A human whose brain has been removed has lost its identity, and therefore cannot be a subject, it seems to me. I think identity is what comes and goes, the units change.

What evidence are you referring to? Things like someone getting knocked out, psychoactive drugs changing experience by acting on the brain, that kind of thing?

I don't think it is right to say phenomenal consciousness is located in the brain, but I think identity very likely is. It seems to me that when people say 'consciousness' they are sometimes confusing it with identity.

Pigliucci's article is a poor one IMO. I would probably have asked him about a premise to a different argument for panpsychism (which he doesn't address in the article). The assumption is that consciousness does not admit of degree, is not a vague concept. I would ask something along the lines of 'Does the concept of phenomenal consciousness admit of degree? Can a being be in a state in which it is indeterminate as to whether it is conscious or not (compare baldness)?'

To address some of what he says in the article:

panpsychism seems to me both entirely unhelpful and a weird throwback to the (not so good) old times of vitalism in biology. — Pigliucci

No modern panpsychist I'm aware of is motivated by a liking of vitalism.

Nagel, therefore, saw panpsychism as possibly “the last man standing” on the issue, winning by default, though it isn’t clear why what is essentially an argument from ignorance (science at the moment hasn’t the foggiest about how consciousness emerges when matters organizes in certain ways, therefore science will never know) should carry any weight whatsoever. — Pigliucci

Winning by default is not the same thing as an argument from ignorance.

Either A B or C.
Not A
Not B
Therefore C

Where there is no consensus, it is perfectly rational to settle on the least problematic theory, whatever that happens to be. As Churchill said, panpsychism is the worst theory of consciousness apart from all the others.

Does that mean that the iPad on which I’m typing this is (partially) conscious? What about the coffee that I just drank as part of my morning intake of caffeine? What about every single atom of air in my office? Every electron? Every string (if they exist)? — Pigliucci

These are good questions from Pigliucci.

Okay, then, let us consider the “genetic argument” first. The “ex nihilo, nihil fit” bit is so bad that it is usually not taken seriously these days outside of theological circles (yes, it is a standard creationist argument!). If we did, then we would not only have no hope of any scientific explanation for consciousness, but also for life (which did come from non-life), for the universe (which did come from non-universe or pre-universe), and indeed for the very laws of nature (where did they come from anyway?). — Pigliucci

I share Pigliucci's view here of the inadequacy (as he quotes it) of this argument. However just pointing out that emergence happens in general is not enough to show that consciousness specifically can emerge from brain function. Every case of putative emergence must be judged on its own merits, and there are reasons why the emergence of consciousness is particularly problematic.

Surely. I’m not positive if my physicist friends would agree that physics is the study of structural form but not content — whatever those two terms actually mean in this context. But if so, then this is simply an argument for the incompleteness, as a science, of fundamental physics. Which, of course, is why we have a number of other sciences that study “content,” chiefly — in the case of consciousness — biology. — Pigliucci

I don't think he has grasped Eddington and Russell's ideas here, but I'm not totally sure I have either, so I'll just move on.

Consciousness, so far as we know, is an evolved property of certain kinds of animal life forms equipped with a sufficiently complex neural machinery. There is neither evidence nor any reason whatsoever to believe that plants or bacteria are conscious, let alone rocks, individual molecules of water, or atoms. — Pigliucci

This is just philosophical ignorance, unfortunately.

Moreover, since at the very bottom matter dops not seem to be made of discrete units (there are no “particles,” only wave functions, possibly just one wave function characterizing the entire universe), it simply isn’t clear what it means to say that consciousness is everywhere. Is it a property of the quantum wave function? How? Can we carry out an experiment to test this idea? — Pigliucci

These are good questions to ask the panpsychist.

I am left with just one question: why would anyone take any of this seriously at all? — Pigliucci

Because there are reasons Pigliucci has not engaged with.

I get it, panpsychism allows us to feel at one with nature because consciousness is everywhere, and that will make us better shepherds of nature itself. — Pigliucci

This observation is philosophically irrelevant, even if true (which it isn't - it's perfectly possible to be a panpsychist and not care one whit for vegetable and mineral welfare.)

I got news: Nature is mind bogglingly bigger than humanity, and it will be here for eons after humanity will be gone. — Pigliucci

Who is he talking to? Who doesn't know this?

