too can remain, but is a property of smaller functional units, perhaps. With this idea, it is the function that determines the content of consciousness (i.e. what is experienced), not whether or not consciousness is present at all.

It's not clear to me why emergence would require "degree" — Daemon

It doesn't necessarily require it, but it is very hard to think of a non-gradual, instant change in a system that could plausibly be associated with the emergence of consciousness. All relevant changes in the development of a brain in an embryo, for example, or the evolution of the brain, or even the transition from being anaesthetised to be a wakeful state, are gradual changes. At exactly what point does consciousness pop up? And why that point? You need a concept of consciousness that admits of degree, ideally, for this kind of account. But phenomenal consciousness does not seem to admit of degree.

perhaps consciousness is a property of space. This has some intuitive appeal for me as it fits with the phenomenology quite well.
— "Bert1

How do you mean? — Daemon

Consciousness feels container like, it feels still and relatively unmoving (or sometimes does) while things happen in it, yet still connected to those things, consciousness feels stretchy, one can focus in and out, one's awareness can be sharp or diffuse, it unifies and relates its contents in the way space does. This doesn't prove anything of course, but I do like it when discussions of consciousness take seriously such phenomenological intuitions and reflections. In most areas, the truth about the world has nothing to do with subjective feelings about the way it is. However when the subject matter is subjectivity itself, these feelings become far more relevant to the discussion.

The IIT is a very different kind of panpsychism, and very differently theoretically motivated.
— Bert1

I've looked into that, in my opinion it's a total failure. — Daemon

I mostly agree with you. I think it's a failure as a theory of consciousness, but it might be a very good theory of identity. I think identity admits of degree in a way that consciousness doesn't. The IIT might tell us which bits of the universe are strongly individuated in terms of the complexity of the content of their consciousness. It give us a way to both privilege brains (brains generate an immense variety and complexity of content) and still be panpsychists.

Why do you think it fails?

(I'll get to your other questions in due course - thank you for asking them).

It doesn't necessarily require it, but it is very hard to think of a non-gradual, instant change in a system that could plausibly be associated with the emergence of consciousness. — bert1

But natural selection (I'll call it Chance) had billions of years to think of it (and billions of stars and planets).

And Chance had already thought of living organisms to work with. In my view it is only with the emergence of life that "systems" emerge. And points of view. Potential points of view. And locations in time and space. Because it is an entity distinct from its environment, a single-celled organism has a lifespan and a locus, things that don't feature in a lifeless universe.

It also has aims, non-conscious aims. Things are good or bad for it.

Life has a drive to evolve systems of increasing complexity, and at some point Chance thought of a mechanism for feeling. It seems likely that would be a development of an existing non-conscious mechanism.

I do like it when discussions of consciousness take seriously such phenomenological intuitions and reflections. — bert1

I don't.

Consciousness feels container like, it feels still and relatively unmoving (or sometimes does) — bert1

I could say "consciousness sometimes feels heavy so maybe it's a property of gravity". Just nonsense, sorry.

Why do you think it fails? — bert1

Information is a measure, not a cause.

I don't see why robotic entities can't be created through non-biological processes. — RogueAI

Well, my idea is that there is something special about biological entities, in that they are separated from their environment. That's what I mean when I say they have an inside and an outside. And a robot isn't separated from its environment in the necessary way. — Daemon

One problem here is maybe a lack of separation of (1) a postulated direct experience of conscious, and (2) criteria for determining with others whether a not-me-or-you deserves the honor.

Maybe a century from now there'll be a robot insisting that it can see redness and feel pain and fall in love. Moreover it acts 'accordingly' (in alignment with criteria we'd apply to humans, with various adjustments for the robot's differing body.) Would the presence of consciousness in this robot be decidable? But then how we 'know' that a random stranger is 'really' conscious and not just faking it? IMO, there are some issues with this concept of consciousness. To 'operationalize' such a concept, we'd probably need to articulate public criteria for its application, and it seems that only 'meat chauvinism' could rule out a sufficiently sophisticated robot. (We ourselves are 'moist robots' in some sense, unless we insist that an undetermined special sauce has been poured on our skullmeat.)

I could say "consciousness sometimes feels heavy so maybe it's a property of gravity". Just nonsense, sorry. — Daemon

I think I probably agree with you about that example linking feelings of heavyness to gravity. But still, that feeling of heavyness is one of the things that a fully developed theory of consciousness will have something to say about. While I am a panpsychist, I'm not sure how to get a handle on why particular experiences tend to attach to characteristic physical functions consistently. Just like any other take on consciousness, there remain a lot of unanswered questions. I think the variety of functionalisms, while failing to explain consciousness itself, may nevertheless make headway in explaining what functions go with what experiences.

