Panexperientialism. — schopenhauer1
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: — schopenhauer1
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. — schopenhauer1
You use the word, integration, how is this not magical fiat where you are getting quality from quantity? — schopenhauer1
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
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
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
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 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. — schopenhauer1
More-or-less yes. According to Schopenhauer — schopenhauer1
I'll just accept the almighty Wikipedia's stance on emergence for now: — 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". — apokrisis
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
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
Please explain WHAT mental is compared to physical without magical fiat? — schopenhauer1
to the triadic or hierarchical with time — apokrisis
So you think using the term triadic hierarchy will somehow explain how one type of "process" is different than the rest? — schopenhauer1
So yes, a "system" is a quite specific kind of process. It has hierarchical structure. — apokrisis
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
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
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
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. — apokrisis
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 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
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