The mind is the set of thinking faculties including cognitive aspects such as consciousness, imagination, perception, thinking, judgement, language and memory, as well as noncognitive aspects such as emotion.

let us call it pure awareness without content,
— Mickey
I call this empty substrate that you speak of "consciousness" and it consists simply of realizing my position in the world. I can only directly capture my consciousness and infer other consciousnesses because their attitude is similar to mine. (Some philosophers say that this capture of other subjects like me is immediate. I won't argue with that, if it's not necessary for your argument). If I have to infer a consciousness of the universe it will have to be because the universe acts in a similar way to mine. This is absurd for two reasons:

Because the universe does not have a body similar to mine and cannot gesture its consciousness, as other consciousnesses in the world do.
Because to claim that the universe can realize its position in the universe is a contradiction. It would be like realizing the position I hold within my "I". This proposition is impossible because a position with respect to oneself is an identity and consciousness is a relational term, that is, it establishes a relationship between two types of entity. — David Mo

What I'm saying is that an assumption is being made about things being internal and external based on the way they appear, and that it is possible that these are merely forms of appearance which differ in form not kind. That there is an identity between the seer and what is seen.

You mentioned that the universe does not behave as you internally, immediately do, but how is it that such a relationship (i.e. perception) can exist if there is only difference and no underlying identity grounding the relationship? I think the one who maintains that we represent the world and all its subjective significance internally has a lot of explaining to do. However, if you accept a form of holism with regarding to the things we consider objective and subjective, then it becomes easier to see how it is possible that we merely abstract differences for the sake of thought and so on, and this is reflected within the brains activity, rather than we somehow creating a mental representation and perceived world from within our brains.

I would like you to defend the idea that the mind is like a spiritual or mental entity, which is what I think panpsychism stands for. That is hard enough for me to find traces of a mind in some of the recent US presidents, but even less so in a volcano or a supernova explosion. I don't see them emitting thoughts, or speaking, or expressing emotions, or any of the properties that are usually considered in a mind.

The idea of a platform I don't know that makes things better. A platform that complains about the futility of life or how much it costs to pour lava through the crater? I don't see it, honestly.

But if the universe doesn't do anything of the things that a consciousness do, why do you call it a "consciousness"? — David Mo

It depends on what you mean by mind. If you limit mind to intelligent behavior and abstract thinking, then it is clear that panpsychism is an untenable position. However, if you treat them simply as forms of awareness that are continuous with not only a multitude of forms of awareness but being/existence as well, and you don't assume that the type of reality you experience as most internal, let us call it pure awareness without content, is only internal, then it is possible to see something that appears internal and something that appears external merely as different forms of awareness appearing within the same underlying substratum, a substratum which we tend to assume is hidden within our brain somewhere looking out into the world through the screen of our senses.

Correct me if I am wrong, but Heidegger did not identify the Being with any form of consciousness. Therefore, turning to Heidegger to justify that consciousness exists outside the brain doesn't seem helpful. Therefore, I ask you to describe this Being common to all things and to explain what makes you think it is a consciousness that exists outside the human brain. In your own words, if possible. — David Mo

You are correct. Heidegger did not identify Being with our current understanding of consciousness, he considers Being to be more basic. He provides justification for something more basic than our current understanding of both the brain, the mind, and consciousness. Our holistic, referential world of significance is what is most basic for Heidegger. It is does not involve awareness, thought, or subject-object duality. This is the same type of holism described by panpsychists. If you think of consciousness as the platform within and upon which everything appears, in other words the essence or background of all things, rather than a mere observer, state of awareness, and so on, then you get a very different picture of consciousness than the one currently considered a property of the mind, brain, self and so on.

I would add that we can't know things in themselves apart from the manner in which they appear to us, according to Kant, but we can infer that certain realities, such as causal forces and free will must exist (metaphysical certainty), as conditions on the possibility of the types of things that appear to us. I think this is essential to Kant's position as a whole.

In response to Hume's analysis, Kant argued that we never observe causal forces, we infer they exist based on the strict, law-like successive order in the phenomena. Although we never observe necessary connections in the succession, we apply our a priori concepts which involve necessity and logic. However, the fact that we are able to apply these concepts and recognize causal force implies that such causal forces must exist and ground the phenomena, as a condition on the possibility of our experience of them. So, Kant is in agreement with the standard scientific viewpoint in many regards, and in disagreement with hard materialists and other philosophers on this issue.

