Panpsychism does not propose that quarks are in themselves conscious or neurons are conscious but that the 'ingredients' of consciousness exist naturally in the Universe due to vast variety and vast combination over an evolutionary period of natural selection of around 14 billion years. Consciousness has now evolved to the manifest stage that is exhibited in the animal world and most successfully within lifeforms such as humans. Panpsychism suggests that individual consciousness may at some point in the future, be able to act as a collective or a combined single Universal consciousness.
Perhaps this could be 'speeded up' by scientific progress in transhumanism.
I am not a panpsychist but I currently raise a very skeptical eyebrow of interest toward it.

There are many forms and articulations of panpsychism. The one I know well is Galen Strawson's. The gist of it is that the basic constituents of reality are so made up that if they are assembled in a certain way, consciousness will follow. So we don't need to think in terms of "emergence" in this case.

Put it this way, given an extremely long period of time, odds are that at least once, this specific configuration of stuff will mix in such a way that its dormant experiential properties are given a chance to appear.

But the potential for experience was always there all along.

That's how I understand him anyway.

The gist of it is that the basic constituents of reality are so made up that if they are assembled in a certain way, consciousness will follow. — Manuel

That's not panpsychism, that is materialism.

The Galen Strawson-Philip Goff idea is that even sub-atomic particles possess a rudimentary form of consciousness. 'The basic commitment is that the fundamental constituents of reality—perhaps electrons and quarks—have incredibly simple forms of experience' - Phillip Goff. So pan-psychism means literally 'consciousness (psyche) everywhere' - it claims that consciousness is not only an attribute of sentient beings but is all-pervading throughout the Universe.

They differ though. Goff calls himself a "Russelian Monist", or a "neutral monist", so the stuff of nature is neither mind nor matter.

Strawson, being provocative, though not necessarily inaccurate, calls his panpsychism "materialist panpsychism", as his materialism takes consciousness to be the thing we are best acquainted with out of all of nature, he adds that consciousness is physical, not physicScal.

Dennett certainly is no panpsychist, he uses the term "nifty" and argues, sure pansychism is fine, but if so, then why not pan-niftyism? And he has a point here.

Yes, there is a sense in which there are extremely rudimentary forms of experience everywhere. But it has virtually nothing to do with how we think or talk about consciousness ourselves, or at best, very little.

Panpsychism is the pathological metaphysics that arises when you try to reduce all existence to materialism, and wind up including "consciousness" as "another face of matter".

Aristotle showed that substantial being is in-formed. It is the combination of material and formal cause. So everything that exists - such as an organism with life and awareness - is a product of a process of material potential becoming suitably structured to achieve the "goal" of having some stable material identity.

But material dualism arises where form isn't deemed to be fundamental and so "consciousness" cannot be explained in these structuralist terms.

The appeal of panpsychism is thus that of a reductionism which is so extreme it even wipes away the vast biological and sociological complexity of the human organism. All that structure counts for nothing and "consciousness" can be made another fundamental property of nature, like mass or charge ... even if that ruse involves claiming that it is a fundamental property which is "first person" and thus will never be measurable.

If panpsychism seems to not to add up, that is because it doesn't. It is material reductionism taken to its self-parodying extreme.

It has been said that panpsychism solves the hard problem of consciousness. I can sort of understand that. If the hard problem of consciousness involves the mystery of how something immaterial (mind, perception, thoughts, etc) can arise from something material (the physical brain), positing consciousness as fundamental, you at least don't have so great a leap to explain things. You go from something that is essentially conscious, giving rise to consciousness. It doesn't seem as absurd as saying that that the immaterial mind arose from physical matter. If that physical matter was composed of some small indivisible unit of experience, then it's at least within the realm of plausibility.

It has been said that panpsychism solves the hard problem of consciousness. — Watchmaker

Panpsychism doesn’t solve the hard problem, it reifies it by installing the dualism within each bit of objective reality.
Here’s a way to really solve ( or dissolve) the Hard Problem:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4007/1/ConsciousnessPrimaryArt2.pdf

Panpsychism doesn’t solve the hard problem, it reifies it by installing the dualism within each bit of objective reality. -Joshs

Would you mind rephrasing that? It's quite intriguing.

