The basic problems of consciousness are just things like the nature of it, how it interacts with the physical, or emerges from the physical structurally, whether it's contingent or necessary. PP answers a lot of those questions.

The problems you suggest are problems for, and introduced by PP...

That's like responding to "this bullet will solve all of my life problems" with, "How can that be? What about the mess afterwards?".

The basic problems of consciousness are just things like the nature of it, how it interacts with the physical, or emerges from the physical structurally, whether it's contingent or necessary. PP answers a lot of those questions. — Wosret

Can it answer a question like, "Why is this robot not conscious?"


For some reason, no one takes the claim of PanVitalism seriously: that fundamental particles have "life" as a fundamental property. When fundamental particles combine in just the right way, their life-forces combine to give rise to a single living entity.

No... lol, I doubt it could answer that, seeing as how the question, and panpyschism being true would be mutually exclusive.

I ain't battin' for PP in any case. I said not only that it's wrong, but clearly, obviously, manifestly wrong.

Granted that all the fundamental particles are conscious, then PP can't answer why the robot, qua robot, is not conscious. The panpsychic might protest that I've you to switch it on, but can't answer why that makes a difference, or that I've not loaded the consciousness program, but can't answer why that's necessary.

Not only does none of that even matter to me, because I'm not a fan of PP, but it's also damn silly.

How does the panpsychist explain why the robot isn't conscious? Almost certainly by denying that premise in some way tout court if they wish to maintain their position.

You might as well be asking them "well, if you're right, then how do you explain why you're wrong"?

The "robot problem" is actually a version of the "combination problem", which is the most significant problem facing panpsychism.

How exactly does an atom have an inner experience, or intention? My experience shows that my intentions often come into conflict with reality. My intentions don't always come to fruition. Sometimes they fail. How does a proponent of the idea proposed in the OP explain how an atom, or anything else without a brain (or a sensory information processor), has intentions and how those intentions interact with reality. What is it like for an atom to have a certain intention and the rest of reality has different "intentions" and how is that known to the atom - the distinction of intentions vs. reality.

to grant a robot qualia requires a change in its programming, not its matter. — tom

I we want to give a robot subjectivity - i.e. "what it is like" knowledge, we have to program it that way. Swapping out a hard-drive, or adding more memory is not going to affect the running of the program that achieves this. What particular hardware constitutes the robot is irrelevant, but panpsychics clain it is relevant! — tom

We know that the robot, as a robot, does not possess subjectivity because we programmed it that way. — tom

The hard problem may indeed be hard, but I think the problem of how to create knowledge - of any kind - is the fundamental problem. — tom

I'm kind of grouping these since they are related.

I think, broadly speaking at least, whether a robot can identify a red card from all other colors is not the same sort of thing which the hard problem of consciousness is talking about. We can imagine a philosophical zombie, for instance, being able to identify red cards from all other colors. And the philosophical zombie is already more sophisticated than a robot in that it has all of our functional capacities -- which is (again, broadly speaking) how Chalmer's characterizes naturalism -- it just lacks consciousness, the "feel"-iness of first person experience.

We do not program the robot to have knowledge of qualia. We program it to identify cards which reflect light at such and such wave-length, then to send some kind of indicator that it has done so to us.

Also, I would say that 'qualia', while certainly related, are different from pan-psychism in that we could defend pan-psychism without, in turn, defending the more particular notion that qualia exist. (at least as entities -- of course we can use the word 'qualia' to simply refer, in general, to particular instances of subjective experience without committing ourselves to separately existing causal entities called qualia)

How do all the fundamental particle consciousnesses combine to create a unified consciousness, and why does that require a brain? i.e. how does a single unified consciousness emerge? This is the same question we have without panpsychism! — tom

I think this is a problem of psychological identity, which is something one can ask regardless of their stance on pan-psychism.

Even if there is no subjective experience we have people who profess to have a unified consciousness, and in general we observe that people who make such reports tend to have brains, so we can ask how this phenomena occurs.

