That used to be my nick-name at school, to differentiate me from the tom who didn't like tuna salad.

A question:

Is there a set of all atomic concepts?

Do you not see that 'brown' and 'dog' compose 'brown dog'? — quine

No. Do you think "quantum mechanics" and "general relativity" compose to "quantum mechanics general relativity"?

The second premise seems problematic. If lexical concepts can be composed of "lower level" concepts, then why must there be any termination to this composition? I don't see why mere composition should imply atomism. You appear to be assuming this, rather than demonstrating it. — Luke

Perhaps the concept "dog" is actually made up of all the atomic conceptions of a dog. We could list a few of these atomic conceptions:

1. The black dog belonging to the butcher with three legs.
2. A poodle
3....

So, let's fabricate a "modus ponens"

1. Concepts are composed
2. If concepts are compositions, conceptual atomism is not the case
3. Therefore conceptual atomism is false.

Anyone convinced?

(2) If concepts can be composed, then conceptual atomism is the case. — quine

You haven't shown this. You haven't even shown that concepts can be composed or that they can't be composed under different conceptions of "concept".

Jesus didn't walk on water or rise from the dead.

There is no such thing as a good reason. Belief is counterproductive.

I have outlined arguments that panpsychism is wrong. These arguments highlight a problem, that I argue, is deeper than the Hard Problem.

The Fundamental Problem is the problem of the creation of (explanatory) knowledge.

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

Panpsychism is refuted by the knowledge argument.

It was never a secret. The point is that now other states and even private individuals have the ability to crash cars, eavesdrop on the world, and masquerade as the Russians. Thanks CIA for being so stupid.

It's about the scale and covert nature of this cyber warfare arsenal. Think how many people own a smart car or TV. How many of these people are just ordinary citizens and not criminals who warrant the attention of the CIA? — Sapientia

Actually, you are wrong.

It's about:

"An historic act of devastating incompetence!" — tom

You can buy the entire CIA cyber-warfare arsenal, that the USA developed at the cost of $100Billion if you have the right connections.

Thankfully in the case of flipping coins both theoretical and experimental probabilities can be easily calculated. If the experimental probability deviates from the theoretical probability by a significant amount (either too many heads or too many tails than expected) we are justified to suspect the coin is biased/loaded. — TheMadFool

You are only justified in thinking the coin is PROBABLY loaded. As you know, there is no such thing as a finite sequence of tosses incompatible with either fairness or bias.

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

There is another option: it is not the brain that is conscious, but the abstraction instantiated on the brain. i.e. consciousness is a software feature rather than a hardware epiphenomenon.

Actually, I mentioned earlier in the thread that I considered panpsychism "not crazy enough" and even "boring". The idea that abstractions can be conscious seems to be the crazy idea that solves all the problems and is fully compatible with other knowledge i.e science, while avoiding dualism.

Your statement that animals lack consciousness is a simple falsehood. — Wayfarer

Strictly it's subjectivity, which they (and fundamental particles) lack.

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

You may have experienced the situation where you become aware that you are in a particular state, when you were previously unaware. This can happen to people under extreme stress. For example, a person might become aware that they are in a state of panic, or even become aware that they are running.

Perhaps even the famous Libet experiment might indicate the same phenomenon. The action potential to make a decision exists significantly before the subjects become consciously aware they are making a decision.

I really cannot see any way of separating experience from awareness, or what-it-is-like knowledge. Robots, animals, and humans under stress may be in a particular state, but none is having a subjective experience.

Dogs can be in a state of hunger, just like a robot can be in a state of requiring its batteries charged, but neither experiences hunger.

I don't understand why animal-lovers don't see this as a blessing.

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

Crows are among the handful of animals whose behaviours seem to refute the idea that animals are not conscious beings - i.e. they lack subjectivity. Not only can some species of crow remember 500 locations where they have stashed food, but they exhibit remarkable tool use and problem solving abilities. My claim that animals can't create knowledge is clearly refuted by the fact that corvids can remember where they stashed food.

I'm going to take this refutation a little further and remind myself that the corvid genome has encoded, via billions of years of evolution, the knowledge of how to replicate itself in its niche.

Partly through laziness, and partly in an attempt to provoke, I admit to being imprecise in my use of the word "knowledge", particularly when I claim that animals (and genes) can't create it, when they obviously can.

The type of knowledge that only humans can create, which includes "what-it-is-like" knowledge, is "explanatory knowledge".

So the reason is that the CIA is irresponsible. I would say that the leak itself proves a degree of irresponsibility. — Metaphysician Undercover

You're not joking!

"An historic act of devastating incompetence!"

Assange confirms the entire CIA cyber weapons arsenal is available on the black market.

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

Sure, and right now the flowers are full of the joys of spring.

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.

A dog is an expression of its genetic code.

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

And since humans know about the big bang and quantum mechanics, it's certain that fish know that the earth orbits the sun. Pretty sure that's how evolution works!