What if meaning isn't what life is really all about? Life does not have to be dependent upon meaning. Living a meaningful life is an activity we engage in, but it is not all there is to life. We have a tendency to make life amount to something, and fail to see that it does not have to amount to anything in order for it to be great. It's pretty amazing that all of this is happening and that we have the ability to make sense out of it and choose our own path in life, but that does not take anything away from how great or intense our experience of it is. Why not just focus on your experience of life instead of fixing, changing, or making something of it?

Statement 1: Kant in the Critique gave a solid argument here. Remove all awareness of an object (the thing itself) and something still exists, noumena. These are the external, independent of our minds.This is a one way track: from noumena to mind to its representations to us, phenomena. All science is based on phenomena, not the true external realities, noumena (not quite what Kant may have said).

Statement two: Science has shown remarkable capability of verification, prediction and use.
How is is this possible if it is only the appearance of external reality (phenomena), not the external reality itself (noumena)? — Arthur Rupel

Awareness of the object is distinguished from noumena, which is the thing in itself, according to Kant. Kant was very concerned with questions regarding causality. He wanted to know how we could know, for example, that the law-like succession we observe is governed by unseen causal forces. An overly simple way of stating this is, we have immediate use and awareness of mental acts. These mental-logical acts involve strict necessity. Such necessity is not observable, so in order for us to be able to apply these acts towards an observable phenomena, a noumenon must lend itself in such a way that it grounds our use of necessity. In other words, such necessity must exist noumenally in order to use concepts that we cannot observe phenomenally. So, we can infer some things about what reality must be like, as a condition on the possibility of certain forms of cognition/experience.

In Being and Time, Heidegger raises the question of the meaning of Being, a question he believes has hitherto been forgotten by philosophers.

What I am confused about is whether, in raising this question, Heidegger is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality, or rather (merely) with the reality of the human experience/condition. That is to say, is Heidegger concerned with what reality is like, in the sense that a physicist can be said to be, or is he concerned with what it is like to be a human being, more in the sense that an existentialist can be said to be? — philosophy

I believe Heidegger is concerned with something more basic than the physicist is concerned with, and phenomenologically demonstrating that that is the case, but not necessarily ultimate to reality. He seems to be concerned with what it means to be human, and he is suggesting that it is taking a stance on what we are and why that occurs. To do these, he is making sense of our continued sense-making activity. However, in doing so, I believe he is saying something very radical about the primacy of coping and meaning over any type of reflection about the world we are capable of conjuring in analysis, whether scientific or philosophic. In this sense, he seems to be more in alignment with an information theorist and than a theoretical physicist.

He treats pain in his account as well. He is not arguing that subjectivity and objectivity do not exist. They exist, but are grounded upon a more basic and holistic form of reality, which philosophers tend to neglect and which is more familiar than the form that appears when we engage in a heightened state of awareness or an objective form of analysis.

In your normal experience, the hammering shows up in a referential totality, in terms of why you are hammering something. You experience the hammering as a task you are engaged in order to x, y, or z. You don't experience the hammer as an object with properties, such as metal, heavy, hard, and so on, until you step back from your activity and engage in a state of reflection, and then it takes on the appearance of something that is an object devoid of the type of qualities we typically attribute to or ordinary "subjective" experience. It is our normal experience which grounds our thinking about the world, and not the other way around, according to Heidegger's argument.

To be fair, it is one thing to try and characterize the structure of Heidegger's argument in Being and Time, and another to see phenomenologically how he shows this is the case, and that is what he spends the majority of time doing in his book.