So, I'd just say that what pan-psychism sets out to answer isn't this question.

Are atoms more conscious than fundamental particles? How about mobile phones?

Are humans 'more' conscious than dogs?

Honestly, one reason to adopt pan-psychism is it gets rid of this question. With emergence we might ask, at what point does a system gain consciousness? Does it come in degrees?

But I think a consistent pan-psychism would simply say that 'more' or 'less' aren't quite applicable here. It's a 'yes/no' question, and the answer is always 'yes', insofar that what we are naming is an entity (since clearly we can also speak of things which do not exist, and would thereby not be conscious)

It's just that the subjective experience of an electron differs from that of an atom differs from that of a cell-phone differs from that of a robot differs from that of a human.

Why are there no semi-conscious things. Or rather, there must be semi-conscious things, how do we identify them?

Because everything is conscious :D -- so there is nothing to identify.

Why do I lose consciousness when I'm asleep, given that I am physically the same? Do my fundamental particles also sleep?

I'd have to be a fundamental particle to say whether or not I sleep. By all observations, at least, I'd infer 'no' -- but there's no reason to rule it out, I suppose.

Also, this question hinges on two different meanings to the word 'consciousness' -- one such meaning is 'awareness', as in "I am conscious of Matt's feelings for me" meaning the same thing as "I am aware of Matt's feelings for me". When you lose consciousness in your sleep you lose awareness. But you do not lose out on what it is like to sleep. We feel dreams, after all, at least the one's which we happen to remember after waking up. I don't see why we wouldn't feel the one's we don't remember just because we don't remember them or why sleep, itself, doesn't have a subjective side just because we don't quite remember what it is like afterwords.

It seems to me that given enough understanding of memory and sleep that we could actually engineer ourselves to retain such memories.

What I said was that experience 'can't be known in the third person'. — Wayfarer

But that can't be right, can it? After all, the claim that experience can't be known in the third person is itself a third person claim about experience. Maybe you think that's a cheap parlor trick, so consider the fact that you can convey truths to me about your experience, and I can convey those truths to others. We can come to know many things about your experiences without actually having had those experiences ourselves. How is that possible if experience cannot be known in the third person?

Furthermore, we can also have third-person knowledge of the structure of experience in general. That's what Kant (who you seem fond of) was really after, wasn't it? He attempted to infer the structure of subjectivity via the transcendental method. By it's own lights, Kant's philosophy counts as knowledge only insofar as the structure of subjective experience can be objectified - that is, insofar as it can become the object of theoretical knowledge.

And that brings me to my point. Objectification is not naturalization. By conflating the two you are running aground the rocky shores of mysticism. Those shores are extremely hard to navigate and, honestly, I'm not convinced it can be done. But the very fact that you and I are having this conversation seems to entail that experience can be objectified - it really can become the object of third-person knowledge. Yet this doesn't entail that it is also "natural", whatever you happen to think "natural" means.

But that can't be right, can it? After all, the claim that experience can't be known in the third person is itself a third person claim about experience. Maybe you think that's a cheap parlor trick, so consider the fact that you can convey truths to me about your experience, and I can convey those truths to others. We can come to know many things about your experiences without actually having had those experiences ourselves. How is that possible if experience cannot be known in the third person? — Aaron R

What I said was:

experience is not an object of cognition, in the way that an electron or particle or other object can be. We don't know experiences, we have experiences; so any experience has an inescapably first-person element, that is, it is undergone by a subject. So we can't objectify 'the nature of experience' in the way we can the objects and forces that are analysed by the natural sciences.