What do you make of Bitbol’s attempt to dissolve the hard problem? He’s following Varela here.

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4007/1/ConsciousnessPrimaryArt2.pdf

Panpsychism does not propose that quarks are in themselves conscious or neurons are conscious but that the 'ingredients' of consciousness exist naturally in the Universe due to vast variety and vast combination over an evolutionary period of natural selection of around 14 billion years. Consciousness has now evolved to the manifest stage that is exhibited in the animal world and most successfully within lifeforms such as humans. - Universeness

If consciousness is fundamental, that doesn't mean that knowledge is fundamental. Wouldn't there have had to be something like a mind that knew how to arrange these ingredients in such a away to give rise to awareness?

It has been said that panpsychism solves the hard problem of consciousness. — Watchmaker

How do you "solve" a problem by combining two problems in an unresolved fashion? It is like shoving the shit that makes you uncomfortable into a locker and saying, see, I can still shut the door on it. Case closed. No metaphysics necessary.

positing consciousness as fundamental, you at least don't have so great a leap to explain things. — Watchmaker

That is the miracle that appeals. You don't have to explain anything about anything. Folk who promote panpsychism don't want to have to explain either mind or matter. They just want to take these familiar cultural categories at face value. So both get shoved in the locker of simple-minded reductionism. And job done.

It doesn't seem as absurd as saying that that the immaterial mind arose from physical matter. — Watchmaker

Depends on how absurd your notion of "physical matter" is. Most folk are naive realists rather than Aristotelean hylomorphists, or modern day particle physicists who talk about stuff like gauge invariance, Yang-Mills couplings, stacks of QFT fields, conformal de Sitter spaces, and the like.

Physicists have looked at "physical matter" rather closely and the naive folk view of things is long dead.

Neuroscientists have looked at "mental matter" and ditto.

Unless all matter and space in the universe foreknew in some sense...like it somehow has the ability to communicate regardless of what shape it ultimately takes. I've heard that quantum particles can be in two places at one time.

Panpsychism says that consciousness is fundamental. What does that mean exactly, that consciousness is fundamental? That the substance that the universe is composed of is essentially consciousness? — Watchmaker

FWIW, I try to avoid the philosophical problems of Panpsychism, as it is usually formulated. If Consciousness is fundamental, then we could assume that every thing in the universe is conscious to some degree. But the notion of conscious atoms and dust particles has been vociferously debated. As an alternative, I take "Information", in a post-Shannon sense, as the Spinozan single substance of the universe. In order to understand what that means, you'd have to spend some time getting familiar with the scientific postulation that "Information" (essence of both matter & mind) is the fundamental element of Reality. I explore the meaning of that unorthodox concept in my BothAnd Blog. :smile:

Is information the only thing that exists? :
Physics suggests information is more fundamental than matter, energy, space and time – the problems start when we try to work out what that means
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431191-500-inside-knowledge-is-information-the-only-thing-that-exists/

Cosmopsychism vs Enformationism :
Goff scoffs at the materialist assumption that mental properties mysterious emerge from complexes of physical properties. "It’s silly to say that atoms are entirely removed from mentality, then wonder where mentality comes from." This discrepancy is why the ancient theory of Panpsychism proposed that even matter is made of Mind (psyche). “Consciousness” is the most common term used to indicate that metaphysical “substance” of reality. But the term is misleading, so I prefer to use the more technical term "Information" in reference to the mind-stuff of which sentience, awareness, feelings and knowledge are made.
http://bothandblog.enformationism.info/page53.html

Hmmm. Information is fundamental. But wouldn't there still need to be a mind to to "know" this information, as well as to "know how" to execute it?

