The notion of a reality-in-itself as ineffable is something that philosophers of a certain ilk will talk about ad nauseam, and apparently without seeing the irony. — Banno

I never said ineffable. Just not the animal/human perception of it.

If it's ineffable, don't try to "eff" it.

That is, don't pretend to use it in your metaphysics. — Banno

I was discussing Speculative Realism with @fdrake. One of the things that makes it different I guess is that they are willing to make speculative metaphysical theories. There are some interesting ones like here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology

The main step that speculative realism wants to get rid of is Kantian Correlationsism. Oddly, for disliking Kant, you seem to be steeped in that thinking in this thread at least.

Related to 'anthropocentrism', object-oriented thinkers reject correlationism, which the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux defines as "the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other".[12] Because object-oriented ontology is the realist philosophy, it stands in contradistinction to the anti-realist trajectory of correlationism, which restricts philosophical understanding to the correlation of being with thought by disavowing any reality external to this correlation as inaccessible, and, in this way, fails to escape the ontological reification of human experience.[13] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology

There is also Quentin Meillasoux's idea of hyper-chaos:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Meillassoux

There is also good old process philosophy by people like Whitehead and the likes.

All of them are willing to look at the world beyond human perceptions into the things themselves. However, the point is you don't have to commit to one version of this, but just be open that there might be a version.

Are rocks conscious?

If not, and yet people are, then at some stage between rocks and people, consciousness emerges. — Banno

And at some point a pile of dirt becomes a hill. Doesn't mean the hill "emerged," only the abstract concept. It would seem that electricity is an emergent property, but again, nothing is being created... only a concept.

Let's use "awareness," because consciousness is the ability to think. Awareness is simply the quality of experiencing. To use our level of consciousness as the standard to measure awareness is obviously not going to be effective. There's no reason to assume that a lack of intelligence signifies a lack of awareness.

Many modern scientists embrace pan-psychism — turkeyMan


How many? — jgill


123 or possibly 159. Not sure which but its definitely one of those. lol. — turkeyMan

:smile: Even one in the hard sciences would impress me. There are probably a few out there.

consciousness in some
shape must have been present at the very origins of things. — turkeyMan

Yes. I am open to Panpsychism. But you should expect that some on this forum will be prejudiced against the concept of universal consciousness, due to its prevalence in New Age mystical & magical notions. Yet, there is growing acceptance of a more scientific understanding that the potential for mind & consciousness was somehow inherent in the Big Bang. William James came to his conclusion, long before New Ageism emerged, and it was based on pragmatic logic, not on empirical evidence. Psyche (Mind) is a metaphysical concept, so its existence in physical objects is counter-intuitive, and inexplicable, to those committed to a Materialist worldview.

Since Consciousness is not physical, but metaphysical, direct empirical evidence is hard to come by. You can't X-ray a rock to see if it contains awareness of its environment. But many modern scientists have inferred that the emergence of Mental & Metaphysical phenomena was not an accident, but implicit in the constitution of the Singularity that gave birth to our world. Panpsychism is not yet the orthodox view of mainstream Science, but there seems to be a burgeoning "new paradigm" among younger scientists. :smile:


Panpsychism : And whilst physicalism offers a simple and unified vision of the world, this is arguably at the cost of being unable to give a satisfactory account of the emergence of human and animal consciousness. Panpsychism, strange as it may sound on first hearing, promises a satisfying account of the human mind within a unified conception of nature.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/


The Incredulous Stare : Many people, both philosophers and non-philosophers, find deeply counterintuitive the idea that fundamental constituents of the physical world, such as electrons, have conscious experience. And many take this to be a good reason not to take panpsychism seriously.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/#IncrStar

Panpsychism :
Literally, “all mind”. The belief that everything material, however small, has an element of Mind. Higher, more complex, forms of Mind are called “awareness” or “consciousness”. Lower & simpler forms are called “energy” or “information”.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html

