David Bohm (physicist) talked about a similar thing. He called it the 'rheomode' I think. From 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order'.

I don't have any strong view on it. It seems convenient to think of things as beings rather than persistent doings, even if it is less metaphysically accurate. Maybe we could try and have a conversation in this mode here. Or even just try and come up with some example sentences to see how it works.

It has long been a rather intense recurring fantasy of mine to have, instead of my silly thin cold skin, a nice thick coat of greasy fur like a seal. I would be so much more secure. The spectre of homelessness loses its horror. I could just sleep on the ground somewhere. I could earn money by allowing people to stare at me and stroke me. I could casually swim in rivers and lakes. It would be amazing. If I had a wish, it would be that. Sometimes I think feathers would be better. But at the moment I favour thick waterproof fur.

I'd like to hear @Hanover's thoughts on this.

That would suggest that God’s POV on morality is completely alien to ours, or conversely (since presumably God’s POV is right), that we have absolutely no idea what it really means for something to be moral. Which then raises the question of what we’re even saying when we say that God is omnibenevolent. — Pfhorrest

This is good. If God is incapable of pain, then yes, his POV on morality will lack a component that is crucial to ours. The relativist theist does not have to say God's POV is the right one, though. It's right for God, but right not from our point of view. But you and I have more fundamental differences on that issue (from another thread) which have surfaced here when considering God. Regarding what a theist might say (according to a friend of mine) about what it means for God to be omnibenevolent, it could just mean that God is omnipotent. For an omnipotent being, whatever is, is good. Because if it wasn't good, it could not exist. For an omnipotent being to not will something is for that something not to exist. God's omnibenevolence just follows from God's omnipotence. As I think we may already agree (not sure) what is good just is what is willed.

Human morality is very much bound up with our limited power. The values of an omnipotent being is a very different kind of ballgame.

Why would an all good God have created an array of life forms that can only flourish at the expense of each other's suffering — Pfhorrest

Perhaps because suffering is morally irrelevant from God's POV.

My position is that consciousness is the result of nervous systems being in a modelling relation with the world. So I am talking specifically about that kind of process. One where there is mental modelling going on. — apokrisis

I'm going to rudely put words in your mouth as I am more likely to understand them that way. How do you feel about the following recasting:

Your position is that a nervous system (any other kind of system?) is conscious if and only if it models the world it is in. Is that right?

This allows for degree, perhaps. A nervous system that models the world in a very useful and detailed way so that it can respond effectively to a wide variety of circumstances is, perhaps, more conscious than a nervous system that models the world in a much simpler (but still useful) way. Perhaps simpler systems are more specialised to certain environments. Is that what you think? I'm not laying any traps here, I just want to understand your view without reading a bunch of books first.

No, I just “have terminal goals” (i.e. take morality to be something*) that involves the suffering and enjoyment, pleasure and pain, of all people. — Pfhorrest

Thanks, this is interesting. It seems to me that that is consistent with metal-ethical relativism. FWIW, I share these terminal goals. However I don't think that other people who do not share these terminal goals have necessarily made a mistake (although they might have done). They are just my enemy. Do you think they have made a mistake such that they could be reasoned with?

Whether or not other people actually care to try to realize that end is irrelevant for whether that end is right. Some people may not care about others’ suffering, for instance; that just means they’re morally wrong, that their choices will not factor in relevant details about what the best (i.e. morally correct) choice is.

It means they are morally wrong from yours or my perspective. But I can't get away from the need to specify a perspective when evaluating the truth of moral claims. What is right and wrong just changes depending on whose point of view one is. This just seems like a fact that follows from the idea that people just can have divergent terminal goals.

*One’s terminal goals and what one takes morality to be are the same thing, just like the criteria by which we decide what to believe and what we take reality to be are the same thing. To have something as a goal, to intend that it be so, just is to think it is good, or moral, just like to believe something just is to think it is true, or real.

Yes, I agree with that.

Imagine you had a brain cancer tumour that is huge. A big mass. Maybe even dwarfing the brain itself. Would that add anything to your "consciousness". — apokrisis

Indeed no. You are right to point out this problem with my analogy which is so in-apt I wish I hadn't used it. Matter of course admits of quantity, whereas consciousness does not, I suggest.

Panpsychism is an argument that piggybacks on conventional materialistic reductionism. — apokrisis

Is it? Could you elaborate?

The problem with this panpsychism is that the weight of neurobiological evidence suggests that the processes are everything. — apokrisis

Do you identify consciousness with processes?

Great question! :)

My view is the exact inverse of Gnomon's (if I have read them correctly). Our identity is constituted by all those processes, and when they stop, we no longer have a unitary identity, or at least much less of one. Consciousness, a bit like the total quantity of matter, is unaffected. I think this is a more coherent fit with the concepts of identity (vague and mutable) with consciousness (sharp and unchanging).

Here here, friend. — JerseyFlight

Where where? Hear hear!

I've listened to quite a few JP vids, interviews and whatnot. I'm no expert on him. I agreed with some of the stuff he said, disagreed with some and thought some was a bit wacky. Do we have to be either fans or anti-fans? Am I allowed to agree with some of it? Can I cherry pick? Or is it like the Bible: I have to either swallow it whole or reject the lot?