Good question! There is something very different about thinking in comparison to our perception of the world. For one, thinking involves contemplating possibilities, things which do and don't and might and could and couldn't occur, for example, whereas the world we perceive does not, at least to the degree or in the same manner as our thoughts do. Our thoughts seem to reflect a wider sphere of possibility, or abstraction, as well, such that they apply to more instances than what we are capable of perceiving. One might therefore ask, how is that we represent these possibilities or level of universality. Do we represent them or do we see them (reflect them) in some manner or do we merely construct them. Do our thoughts actually reflect reality or do they provide us with a useful but distorted view of reality. These are all things to think about... no pun intended

It seems possible to make a distinction between various states of awareness, such as our thoughts, feeling, perception and emotions, and consciousness, or that in which our states of awareness show up or appear. From within our various states of awareness, consciousness appears to be that which is doing the looking, thinking, feeling and so on, and these states appear to be internal to consciousness, whereas the things we perceive, think about, and feel appear to be external to consciousness. However, one thing to note is that our internal states and the external things become aware of both appear within consciousness. What differs is their form appearance. Based on this difference in appearance, we conclude that consciousness lies within us and things exist outside of consciousness, but this is a conclusion we draw based on the way that everything appears.

One that ascribed to panpsychism might argue that in order for any form of awareness to occur, things must appear as though they are external material bodies that lack consciousness in essence, but this is merely a form of consciousness which leads us to conclude that consciousness is in us and not in what we see based on the form of its appearance.

Martin Heidegger was not a panpscyhist, but he is famous for arguing in Being and Time that our the objective analysis gives us a distorted and fragmented view of reality if we take it to be fundamental. What is more fundamental, according to Heidegger, is the holistic and referential totality of meaning consistent with the activity we are normally engaged in in life. In other words, he uses phenomenology as a tool to show that the subject-object distinction is not fundamental to reality, and neither is the idea of an inner and external world.

Meaning is that which is typically thought of, for example, when we talk about the essential underlying nature of things, which distinguish one thing at their core from another, irrespective of whether we take meaning or beliefs to be derivative of one another. However, when we analyze the meaning of something, we are able to deduce that it is neither inherent nor fixed. In other words, it is not intrinsic to things and it is not constant or concrete, as some to think it seems to be. Freedom thus underlies the meaning of things. We are continually defining and redefining ourselves because at our core we are free. They can conflict with one another if meaning is taken in a fixed or inherent sense. Further, it is not that we can do away altogether with meaning, but that we are able to see it for what it is, and not take it as something that is ultimate or fundamental, and rather as a create process we engage in. In other words, we can engage in meaning freely without being attached, defined, or limited by it. It is our freedom that attests to something more fundamental in us than meaning.

In response, I would say that purpose at its core involves meaning, and meaning in general presupposes beliefs and assumptions. Assumptions and beliefs are in essence delimiting. They describe the boundaries of some limit, which is always based on a set of axioms which can never be proven but are typically apparent in some manner or another. So, meaning and purpose are limiting in essence and based on something apparent which seems to conflict freedom, which is not limited by the boundaries inherent in meaning. Because we are capable of creating and recreating meaning, I would say it is neither fixed nor fundamental to life, I would also suggest our free will attests to something more fundamental in us than meaning and purpose, something more consistent with our humanity and life.

I think that it is important to recognize, as the nihilist does, that there is a conflict between freedom and purpose. However, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Once you have chosen a course of action, as long you initially freely chose it, it is a free action. And one is free to choose otherwise at any point in time. As so often happens, our ideologies or beliefs or values that we hold so dearly conflict with an event that occurs in our lives. When this happens, we are presented with the opportunity to reevaluate and choose again, and redirect our purpose, which we now hold of higher value.

On another note, I do believe it is possible to live without purpose and not maintain a nihilist position. I agree with the nihilist that it is our attachment to meaning/purpose that confines us. Ideologies tend to limit the scope of our perception and action, and they are the driving force being purpose/meaning. Our ability to fashion an ideology is, in some sense, our ability to create meaning in our life. So it is not that meaning does not exist. It is rather that it limits our freedom. The problem is the tendency to propose a gloomy alternative to living a meaning filled life. Without religion or morality or ideology or a grand story about the universe, what is left?

The simple answer for us humans is our humanity. Our sensitivity to life itself, apart from meaning. It is a sort of reversal of the proposition "I think, therefore I am" to "I am, therefore I think." Life is happening, has been happening, and continues to happen irrespective of our attempt to make sense of it or make it meaning. The point of life is just to live and to cultivate your awareness of it.