Comments

  • A question for panpsychists (and others too)
    I can't imagine he is ever going to stop trying to figure out what those features are. Newton could not figure out what gravity is. He only figured out what it does. Einstein kept at the mystery, and figured out its intrinsic nature. — Patterner

    That's interesting. Isn't the situation almost the converse with consciousness? We know what it is, but we don't know what it does. Consider epiphenominalism. That's exactly the view that consciousness doesn't do anything. It's not causal. By epiphenominalists agree that consciousness is that by which such-and-such has experiences.
  • A question for panpsychists (and others too)
    Could it? I'm not sure matter can do anything at all without consciousness. It seems to me that consciousness might be uniquely causal.

    I think we are so used to explaining one thing in terms of something else, it is really hard to recognise that this isn't needed with consciousness. Understanding the concept is enough to fully understand what it is.     — bert1

    There's a contradiction in my own post. I said I wasn't sure if it was uniquely causal or not, then I said understanding the concept of consciousness is enough to understand its nature. I'll go with the latter I think. The causal and the experiential are separate concepts, even if they are both equally irreducible to anything else.
  • A question for panpsychists (and others too)
    Matter could have easily stayed dormant and inanimate and have not given rise to mind or consciousness — kindred

    Could it? I'm not sure matter can do anything at all without consciousness. It seems to me that consciousness might be uniquely causal.

    I think we are so used to explaining one thing in terms of something else, it is really hard to recognise that this isn't needed with consciousness. Understanding the concept is enough to fully understand what it is.
  • A question for panpsychists (and others too)
    I don't understand what you mean. What is the mystery, and how have we solved it? What is its intrinsic nature? — Patterner

    Consciousness is its own explanation. It's nothing other than itself. If we assume that consciousness is a natural phenomenon like, say, a whirlpool or something, then we have a mystery to solve, we naturally seek for an explanation, just as we would for a whirlpool. I just don't think any such explanation is to be had, and it's not needed anyway. Once the definition of consciousness is grasped, there is nothing more to explain. With regard to consciousness, definition and theory are one. The question of its relationship to everything else remains though.
  • Simplest - The minimum possible building blocks of a universe
    I won’t waste your time any further. — apokrisis

    Can you waste mine instead? I'm up for it.
  • A question for panpsychists (and others too)
    ↪Vera Mont
    Yes, 'how' is used less broadly than 'why'.
  • The Philosophy of Mysticism
    And, imo, this "object" conceals (its) absence. In broad strokes, I think religion (to worship) idolatrizes-fetishizes-mystifies '(the) absence' and mysticism (to meditate) denies – negates – 'whatever conceals absence' in order to "experience" absence as such whereas philosophy (to inferentially contemplate) describes – makes explicit – 'presence concealing absence' and science (to testably map-model) observes 'only fact-patterns (i.e. states-of-affairs concealing absence) in order to explain dynamics. — 180 Proof

    This looks interesting, but it is a zip file. Can someone unzip it?
  • A question for panpsychists (and others too)
    "How" would be a scientific question (i.e. to explain empirically) instead of a philosophical question "why" (i.e. to clarify-justify conceptually). — 180 Proof

    I get what you mean I think (maybe not), but I'm not sure that's really how language is used. Consider the empirical, scientific enquiry:

    "Why does it only rain when there are clouds in the sky?"

    We could say "How is it that it only rains when there are clouds" but it's unnatural. I think 'Why' is used in a wide variety of contexts, including scientific, conceptual and teleoplogical.
  • A question for panpsychists (and others too)
    If atoms somehow have some sort of subjective life, how does it illuminate the phenomenon of consciousness simply by supposing everything has it? — Bodhy

    This is a good question, as it illustrates, in my view, a mistaken way that philosophers and scientists often think about consciousness. And in a way I agree with you.

    Consciousness is not in need of explanation - the mystery is already solved. We know what it is. We know its intrinsic nature, I suggest. There's nothing more to be said about that. What we don't know is how consciousness relates to everything else. That's the difficult bit. Panpsychism (of whatever kind - there are a number of different panpsychist views) is one way to tackle the problem of where to place consciousness in the world. There are a number of options competing with panpsychism, each with its theoretical pros and cons. For my money, panpsychism has the most pros and the least cons.

    Panpsychism is not really a theory of consciousness, I don't think. It's a theory of which things are conscious. Non-panpsychists perhaps do need a theory of consciousness itself, because they need to explain how some things are conscious and others not, and maybe in order to do that they need to assume consciousness has some underlying nature we can elaborate in terms of the structure and function of, say, brains, as @apokrisis and @180 Proof and others on this forum believe. Substance dualists (do we have any here?) need to come up with a theory of what consciousness could be such that it interacts with the physical world, without actually being of the physical world.