Pigliucci has made a whole lot of assumptions about panpsychists ('New Agers') rather than engaging with panpsychism as a philosophy.

Wayfarer might be making a distinction between being and being-something. Unformed vs formed substance, or something like that. I prefer not to use 'being' in that way (because it's confusing) but I know some do.

I agree, and I think that this is analogous to the situation with incompatibilist free will. Incompatibilists insist that free will means being undetermined. Okay, electrons are undetermined, according to contemporary physics. So electrons have free will? Sounds like kind of a useless definition of free will then. But hey look over there, those compatibilists have a much more useful definition of free will according to which humans sometimes have it but electrons don't... it just has nothing to do with (in)determinism.

Likewise, phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness. — Pfhorrest

This interesting, and I think I understand your point. In the analogy, phenomenal consciousness is like incompatibilism - a coherent and meaningful idea, but not useful or particularly interesting. And compatibilism is like access consciousness - it's actually interesting and useful to be able to talk about the particular capabilities, powers and limitations of the mind in question.

I half agree with you. I'd be interested in your views on overdetermination. I eat because physical events in my brain cause, in law-like ways, my muscles to pick up food, put it in my mouth and chew it and swallow it. And presumably these causal pathways are in principle traceable. But I also eat because I feel hungry. And I wouldn't eat if I didn't have that feeling - the physical story is not the whole story of why I eat. So we have two causes (don't we?), and the question is, what is the relationship between them? There is a problem, because when we speak about machines which we presume are not conscious, an account of the physical processes is taken as sufficient to explain the behaviour of the machine. But in humans it's not enough, and we then have to try and explain why the situation is different in humans. My panpsychist answer is to say that it is not ultimately different. The problem is resolved if we can reduce one explanation to the other. Attempts to reduce will or consciousness to physical explanations have so far failed, but I think the reverse reduction can perhaps be made. Physical explanations refer to laws, causes, forces, all of which are presumed to be insentient. But these are just made up ways to refer to what things just do. To illustrate this, consider a crude analogy. Imagine an alien race of giants who discover humans. However they see only our behaviour and have no idea we are conscious. They design a light switch (admittedly a rather crap design, but bear with me). They put a giant 100m rocker switch like a see-saw on the ground. 20 humans are placed on one end and the whole lever is enclosed in a cage so that the humans can't escape. Now they wait a bit. To operate the switch they put some bags of food at the other end. The hungry humans move to the other end to get to the food, and the switch tips over and is operated. Now we know that the switch depends on phenomenal states to work, because we know what it is like to be a human experiencing hunger. But the giant aliens, who are not like us at all, presume that we do not possess consciousness, because we are very different from them. So Prek the alien giant observes this behaviour very carefully and invents Prek's law, namely that human particles follow a four-hour cycle of attraction to carbohydrate particles which are then absorbed by the humans particles. This is just taken as a fundamental law which 'just is', and it works. It successfully predicts the behaviour of the switch. (Yes, I know it is a really crap switch). We know Prek's law is a made-up law, because it is just a stand-in for the real cause, which is the phenomenal state of hunger. And the panpsychist thought is to simply extrapolate this to everything, so when we look at the behaviour of a system, we are looking at conscious things following their will. And mechanism can emerge from this, and predictable results can be exploited which are not intended or understood by the constituent entities. Any time we appeal to a force in a physical explanation, I suggest we are referring to the phenomenal states of the entities involved. And if we remember that entities are really persistent doings themselves, even the very existence of anything depends on will. This is of course problematic and raises a lot of questions. But it seems to me that reducing physical explanation to will is a much more hopeful project than reducing will to physical explanation. So I am an emergentist after all, but not about consciousness, but about mechanism. If we think 'reduction' is a dirty word then we are the stuck with the problem of the relationship of the mental to the physical. Do you find this at all plausible?

Particles are conscious in exactly the same way humans are.
— bert1
How do you know this? — Gnomon

In short, because panpsychism is the least problematic theory of consciousness. I can rehearse the arguments if you want me to.

The point of my comment was less to argue for panpsychism, and more to make a point about the definition of 'consciousness'. The differences in experience between one thing and another are differences in what is experienced, not differences in degree of consciousness, because consciousness does not admit of degree.