I don't think anyone here disputes that. The point about panpsychism is that it says electrons have some form of consciousness. — Wayfarer

There is no evidence, nor reason to suppose animals have consciousness.

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.

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

Single celled organisms? Awareness?

Assange doesn't have the ability to assassinate anyone driving a smart car, transform your smart TV into a surveillance post, and thousands of other goodie goods. He has the ability to publish information. The two are hardly analogous. — Sapientia

Assange may indeed have much of that ability, as have others.

Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized "zero day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.

Looks like the Germans may prosecute over the CIA hacker base in Frankfurt!

4) We have nothing to hide, so why is this relevant?
Counter: Let me put it to you in a way you can understand. Trump has the ability to blow up your car at will and no one will know who did it. And that's just one tool he has, among multiple thousand. Even if you trusted Obama with these tools (which, by the way, were developed under the Obama presidency), do you really trust Trump to be responsible? — discoii

I think you've missed the point of "Vault 7 Part One".

It was these very cyber-attack tools that were used to wire-tap Trump and his transition team during the election and during the transition. It was these very tools that were used to masquerade as Russian hacks, to provide probable-cause to get the FISA warrant to spy on Trump. Furthermore, Obama seduced the security clearance of the wire-taps on Trump and ordered their wide dissemination among the security community - basically facilitating the leaks.

An interesting side issue is that Loretta Lynch made the last (and successful) FISA application hours after meeting with Bill Clinton.

Trump was told of the contents of Vault7 a few days before the dump, hence his famous Twitter tirade against Obama for spying on him. Various conversations that were used to incriminate Flynn took place in Trump Tower. Now Trump knows not only where he was spied on, but how, by whom, and the source of his alleged Russian connections.

There is unquestionably going to be a shit-storm of large proportions over this. It is essentially sedition, if not an actual attempted coup, on behalf of Obama-loyalists in CIA.

The CIA is clearly out of Trump's control, but there are also clearly some members of the CIA, at a lower level, who are on his side.

But even this isn't the main shocking revelation of Vault7, if sedition was not enough. It's that after spending $100Billion developing "Umbrage", the CIA have lost control of it. If you know the right people, you could get a copy!

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

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.

So, to demand something from say physicalists, that you don't demand from panpsychics, seems a bit unfair. Panpsychics have no more idea how an individual person's consciousness "floats into the world" than anyone else.

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's certainly simpler minded, and similar moves have been tried before e.g Vitalism. What could be easier - simply declare that matter has just the right hidden, untestable property that accounts for a feature of the human brain you can't explain. We'll be attributing a range of emotions to photons next. Maybe the blue ones really are a bit sad?

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

Here's the thing, fundamental particles don't have a history. Electrons are not even distinguishable in principle.

The facts are that Bangladesh is gaining land, has suffered no increase in cyclones, and has benefited enormously from CO2 fertilization.

The evidence to which I was referring was evidence of AGW, not that it is a bad thing. If you can't see why it would be a bad thing, I suggest you ask somebody in Bangladesh or South Sudan. — andrewk

You mean the Bangladesh that achieved record rice and record total cereal production in 2015? Last year's harvest being marginally below that record. You mean the Bangladesh that has reduced malnourishment to the tune of $1billion due to increased crop yields, and still gaining land due to sedimentation?

If you think the problems in South Sudan are due to the climate, you are politically unaware. Visa fees for aid workers are now $10,000.

But we mustn't ignore the evidence and the best science and economics, such as the empirical fact that the biosphere has become 14% more productive since 1982, which is modeled to reduce the amount of land under agriculture by 11-17%. Human welfare does not seem to score well in virtue-signaling competitions, so I ask you to consider the wild animals!

And, we don't want our best science and economics to obscure the narrative, so let's deny them. Specifically let's deny the result that global warming is expected to be beneficial up to 3 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures, of which we have achieved 0.8 degrees.

By the time we hit 3 degrees of warming, the Bangladeshis will be as rich as the present day Dutch, and quite able to afford sophisticated flood defences.

http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/climate_change.pdf

The "robot problem" is actually a version of the "combination problem", which is the most significant problem facing panpsychism.

What the climate change deniers are doing is almost the opposite of skepticism. They are refusing to accept the mountain of evidence that is before them. Sometimes they even start saying nonsense like 'where's the proof?', showing that they don't even understand the difference between science and algebra. — andrewk

What is the mountain of evidence that global warming is a bad thing?

Granted that all the fundamental particles are conscious, then PP can't answer why the robot, qua robot, is not conscious. The panpsychic might protest that I've you to switch it on, but can't answer why that makes a difference, or that I've not loaded the consciousness program, but can't answer why that's necessary.