Now, in one sense we can be very clear about our own experiences - we certainly know what an unpleasant or pleasant experience is, and we know that some experiences have specific attributes, across a vast range of experiences. But in all cases, we know those things experientially - we know about those attributes, because they are the constituents of our experience, in a way very different from how we know and predict the behaviour of objects according to physical laws. — Wayfarer

What is it to 'know something in the third person?' Well, consider the trajectory of a projectile. A great deal of physics is occupied with such questions, in fact, as you know, it was towards the end of calculating such things that calculus was devised. Then there's the entire field of mathematical physics, astronomy, cosmology - too vast to summarize. And all of that, you or I or the next person can go and learn about and study, and we will all see the same facts. What scientiific methology does in respect of such matters is to isolate those aspects of experience which are (1) quantifiable, and (2) common to all observers, and set aside or bracket out the subjective elements, so as to arrive at the putative 'view from nowhere' (Nagel).

Whereas, the only reason you and I believe that each other has the same kind of experiences is presumptively. I presume that other persons have similar kinds of experiences to myself, but I can't ever know what it is like to be another person. There may, furthermore, be kinds of experiences that others have, that I have never had, and that is not something that can be written down and conveyed through mathematical formulae, in the way that facts about objects can be.

I can send you a projectile, but I can't send you an experience; experiences all come with subjects attached.

This is why eliminative materialists are able to deny that experience is real at all. Of course, Galen Strawson, who is an advocate for panpyschism, says this is self-evidently false - but it can't be proven. Dennett, and Rosenberg, and various others of that ilk, all argue that first-person experience is unreal, and there's no objective way of proving them wrong, because the reality or otherwise of first-person experience is not an objective fact. In fact, that is why such people are obliged to deny the primacy of the subjective; if it's true, their argument is false (as indeed I believe it to be.)

So when I try and convey an experience to you, I can only do so because I believe you will know what I mean, that the person I am conversing with is a person like myself. I think it's a perfectly reasonable belief, but a belief is what it is.

we can also have third-person knowledge of the structure of experience in general. That's what Kant (who you seem fond of) was really after, wasn't it? He attempted to infer the structure of subjectivity via the transcendental method — Aaron R

Indeed, but he also was aware of the 'reflexive problem of knowledge', which is that the 'transcendental subject' in whom all of the intuitions reside, is not itself amongst the objects of knowledge. The subject is in that sense an aspect of the noumenal, rather than the phenomenal, domain. Furthermore, the whole arduous labour of the Critiques had to be undertaken specifically because the knowledge of the structure of experience was hitherto unknown.

Objectification is not naturalization. — Aaron R

I am sure that naturalism relies on, or presumes, objectification. The natural scientist is herself an intelligent subject in a domain of objects, other beings, and forces. The pursuit of objective knowledge rests on analysis of those and the identification of the causal relations and regularities by which their behaviour can be predicted.

If we could not have ":third person" knowledge of "first person" experience. we would not have any knowledge of our own experience. First person experience is the having of experience, not the discursive knowing of the experience that has been had; that comes only after the fact and it is a third person knowing, just as knowing of any phenomenon is.

So, I would say Aaron's objection is correct, if you could have no third person knowledge of your own experience then you could not say anything meaningful about it.

we would not have any knowledge of our own experience — John

I don't think we have knowledge of experience. I think knowledge is a facet of our experience.

if you could have no third person knowledge of your own experience then you could not say anything meaningful about it. — John

It is often commented, that 'the taste of an orange' can't be conveyed to one who hasn't eaten an orange.

I can send you an orange, and then you can taste it, but I can't send you 'the taste of an orange'.

I don't think we have knowledge of experience. I think knowledge is a facet of our experience. — Wayfarer

How can you say knowledge is a facet of our experience if you have no knowledge of experience?

It is often commented, that 'the taste of an orange' can't be conveyed to one who hasn't eaten an orange.

I can send you an orange, and then you can taste it, but I can't send you 'the taste of an orange'. — Wayfarer

I can't see the relevance of this truistic example. If you know you have tasted oranges then you know something about your experience.

How can you say knowledge is a facet of our experience if you have no knowledge of experience? — John

To be conscious is to be subject to experience. So any kind of knowledge-claim whatever presumes that there is a subject of experience. Knowing how to speak, how to compare, I can comment and reflect on the nature of experience - as I have acknoweldged. But the subject of experience is not an object of experience; I can't stand outside experience, or reason, or knowledge, and comment on it 'from the outside'.