I can only infer that other humans are conscious because they behave the same way as I do in similar situations. Do particles behave like humans? — Gnomon

Yes, they move if poked, for example. If you want to say some behaviour is evidence of consciousness and other behaviour is not, I'd be interested in what criterion you use for determining what is admissible evidence and what is not.

Do they show signs of fear as a strange energetic particle approahes? — Gnomon

i doubt it. I understand fear in very human terms, and a particle is very different from me. But they may feel something as their fields gradually overlap, I don't know.

Do they love their entangled partners? — Gnomon

I don't know.

Is your little toe conscious in "exactly the same way" as you are? — Gnomon

Yes, becausue 'consciousness' only means that the bearer is capable of experience, not that their experiences are similar to other conscious things.

Consciousness is an evolutionary advantage for living creatures, but how would it be adaptive for atoms and billiard balls? — Gnomon

I'm a panpsychist, I don't think consciousness did evolve. I don't think consciousness confers any evolutionary advantage, because there are no non-conscious things.

Why do you say mental properties are non-spatial? — Zelebg

I didn't mean to imply that at all. Sorry if I was not clear. I was simply making an analogy between space and consciousness. Being spatial is not the kind of thing that can emerge intuitively. Similarly with consciousness, I am suggesting.

What Maw said.

Not because they are inherently wrong, but they can be misinterpreted as implying that particles are conscious in the same way humans are. — Gnomon

Particles are conscious in exactly the same way humans are. Particles have experiences. Humans have experiences. In so far as they both have experiences, or are capable of experience, they are both conscious. They have different experiences, but we are talking about consciousness, not content.

What it concerns, though, is the relationship of nested hierarchical systems. And, specifically, the appearance of "trigger" subsystems whose function is to focus interaction from a subsystem to its parent. Kind of like the study of encephalization, the development of the central nervous system and brain. — Pantagruel

That sounds interesting, but I don't understand it.

In my thesis, the universe began as non-conscious creative Energy, or as I call it, EnFormAction : the power to enform. Then via a long gradual process of Phase Transformations (emergences) raw Information (mathematics) was developed into the complex chemistry of Life (animation), and thence into the compounded complexities of Mind (intention). The Potential for Consciousness was there all along, but only at the tipping-point was it actualized, or crystallized, into the power to know. The link below is a brief overview of Evolution via EnFormAction. No magic; just continual incremental changes. — Gnomon

Why can't all these emergences happen in the dark? Why is consciousness a necessary consequence of all this?

The hard problem is hard because it assumes emergence.
— bert1

Why is emergence a problem? Emergence is a well known property of complex physical systems. — Pantagruel

It is. But it needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Most stories about emergence are perfectly plausible. But some bugger the mind. For example, its a headfuck to try and figure out how spatial stuff could emerge from non-spatial stuff. If you have a bunch of things that don't take up any space at all, what are they supposed to do to each other such that they end up with something that takes up space? Maybe it's possible, but you need a fuck of a good storyteller to make this convincing. Similarly with consciousness - I want the story of how non-conscious stuff interacting can end up with conscious stuff. Maybe it's possible. Some take a piecemeal approach, and divide up the concept of consciousness into several parts, and then set about attempting to move from one to the next. I haven't heard anything convincing at all so far. It's not enough to say 'hey, fluidity emerges from interactions of hydrogen and oxygen without a problem, therefore I can say anything emerges from anything without a problem.' No, you have to tell a convincing story.

And there are structural problems that work against the emergentist. One big one is that things are either conscious or not. Consciousness seems to be a non-vague concept. That is, if something is conscious at all, it is conscious. And if it isn't, it isn't conscious at all. There are no states that are indeterminate as to whether they are conscious or not. Are there? Maybe that's wrong. But if it's right, that presents a problem for emergence. Emergent properties typically emerge gradually in systems whose defining properties are vague. Fitting in a sudden switch from non-conscious to conscious in such systems is difficult and arbitrary. Such stories are unlikely to be convincing. But if you have such a story to present, please do so.

The idea is that if consciousness does not admit of degree, then it becomes very hard to find a point at which it can plausibly emerge. We'd have to find a change in a physical system that did not admit of any degree, some kind of quantum jump or something, with which to correlate the emergence of consciousness. This cannot plausibly be done it seems to me.