    Does that help? Your question has helped me articulate this.
  • Pragmatism Without Goodness
    This is the central fact you fail to engage with – the way that life and mind are indeed mechanistic. A system of informational switches regulating entropic flows in the way anyone can recognise as being alive and mindful. Or in other words, constituting an organism zombie. — apokrisis
  • The Philosophy of Mysticism
    When i examine my experience, the only thing I can find that might qualify as remotely mystical is a relentless and brutal positivity that permits weakness but not negativity, or self-pity. Although it can forgive, and make use of, both.

    Maybe that's nothing to do with mysticism

    EDIT: the reason I mention is that it doesn't feel entirely from me. Maybe I'm just mentally ill. I have none of the certainty that tends to go with mystical experience
  • A question for panpsychists (and others too)
    As a panpsychist I believe that the rarity and privilege of my experiential transformation from typical matter into a human is literally unimaginable. In fact, I think my miraculous existential fortune should be justified by something other than "it just is that way". My question is what you think this justification might possibly be, or why you think "it just is that way" suffices. — Dogbert

    Are you asking about the emergence of the sentient from the insentient?

    I didn't see this at first but I think you likely are. If so it is a restatement of the 'hard problem' in other words. It's good that you have seen it for yourself. If so 'it just is that way' is highly unsatisfactory. And panpsychism is an alternative, one that I happen to endorse.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    ↪Janus
    I think you're right, I do presuppose a reason, and maybe that is just a bad habit. However if there is, in fact, an unknown reason, then we have a natural mystery that explains the phenomena we experience.
  • My understanding of morals
    Moral principles

    As far as I can see, all formal moral philosophies, and certainly any philosophy that specifies how other people should behave, is not moral at all, or even really a philosophy. It’s a program of social control - coercive rules a society establishes to manage disruptive or inconvenient behavior     — T Clark

    Yes, I agree. If there were only one sentient being in the universe, it would go around gobbling at will. There would be no other to impede it. If there are more than one, it is possible that the stronger eats the weaker. Still no morality. Morality happens when two sentient creatures of roughly equal power encounter each other, and they have to come to terms. Morality is the terms that they come to, perhaps. It's is about controlling the behaviour of the other, so they are less of a threat, or so they work for you. Morality is always about others, what you want them to do and what they want you to do.

    It might be contrasted with virtue ethics perhaps, where the concern is to be virtuous, and the focus is on oneself and not others, perhaps.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    ↪ssu
    I only say that because it was the reason given in the setup. You were discussing why a person who is already religious would wonder why God exists, why not just follow the rules. So the reason for following the rules assumes the existence of God, in this setup, no? Maybe I misunderstood. But the existence of God is an important factor here because the assumption of his existence is behind the drive to follow the rules. This drive would be on a much more certain footing if God's existence could be established rather than being assumed. Maybe I'm overlooking the importance of faith.

    Of course, I don't believe, even if I were a theist, that source of my morality would be in God's will, however revealed. It is in my will. Then God and I can have a fight, or we can negotiate, or agree, or I can submit, or whatever.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    Why not simply follow the given manuals and act righteously? — ssu

    Because it's stupid and pointless if there is no God. So you need to figure out if God is real, and if so it is the God of the bible, and if so is the bible literal, and if so, it might make sense to follow the rules (or it might not, the moral thing might be to fight God the evil basted and his bastard children and curse him even if it is futile).
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    Scientists and scientifically literate persons do not misuse (misinterpret) physical laws that way – and obviously, bert, you're neither a scientist nor scientifically literate if you believe nature's regularities / structures are "inexplicable" (akin to supernatural mysteries ... miracles, woo-of-the-gaps, etc). — 180 Proof

    If you keep asking 'Yes but why?' eventually even scientifically literate people like yourself, will say 'That's just how it is'. That's a mystery. I make no claim to it being akin to 'supernatural mysteries ... miracles, woo-of-the-gaps, etc'
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    ↪180 Proof
    Yes, but they are still used in explanations. And the regularities are describable but inexplicable.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    Can anyone prove a god, I enjoy debates and wish to see the arguments posed in favour of the existence of a god. — CallMeDirac

    If cosmopsychism is true (panpsychism with an emphasis on the macro rather than the micro), and at the moment I think it probably is, then we have a very large (possibly infinite) and powerful conscious blob. Should we call it God? Who knows. But it's a possible candidate for Goddishness. Does it mean we should believe in miracles, hate fags, give it a name and then stone people who say the name out loud, start wars in its name, try to make out that it is really really bothered about which ethnic group should have rights to a piece of land on one tiny planet in an infinite universe, use it to explain odd things that sometimes happen, and otherwise make up stories (that coincidentally happen to align with our interests) about what it wants? Probably not.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    So, again, no proof, even if perfect would change a thing. — Sam26

