An argument for panpsychism.

[Cerpin Taxt]

I wanted to start a thread to flesh out a few things that have been rattling around in my head recently. For a while I've been really interested in panpsychism, and consciousness in general, and I think there is a persuasive argument to be made in defense of panpsychism. Like so:

1.) Either everything is conscious, or nothing is conscious.
2.) It is not the case that nothing is conscious.
C.) Therefore everything is conscious.

All neat and tidy, eh? Guess we're done here, last one out get the lights.

But seriously, I have some supporting arguments prepared, but instead if writing a dissertation, I thought I would just open it up for discussion and let those arguments happen organically.

So, anybody have a problem with premise (1)?

 

[smackababy]

Never heard of this panpsychism before.

Problem I have with number 1 is it is speaking only in terms of absolutes and how is everything, if everything means truly every individual thing and not everything as a whole, not in its own state of consciousness with no influence from the other things.

And, how do we go about proving or disproving that. It is easy to prove the statement "nothing is conscious" because, we only need to find one thing. It is a lot harder to prove "everything is conscious" because that one thing might be hard to find.

 

[Fern]

-snip-
1.) Either everything is conscious, or nothing is conscious.

Why can't just some things be conscious?

Also, I think it is imperative to define the term "conscious" for a decent discussion to proceed.

Fern

 

[ThinClient]

1.) Either everything is conscious, or nothing is conscious.

This is an ultimatum. It is an irrational first step -an irrational conclusion or boundary for the argument. Besides, what does it mean to be conscious?

This entire conversation is irrational.

I see a lot of this kind of behavior (read: discussion) from people who have smoked themselves silly.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

CT: How can you ignore the material conditions and historical causes that lead to extant being?

Unfortunately your totalization of statement 1 is correct within the context of a split between subject and object; as with Descartes's split you become the giver of life to all reality around you: the subjective self dominates the meaning in the objective world.

Merlu-Ponty, in phenomenology of perception, reiterates this basic point made by philosophical anthropology long before him; on manuscript-pages 427-432 I have made these personal notes on the subject:

I The Cognito
a. Interpolation of the cognito in terms of eternity
MP(427) The encountering the world means being toward an object, where in my being flees from the object, and I am left thinking of the thing as thingly; but that thinglyness comes out my being toward it; even if I don't know what the thing is, it is immediate enveloped by attempts to deliver it into a tingly nature. (428) The experience of the distance between thumb and index finger is neither explicable in simply observing or in relying on simple nuronic discharges from touch; this person as subject is only comprehensible in the internal self form which the touching of something comes. (429) If a thought does not go out of me about a thing, then I do not recognize the thing as being. (430) Every thought starts with self-conscience and is thus of the subject (subjective)
b. Consequences: the impossibility of finatude and others
(431) The solipsistic world of a sealed off self is an eternal and all encompassing self; the cognitive I becomes God.
c. return to the cogito
(432) The external cannot be simple observation and the internal cannot be solipsistic, as temporality is continuous and fundamental to how experience occurs.



I think the solution is in taking a basic phenomenological approach; as if we try to 'frame' things then we must appeal to our own limits as the ultimate frame. But if we start with the phenomenon and work our way out we can gain an understanding of the material conditions of other's life-worlds. The exact methodology will be necessarily idiosyncratic to the phenomenon.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Thanks for the contributions. I made the post while on a plane, and now I'm home and exhausted. I'll have replies later. Indeed the 1st premise is the dealmaker or dealbreaker, but I think I can make some strong arguments to support it.

 

[DaveSimmons]

1. Either everything is a bunny or nothing is a bunny
2. It is not the case that nothing is a bunny
3. Therefore everything is a bunny

"It must be bunnies" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibk0LA3Unfk


Edit: more seriously, the flaw in your logic is 1), which should have been written as:

1.) Either everything is conscious, or not everything is conscious.
2.) It is not the case that nothing is conscious.
C.) Therefore Either everything is conscious, or not everything is conscious. -- 2) does not prove or disprove either option.

The negation of "all" is "not all" which is very different from "none".

 

[Madwand1]

Indeed the 1st premise is the dealmaker or dealbreaker, but I think I can make some strong arguments to support it.

The conclusion may be valid independently of the premise and arguments. Indeed, it is the position of some religions.

 

[IronWing]

Animism strikes me as kind of a default belief system. "I think, therefore everything thinks." I would think we would have to unlearn this idea at some point as opposed to being taught it.