God as the answer to any unanswered question. — Banno

I didn't think you were religious Banno.

How are you so sure?
— Shawn

Did you have an example of one? — apokrisis

@Shawn, you could try asking the question again.

Ditto most of the comments, but I'm also sympathetic to the OP. Stoicism can easily seem trite and a justification of oppression. It might be helpful to distinguish personal philosophy from social policy. Stoicism makes sense as personal philosophy, but it could be perverted and incorporated into social policy, persuading people that they cannot change the systems, class structures, wealth inequalities etc they live in so they may as well accept them and like it.

Yeah he was annoying.

That's an advanced position though. You first have to understand the objective as a realm completely beyond access, realize that therefore everything supposedly objective is therefore merely intersubjective, and then conclude that if the objective is inaccesible, we might as well cut out the middleman and equate intersubjective and objective. — Echarmion

Indeed, you put that better than I was about to do. Not everyone will be happy with collapsing the distinction like this, and in characterising others' positions, I would maintain the distinction they maintain. (Says me in a high-minded "I never mis-characterise others" way)

It seems to me Pfhorrest is a meta-ethical relativist, as long as he thinks that everyone has, in fact, the same terminal goals such that rational argument can always in principle result in agreement.

To a moral relativist, what is the purpose of morality? — Tzeentch

Getting other people to do what you want them to do.

As a panpsychist, I might go as far as to say that reality (the way the world is) is at bottom, negotiated. I used to think that ethics was the last area of philosophy we should study, and is the most derivative. After being influenced by The Great Whatever, I now think it might be foundational.

It's sort of the moral equivalent of people who believe things uncritically, just because they heard someone say it or read it somewhere and it seemed truthy to them. That seems to be most people, and doing what feels like the moral thing to do because they feel like it seems to be most people too, but both of those seem like a very shallow, fragile, easily corrupted and highly fallible ways to go about deciding what to think and what to do, in contrast to, you know... actually reasoning about these things critically. — Pfhorrest

Moral reasoning is still possible for the meta-ethical relativist (hope I've got that right). We just have to find common terminal goals (as opposed to instrumental goals, to put it in AI terms). Then we can argue about how best to achieve those goals. Rational argument ceases to be possible when people have divergent terminal goals. Then it's just a fight. It may be that, as a matter of fact, all people have convergent terminal goals (I believe that, or at least think it likely). But even if so, this does not make meta-ethical relativism false. It just makes it look like objectivism. Just like intersubjectivity is not objectivity, but seems like it.

At the moment I see human morality more or less in the same way as the guy in this video thinks about the orthogonality thesis regarding Artificial General Intelligence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUO6pjwFOo

Ethical claims invoke a move such as that from "I choose not to eat meat" to "you should choose not to eat meat". The move from what I chose to what others should choose.

If that is so, it is difficult to see how moral relativism could count as a coherent ethical position. — Banno

I agree moral claims are about others. But they are about getting other people to do what you want them to do, not what they should do in any objective sense.

That is what my thread is about, what does it mean or what would it mean if morality is relative? — Judaka

Perhaps it means that what we should do is negotiated rather than discovered. Not sure.

Besides descriptive relativism, there are also meta-ethical relativism, which is what Carlos is talking about (the truth or falsity of moral claims is relative) — Pfhorrest

I'm one of those...

but also normative moral relativism, which is what Judaka mentions here (we ought to tolerate behaviors that our morals say are bad because our morals are just relative). — Pfhorrest

...but not one of those.

Thanks for the concepts.

That's an argument, but as a reductio it doesn't quite reach the solid ground of contradiction. bert1 could have been unenlightened (if he had registered the name in time) and not-bert1 could've been unenlightened (and as it happens is). Either of us could have been, but only one of us is. — unenlightened

I took schop to be talking about people with all their non-name-dependent features rather than switchable name-bearers.

"I am not bert1" by the way, does not (fortunately) entail that I am everyone who is not bert1.

:) Indeed. It depends where one puts the brackets I guess. "I am (not-bert1)" means you are everything that isn't bert1. "I am not (bert1)" means just that you are not the one thing that is bert1, but you might or might not be one or more other things.

(Not that I agree with Schop's OP just for the record. I think there are two senses of 'you' in play that are not distinguished. I don't think statements like 'I am bert1' and 'you are unenlightened' are always straightforward statements of identity. I assumed they were in my rendition of Schop's argument to be charitable).

EDIT: removed double-negative

Definitions are just to see if your on the same page regarding a word. — Asif

This is not to be sniffed at. Very important thing sometimes in philosophy.

It's like a game of tennis. — apokrisis

This is a revelation.

...trying to make a table...

Not sure if this will help. Bit messy but it might be what schop has in mind.

