Panexperientialism. — schopenhauer1

Right then. So how do you deal with the criticism that claiming agency at the level of particles is causal overdeterminism? What use is there in granting choice to particles unless there is evidence of them making choices?

There is this basic problem of claiming a mental aspect to materiality as a brute fact. We can certainly track material being a long way down. But mental being seems to disappear as soon as the complexity of a neural modelling relation with the world disappears. You haven't yet said why emergence can't explain this, only that you "can't see it yourself".

Ah, smug snootyism, one of the most satisfying and least valuable philosophies. — T Clark

Zing! (Y)

The least valuable being describing something one knows nothing about. Ever try learning golf by reading about it?

You haven't yet said why emergence can't explain this, only that you "can't see it yourself". — apokrisis

But I did say how it can't explain it:

Either the processes have an inner aspect, or it is all just "dead" interactions or purely-mapping (i.e.information transfer) if you want to try to be Peircean about it. Now, you are going to make a grand move to invoke DOWNWARD CAUSATION (read that with resounding echoes)- the core of emergentism, and the core of its failings when related to mind-body problem. Downward causation works in physical systems as the radical difference is not there. It is still using the language of math/physics/mapping. Instead now we have experientialness- a completely different phenomena that doesn't speak in quantities and maps, but qualities and first personhood. In other words, as I keep saying, you are getting an emergent phenomenon illegitimately from quantity to quality (what I call magical fiat). I don't think you mean to do this, but you are doing this.

But I did say how it can't explain it: — schopenhauer1

I'm not following your logic. Didn't you cite Whitehead employing a systems-type emergence argument to explain why rocks aren't conscious and yet brains are? One has something extra the other lacks - global constraint to organise and create generalised integration.

So given a basic acceptance of this approach to causation, why can't experience be a materially emergent property?

Yes, I hear you claim a categorical dualistic difference. But I am waiting for your argument that supports that as the necessary conclusion.

global constraint to organise and create generalised integration. — apokrisis

So given a basic acceptance of this approach to causation, why can't experience be a materially emergent property? — apokrisis

Because integration in every other phenomena that consciousness apprehends (i.e. the physical events) is radically different in its non-qualitativeness. Everything else is quantized. Qualities are emerging from quantifiable mapping, which seems about as magical as it gets in philosophy land. You use the word, integration, how is this not magical fiat where you are getting quality from quantity? How is mapping = to experiential quality other than if the mapping has some quality there to begin with (i.e. Whitehead's logic)?

Because integration in every other phenomena that consciousness apprehends (i.e. the physical events) is radically different in its non-qualitativeness. — schopenhauer1

But that is back to the circularity of how you choose define mind in opposition to matter. You can only arrive at your dualistic conclusion because it is the distinction you have already assumed. Mind and matter are separate, therefore mind and matter are separate, amounts to a tautology, not an argument.

I agree that this dualistic framing is socially acceptable. It is standard cultural practice. But you have to come up with something better than demonstrating that the customary definition of "the world" leaves no room for "experience".

Probably worse that that, your actual claim here winds up being contradictory of your now professed pan-experientialism. Somehow you know that material integration/emergence is non-qualitative. And yet even Whitehead seems to accept that the claims about differentiation and integration reflect what are usually considered material descriptions of the world. He is talking about the physical structure of rocks vs the physical structure of bodies with brains. Otherwise how could we tell a rock isn't integrating information, binding together occasions of experience? Are we to believe its apparent material structure might say its not, but its mental aspects are somehow doing just that despite the materiality not going along on that correlational ride?

This is what is so ghastly about panpsychism. It falls apart under the slightest prod like a mouldering corpse. But ah well.

You use the word, integration, how is this not magical fiat where you are getting quality from quantity? — schopenhauer1

Jeez. You asked me to comment on Whitehead. I just agreed that he at least did argue for standard systems causality - emergent organisation or the birth of autonomy as the result of a symmetry-breaking process of differentiation and integration.

The ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction. The novel entity is at once the togetherness of the ‘many’ which it finds, and also it is one among the disjunctive ‘many’ which it leaves; it is a novel entity, disjunctively among the many entities which it synthesizes. The many become one, and are increased by one. In their natures, entities are disjunctively ‘many’ in process of passage into conjunctive unity

But you have to come up with something better than demonstrating that the customary definition of "the world" leaves no room for "experience". — apokrisis

Hence panexperientialism/panpsychism. Didn't know you advocated for it ;).

Somehow you know that material integration/emergence is non-qualitative. And yet even Whitehead seems to accept that the claims about differentiation and integration reflect what are usually considered material descriptions of the world. — apokrisis

Again, the ability for occasions of experience to differentiate and integrate means that processes have fundamental "what it's like" aspects- processes are experiential, not just quantifiable.

Otherwise how could we tell a rock isn't integrating information, binding together occasions of experience? Are we to believe its apparent material structure might say its not, but its mental aspects are somehow doing just that despite the materiality not going along on that correlational ride? — apokrisis

No no, they are integrated too, but Whitehead claims it as a "democratic" concrescence rather than a hierarchical one (what you may call integration perhaps). Mentality is there:

The basic unit of reality in Whitehead's system is an event-like entity called “actual occasion,” which is the procedural integration or “concrescence” of processes of data transfer (“prehensions”) into unities that become new data. Each actual occasion is the growing together of the total available information of the universe at that time, according to certain principles, repeating and reinforcing certain patterns (“eternal objects”) and thereby creating new ones. Whitehead's process metaphysics is arguably the most comprehensive descriptive metaphysical framework we have to date — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/#3

Although the system is a monistic one, which is characterized by experience going “all the way down” to the simplest and most basic actualities, there is a duality between the types of organizational patterns to which societies of actual occasions might conform. In some instances, actual occasions will come together and give rise to a “regnant” or dominant society of occasions. The most obvious example of this is when the molecule-occasions and cell-occasions in a body produce, by means of a central nervous system, a mind or soul. This mind or soul prehends all the feeling and experience of the billions of other bodily occasions and coordinates and integrates them into higher and more complex forms of experience. The entire society that supports and includes a dominant member is, to use Hartshorne’s term, a compound individual.

Other times, however, a bodily society of occasions lacks a dominant member to organize and integrate the experiences of others. Rocks, trees, and other non-sentient objects are examples of these aggregate or corpuscular societies. In this case, the diverse experiences of the multitude of actual occasions conflict, compete, and are for the most part lost and cancel each other out. Whereas the society of occasions that comprises a compound individual is a monarchy, Whitehead describes corpuscular societies as “democracies.” This duality accounts for how, at the macroscopic phenomenal level, we experience a duality between the mental and physical despite the fundamentally and uniformly experiential nature of reality. Those things that seem to be purely physical are corpuscular societies of occasions, while those objects that seem to possess consciousness, intelligence, or subjectivity are compound individuals.

b. Perception and Prehension

Every actual occasion receives data from every other actual occasion in its past by means of prehension. Whitehead calls the process of integrating this data by proceeding from indeterminacy to determinacy “concrescence.” Concrescence typically consists of an occasion feeling the entirety of its past actual world, filtering and selecting some data for relevance, and integrating, combining, and contrasting that original data with novel data (provided by the divine occasion) in increasingly complex stages of “feeling” until the occasion reaches “satisfaction” and has become fully actual. Because this process of synthesis involves distilling the entire past universe down into a single moment of particular experience, Whitehead calls a completed actual occasion “superject” or “subject-superject.” After an occasion reaches satisfaction, it becomes an objectively immortal datum for all future occasions. — http://www.iep.utm.edu/processp/

The most obvious example of this is when the molecule-occasions and cell-occasions in a body produce, by means of a central nervous system, a mind or soul. — http://www.iep.utm.edu/processp/

This is just repeating the same old. What causes mind as we mean it - human minds rather than rock minds - is a physical structure. The evolved complexity of a nervous system doing information processing.

Then "experience" gets slapped on by fiat as the bit of magic which explains why material complexity alone couldn't do the trick.

It is exactly like saying that a living organism is only living because there is all this biological structure. Plus a vital spirit that then ensures the structure has the added quality of animation.