Oh, btw, just for reference, here is an article talking about quantum stuff being in two places at one time.
I think it may have bearing on the topic at hand. Not really sure just yet how, but if things can be in two places at one time, then to me at least, all bets are off. It's not a huge leap from there to say that the universe itself is a mind.

https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2020/10/need-be-two-places-once-it-may-be-possible#:~:text=Quantum%20physics%20has%20demonstrated%20that,also%20exist%20in%20multiple%20places.

it reifies it by installing the dualism within each bit of objective reality. — Joshs

Are we talking reality's atoms, or reality's degrees of freedom? ... and thus its invariances ... and thus its structural dichotomisation into its global spacetime invariances (the structure of its Lorentz, Poincare and even de Sitter symmetry groups) and its local gauge invariances (starting with the Standard Model's SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1))?

The problem is that the notion of material atoms is already as reified as it gets. And modern hylomorphism makes that clear. Material reality is composed of a structure of constraints acting to shape amorphous material potential.

So whether you are seeking to explain mind or matter, both have to fit within that ontic structural realist frame.

What do you make of Bitbol’s attempt to dissolve the hard problem? — Joshs

I like Bitbol's clarity. But you know that my answer is pansemiotic. So we can't reduce out accounts of reality to phenomenology as our first person point of view - our semiotic Umwelt - is the least general "view of reality" possible. And we are seeking the maximally general view as the ground under our ontology.

Even for a phenomenologist, it is obvious that your "experience" in any passing moment - or attentional state covering about half a second - is far more particular and "first person" than your "sub-conscious" habits, which are states of mind, or psychological structures, formed over years of living and development. And your neurological level of reflexes and sensory apparatus are even more general and "unaware" than that.

So phenomenology that actually examines the structure of experience would not seek to ground itself in the sharp and personal sense of the immediate. It already has to turn towards the subconscious and automatic to find that which is more general. And it is already thus becoming more receptive to standard neuro-reductionism - as an account based on the methodological naturalism which is all about explaining the particular from the better vantage point of the general.

Thus Bitbol can be quite right about physics and its struggle to generalise the fact that we are indeed humans making models of an objective reality, yet seem forever entangled in those models.

The quantum collapse issue highlights that fact. Yet as I have argued, it also shows us exactly where the epistemic incision must be made.

In the semiotic view, reality is our Umwelt - a picture of the world as it is ... with the small addition of it being the world with "us" in it as its intentional centre.

So as a model of third person objectivity, the fact that we then also find ourselves buried in the heart of the model as its first person finality, is the feature of the model, not the bug.

As organisms, we could never afford to take a dispassionate stance on existence. Our models have to be enactive. So the self must arise out of the pragmatics of semiosis.

That means that when we inquire into the third person view of the physical world, we find it reflects our intentions and needs rather directly. We experience an Umwelt.

And the same then goes when we try to take a third person view of "consciousness" as this act of modelling the world. The "self" is a necessary part of the psychological structure that is the Umwelt.

So first and third person view are the dualised aspects of the model itself. Neither "exist" outside that.

That is the general statement about the semiotic modelling relation that grounds things. And then moment to moment states of mind are all about the great particularity of being a model that is forever dynamically evolving its overall adaptive balance.

it reifies it by installing the dualism within each bit of objective reality.

When someone gets a moment, would you mind explaining this like you're explaining it to a six year old?

Dualism is usually understood as the idea that there are two kinds of 'substance' - matter (what things are made from) and mind (which thinks. 'Duality' means 'of two kinds'.) This harks back to René Descartes famous analysis of the body and mind. But it then leads to the apparent problem, how does a 'thinking substance' that has no material attributes influence a 'material substance' that has no intelligence? That is what was caricatured as 'the ghost in the machine' criticism of Descartes.

The problem lies in the misconception of what, exactly, is meant by 'substance'. Usually by substance we mean 'a material with uniform properties'. However in philosophy, 'substance' was derived from the word 'substantia', meaning 'that in which properties inhere' or 'the bearer of attributes'. Socrates is of the kind of being 'man' (substantia) but he happens to have blue eyes (an 'accidental' property). The original word for 'substance' in Aristotle was 'ousia' which means something much nearer to 'being' than what we mean by 'substance'.