If you know you have tasted oranges then you know something about your experience. — John

I didn't say otherwise, but it's still a subjective experience, not an objective fact.

I can't stand outside experience, or reason, or knowledge, and comment on it 'from the outside'. — Wayfarer

But that's exactly what you are purporting to do. You are making comments, which you do not take to be purely subjective, because you obviously think they are correct and not mere opinions. about the nature of experience. So you are indeed, purporting to"stand outside experience, or reason, or knowledge, and comment on it 'from the outside".

I didn't say otherwise, but it's still a subjective experience, not an objective fact. — Wayfarer

So, there is no objective fact about whether you have experienced the taste of oranges or not?

You are making comments, which you do not take to be purely subjective, because you obviously think they are correct and not mere opinions. about the nature of experience. — John

To you, another human being, with whom I share experience. My comments are not purely subjective, but they don't concern any object. You cannot send me an experience, or even show me an experience. You might induce one in me, by giving me an hallucinogenic drug, or putting me in a rocket, but that relies on there being a subject of experience.

This is all discussed in Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness.

My comments are not purely subjective, but they don't concern any object. — Wayfarer

That is simply not true, your experience insofar as you know it, is the object you are speaking about: otherwise anything you say about your experience is simply senseless.

The fact that I can't experience your experience is no more significant than the fact that one rock cannot be in the same place at the same time as another, and it is also, by the way, another purported fact about the thing you say no objective statements can be made.

Your experience insofar as you know it... — John

Experience is not an object, except for in a metaphorical sense. An experience doesn't exist, absent an experiencer. Whereas, a bowling ball, a pen, a computer - the list goes on - are all objects.

Whereas, a bowling ball, a pen, a computer - the list goes on - are all objects. — Wayfarer

So, they are objects because they exist absent experiencers? Does the erosion experienced by a hillside exist absent the hillside?

All experience indubitably implies a subject of experience, and that subject is not an object of perception. The mind itself is obviously, clearly, not an object of perception, in fact it is whether the mind is something that really exists, and if so how, that is at issue.

It sort of does. The thing about the experiencer is they don't appear in experiences of the world. Our experiences are of specific state (bowling ball, computer, rock, an instance of happiness, my understanding of a post, a thought that we are an experiencer, etc.). In these terms, the experiencer is always beyond any particular experience-- a sort of infinite which is never captured by giving an account of one particular moment of the world.

Insofar as our experience of states of the world goes, there is no experiencer. It cannot appear in experience's accounts of the world because it is an infinite. To grasp the experiencer, one's understanding has to move beyond a state of the world (e.g. the existence of a rock, bowling ball or a thought), to the expression of logic that is the being of an experiencer.

The "hard problem" is a red-herring generated by confusing particular experiences (i.e. state of experiences-- an existing thought, a feeling, a sensation, etc., ) with experiencer. It's not true. The experiencer is more than any of their experiences, more than the sum of their experiences.

Instead of recognising the experiencer as an infinite, and so outside any experience of a state of the world, the substance dualist and hard problem reduce the experiencer to particular states of experience in the world.

I never said experience doesn't require a subject. In the case of erosion that is experienced by the hillside, the hillside is the subject, I am saying that logically this is no different than saying that in order for you to experience, you must exist.

@Wayfarer, you're not addressing the criticism that's being leveled at you. If you think that third person knowledge of experience is impossible then you need to explain how it's possible for you or anyone else to know (or say) anything about your (or anyone else's) experience. It won't do to simply assert that "the subject of experience is not the object of experience" because that just begs the question.

In regards to Kant, his philosophy implies only that the transcendental subject can't be an object of empirical cognition, not that it can't be an object of cognition tout court. Insofar as transcendental philosophy is itself the product of reason operating on judgment, it requires that the transcendental subject must be capable of becoming an object of cognition. Otherwise transcendental philosophy itself would not be possible.