This is just repeating the same old shit. What causes mind as we mean it - human minds rather than rock minds - is a physical structure. The evolved complexity of a nervous system doing information processing.

Then "experience" gets slapped on by fiat as the bit of magic which explains why material complexity alone couldn't do the trick.

It is exactly like saying that a living organism is only living because there is all this biological structure. Plus a vital spirit that then ensures the structure has the added quality of animation.

Bonkers. — apokrisis

So in that case, a pox on both houses as where experience is slapped on at the starting point in one, it is slapped towards the end of a process in another. I guess they both suffer the same problem. Not enough words like "integration" "downward causation" or "negentropy" will make the magical fiat go away. Experience not inherent in the system becomes an outright dualism, one that is not accounted for.

How about everyone agreeing that "the soul (which is effectively "magical") is emergent from the organization of the brain and survives as long as the brain lives".

So in that case, a pox on both houses as where experience is slapped on at the starting point in one, it is slapped towards the end of a process in another. I guess they both suffer the same problem. — schopenhauer1

Well it is only you slapping on "mental" as a term. I questioned your customary division of the phenomenal into the "self" and the "world".

More-or-less yes. According to Schopenhauer — schopenhauer1

Thanks. So in the same way you can identify that as being identical to conscious experience, can the same not be done for a particular semiotic process? So the phenomenal bit is being identical to that metaphysical process which sees itself as something living in the world. If not why not?

This is really what the identity theorist wanted but they failed so it moved on to functional identity.

"In answer to the question “why are these states conscious?” it can be replied that this is what it means to be conscious. If a state is available to the mind in this way, it is a conscious state (see also Dennett 1991). " http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/#SH3b

The problem with this is that it forgets that this is only an epistemic identity. Its ontological identity is still bundles of neurons which do not have the character of "phenomenal first person experience". So the difference between the two (semiotic and the materialist functional) is that holistic ontological identity is built into its theory.

I don't necessarily buy the Peircean metaphysics being posted but I can see it as a better solution for the hard problem than the materialist one.

I'll just accept the almighty Wikipedia's stance on emergence for now: — schopenhauer1

I'll try and tackle the issues of emergentism at a later date. I am fairly familiar with that page and systems science. From what I recall (it has been a couple of years since I read it) Bedau's essay linked on that page is fairly useful. http://people.reed.edu/~mab/papers/weak.emergence.pdf

Well it is only you slapping on "mental" as a term. I questioned your customary division of the phenomenal into the "self" and the "world". — apokrisis

But I will repeat: Not enough words like "integration" "downward causation" or "negentropy" will make the magical fiat go away. Experience not inherent in the system becomes an outright dualism, one that is not accounted for.

How is changing terms going to help? Please explain WHAT mental is compared to physical without magical fiat? I can say "hocus pocus" (downward causation) and say mental states now exist, doesn't mean I explained anything about how qualitativeness exists (aka qualia). Also, the ability to apprehend qualities (even undifferentiated) are not learned. Other animals probably have them too.

Thanks. So in the same way you can identify that as being identical to conscious experience, can the same not be done for a particular semiotic process? So the phenomenal bit is being identical to that metaphysical process which sees itself as something living in the world. If not why not? — JupiterJess

This is the debate apokrisis and I are having pretty much. How can neurons interacting "be" mental states? Even if they cause them, how are they one and the same- both qualitative and objective? Schopenhauer's theory proposes that all is really Will. The body being objectified Will means that it is a monism with two sides. One side is the inner "thing-in-itself", the other is the body which is its objectification. I'm not really advocating for his view per se though.

At the same time, there is one aspect of the world that is not given to us merely as representation, and that is our own bodies. We are aware of our bodies as objects in space and time, as a representation among other representations, but we also experience our bodies in quite a different way, as the felt experiences of our own intentional bodily motions (that is, kinesthesis). This felt awareness is distinct from the body’s spatio-temporal representation. Since we have insight into what we ourselves are aside from representation, we can extend this insight to every other representation as well. Thus, Schopenhauer concludes, the innermost nature [Innerste], the underlying force, of every representation and also of the world as a whole is the will, and every representation is an objectification of the will. In short, the will is the thing in itself. Thus Schopenhauer can assert that he has completed Kant’s project because he has successfully identified the thing in itself.