    I don't think that's entirely right. Reason does change people's views, but slowly, and very occasionally quickly. The rationale lodges in some deep recess of the brain, and slowly starts rearranging neurons around it I reckon, although may never reach a critical mass. Admittedly there are much quicker ways to influence the beliefs on another.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    What question is not begged (is not fallaciously answered) by "a mystery"? None. — 180 Proof

    Naturalists offer explanationsi nterms of natural laws, but the laws themselves are taken to be brute and inexplicable, no? A mystery that answers questions.
  • Is there any physical basis for what constitutes a 'thing' or 'object'?
    This topic was called the problem of 'natural kinds' when I was at university. Someone might have mentioned this already, I haven't read the whole thread.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    I think @unenlightened is taking the only remotely promising approach, and that is to stipulate a God-idea and then check the world (in a broad sense of 'check') for a corresponding reality.
  • A potential solution to the hard problem
    Why would you expect this? — Dfpolis

    I not sure if I would. I think I was replying to @flannel jesus who might expect it and did give an answer. See above.
  • A potential solution to the hard problem
    ↪flannel jesus
    Oh, I see. Didn't understand that when I wrote my previous answer. So where is the boundary between the layers?
  • A potential solution to the hard problem
    ↪flannel jesus
    We've crossed the language-level boundary when we say "My thoughts about consciousness caused my fingers to move the pen which wicks ink up from the ink-cartridge according to physical laws x,y,z", for example.
  • A potential solution to the hard problem
    ↪flannel jesus
    Sorry I don't understand. Writing things involves moving physical objects around, pens, keyboards etc. What am I missing?
  • A potential solution to the hard problem
    It's casual at it's own lever of abstraction. — flannel jesus

    Oh, OK. Can you give an example of consciousness causing something in a way that doesn't tread on the toes of any physics?
  • A potential solution to the hard problem
    ↪flannel jesus
    Interesting article. It's extremely dualistic, in a way, isn't it? It seems to suggest a fairly radical disconnection between the two 'levels'. Is he saying that the levels exist in language alone, perhaps, and not physically? And nowhere is there an explanation of, say, how consciousness came to be, or even if he thinks consciousness is real.

    EDIT:

    This is a nice quote from the article:

    I really do think that enormous confusion is caused in many areas — not just consciousness, but free will and even more purely physical phenomena — by the simple mistake of starting sentences in one language or layer of description (“I thought about summoning up the will power to resist that extra slice of pizza…”) but then ending them in a completely different vocabulary (“… but my atoms obeyed the laws of the Standard Model, so what could I do?”) — Sean Carroll
  • A potential solution to the hard problem
    It doesn't have to be either/or. — flannel jesus

    Maybe. I think that would make a great topic for a thread. Does psychological causation compete with physical causation?
  • A potential solution to the hard problem
    ↪flannel jesus
    I heartily agree. EDIT: you may be interested in @apokrisis posts on the forum about complex systems and top-down causation. Is that the kind of thing you are thinking of?
  • A potential solution to the hard problem
    ↪flannel jesus
    It would. But it leaves no evolutionary role for consciousness to play, which was @wonderer1's point.

    EDIT: my own tentative view is that only consciousness is causal.
  • A potential solution to the hard problem
    Suppose miraculously I was able to produce an accurate account of every detail of the evolutionary path leading to humans. Would it then be unreasonable to conclude with, "So that's just the way evolution went?"

    BTW, Do you think Chalmers is an evolution skeptic?     — wonderer1

    When philosophers like Chalmers ask questions like "Why doesn't all this information-processing go on "in the dark", free of any inner feel?" they don't really mean 'why' in the sense of "what evolutionary benefit has it?" They're looking for a 'how', as in "Explain how, exactly, that information processing (or whatever function) somehow produces/causes/is-identical-with consciousness?"
  • A potential solution to the hard problem
    So what reason do we have to think human behavior in general could be as it is without consciousness? — wonderer1

    Because of the causal closure of the physical
  • In any objective morality existence is inherently good
    ↪180 Proof
    What are you talking about?
  • In any objective morality existence is inherently good
    ↪180 Proof
    What does 'rodeo clowning bulls' mean?
  • An Argument for Christianity from Prayer-Induced Experiences
    ↪Lionino
    Sure, I agree. That's a good point, but one @180 Proof didn't make. There were a number of things that @180 Proof could have meant, I was just wondering which one it was. I respond to 180's posts quite a lot because his style is ambiguous, and when people miss his point, he invariably blames the reader, something no good writer should ever do. And 180 is a very good writer some of the time.
  • An Argument for Christianity from Prayer-Induced Experiences
    If some observation corresponds to some Star Wars-specific proposition, then it is evidence that Jediism is true. — 180 Proof

    Do you think there is something wrong with that?
  • The essence of religion
    A pointless comment. — Janus

    That's exactly what someone who was teased by their sister as a child would say.
  • The essence of religion
    ↪Janus
    Sure, let's do that on the psychology forum.
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