And the common misconception that 'substance' is 'stuff' leads to the ridiculous notion of 'thinking stuff' - which is actually very close to what panpsychism is saying! Hey, all stuff thinks, but it's not until it congeals into human form that it thinks intelligently'. Or something of the kind.


Incidentally some years back, Phillip Goff, noted panpsychist, joined the forum to respond to my criticism of an article of his. That can be read here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/58859

"Substance" is not "stuff"? This is interesting. Could you explain that a bit more?

Substance" is not "stuff"? This is interesting. Could you explain that a bit more? — Watchmaker

Thought I did! The original term was 'ouisia'. I'm not a Greek scholar, or Classics scholar, but what I've learned is that 'ousia' doesn't mean anything like 'stuff'. It is a form of the ancient Greek verb for 'to be'. So 'ousia' is more like a kind of 'being' than a kind of 'stuff'. There's an entry here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousia which is not a bad starting point but to really get your head around it takes a fair bit of study.

(Actually, I noticed this in that article: 'Much later, Martin Heidegger said that the original meaning of the word ousia was lost in its translation to the Latin, and, subsequently, in its translation to modern languages. For him, ousia means Being, not substance, that is, not some thing or some being that "stood" (-stance) "under" (sub-).' )

Thanks.

So substance is a form of being, not stuff. Would it be conceivable that matter is ultimately composed of ousia?

Would it be conceivable that matter is ultimately composed of ousia? — Watchmaker

I guess in some ways that is what the panpsychists are driving at, although I agree with @apokrisis criticism of it - that it tries to solve the problem of what, exactly, is consciousness, by saying that everything is conscious.

When we say 'composed of', what do we mean, exactly? The atomist view is that matter is 'composed of' indivisible point-particles. That's what everything comes down to. That is a very difficult thing to defend, however, in light of the findings of 20th century physics, which calls into question the possibility of atoms in that simple sense; the current model of the atom is just that, a 'model' comprising mathematical abstractions that can be validated against observations (albeit with quite a few missing pieces.)

I would say that the intuitive exploration of the nature of 'being' requires a different kind of mind-set to the hard-nosed approach of physics and science generally. Considering such questions is more an existential question, than a scientific one. I think it harks back to a different age, with a very different kind of mentality or outlook on life, than our own 'objectivist' culture.

Phenomenology, for example, which has been mentioned already, consists of disciplined reflection on the nature of experience - not on the composition of objects.

For him, ousia means Being, not substance, that is, not some thing or some being that "stood" (-stance) "under" (sub-).' — Wayfarer

This makes sense in that Being grounds Becoming in the Aristotelean scheme. So that which stably exists becomes the stuff which also can stand under the change.

Of course, this new variety of reductionism is disputable. Hylomorphism reads better when understood as Being being the stability of the material potential once it has become structured or in-formed in a fashion that supports its persisting existence.

In that light, the Becoming grounds the Being. You have to have the dynamics - the flux - before you could negate that in some way that results in the stasis of a continuous identity.

So the general Greek scheme is the same whether it is the Pythagorean apeiras and peras, the Heraclitan flux and logos, or the Aristotelean hyle and morph, or material impulse and Platonic constraint.

Substance is the stability that results from a structure of constraints acting on a field of free possibilities. It is the stabilisation of the unstable.

Reductonism needs one or other to come first - either the dynamically stable results or the dynamically uncertain start. But holism says the dynamism - the process view - is the thing. And so existence is all relative to that.

Either the dynamism is maximised in one of its directions, or minimised in the other. It is the wholeness of this relation that counts - which is the ground - and not which way around you try to arrange the two complementary poles.

So you can read it as Being begets Becoming. Substance describes an informed state of materiality such that there is something that is both stable enough to have a persisting identity, yet also fluid enough to partake in further evolutionary change. The clay can be made into bricks.