Life has a drive to evolve systems of increasing complexity, and at some point Chance thought of a mechanism for feeling. It seems likely that would be a development of an existing non-conscious mechanism. — Daemon

OK, this is a start. The next question is: at what point in the evolutionary process did feeling first emerge? This is a hypothesis at the moment. How are we going to narrow down the possibilities? If we want to take a scientific approach, how do we test a system for the presence of consciousness?

Is it when the cell wall developed?

EDIT: I know this is a thread about panpsychism, not your view. However part of understanding the theoretical appeal of panpsychism is to come up against the difficulties with emergentism.

the only causation we actually know happens is psychological - we cause our arm to go up, for example. But this seems to compete with other, physical, causal accounts involving neurons firing.
— Bert1

Descriptions at two different levels. That's good. The more distinctions, the more we understand. What's the problem? — Daemon

The difficulty with the idea of two levels of description is that it creates a dualism, and imports many of the difficulties of that. What accounts for these two points of view? Why do some things have a point of view of their own, but others don't? Why are there two methods of explaining actions in humans, but only one method with cars?

Your intuition that what is necessary for consciousness that there be an inside and an outside is very interesting, as that is suggestive of the creation of two points of view, that of the subject (from the inside) and that of the external observer (from the outside). Is that where you are coming from?

There's not, I submit, any "will" in this scenario either. It looks like will, but the real driver is chance, natural selection. Only organisms equipped with the biochemical machinery that gets them swimming in the right direction will survive. — Daemon

Sure, at the mid-level description you quote there isn't. But when we ask for finer and finer details, we get to forces, and 'no further explanation is possible, we are just describing what happens'. That's where I suggest a further step is possible, and perhaps even necessary, and that is to say that the observed behaviour is the result of will. The idea is that physical explanations of the bacterium's behaviour is, at least, reducible to psychological explanations. And that opens the door to the possibility that the whole bacterium is conscious, and it is doing what it is doing because of how it is feeling as a whole, and the mechanical explanations are, at bottom, just descriptions of behaviour which has psycholgical causes. (Not that that is unproblematic of course, there is still the combination problem for panpsychism. The combination problem is the most common and famous objection to many forms of panpsychism.)

We could make an analogy. We might observe that every Friday, after receiving their pension, old humans go to the shop to buy their groceries. We could conclude from this that there is a physical law that describes this behaviour, no? It successfully predicts observation, with no reference to feeling or consciousness in the pensioners. However we know, because we are similar to pensioners, indeed some of us are pensioners, that feelings absolutely play a totally essential role in this story don't they? The physical law we just invented is horseshit isn't it? We know perfectly well that the pensioners want to eat because they are hungry and they want to stock up on food for the next week and get themselves a nice treat in the process, and maybe chat to each other a bit in the process. We don't do that with atoms and molecules because they are not like us. We don't immediately have an insight into their feelings. I'm suggesting that the physical laws we use to describe behaviour are very useful and accurate when making predictive models and whatnot. But that they are no more than that, and are ultimately made-up.

The difficulty with the idea of two levels of description is that it creates a dualism, and imports many of the difficulties of that. — bert1

Have you read Searle's "Mind, a Brief Introduction"? Have a look at the introduction here: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5G_iBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT11&lpg=PT11&dq=%22Mental+qua+mental+is+not+physical%22&source=bl&ots=3hWB2ubOkb&sig=ACfU3U34m0SpjL4espBNr3Hk2C87rhoT7g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwib3L2HpJDwAhX5gf0HHYp6BBEQ6AEwAXoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q=%22Mental%20qua%20mental%20is%20not%20physical%22&f=false

I think you are falling into the trap he describes.

The next question is: at what point in the evolutionary process did feeling first emerge? This is a hypothesis at the moment. How are we going to narrow down the possibilities? If we want to take a scientific approach, how do we test a system for the presence of consciousness?

Is it when the cell wall developed? — bert1

No. The cell wall (or something about the cell) creates the distinction between organism and environment, it creates a potential locus for consciousness, there has to be a discrete entity for consciousness to happen to, but I'd say consciousness itself came later. Maybe in fish. Maybe in worms.