Although every representation is an expression of will, Schopenhauer denies that every item in the world acts intentionally or has consciousness of its own movements. The will is a blind, unconscious force that is present in all of nature. Only in its highest objectifications, that is, only in animals, does this blind force become conscious of its own activity. Although the conscious purposive striving that the term ‘will’ implies is not a fundamental feature of the will, conscious purposive striving is the manner in which we experience it and Schopenhauer chooses the term with this fact in mind. — http://www.iep.utm.edu/schopenh/

But I will repeat: — schopenhauer1

Of course you will. The same tautology over and over again. Duality is what you presume and dualism is what you conclude. The circularity is why you are on auto-repeat.

Please explain WHAT mental is compared to physical without magical fiat? — schopenhauer1

I have repeatedly - at your demand - explained that I ground my approach in semiosis. So the "duality" or dichotomy of matter and sign. Because it is dichotomy - a symmetry breaking - rather than a duality, how there is both the differentiation and the integration gets accounted for. And then development explains how the simple becomes the complex - how the dichotomised leads to the triadic or hierarchical with time.

If you don't get it, cool. In this thread I was asking you to justify your ontology, not seeking to explain mine yet again.

to the triadic or hierarchical with time — apokrisis

What is the difference between triadic processing in non-minds and triadic processing in minds in terms of what it is like to be a triadic process? You snuck in another word- "hierarchical". The word soup does not end in trying to explain away how the experience of minds somehow "appear". So you think using the term triadic hierarchy will somehow explain how one type of "process" is different than the rest?

Let's at least be constructive. What do we both agree on:

1) Minds are a process
2) Some sort of informational process is happening or interactions of events
3) Disjunctions and integrations occur

All those could be good beginnings. But you've already slipped in "mind" in a contentious fashion.

Could you be clearer and say minds are the result of a process, and so not a brute fact on which the process depends. Could you say it is not mind but instead "minding", or at least "mindfulness", that characterises the material outcome, to make it clear a reified substance is not presumed which remains separate to the process itself?

These have been immediate sticking points so far.

So you think using the term triadic hierarchy will somehow explain how one type of "process" is different than the rest? — schopenhauer1

It is hardly sneaking anything in in calling semiotics a triadic or hierarchical process. What else was Peirce describing? And what else has natural philosophy been saying since Anaximander and Aristotle?

So yes, a "system" is a quite specific kind of process. It has hierarchical structure.

So yes, a "system" is a quite specific kind of process. It has hierarchical structure. — apokrisis

I'm not denying hierarchical structure, I am denying that hierarchical structure means that there is a smooth transition from non-mind-like structure to mind-like structure (hence the name of this thread). Processes are not all the same- one is radically different, and that is indeed the sticking point. Triaidic hierarchies in map land vs. triadic hierarchies in experiential land. The thing is though, you are so close to being on the cusp of saying that, like Whitehead, the triadic hierarchies are experiential in their prehension and novelty all the way down (which is NOT the same as saying full blown consciousness all the way down in the animal sense).

The thing is though, you are so close to being on the cusp of saying that, like Whitehead, the triadic hierarchies are experiential in their prehension and novelty all the way down — schopenhauer1

In your wet dreams. Even when arguing for pansemiosis, I am clear that life and mind are different in having an epistemic cut that puts hierarchical constraint "inside" the organism. I am arguing for the evolution of autonomy, not against it.

I am just rejecting your mental substance just as I would if you argued for elan vital.

You want to treat consciousness as some pure quality. You take it for granted there is a self who introspects on a Cartesian theatre of ideas and impressions. You argue that there is all the physical complexity of some information process - and then for no known reason, there is the added radioactive glow of phenomenal experience to light up the brain's dark circuits.

But then you turn out to be undecided on whether your ontology is one of dualist correlation or panpsychic monism. How could I be close to agreeing with you if you find it hard to agree with yourself?