But then Becoming also grounds this Being. The wish to build a house drives the need for solid little cubioids as the Platonically ideal construction material. And so that wish - imposed on the innocent undirected dynamics of clay - bring about the result of restricting its claggy material freedoms. An end is put to its less substantial state of being.

Panpsychism says that consciousness is fundamental. — Watchmaker

In other words, as others have suggested, "panpsychism" is a reductionist yet anti-emergence mystery-of-the-gaps which only compounds 'the mystery of consciousness' with a proposal to substitute a (lower level) harder problem for "the" (higher level) "hard problem". A question begged, not answered.

Hmmm. Information is fundamental. But wouldn't there still need to be a mind to to "know" this information, as well as to "know how" to execute it? — Watchmaker

Yes. In my thesis, I call that "Knower" by various names that indicate only its functional role, because I don't know anything for sure about anything that is not within the space-time universe.

Since the "Knower", as a whole, must necessarily be more-than the comprehendable parts, I assume that he/she/it must be external & prior-to the known universe. Also, since some theorists portray the Information-centric universe as a computer program, I use the label "Programmer" to indicate the creative role of the "Enformer". And, for those who are more comfortable with the baggage-laden concept of God, I sometimes refer to the Knower as "G*D". The asterisk is intended to hint that this is not your grandfather's notion of deity. Some traditional philosophical appellations for the executor of the program is "First Cause" or "Prime Mover". Of course, William Paley's, pre-computer, functional description of "Watchmaker" is also historically appropriate.

As far as I'm concerned, whatever the "Knower" is, beyond the conceiver of the world's Information, is of no concern to me. I can make some assumptions & conjectures about Eternity & Infinity, but that's really beyond my scope of knowledge. Apparently, the Knower wants to be known only for He/r knowable Forms. If there is any other revelation, I don't know anything about it. Presumably, you can know the "Artist" by his/her works. :cool:

The Information Philosopher on Panpsychism :
https://www.informationphilosopher.com/mind/panpsychism/

Universe information theory :
Digital physics is a speculative idea that the universe can be conceived of as a vast, digital computation device, or as the output of a deterministic or probabilistic computer program.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics

So substance is a form of being, not stuff. Would it be conceivable that matter is ultimately composed of ousia? — Watchmaker

Perhaps. "Ousia" was adopted by Christian theologians as a reference to the spiritual "substance" or "essence" of God. So, if you think of Matter as a tangible form of incorporeal Spirit, that might work. But, for a science-oriented audience, it might be easier to convey the same idea by substituting 21st century "Information" for ancient spooky "Spirit".

From that perspective, God would be the Enformer, who created a world from his own "substance" : in this case, "Information" -- the creative power to enform. That's an update on an old pre-20th century Deistic notion : either God became the physical world, or that God transformed some of his metaphysical Essence into physical matter. Today, pragmatic scientists have learned that knowable Information (meaning) can transform into invisible Energy (potential ; causation), and into mathematical Mass, that we experience as weighty Matter. (E=MC^2)

However, that same "Information" was originally known as the intangible ideas & thoughts in a Mind, in a brain. So, Information is the ultimate shape-shifter. In my thesis though, I also refer to the ultimate source of all things as BEING : the "foundation of all existence". BEING is simply the power to become, to exist. To sum up : everything in this world is a form of Information, or as I prefer, EnFormAction. :nerd:


Metaphysics of God (as One Infinite Eternal Substance) :
Many philosophers and scientists of the past have understood God as One Dynamic Substance that causes and creates the world. This is conducive to the pantheist conception of God as the Universe / Nature / Reality.
https://www.spaceandmotion.com/metaphysics-god-substance.htm

Mass, in physics, mathematical measure of inertia, a fundamental property of all matter. It is, in effect, the resistance that a body of matter offers to a ... change of state..

