Consciousness is not a noun but a verb. And if I say I am conscious, it is of something. What I really mean is that I can attend and report. I can introspect in the socially approved fashion of turning my neurobiology of attention onto even things that I wouldn't naturally waste time noticing – like the "redness" of red – and speak about it in a narrative fashion as something that "I" have "experienced".
So to be able to look inwards and report is a skill we learn that boils down to being socially trained to use language to direct our attention to all the "phenomenology" that our brain is instead evolved just to "look past". The brain is busy trying to assimilate the world to its running predictive models. Society sets itself up as a higher level self in our heads and demands a full account of all our thoughts and feelings so that we can become "self-regulating" beings – aware of ourselves as actors within larger sociocultural contexts.
Consciousness is treated as a big deal in modern culture because it really matters to society that it can sit inside our heads and make sure we run all our decisions through its larger filter. We must notice the details and be ready to report them. — apokrisis
Hence, is consciousness actual rather than illusory, fictional, etc.? — javra
This is monism. This is reductionism. So how I think of things – how Peirce thought of things, how systems science thinks of things – just doesn't share your ontological commitments. You are trying to jam square pegs into round holes. — apokrisis
You seem to be a level-headed fellow. So, I was concerned that you interpreted my brief sketches of three competing worldviews as "mis-representing" the ideas of those who hold such views. It was not intended as a put-down, but as a way to distinguish the philosophically pertinent differences between them. If you are willing, I'd like to hear your own compare & contrast between monistic Materialism and monistic Panpsychism. For example, here's what I said in the post above :Seems to me you, or the author you're discussing, is trying a bit of flashy rhetorical footwork by misrepresenting the ideas of people you disagree with. — T Clark
The feeling of being a self in its world by being a prediction machine with its collection of interpretive habits. — apokrisis
"Apparently, monistic Materialism solves the origin problem by denying that it is a problem : consciousness is not real, but ideal : a figment of imagination, so it literally does not matter. Dualism just accepts that we tend to think of Mind & Matter as two completely different things, and never the twain shall meet : hyle + morph = real matter + ideal form. Monistic Panpsychism assumes that Matter is an illusion generated by the inherent mental processes of nature (a priori Cosmic Consciousness), hence matter does not matter." — Gnomon
QBism expands upon the notion of "participatory realism", that quantum physicist John A. Wheeler postulated back in the '60s. From the perspective of Materialism, it may sound like anti-realism. — Gnomon
Depends on how you look at it. :joke:Then: Properly speaking, would you interpret panpsychism thus understood to be an ontological monism or an ontological, non-Cartesian dualism? — javra
Depends on how you look at it. :joke: — Gnomon
Empirical science ignored the mental aspects of reality for centuries, because it was associated with Souls, Spirits, and Ghosts. — Gnomon
I'd like to hear your own compare & contrast between monistic Materialism and monistic Panpsychism. — Gnomon
[...] Together those processes make up the mind. Is it real? Yes. Is it physical - good question. What kind of a thing is it? I'm not sure, but I do believe it is a manifestation of physical, biological, neurological processes. — T Clark
Coincidentally, I just came across a YouTube video, by Sabine Hossenfelder, on the topic of "why the universe is not locally real". After a quick Google, I found that it's a hot topic right now, because of the recent Nobel winners. Quantum physics should give those who are "irreducibly fixated" pause to question their assumptions about their own local Reality. To quote an old TV ad : "Is it real, or is it Memorex?" :smile:This goes out to those who are not irreducibly fixated on the unquestionable reality of their own particular worldview, whatever it might be (if any). — javra
The quoted sentence above, sounds pretty technical (abstruse). Can you deconstruct it for someone not familiar with Biosemiotic jargon? Does it deny that the observer of a quantum experiment can influence, but not control, its outcome? Is Biosemiotics derived from a metaphysical Materialism worldview? Hence, avoiding the "woo" label, signifying non-sense? Do you think that Wheeler meant to imply a mind-over-matter form of magic?The less woo understanding of this Bayesianism is that the human measurer can construct the mechanical constraints on a prepared quantum system so as to decohere it to the degree it answers to a classical counterfactual description. — apokrisis
Coincidentally, I just came across a YouTube video, by Sabine Hossenfelder, on the topic of "why the universe is not locally real". [...] To quote an old TV ad : "Is it real, or is it Memorex?" :smile: — Gnomon
I didn't think you were an expert on the philosophy of monistic Panpsychism; neither am I. But you seem to have a negative opinion of it. Others on this forum openly label such immaterial notions as "woo". It is obviously contrary to the fundamental axiom*1 of monistic Materialism. And it may seem contradict another basic assumption of Naturalism : "nothing supernatural"*2. Both of those positions are presumptions, not conclusions from the empirical scientific method.Together those processes make up the mind. Is it real? Yes. Is it physical - good question. What kind of a thing is it? I'm not sure, but I do believe it is a manifestation of physical, biological, neurological processes. — T Clark
What kind of a thing is it [mind]? I'm not sure....
— T Clark
What I said :-) — Wayfarer
Both of those positions are presumptions, not conclusions from the empirical scientific method. — Gnomon
All cosmic conjectures are, of course, non-empirical, hence objectively unprovable. — Gnomon
Sorry to have bothered you with dumb questions about an esoteric topic. I guess Biosemiotics is not for the uninformed general public. Are you reserving that secret information for only the cognoscenti? :joke:You cut and paste all this stuff you don’t understand. That is why you can’t follow an informed discussion about it. — apokrisis
Well, you can see their behaviors. Their inner experiences (or lack thereof) are out of reach. Do other people see red the way I see green? Who knows. — RogueAI
You seem to be more familiar with Biology than with Quantum Physics*1. If so, you may be able to enlighten me about Biosemiotics (BS). Which has been proposed as an alternative to Panpsychism (PP) as a mechanism for the emergence of Mind from Matter. doesn't seem to be willing to engage with an infidel (unbeliever in Materialism) to explain some of the technical jargon he uses in his posts. My interest in BS is simply that the semiotic (symbolic) aspects of the BS theory may be related to the Information Theory that I am better aquainted with. But some of the language sounds like Postmodern linguistic analysis*2 that is opaque to my simple mind. Does BS tell us anything new & important about Biology in general, or about the symbol manipulating Mind?Each one of these primitive mind endowed (and, hence, awareness endowed) cells is constituted of organic molecules – some of which which have been empirically evidenced to exhibit at least some QM properties. — javra
Yes. But useful for what purpose?If that's true, they are metaphysics - ways of looking at the world. The question to ask is whether or not they are useful ways. — T Clark
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