I tried to be clear where I agree with Whitehead - on the generality of a holistic systems causality. Then where I fundamentally disagree - on experience or agency as a fundamental property or constituent of nature. Just go with the positions I actually argue when in doubt.

I am clear that life and mind are different in having an epistemic cut that puts hierarchical constraint "inside" the organism. I am arguing for the evolution of autonomy, not against it. — apokrisis

Explain the epistemic cut without too much jargon. Explain hierarchical constraint "inside" the organism without too much jargon. Define it first, provide examples maybe. Then from there explain how it applies to the solving the mind-body problem. You can be lengthy but not jargony. I'm demanding this because I've seen your tendencies. We can either have a constructive, beneficial discussion or an ongoing hostile debate where no one gets anywhere. Ordinary language sometimes prevents talking past each other. And no snarky remarks about reading this or that (name drop systems philosopher). Anyone can simply say to go read their favorite philosopher and end the conversation.

All those could be good beginnings. But you've already slipped in "mind" in a contentious fashion.

Could you be clearer and say minds are the result of a process, and so not a brute fact on which the process depends. Could you say it is not mind but instead "minding", or at least "mindfulness", that characterises the material outcome, to make it clear a reified substance is not presumed which remains separate to the process itself?

These have been immediate sticking points so far. — apokrisis

To me, saying minds are the result of a process is cleaving too close to "minds are epiphenomenal". Is that your take? I'm pretty sure you don't mean to say that.

Anyone can simply say to go read their favorite philosopher and end the conversation. — schopenhauer1

Yeah. I mean anyone woulda thunk dis was a philosophical forum or sumthink. Next people will be making their case by posting large slabs of impenetrable text from blogs called larval subjects, or suchlike. I mean it's not like we can just google unfamiliar terms and start to educate ourselves.

Get over yourself man.

Yeah. I mean anyone woulda thunk dis was a philosophical forum or sumthink. Next people will be making their case by posting large slabs of impenetrable text from blogs called larval subjects, or suchlike. I mean it's not like we can just google unfamiliar terms and start to educate ourselves.

Get over yourself man. — apokrisis

Okay, I'm done talking with you. I'm asking you to teach, and you are going to taunt and insult instead.

Okay, I'm making another attempt at actually trying to have a fruitful dialogue. I was trying to understand your position better, and have to explain it more succinctly in relation to the conversation at hand. I was trying to see if our versions are actually more similar if we make our positions more clearly stated and see where we agree and disagree. Dual aspect monism is more where my theory lies. However, I don't see how it can be wrong to think about what it is like to be the process itself from the process' point of view. Afterall, you seem to be making a connection with the semiotics of cognition and the semiotics of materials. It would seem that we have: semiotics of material, material matieral.. then the ghostly steam of semiotics of mental mental mental. This stark split, you seem to point out as a epistemic cut, which seems to be Howard Patee's idea of the epistemic cut which seems also similar to downward causation of top to bottom systems. I just don't get how pointing to the fact that there is a difference of the final process (cognitive events) and the material constituents (material events) and that mental events can change physical events, says very much except a tautology of common sense (mental events exists and affect physical events and vice-versa). That does not seem to be answering the question.

The story remains the same.

1) It starts with the proper nature of explanation. An explanation of nature in terms of causality is a model - a rational account with observational consequences. This is going to happen because of that. The account thus depends on posited counterfactuals. If the particular predicted events don't happen, then something must be a problem with the general statements which are the theory.

On that score, it follows that you can't even have a theory if you can't identify counterfactuals. There has to be something to measure in terms of the claims being made.

So as I have said quite a few times to you, I agree that any theory of nature encounters a "hard problem" when it runs out of factual distinctions. About the Cosmos or Being itself, we can ask "Why anything?" and that question drops down a great big silent well to the degree we can't offer a measurable counterfactual. Show me the alternative to the simple fact of Being and then we can start to account for its existence employing counterfactual argument.

The same applies to other ultimately self-referential lines of questioning like "why is the mind a mind?", "why is red red?", etc. I accept a terminus to explanation - a hard problem of epistemology - if we run up against the brute factness of qualia, just as much as if we run up against a brute factness in regard to being.