 

[Murloc]

1) depends on what you define as conciousness.
But the whole things seems similar to the thought that everything is part of one consciousness, the gaia earth idea etc. which has been played from every angle by many religions since humans were capable of thought.
I don't think that saying that a rock is conscious in itself makes sense. It's either the whole universe (or earth if your view is limited to that, such as in the case of many ancient civilizations), or you drop the concept. I don't think there's anything of value that can come out of thinking like this, except for a better sense of belonging and environmental responsibility, but I don't think spirituality is necessary for that.

 

[dank69]

He has to be breaking this down to a sub-atomic level, right? All particles, light, energy is conscious? Something along those lines? Maybe some chaos theory or wave-particle duality? Just a wild guess from my limited knowledge.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

He has to be breaking this down to a sub-atomic level, right? All particles, light, energy is conscious? Something along those lines? Maybe some chaos theory or wave-particle duality? Just a wild guess from my limited knowledge.

The idea isn't that an atom is made up of consciousness; but rather that we can only experience and know about an atom through consciousness. Our consciousness makes the universe around us 'alive' and thus our consciousness is embedded in all 'things' that we call things. The world of humans is a world of minds interacting with minds.

What we 'call' reality is constructed socially.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjGRySVyTDk

 

[Moonbeam]

What we 'call' reality is constructed socially.

We are what we eat? The human brain is plastic, each different and yet each built on a basic pattern, all human brains. So there should be that which we are and that which is potential, maybe with some things gained other potentials are lost forever. I don't know. But it seems to me we can become what we can become and never become what we can't, so that we have a range we can call the human potential. So if what you say is true, and if the it is within human potential to love the Universe then the Universe also loves us.

The Hopi dance to sustain the universe in existence. Perhaps the universe is best when it's an act of reverence.

 

[hans030390]

The universe and its laws allow for the possibility of the universe to observe itself (AKA life). Perhaps there is a sort of universal consciousness at work, but not necessarily in such a way that is similar to human consciousness. That also leads into the question of how one would define consciousness and its various types.

 

[moonbogg]

We know that only few things are conscious and that consciousness comes at a late stage in the universe. Consciousness is not a thing, but a process that takes place in complex systems. Lacking this complexity, most things are not conscious.
Regarding things that aren't known, such as the characteristics of the larger structure that our universe is contained within, perhaps consciousness is a characteristic of such a system. For instance, a single neuron is not conscious, but it contributes to a conscious system. Likewise, everything in our universe may not be conscious, but our universe may act as a neuron in a larger system and contribute to consciousness on a different scale. So all things are not conscious, but as far as anyone knows, all things may contribute to, and be necessary for, consciousness.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Do we actually know that? As far as I can tell, that's largely an assumption based on the fact that we only know for sure the we are conscious, and that we are complex processes. I suppose you can define consciousness as requiring a complex process, though I doubt that's going to be very convincing.

Also, if I'm not incorrect here, panmindism is more then just "Every rock, tree, and bush is conscious." It's literally everything you can conceive of is conscious. A rock is conscious, your brain is conscious, and the combination of the rock and your brain is another, separate conscious. The rock plus your brain plus one molecule of oxygen in Cleveland is another, and the combination of the ocean, moon, and 3 VHS tapes in my basement is yet another. Everything is not merely conscious in and of itself, but it's also a part of an infinite number of other consciousnesses.

It's not entirely off the wall. We regularly speak of groups of people or nations as wanting something, or having thought/emotions.

Seems hard to disprove, but ultimately kind of useless. If correct, panmindism is a great universal truth with no effects.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

I apologize for my continued absence. Work has gotten a bit on top of me since I got back in town. Frankly I'm losing the motivation I once had to defend this argument, but I'll try to return to see where I can take it.

 

[DaveSimmons]

It's not entirely off the wall. We regularly speak of groups of people or nations as wanting something, or having thought/emotions.

But that's only saying that a group of conscious beings can have a collective consciousness. Not a group of rocks or pencils.

 

[DrPizza]

1.) Either everything is conscious, or nothing is conscious.
2.) It is not the case that nothing is conscious.
C.) Therefore everything is conscious.

So, anybody have a problem with premise (1)?