Is Information the Fifth Form of Matter? :
It states that information is the fundamental building block of the universe, and it has mass . . .
https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/article/is-information-the-fifth-form-of-matter

Substance is the stability that results from a structure of constraints acting on a field of free possibilities. It is the stabilisation of the unstable. — apokrisis

I think you mean 'matter'.

We should consider what the ancient philosophers understood as the philosophical significance of the forms, which is that they are changeless or incorruptible. So they signify immortality, that which is beyond the vicissitudes of becoming and passing away. The quest was for the correspondence between that element of the soul which could be identified with that immortal aspect of being; by knowing that, the philosopher was united with it (i.e. in the Phaedo, where philosophy is the 'preparation for death' and 'the soul' is 'united with the eternal forms'.) Their aim is not to arrive at an objective or what we would nowadays understand as a scientific understanding - it was, from today's perspective, mystical.

But if happiness [eudomonia] consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be activity in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be the virtue of the best part of us. Whether then this be the Intellect [nous], or whatever else it be that is thought to rule and lead us by nature, and to have cognizance of what is noble and divine, either as being itself also actually divine, or as being relatively the divinest part of us, it is the activity of this part of us in accordance with the virtue proper to it that will constitute perfect happiness; and it has been stated already that this activity is the activity of contemplation [theoria]. — Nichomachean Ethics

So, if you think of Matter as a tangible form of incorporeal Spirit, that might work — Gnomon

I think that's a reification.

Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity.

I think you mean 'matter'. — Wayfarer

Nope. But we do tend to define matter as that which can take the imprint of our rather particular human wishes.

That doesn't do justice to the deeper definition of substance that goes beyond it being already present as a material cause, and instead defines it in terms of a privation of form, and so unformed potential.

We should consider what the ancient philosophers understood as the philosophical significance of the forms, which is that they are changeless or incorruptible. So they signify immortality, that which is beyond the vicissitudes of becoming and passing away. The quest was for the correspondence between that element of the soul which could be identified with that immortal aspect of being — Wayfarer

So I give the Aristotelean view and you reply with the popular theistic version of Platonism - the one without the chora as its version of the material potential or formless receptacle.

I agree Aristotle said the soul was the form of the body. But then a neuroscientist would also say the same these days. With the emphasis on the lack of immortality, perfection, changelessness, etc, that in fact essential to substantial being as something developmental and temporal, not timeless or transcendent, but thoroughly immanent and actual in its substantial particularity.

In other words, as others have suggested, "panpsychism" is a reductionist... — 180 Proof

Panpsychism is the pathological metaphysics that arises when you try to reduce all existence to materialism, and wind up including "consciousness" as "another face of matter". — apokrisis

Could you explain the reduction?

Reduction normally involves explaining one thing completely in terms of things other than it. So a is reduced to x, y, z if a is fully explained by x, y, z with no reference to a in that explanation. Something like that anyway.

So if panpsychism is a reductionist theory of consciousness, what non-conscious things do you think it reduces consciousness to?

I find this very odd, as one of the primary theoretical motivators for panpsychism is the that is it not a reductionist theory, that is, difficulties with attempts to explain consciousness in non-question-begging terms lead us to the conclusion (not assumption) that consciousness is a fundamental property of reality.

Panpsychism says that consciousness is fundamental. What does that mean exactly, that consciousness is fundamental? That the substance that the universe is composed of is essentially consciousness? Where did "knowing" come into play? Something had to initially know how to arrange atoms and chemicals in way to give rise to awareness. — Watchmaker

Not all panpsychists think that consciousness is fundamental. I do though.

All that is necessary for panpsychism is that consciousness is present somehow in everything. The IIT, for example, is reductionist, it says consciousness is integrated information, so in a sense information is more fundamental than consciousness, it just so happens that there is no unintegrated information around, so everything is, in fact, minimally conscious.

There are also micropsychists, that take a bottom-up panpsychist approach, starting with small things and building up; and macrospsychists, who take consciousnes as a property of reality as a whole and get to multiple subjects by division (rather than addition). Lots of different versions with different theoretical motivations.