1) I am bert1
(assumption)
2) I could have been unenlightened
(target assumption for reductio)
3) bert1 could have been unenlightened
(Substituting "bert1" for "I" from 1,2. Not sure what this move is called in logic (switcheroo?) but it seems valid to me if 1 is a simple statement of identity)
4) NOT bert1 could have been unenlightened
(assumption based on bert1 and Un necessarily being different objects/processes or whatever)
5) bert1 could have been unenlightened AND NOT bert1 could have been unenlightened
(& intro 3,4)
6) Therefore, NOT I could have been unenlightened
(RAA 1,2,3,4,5)

That'll have to do. I'm sure this forum must have a way to set out arguments like this in a clearer format on the page. Am I supposed to use LATEX or something?

... democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time ...

Yeah, this is frequently misquoted. What he actually said was:

... panpsychism is the worst theory of consciousness except for all those other theories that have been tried from time to time ...

Leaving aside the "victim" language which again paints rhetoric as an entirely bad thing: yes in a way, if you enjoy some music, the musician has successfully used some broadly-speaking rhetorical device on you to successfully evoke that reaction in you. — Pfhorrest

Fair enough. If you take the negative connotation out of it. In my ignorance I thought rhetoric and sophistry were more or less the same thing.

Rhetoric is an art, sure. It's not foundational to art generally, though. If I enjoy some music, am I really a victim of rhetoric?

This has probably been pointed out already somewhere in this thread, but the point of starting an argument by stating definitions is to clarify which of multiple possible uses one means by a word. — Pfhorrest

What Pfhorrest said.

The question to hand is "which is to be the master?"; and my answer is, the use is the master of the definition. — Banno

Qualified assent. Dictionaries are compiled by people who pay careful attention to use, at least one hopes. And the definitions they write deserve some respect, and should not be dismissed because one does not perceive or recognise one's own usage in some of the senses listed in the dictionary. I'm talking about 'consciousness' here, obviously.

There must, therefore, be a way of understanding a word that is not given by providing its definition.

Now this seems quite obvious; and yet so many begin their discussion with "let's first define our terms". — Banno

There is no dichotomy between a definition and usage. The way of understanding a word is by understanding how to use it. And one way to understand how to use it is to look in a dictionary at its definition. That is because dictionary definitions are derived from observing usage. Offering a definition, at least in part, is informing people of how a word is intended to be used.

Dictionaries describe usage, no? They're useful when there is confusion over different usages, as in the various senses of 'consciousness'.

Indeed, but they are both smart and interesting. It doesn't bother me so much if a poster has little of interest to say.

Disagreeing with either Banno or Apo quickly leads to the conversation crashing. It's frustrating and annoying. It's interesting watching them interact with each other.

@apokrisis what do you think of Banno's post?

Could you give an example of a property of space other than the mind? — Daniel

Not sure. Extension. Stretchability. Self-movingness.

Now, if you think the mind occupies a space, what would you say its limit is? — Daniel

Not sure. Maybe a mind is the space that a brain occupies.

I am asking this because it seems that everything that occupies a space is limited (i.e., it has a shape/form/limit). — Daniel

Nearly everything yes. But maybe fields occupy all of space, without limit.

I think it's a property of space, so I'd go for 'yes', as space occupies space.

In a healthy democracy, the rule of law one hopes, which one hopes reflects the values of the populace. In any case there are many more kinds of power than military and police. Corporations influence the law rather heavily don't they?

Thus he uses his vast wealth “to build narratives and to pass laws that will require all the other rich people to pay taxes and pay their workers better”, thereby increasing state power at the expense of private property and wealth. — NOS4A2

Isn't 'state power' the only thing that protects people from corporations? Power has to be somewhere. Where do you want it to be?

Descartes expressed his opinion that only humans are conscious, while animals only appeared to be sentient. But modern science has discovered signs of consciousness in almost all animate (self-moving) organisms. Unfortunately, we still have no way to detect consciousness directly, so we rely on inference from behavior. Even primitive bacteria seem to interact with their environment as-if they are sentient beings. But, since inanimate objects have no observable self-propelled behavior, they are presumed to be non-conscious. Therefore, it appears that Life is a necessary precursor to Mind. — Gnomon

Thanks, that's good. Inference from behaviour is an interesting way to resist panpsychism and has some force. This line of thought leads to possible issues of overdetermination. A narrow examination of this argument by analogy with humans would be worth a thread of its own I think.

I don't know why some Panpsychists believe that crystals are conscious. — Gnomon

Indeed, that appears to be the case.

Consequently, my Enformationism thesis assumes that Sentience is not a fixed property of the universe, but instead an emergent evolutionary process. My guess is that It began as something like a mathematical algorithm (information) in the pre-big-bang Singularity, and has gradually complexified over the eons into Energy, Matter, Life & MInd. If so, then we can assume that Self-Consciousness, as found in humans, is the current pinnacle of Evolution. Who knows what comes next --- artificial consciousness? Of course, this is a philosophical hypothesis, not a proven scientific theory. :nerd: — Gnomon

I'd need more information to understand this properly. Do you think consciousness is identical with a certain kind of information processing?

I think the ancient metaphors of Animism were good guesses in pre-scientific times, but we now have a better understanding of how the world works, and how unique Consciousness is to living things, and Self-consciousness to reasoning things. — Gnomon

Cool! I'm clearly out of date. What are the latest findings on which things are conscious?