Furthermore, it is striking the extent to which Kant's account of subjectivity is functional in nature. That is, it ultimately specifies what something must do in order to count as a subject of experience. To the extent that it does this, Kant's theory (and variations thereof) can be interpreted as providing a functional model of subjectivity, thus unwittingly legitimizing the notion that the problem of subjectivity is best approached as an engineering problem (per Dennett, et al). There's a very real sense in which Dennett and his ilk can be seen as legitimate heirs to the Kantian tradition. To be clear, I'm not saying that Kant would have condoned Dennett's philosophy, but it's pretty hard to deny that he planted the seeds of modern functionalism right below the surface.

I think his mistake is to believe that 'experience' is something that can be known in the third person. In other words, experience is not an object of cognition, in the way that an electron or particle or other object can be. We don't know experiences, we have experiences; so any experience has an inescapably first-person element, that is, it is undergone by a subject. So we can't objectify 'the nature of experience' in the way we can the objects and forces that are analysed by the natural sciences.

I thought you meant that I can't have your experience. I hit my thumb with a hammer and I feel pain, but you can't feel my pain. I hit your thumb with a hammer but I feel no pain. We don't share the same experience, we experience what we experience, each in our own way.

If you think that third person knowledge of experience is impossible then you need to explain how it's possible for you or anyone else to know (or say) anything about your (or anyone else's) experience. — Aaron R

I did not say anything about it being impossible. What I said was

experience is not an object of cognition, in the way that an electron or particle or other object can be. We don't know experiences, we have experiences; so any experience has an inescapably first-person element, that is, it is undergone by a subject.

...

...in one sense we can be very clear about our own experiences - we certainly know what an unpleasant or pleasant experience is, and we know that some experiences have specific attributes, across a vast range of experiences. But in all cases, we know those things experientially - we know about those attributes, because they are the constituents of our experience.

So, I didn't say that 'third person knowledge of experience is impossible. I said that experience is not an object of cognition, in the way that an electron or particle or object is, and that consequently, it always has an inescapably first-person attribute, which is exactly what is not present in judgements about physical objects of cognition.

(Which is why I added that I can send you a projectile, but I can't send you an experience, because there's always a subject attached.)

In regards to Kant, his philosophy implies only that the transcendental subject can't be an object of empirical cognition, not that it can't be an object of cognition tout court. — Aaron R

In the philosophy of Kant , the transcendental ego is the thinker of our thoughts, the subject of our experiences, the willer of our actions, and the agent of the various activities of synthesis that help to constitute the world we experience. It is probably to be identified with our real or noumenal self (see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason , A 492/B 520, where ‘the transcendental subject’ is equated with ‘the self proper, as it exists in itself’) ( see noumenal/phenomenal ). Kant called it transcendental because he believed that although we must posit such a self, we can never observe it.

Blackwell entry on Transcendental Ego; emphasis added.

it is striking the extent to which Kant's account of subjectivity is functional in nature. — Aaron R

I don't agree with that assessement. I think he is concerned with the limits of knowledge. Recall his saying 'I had to declare a limit to knowledge, to make room for faith'.

There's a very real sense in which Dennett and his ilk can be seen as legitimate heirs to the Kantian tradition. — Aaron R

Based on what I know of Dennett, I can't see how he can be said to have understood Kant's 'copernican revolution in philosophy' or indeed much of Kant at all.

We don't share the same experience, we experience what we experience, each in our own way. — Cavacava

My point exactly.

In the case of erosion that is experienced by the hillside, the hillside is the subject, — John

Fallacy of equivocation. 'The hillside' might be the subject of analysis, but it's not a subject of experience - unless, of course, panpsychism is right, and mountains are conscious!

You're assuming your conclusion, and arguing in a circle.

Same to you, good sir.