Stanford has caught up with this, no doubt due to my heroic efforts on these forums and the last:

More recently, Goff (2013) has argued that consciousness is not vague, and that this leads to a sorites-style argument for panpsychism. Very roughly if consciousness does not admit of borderline cases, then we will have to suppose that some utterly precise micro-level change—down to an exact arrangement of particles—marked the first appearance of consciousness (or the change from non-conscious to conscious embryo/foetus), and it is going to seem arbitrary that it was that utterly precise change that was responsible for this significant change in nature. — Goff, Philip, Seager, William and Allen-Hermanson, Sean, 'Panpsychism', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

EDIT: ...and just to finish the thought, we then have to pick an alternative to emergentism. And as pfhorrest has already mentioned, the two obvious alternatives are eliminativism (nothing is conscious) or panpsychism (everything is). Eliminativism is false because I am conscious. That leaves panpsychism. It's the worst theory of consciousness apart from all the others.

Phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness track each other. — fdrake

I don't think that's right. Could you give an example?

Therefore, phenomenal consciousness comes in degrees. — fdrake

This doesn't seem right tome either, and a number of other philosophers also think that consciousness does not admit of degrees. It's important to distinguish consciousness from content, and consciousness from identity. One argument for panpsychism springs from the idea that consciousness does not admit of degree.

Emergence is only one proposed solution to the hard problem. — Pfhorrest

Sure. The formulation of the hard problem does not strictly assume emergence, I was being a bit glib. But I think it springs from naturally emergentist assumptions. Namely that the universe started out unconscious, and then, as a result of non-conscious stuff doing things, consciousness arises. And explaining how this happens is hard in the strong sense Chalmers meant it. Eliminativism and panpsychism (and objections based on language and misapplications of concepts etc) sidestep the problem. The only people who have to tackle the hardness of the hard problem are emergentists it seems to me, as they are the ones who have to build this conceptual bridge between the non-experiential and the experiential.

The hard problem is hard because it assumes emergence.

I'd like to ask him about his critique of panpsychism. I'll figure out a question in the next few days.
https://platofootnote.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/on-panpsychism/

I don't think any deep thought is required is there? It's easier. Les power, less responsibility, less hassle.

The will to develop the potential of someone or something. That's one kind of love I think and covers quite a lot.

The concept of the soul is integral to the judeo christian framework — dazed

I'm doubtful if the framework has a metaphysical concept of soul. It has a moral, and functional one. The soul plays a role in our mortal and immortal lives. But I am not aware of any theory of what the soul actually is and how it interacts with the brain or whatever. I'm probably ignorant though.

Nardil — Wallows

I don't see how Aragorn's fictional broken sword is going to help Tim.

I like the analytical style, but I think most analytical philosophers are wankers. If I knew any continental philosophy I'm sure I think they were wankers too. I think I think philosophers are wankers. Certainly everyone on this forum is. Except maybe pfhorrest and TGW, who I wish would come back. I like philosophers though, even the black ones. Guess that makes me a cunt.

EDIT: wallows isn't a wanker

I'm a panspychist too and I agree with some of this.

it seems logically impossible that nerve signals can generate a subjective observer while at the same time enabling that self to have its own distinct powers. — lorenzo sleakes

This is intuitively plausible but could do with more elaboration and argument, if you have time. Can you explain further what you mean?

I propose that the brain only generates the content of consciousness and not the self that binds it into a whole. The visual processing center for instance generates visual perceptions and thoughts. But the conscious self, that private world that binds the sensations into a simple unity, has a more permanent status and is not generated by the pattern of nerve signals — lorenzo sleakes

I agree with that I think. I think identity should be distinguished from consciousness. Consciouness seems to me to be about the unification of its content, whereas identity is about the contents of consciousness, which are various and plural and determined by brain (or perhaps body) function.

Instead the mental subject comes from an already conscious nerve cell from which it splits off to become what Lebiniz called the dominant monad. The conscious self then is an atomic unity evolving from other conscious natural beings in a panpsychist universe and as such can have real causal powers. — lorenzo sleakes

I can't bear Leibniz's Monadology, so I instinctively recoil from this. But you may have repurposed his ideas fruitfully, I don't know. I'd need to hear more about this bit.