But then you would have the complementary responsibility of not presenting me with "theories" that are "not even wrong". You can't employ brute fact to attempt to prove some naturalistic causal account.

That is precisely the problem with any variant of panpsychism. It presumes experience as a brute fact in a way that defies counterfactual analysis. It says be sure that matter has an experiential aspect, the intrinsic property of being aware, but there is then no way to measure that, to demonstrate that, because I have also constructed the theory in such a way that the presence of experience at the foundational level of matter makes absolutely no bleeding difference to anything you could observe.

The theory is just a tautology. It claims its results in a way that admits to no possible test. It founds itself in brute fact and then hides that while happily agreeing with anything a physicalist might have to say about the correlation of mentality with the complexity of material structures or the functionality of information processes.

Frankly, it is either a case of intellectual stupidity or intellectual dishonesty to advance panpsychism in any of its familiar forms. A theory isn't a theory unless it can be falsified. And panpsychism makes its claims in a way that put it beyond falsification. It becomes a tale of mind all the way down. And then mind does less and less until it is apparently doing nothing. We have the mind of a rock. But that is OK. because all the counterfactual heavy lifting is granted by the panpsychist to the standard material side of the equation.

The rock is a bunch of disunified occasions of experience, or some such utter guff. Brains have the material structure to produce a monarchy, a unity, of these occasions. Or more utter guff.

I'll stop there before even attempting to defend semiotics (sign processing, the epistemic cut, hierarchical complexity, systems causality, etc) as our best candidate theory of mind. The misunderstanding you have is at the most basic level of epistemology - what would even count as "a theory" or causal account of nature.

Okay, well-stated and very clear. Thank you. I actually agree with much of what you stated. I am not comfortable in the home of panpsychism/panexperientialism. I think one of your best critiques in your previous post was when you stated:

And then mind does less and less until it is apparently doing nothing. We have the mind of a rock. But that is OK. because all the counterfactual heavy lifting is granted by the panpsychist to the standard material side of the equation. — apokrisis

I don't want to make a rebuttal really, but just a reasoning for why this option might be attractive. If experience is there all the way down, experience is accounted for as a foundation. It is the ground- the non-counterfactual "is" (or perhaps in Kantian terms- the "thing-in-itself; that is to say, experientialness).

What is the other option? To me, the other option is dualism. However, dualism seems to imply a strict split between material and mental which we both agree seems at odds with science. Dualism seems to posit a transcendental split between matter and a ghostly mind that correlates/interacts but is not equivalent to the material on which it correlates. This to me seems problematic. What I fear about your brand of semiotics philosophy is that it has a hidden dualisim (because it is not accounting for the nature of the difference between quality and material interactions) in that there is a spooky-like quality that results from the semiotic process. What is this spooky-like quality? Well, if we hit a wall of the hard problem because there is no "counterfactuals" that can be tested, that indeed is the very problem that we are getting at. Otherwise, yay for semiotics and systems approaches to neuroscientific/biological problems. However, this hard ground at the bottom of the well, it really doesn't say much- thus the very speculative and imaginative answers to this question.

Now, perhaps ideas like sign processing, the epistemic cut, hierarchical complexity, systems causality, etc. may be the light which leads out of this cave, but it has to be done with at least keeping in mind what I stated earlier about how the experientialness of certain processes should not be taken for granted as just "there" as the result of a series of processes without account for what "there" is.

I actually agree with much of what you stated. I am not comfortable in the home of panpsychism/panexperientialism. I think one of your best critiques in your previous post was when you stated: — schopenhauer1

I think I understand what you are getting at. Cosmic Goals and Thermodynamic Purpose are much more palatable words.

Philosophers can be quite interesting when they gather together to invent new stories and phrases. The exact difference between these concocted phrases and God is zero. You can throw panpsychism in there as well. Ultimately the Cosmic Cause has to be there somewhere. I just prefer to call it Mind since that is the only thing we all experience. I guess I like to keep it simple.

What is mind-boggling is that people actually take this Thermodynamics Purpose seriously. Humans just love their myths. This never changes, pre-historic or modern, always weaving myths.