Philip Goff also has a pretty good blog, from which I quote the following:

Perhaps the most important move in the scientific revolution was Galileo’s declaration that mathematics was to be the language of natural science. But he felt able to do this only after he had revolutionised our philosophical picture of the world. Before Galileo it was generally assumed that matter had sensory qualities: tomatoes were red, paprika was spicy, flowers smelt sweet. But it’s hard to see how these sensory qualities – the redness of tomatoes, the spicy taste of paprika, the sweet smell of flowers – could be captured in the abstract, austere vocabulary of mathematics. How could an equation capture what it’s like to taste spicy paprika? And if sensory qualities can’t be captured in a mathematical vocabulary, it seemed to follow that a mathematical vocabulary could never capture the complete nature of matter.

Galileo’s solution to this problem was to strip matter of its sensory qualities and put them in the soul. The sweet smell isn’t really in the flowers but in the soul of the person smelling them; the spicy taste isn’t really in the paprika but in the soul of the person tasting it. Even colours, for Galileo, aren’t really on the surfaces of objects but in the soul of the person observing them. And if matter had no qualities, then it was possible in principle to describe it in the purely quantitative vocabulary of mathematics. This was the birth of mathematical physics.

But of course Galileo didn’t deny the existence of the sensory qualities. Rather he took them to be forms of consciousness residing in the soul, an entity outside of the material world and so outside of the domain of natural science. In other words, Galileo created physical science by putting consciousness outside of its domain of enquiry.

That is all perfectly true, but it is also not hard to see how this perfectly complemented Cartesian dualism. It mapped perfectly well against this model, and indeed formed the worldview of early modern science, which is still vastly influential to this day.

As Thomas Nagel wrote:

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop.

(Mind and Cosmos, pp. 35-36).

Now is seems to me as though panpsychism acknowledges that this is a problem, but then goes about trying to mend the split as follows.

In his very lnfluential essay Realistic monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism’, Galen Strawson proposes to rectify it by acknowledging the apodictic nature of conscious experience - i.e. it is implausible to doubt that there is one who doubts - but also by declaring that whatever is real is physical. Ergo, what is physical must have an experiential aspect - 'experiencum', as I called it above - which is not detected by physics itself, because physics is only concerned with 'the motions of bodies'. This he calls 'real physicalism', as distinct from physicSalism, which is basically old-school materialism (i.e. that everything is reducible to physics). He says, because at least in some form, namely, the form of brains and nervous systems, matter is capable of consciousness, then it must latently have possessed this attribute all along; when it assumes the forms of brains, it is, as it were, actualised. (I am reminded of my Indian Philosopher lecturer saying in his lectures on Vedanta, 'what is latent becomes patent'.)

But all of this seems to be to be trying to go back and find something that has been forgotten - namely the primacy of consciousness - while still preserving the main axiom of physicalism, that what is real, is physical.

Never having been a materialist or physicalist, I have no requirement to presume 'the primacy of the physical'; personally, I think physicalism has been seriously challenged by physics itself. But I think that regardless, the materialist paradigm is now so thoroughly embedded in the secular culture of the West, that to advocate anything radically different is a practical impossibility (after all, it was for just such a proposal that Thomas Nagel was declared a heretic for publishing the book above.)

So panpsychism is trying to mend this split, by declaring matter itself conscious. This enables one to stay within the physicalist fold, but to try and address the glaring insufficiencies that have since appeared in it. That's my reading of it.

I say that you are assuming that to be a conscious subject such as a human being with conscious experience is a situation that entails an entirely different logic vis a vis experience than it does to be an unconscious subject such as a hillside.

To clarify what I mean; you argue that I do not experience your experience, and I respond that the logic is the same in the case of the experience hillsides enjoy, in that one hillside does not, could never, experience the same erosion that occurs on the other hillside. The logic appears to be the same.

And yet you seem to be unable to demonstrate that this assumption that there must be a different logic is correct. I say this is the conclusion you seem to be groundlessly assuming and asserting, which also underpins your argument.

What conclusion to do you think I am assuming?