Assume premise (1). It leads logically to (C). Rocks are not conscious - therefore we have a contradiction. Thus premise (1) is false.
QED.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

The crux of my defense of (1) was to argue that the idea that we could distinguish "conscious" things from "unconscious" things was fundamentally arbitrary, and therefore objectively meaningless. In short, we could exclude "some things are conscious," making (1) a true dichotomy. That's the hard part. The rest follows pretty easy from it.

 

[piasabird]

To me this sounds like a bunch of dribble. I bet if you did a poll not even 1 in 100 people could define what this word "panpsychism" means. I was reading some definitions on website and still dont know what it means.

Define it?

This is more like a highly technical topic.

Mormon Doctrine would confuse you even further. It states everything existed as intelligences first, and then was created in the spiritual sense. Of course then there is the concept that God exists in a state with no time or a different reality that can not be understood or described by man.

Did the universe ever not exist? Prove it! (Rhetorically speaking). Does it matter if there was a beginning to existence. What make you think this world is the center of the universe? It could be one of many worlds. We could all be in a kind of time loop or one eternal round.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

"I bet if you did a poll not even 1 in 100 people could define what this word "panpsychism" means."
This adds nothing.

CT is addressing the problem of qualia, a well-situated problematic in philosophy. This is because he's smart enough to 1) question the implicit metaphysics of anglophonic aculturation and 2) know that there's more to life than naive realism

Some day I'll explain that it's all language and he'll understand in a very precise way what I mean; but he's got to make it past the phenomenological turn first. This isn't to say he's "behind" me at all; only to say that he's circling in one part of a path i've been down, no doubt there are gems along the way I missed and many experiences he brings that can draw-forth new worlds.

You are welcome to read up:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/

This, I think, is for CT:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schutz/#BerWri

 

[IronWing]

Assume premise (1). It leads logically to (C). Rocks are not conscious - therefore we have a contradiction. Thus premise (1) is false.
QED.

Only if we assume that rocks are not conscious. I've met a lot of rocks that hit on me and definitely wanted me to take them home.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

^?

I'm fairly sure that's just further support for Dr. Pizza's point.

Also, who's to say rocks aren't part of a conscious planet earth?

 

[Baasha]

It should be noted that "panpsychism" was a term popularized by IONS (Institute of Noetic Studies) in California following the rapid interest in "Panentheistic" philosophies starting in the 1930s in Europe/America.

It was a direct result of research into Hindu/Buddhist schools of thought that are now hidden, intentionally by most and unintentionally by a few, that gave the rise to this field of "panpsychism".

In other words, Hinduism (and some interpretation of certain Buddhist principles) deal with the ontological - a singularly emphatic difference between the Dharmic framework vis-a-vis the Abrahamic framework which is purely soteriological in nature.

This new "phenomena" of quixotic jargon can be seen as a method to cover up the true sources of these principles, philosophies, and frameworks; Hinduism and Buddhism.

This, of course, is nothing new for westerners who specialize in theft of other cultures, lands, and people - a trait they have exhibited for centuries without an iota of shame or civility.

After all, even "philosophies" such as Process Philosophy, or Whitehead-ian thought, is a direct mapping of abidharma Buddhism without any reference or credit to the latter.

Panpsychism, in short, is the common Hindu framework of "saguna Brahman" - the "qualitative infinite" as opposed to "nirguna Brahman" that is the immutable and unmanifest consciousness that is all-pervading.

Look at this article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-theory-of-consciousness

Posits an "Integrated Information Theory (IIT)" or a 'scientific' version of Panpsychism - another bastardized version of an already long series of dishonest scholars and scholarship.

The dharmic frameworks of Hinduism and Buddhism, or of Dharmic "faiths" in general, are being stolen, digested, and remapped onto westernized frameworks with fancy jargon at a rapid pace. This has been going on for a few centuries and has picked up pace in the past few decades.

Another example of this thievery by the west is Yoga - claiming that it is not "Hindu" or it is not "ancient" or that its principles are already somehow found in the garbage that is Christianity and/or Judaism.

Most Indians are woefully ignorant of the theft right in front of their noses and instead are looking for crumbs from westerners in terms of "awards" and accolades for ephemeral gains.

Yet, there are a few solid scholars who are working with fervor to counter the behemoth of surreptitious thievery by western "scholars" and academics - their efforts are finally being supported by those who have some knowledge and self-respect (thankfully).

Swami Vivekananda's brilliant and pithy statement comes to mind; "Uthishta jagratha praapyavaraan nibodhata!" (Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached!).

Time to go play some GTA V!