New Ageism :
An alternative religious movement that spread through the occult and metaphysical communities in the 1970s and 80s. It looked forward to a “New Age” of love and light and offered a foretaste of the coming era through personal transformation and healing. The movement’s strongest supporters were followers of modern esotericism, a religious perspective that is based on the acquisition of mystical knowledge and ritual magic. Its eclectic doctrines borrow from Eastern & Western occult traditions. Note : although some of its pandeistic & panpsychic cosmology may seem similar to Enformationism, its antiscience & irrational attitude is in opposition.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html

The EnFormAction Hypothesis :
http://bothandblog3.enformationism.info/page23.html

Physics of Consciousness : https://www.closertotruth.com/interviews/55454

Rocks are conscious and feel?
Imagine the silent screams of the rubble in the driveway, when running them over with the car. :scream:
(Any "defender of the defenseless" is going to be really busy.)
How do panpsychists live anyway?

And at some point a pile of dirt becomes a hill. Doesn't mean the hill "emerged," only the abstract concept. It would seem that electricity is an emergent property, but again, nothing is being created... only a concept.

Let's use "awareness," because consciousness is the ability to think. Awareness is simply the quality of experiencing. To use our level of consciousness as the standard to measure awareness is obviously not going to be effective. There's no reason to assume that a lack of intelligence signifies a lack of awareness. — Kev

What is one to do with junk thinking such as this?

Yep, hills are piles of dirt.

Electrons are measurable, manipulable, adn calculable. The awareness of a rock, not so much.

It was not the concept of electricity, but electricity, that boiled the water for my coffee. I climb the hill, not the concept of the hill.

What evidence do you have that rocks are aware?

I think that might be enough. As I said, someone who quotes Rand has a long way to go to gain respect. The lack of critical thought that infects her disciples is evident here. There's nothing for me in your posts.

All looks a bit too eccentric for my tastes. Yep, folk make stuff up.

The incredulous stare is still the appropriate response.

What evidence do you have that rocks are aware? — Banno

lol I never said rocks are aware. I did say I think insects are aware, and I don't think awareness is an emergent property... but we only acknowledge it as such when it crosses a certain threshold.

We are collections of atoms, yet our experience is singular. Either we are the atoms, or we are some magical observer that only experiences the information that the atoms produce. I am not a dualist, but perhaps you are. That would definitely be junk thinking.

Electrons are measurable, manipulable, adn calculable. The awareness of a rock, not so much. — Banno

We can't measure it, so it must not exist. Electrons are measurable, NOW, but there was a time not too long ago that they weren't. Amazing how the truth can change... None of these are good arguments. I'm assuming you accept that there are degrees to awareness/consciousness, although you keep strawmanning by saying "rocks aren't conscious," but you don't leave open any possibility that awareness could be on such a basic level that you can't relate to it.

I climb the hill, not the concept of the hill. — Banno

The point is whether you call it a hill or a collection of dirt it's the same thing. Consciousness could very well be a bottom-up phenomenon... a product of the collaboration of minimally aware particles.

Either we are the atoms, or we are some magical observer that only experiences the information that the atoms produce — Kev

...or, we're implemented by the atoms.

You are too credulous.

I don't see another more believable alternative. Like everything else in the universe, I don't think awareness is created or destroyed, but the form can change and it can be combined like atoms into molecules.

I don't think awareness is created or destroyed... — Kev

What to do with this. As if anaesthetic did not exist. AS if one did not sleep. As I said, you are credulous, I'm incredulous.

The incredulous stare is still the appropriate response. — Banno

I agree that it's the appropriate response for a Physicalist. But for some of us the most important things in the world are non-physical. And Consciousness remains the "hard problem" for Physicalism : how does matter know anything?