No need to apologise Chris. I definitely am racist. I don't like it. I don't like to say 'we're all racist', because that might make me feel better about it. Although if I did feel better about my racism because everyone else was racist too, then that would make me a dick as well as a racist.

I am ashamed Chris.

I'm racist, but not because of the language I use. I try to avoid talking about any racial issues for fear of revealing how racist I am.

What are the options again? Are there more than two?

Yep. The whole lot.

I think it's all real jorndoe.

1- mans evil is caused by his freedom not by god
2- natures evil is necessary for creation or part of gods higher plan

3- god helps stop evil sometimes if you pray.

4- god gives justice in the afterlife — OmniscientNihilist

5 - there is no evil from God's point of view

Perfectly good and omnipotent are incompatible. Christians like Ockham and Martin Luther, in consideration of the matter, voted for omnipotence, leaving the problem of goodness still to ad hoc resolutions. — tim wood

If that's right then they didn't understand the concepts. It follows from God's omnipotence that everything is good from God's point of view. It can still be really shitty from our point of view though, with no contradiction.

All of these are nothing more than you lying in the bath and farting, and being aware of it. — Janus

Yes, indeed.

• There is the phenomenal character of me lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
• There was something it was like for me to be lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
• There is the quale of my lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.

I'm not keen on 'quale' in any context, and I like 'something it's like' in some contexts. I think 'phenomenal character' is probably better in most examples. Depends on the language of the example.

EDIT: were you asking for examples from philosophical literature?

You could just as well have these:

• The experience of me lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.
• The feeling of me lying in the bath with the bubbles of my farts trickling between my thighs.

I take all these to be essentially equivalent.

phenomenal character — fdrake

= quale
= 'what it's like' language

I'm not keen on the word 'quale', but that's all it's supposed to mean in anything I've read that features the word.

Giulio Tononi has proposed a measure of organized complexity for the determination of the level of consciousness called "integrated information." — litewave

I think the IIT theory might be a very good theory of identity - every system that integrates information is a conscious individual. But as a theory of consciousness I think it fails, as it gives no reason to suppose that the integration of information couldn't happen, as it were 'in the dark'.

Nobody experiences the pain, because the person who would have experienced the pain does not exist while the body is anaesthetised.

To put it another way: the anaesthetic destroys the person, not the consciousness. It doesn't destroy the person legally, of course, just metaphysically.

I just mean that perhaps you disappeared, rather then your consciousness disappeared. I don't mean that you body vanished, obviously. I mean that the brain function required for there to be a single experiencer capable of experiencing pain was not there. Smaller structures which are not capable of integrating the messages from the nerves in the flesh being cut may retain identity and be conscious of their own processes, but these are not you. Not sure if I've explained what I mean very well.

Such experiences probably exist on the level of neural structures, not atoms, and can be temporarily switched off by general anesthesia. — litewave

How do you know it is consciousness that is switched off, rather than unitary identity that is disrupted?

I agree with a good deal of that. I'm a panpsychist and have been for a while. I don't think consciousness comes in units, I think identity does - and I think a lot of confusion in the philosophy of mind comes from muddling up consciousness with identity (for example, when you get knocked out, people usually asusme you are still you, but you have lost your consciousness; but I think the reverse, no consciousness is lost but your identity is disrupted). I like your analogy of the computer screen, although that's a bit passive. I think consciousness is very container-like, but not so much like a jar or screen, but as a field, which is stretchy and is intimately connected with (and constitutive of) its contents. As part of the physical universe, consciousness seems to me to fit most naturally and least problematically at the level of fundamental fields.

EDIT: I'm not a fan of the word 'qualia' as it makes it seem like experience has weird ectoplasmic extra bits called qualia. I know that's probably not how many mean the term, but I think it's best to avoid using it otherwise people get sidetracked into tedious arguments about exactly how real they are and what they refer to, if anything, blah blah. Best to stick to 'phenomenal experience' or something everyone can get on board with.

But I am honestly amused - like it makes me smile irl - to think people look out at the world around them and honestly believe in their heart of hearts that what they see are 'properties'. — StreetlightX

I mean, I'm mostly on board the embodied cognition train that says we see for the most part "affordances", opportunities for action, sites of relief and rest, goals to arrive at, hazards and safety, speed and rest, and so on. — StreetlightX

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