The basic problems of consciousness are just things like the nature of it, how it interacts with the physical, or emerges from the physical structurally, whether it's contingent or necessary. PP answers a lot of those questions. — Wosret

Can it answer a question like, "Why is this robot not conscious?"


For some reason, no one takes the claim of PanVitalism seriously: that fundamental particles have "life" as a fundamental property. When fundamental particles combine in just the right way, their life-forces combine to give rise to a single living entity.

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

I think it is you that is missing the point. It is a well known problem for panpsychism - the combination problem.

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

Even if you insist that each electron, atom, transistor is conscious, the robot is not.

If consciousness is inherent in matter, and is just a fundamental aspect, like space and time, then it solves a lot of problems,... — Wosret

Really? We have one problem - how to explain consciousness - which panpsychism actually doesn't help us with, plus it causes a whole host of other problems:

How do all the fundamental particle consciousnesses combine to create a unified consciousness, and why does that require a brain? i.e. how does a single unified consciousness emerge? This is the same question we have without panpsychism!

Are atoms more conscious than fundamental particles? How about mobile phones?

Why are there no semi-conscious things. Or rather, there must be semi-conscious things, how do we identify them?

Why do I lose consciousness when I'm asleep, given that I am physically the same? Do my fundamental particles also sleep?

Panpsychism simply is not weird enough. Emergent consciousness from underlying physics is much weirder, simpler, and it has a large active research program!

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

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.

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

I we want to give a robot subjectivity - i.e. "what it is like" knowledge, we have to program it that way. Swapping out a hard-drive, or adding more memory is not going to affect the running of the program that achieves this. What particular hardware constitutes the robot is irrelevant, but panpsychics clain it is relevant!

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

Why is my subjectivity unaffected when I have a hair cut?

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

Instead of applying the knowledge argument to Mary, let's apply it to a robot. The robot has been programmed with all knowledge of light, but is unable to detect red due to a loose connection. During routine maintenance, the loose connection is spotted, and the robot can now detect red. The "red" signals are now fed via various circuits to the CPU where they are processed and the robot acts accordingly.

We know that the robot, as a robot, does not possess subjectivity because we programmed it that way. Perhaps more importantly, because it is a robot, we have a lesser tendency to anthropomorphise it and impute properties that are absent. We now decide to program the robot with "what it is like to see red" knowledge. How do we do that? The electrons the robot is made from may have subjectivity, but that doesn't help us. We can't even express "what it is like" for ourselves, and certainly can't predict it for a robot.

The only way to get the robot to discover "what it is like to see red" is for us to program it to create that knowledge for itself. This seems to be true, whether panpsychism is true or not. So we must program the robot with a general ability to create a particular type of knowledge.

While it might be possible to program a robot in such a way that it becomes capable of knowing what it is like to see a colour, the idea that knowledge creation can be restricted, even in this scenario, seems at odds with the very notion of knowledge creation. Since we cannot predict the knowledge, how could we predict where to place the restriction?

It seems that in order to endow the robot with the ability to create knowledge of "what it is like to see red", we must endow it with a general ability to create knowledge of any kind. In doing so, what have we altered? The robot is physically the same apart from certain bits scattered about its memory and registers being at a different voltage, and some electrical currents being different. I don't see that panpsychism offers anything to help us understand this situation or help us reach this goal.

The hard problem may indeed be hard, but I think the problem of how to create knowledge - of any kind - is the fundamental problem.

I have just been made aware, via my extensive philosophical network, that critics of Philip Goff might like to sharpen their arguments between now and tomorrow. There is a high probability that this thread might encounter celebrity intervention.

As a warm-up here's a very interesting discussion:



And a video of Daniel Dennett listening to Philip Goff

There is no first real number after 0 with the standard order; there is an uncountable infinity of real numbers between 0 and any arbitrarily small but finite value that one chooses. However, they are all still individual real numbers, thus forming an analytic or compositional continuum, rather than a synthetic or true continuum. — aletheist

Sure, an uncountable infinity of real numbers exist within any finite interval, but you can't identify them and can't distinguish them.

None of these numbers, except a measure zero fraction, can be represented physically in any way - they are non-computable. The only reason you can tell they are there is because you know, from the properties of the continuum, that they must exist.

Your claim that indistinguishable numbers are individual is simply a contradiction.

Please just make your point, if you have one. The real numbers constitute an analytic continuum, not a true continuum as defined by Peirce (and others). — aletheist

What is the first number after 0 according to Peirce?

What is the first number after 0 according to mathematics - i.e. Cantor/Dedekind/Cauchy et al?

If you don't know, just admit it!

Right, there are no "missing" numbers; but that still means that the set of real numbers consists of individual numbers. A true continuum does not consist of individuals. — aletheist

What is the first number after 0?

Numbers are intrinsically discrete; and it is not a matter of whether this discrete thing adequately represents the real numbers, but whether it adequately represents true continuity. — aletheist

But surely you are aware that the set of real numbers is complete?