However, if Mind is somehow intrinsic to the material world, then the emergence of Mind from Matter is not a problem. And that is the logically credible postulate of my Enformationism thesis. If Information is more fundamental than matter, then matter & mind are both forms of Information. But what is Information? It may not be what you think, or believe. :nerd:

Physicalism : "the Panpsychism problem"
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/

Consciousness : "information integration theory"
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/

Consciousness :
Literally : to know with. To be aware of the world subjectively (self-knowledge) and objectively (other knowing). Humans know Quanta via physical senses & analysis, and Qualia via meta-physical reasoning & synthesis. In the Enformationism thesis, Consciousness is viewed as an emergent form of basic mathematical Information.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page12.html

Is Information fundamental? :
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/is-information-fundamental/
https://www.closertotruth.com/series/information-fundamental

Information :
Knowledge and the ability to know. Technically, it's the ratio of order to disorder, of positive to negative, of knowledge to ignorance. It's measured in degrees of uncertainty. Those ratios are also called "differences". So Gregory Bateson* defined Information as "the difference that makes a difference". The latter distinction refers to "value" or "meaning". Babbage called his prototype computer a "difference engine". Difference is the cause or agent of Change. In Physics it’s called "Thermodynamics" or "Energy". In Sociology it’s called "Conflict".

As if anaesthetic did not exist. AS if one did not sleep. — Banno

Your implication here is that without memory experience cannot exist. We know the brain stays very active during sleep. We know we dream, and for the most part have no memory of what we experienced.

What you're doing is analogous to picking up a single piece of dirt and saying, "This is not a hill." No... it's not a hill, very good. And observing electrons orbiting a nucleus doesn't really give one the impression they can be used to boil water. "This thing on one end of the spectrum doesn't resemble this thing on the other end," is not good logic. We know there is a range of awareness at the top end; the extent of that range being largely subjective. We know animals with eyes can see.

So while some may look at the brain and think it's "just material," and potentially arrive at a determinist perspective, I think it's important to scrutinize the "just" part. If I was a determinist I wouldn't bother.

A language game is just a family of rules around a group of words and deeds.

Problems arise with irregularities; such as when the words are moved to a different language game with insufficient care. — Banno

When someone brings up the issue of language games when discussing a philosophical issue, I'm led to believe that that amounts to dismissing it as a non-issue, any significance it is thought to possess being nothing more than confusion caused by misunderstanding language. The bottomline is that to invoke Wittgenstein's language game is to accuse someone of being confused. :chin:

Many modern scientists embrace pan-psychism — turkeyMan

Even one in the hard sciences would impress me. There are probably a few out there. — jgill

Yes, there are a few "hard" scientists out there who take the notion of Panpsychism seriously. It's not yet mainstream, but the "soft" sciences of Information Theory and Systems Theory are pioneering the study of Nature for clues to how & why Life & Mind emerged from the physical process of Evolution. Most of the research is based on Information & Computation theories. Hard physicists, who are still searching for the bottom line of physics by smashing particles, are not likely to encounter many signs of Life or Mind. But, softer Quantum Theorists, are dealing with much mushier aspects of reality, and may be more open to the idea that a potential for Life & Mind was inherent in the original Singularity program, in the form of non-physical Information. Since Life & Mind are not physical phenomena, but metaphysical functions, their study is often limited to "soft" Theory, rather than "hard" empirical Practice.

If you're interested in some cutting edge research, I recommend the 2017 book by members of the Santa Fe Institute for interdisciplinary theoretical research (outside traditional boundaries). The collaborative book is From Matter to Life : Information and Causality, and it's editors include a Physicist, an Astrobiologist, and a Mathematical Cosmologist. Among the contributors are not one, but seven, physicists, along with Biologists, Chemists, Mathematicians, Philosophers, and Psychologists. This is cutting-edge stuff, so those whose knowledge of science remains in the 20th century may not be aware that the "soft" sciences are beginning to play a prominent role in the science of the Information Age.