Your intuition that what is necessary for consciousness that there be an inside and an outside is very interesting, as that is suggestive of the creation of two points of view, that of the subject (from the inside) and that of the external observer (from the outside). Is that where you are coming from? — bert1

No! The individuation of the organism creates one point of view. There is no external observer! And no reason to posit one!

But when we ask for finer and finer details, we get to forces, and 'no further explanation is possible, we are just describing what happens'. That's where I suggest a further step is possible, and perhaps even necessary, and that is to say that the observed behaviour is the result of will. The idea is that physical explanations of the bacterium's behaviour is, at least, reducible to psychological explanations. — bert1

But why should that be necessary? What does it add to our understanding? We can already explain how a bacterium swims up a chemical gradient in exhaustive detail, and they do this automatically, without will. What looks like "will" is the result of natural selection, automatic, non-psychological, because no psyche is involved. What's the motivation for your introduction of the psyche, when the process can be explained without it?

What motivates panpyschism? — OP

Indeed, what does motivate panpsychism?

Let's see how things stand.

The soul remains, as of yet, a hypothetical. We haven't, as of yet, proven that we h. sapiens, the most eligible candidate, have souls.

Then, out of the blue, someone comes along and claims, everything has a soul!

WTF? Is this a joke? This must a fallacy of some kind, oui? More alarmingly, it has sophistry written all over it. :grin:

But why should that be necessary? — Daemon

Because the alternatives are impossible, or wildly implausible, namely, that consciousness emerges from the interfunction of severally non-conscious elements.

What's the motivation for your introduction of the psyche, when the process can be explained without it? — Daemon

It can't be explained, just described.

Indeed, what does motivate panpsychism? — Agent Smith

I thought this was well known? The motivation is bound up in the problem of understanding ‘consciousness’. That there are many different people taking up the idea of panpsychism with various other motivations attached is secondary to the original point of trying to understand consciousness right? — I like sushi

It can't be explained, just described. — bert1

Chemotaxis can be explained. Here's the explanation:

The central mechanism of signal transduction involves two families of proteins found in microorganisms and plants which work in pair-wise fashion to mediate chemotaxis, as well as other regulatory processes ranging from cell differentiation and development to antibiotic resistance and fruiting. E. coli alone has over 30 different examples of these so-called ‘two-component’ regulatory systems.
One of the families of proteins that mediate two-component signaling consists of histidine protein kinases, which catalyse the transfer of γ-phosphoryl groups from ATP to one of their own histidine residues.The other family consists of ‘response regulator’ proteins, which are activated by the transfer of phosphoryl groups from the kinase phosphohistidines to one of their own aspartic acid residues.
Most histidine protein kinases are transmembrane receptors with a variable external sensing domain connected via hydrophobic membrane spanning sequences to a highly conserved autophosphorylating kinase domain in the cytoplasm. Stimulatory ligands interact with the receptor's external sensing domain to control the rate of kinase autophosphorylation and hence the rate of response regulator phosphorylation in the cell's interior.
The response regulators are generally free to diffuse around the cytoplasm, and aspartate phosphorylation generally enhances the ability of a regulator to bind to DNA, or in the case of the chemotaxis response regulator, to bind to motor proteins and regulate the probability of a tumble.
The histidine protein kinase that mediates chemotaxis responses is called CheA and the chemotaxis response regulator is CheY. CheA differs from most histidine kinases in that it is not an integral membrane protein. Instead, CheA is tightly associated with, and regulated by, several different transmembrane chemotaxis receptors, each of which functions to detect a different class of attractant and repellent chemicals. These receptors transmit a signal that increases CheA autophosphorylation when attractants are absent or repellents are present. Increased CheA phosphorylation leads to an increase in the level of phosphorylated CheY.
Phospho-CheY diffuses from CheA freely through the cell, and when it encounters a flagellar motor it binds to a flagellar protein called FliM. Phospho-CheY bound to FliM induces tumbling by causing a change in the sense of flagellar rotation from counterclockwise to clockwise, as viewed from behind. The six to eight flagella scattered over the cell surface rotate coordinately to form a bundle during smooth swimming. This bundle is suddenly thrown into disarray when one or several of the motors reverse direction, causing the characteristic tumble that randomizes the direction of the next period of coordinated smooth swimming. Whereas the receptor–CheA complex controls the rate of CheY phosphorylation, a phosphatase termed CheZ is responsible for phospho-CheY dephosphorylation.

If that isn't an explanation, what is missing?