For obvious reasons, the book does not mention the ancient term Panpsychism. But its core concept, that Life & Mind & Matter are all forms of metaphysical Information, is a modern formulation of the same notion. An early expression of that view was pioneering physicist John Archibald Wheeler ("it from bit"), who said : “All things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe… Observer-participancy gives rise to information.”. This book is not for the general public, but for those who have the scientific background to appreciate the implications of state-of-the-art research. :nerd:

Santa Fe Institute : . . . an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe (New Mexico, United States) and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, including physical, computational, biological, and social systems. The Institute is ranked 25th among the world's "Top Science and Technology Think Tanks" . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe_Institute

From Matter to Life : https://www.amazon.com/Matter-Life-Information-Causality/dp/1107150531/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=from+matter+to+life&link_code=qs&qid=1594489873&sourceid=Mozilla-search&sr=8-2&tag=mozilla-20

...which would be pretty unconvincing. No, that's a gross simplification. Wittgenstein for children.

:up:

Yep, folk make stuff up. — Banno

No, again you're letting your smarmy quips block actual understanding.

The minute you find "evidence" of folk not making stuff up, the stuff becomes part of the correlation circle of epistemology, not ontology. Any answer thus evinced through something akin to scientific data, would be just the human-to-object relation. Again, read the quote again, this time carefully:

Because object-oriented ontology is the realist philosophy, it stands in contradistinction to the anti-realist trajectory of correlationism, which restricts philosophical understanding to the correlation of being with thought by disavowing any reality external to this correlation as inaccessible, and, in this way, fails to escape the ontological reification of human experience. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology

That part is nothing to do with metaphysics, just pointing to the circularity of correlationism and the ontological reification of human experience as "experience" projected to the universe.

That part is nothing to do with metaphysics, — schopenhauer1

That quote is appalling. At least I put some effort into my "smarmy quips".

That quote is appalling. At least I put some effort into my "smarmy quips". — Banno

Why is the quote appalling? Again, dodge-quip.

Dude, if you can put the quote into English, please do so. Then we might continue.

Otherwise, it just looks like you are a dealer in obscurity.

Because object-oriented ontology is the realist philosophy, it stands in contradistinction to the anti-realist trajectory of correlationism, which restricts philosophical understanding to the correlation of being with thought by disavowing any reality external to this correlation as inaccessible, and, in this way, fails to escape the ontological reification of human experience. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology

WTF?

I thus said it pretty much:
Correlationism is the idea that you cannot get beyond the human mind's constructs of the world

the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other."[7] Philosophies of access are any of those philosophies which privilege the human being over other entities. Both ideas represent forms of anthropocentrism.

I explained it myself here:

The minute you find "evidence" of folk not making stuff up, the stuff becomes part of the correlation circle of epistemology, not ontology. Any answer thus evinced through something akin to scientific data, would be just the human-to-object relation. — schopenhauer1

That part is nothing to do with metaphysics, just pointing to the circularity of correlationism and the ontological reification of human experience as "experience" projected to the universe. — schopenhauer1

Don't take your point of view as THE point of view of the universe. By expecting an explanation of consciousness that comports to something like a human (e.g. scientific) point of view, would be barking up the wrong tree, as that is still part of the human-to-object way of relating to the world. It doesn't break that correlation of human mind/world.

If you don't mention my name or quote me, I may not see your reply.

Correlationism is the idea that you cannot get beyond the human mind's constructs of the world — schopenhauer1

And, as noted previously, that's just a muddle. Not because it's wrong, but because it sets out the issue improperly.

You live "beyond the human mind's constructs of the world". You are always, already, embedded in the world. Stop pretending you need an explanation before you engage.

You live "beyond the human mind's constructs of the world". You are always, already, embedded in the world. Stop pretending you need an explanation before you engage. — Banno

Being already embedded, and recognizing that being embedded doesn't mean the universe is only how a human is embedded. There can be relations of things beyond how we construct the world. That is all that is required. There is are relations of objects or processes beyond the human-to-object relation.