Time and relationships (or, consciousness per Martin Heidegger)

[ConradDJ]

How does this square with QM as a sum over histories story? One history emerges as a result of a collapse of the wave function. But all the other shadowy histories exist in a way that contributes to the final outcome as QM corrections.

So yes, there is a one-to-one story here in that one particle may emit a photon, another absorbs it. Each changes state in a well defined way. But then QM is also non-local. There is a global aspect to collapse. An event has to feel out the context of all the possible histories to settle on then the most probable actual history...

The you-you dyad breaks down rather radically as two particles exchanging a photon are actually embedded in a relationship with a larger system.

Yes, there’s no question that dyadic relationships can only communicate information within a larger context. But I don’t think the local/global dichotomy is very helpful for understanding how this works. In the world I experience, I don’t find anything “global” – though my local environment has many different aspects on different scales in space and time. And the same seems to be true of the atom’s world.

I think that to understand physics, we need to understand what each kind of relationship (electromagnetic, gravitational, etc.) contributes to this communicative environment. So I’m not trying to uncover a universal “logic” of communication, but rather to understand how this system of very diverse kinds of contexts evolved – such that for every parameter of every “field” or “particle” there’s an interaction-context that measures it, and makes it available as part of the background-context for the measurement of different parameters.

Even in your system, I believe you need quite a few different dichotomies to make a world. You’re looking to unify the system by pointing to an underlying dynamic that’s essentially the same for all of them. But my guess is that in physics as in biology, each component structure has a unique role to play, and therefore its own “logic”.

It seems that at the fundamental level, in physics, all interaction is dyadic and momentary. So the basic issue for me is, how does a web made of moments of one-on-one connection evolve into an environment that supports long-term spatial relationships between points of view that persist over time? Evidently this involves many kinds of “universal principles” that we can think of as providing “global” constraints. But even the universal “laws” have to be meaningful (measurable) in terms of local interaction-contexts.

As to the peculiar character of QM – it describes a basic “quantum vacuum” made of “virtual events” that obey no laws, in which no conditions or parameters are definable. So let’s say any kind of “event” can happen at this base level. But apparently the only events that can become part of the “real” world that we (or anything else) can actually “observe” are dyadic interactions... and specifically, one-on-one connections between events that connect to other such events. Events that don’t connect, don’t participate, remain part of the indeterminate background.

Then of all the possible events in this web of momentary connections, only those can be part of an observable world that also happen to participate in certain “lawful” patterns in the web, which make a context for defining each other.

So basically I’m imagining that all the “laws” and “global constraints” in physics arise by chance, as the conditions that define this informational environment. In a given interaction, everything happens – but only insofar as the interaction happens to “obey” the laws (in a context of other interactions that happen to obey the laws) can it be “determinate” (and participate in the evolving context that let's other events be “observed”).

As to “non-locality” – first, my “local” context doesn’t include only what’s “near by” in space. When I see a star, I’m participating in an interaction over several light-years. But I’m not connecting with anything “global”.

Second, QM does not describe any interaction over space-like intervals, only correlations between otherwise random measurements. So QM describes “patterns” in the interaction-web that are essentially different from the light-cone structure given in Relativity. Again, I don’t see anything “global” here, only very radical differences in the kinds of patterns that are apparently needed to define what happens in the world.

So yes, clearly the “laws of physics” are “global” in the sense of “universal”. But I think they arise not out of the logic of dichotomy, but out of the complicated conditions that have evolved to let information be defined “locally” and communicated between local viewpoints.

 

[alt]

Well, no matter what else, this has been a fascinating and informative thread which I have followed closely and have learned a lot from. So Apeiron and PhizzcsPhan, thank you for it. I hope you can continue it a little further. I have a couple of questions, if I may.

Apeiron, in post #61 you said;
But I am unifying those two kinds of emergence as one. They are both the result of the same process of dimensional reduction.

I've read through and pondered all you've said and I still can't understand what you mean by dimensional reduction. Could you please clarify ?

PhizzcsPhan, in post #81 you said;
Pattee and you are right to point to the epistemic cut as important in discussing life and consciousness, but it only makes sense if you push it all the way to the bottom. Otherwise it becomes completely arbitrary.

Push it all the way to the bottom - OK. Do you then also push it all the way to the top ? Meaning, do you believe that the universe, the largest macro you can imagine (whatever that might be) also has life and consciousness .. and 'psyche' ?

Thanks - and once again - a wonderful thread !

 

[Ferris_bg]

Do you then also push it all the way to the top ? Meaning, do you believe that the universe, the largest macro you can imagine (whatever that might be) also has life and consciousness .. and 'psyche' ?

It depends on if your definition of dependence/interconnection for unitary subjects is complete or not. If there is something left, you can have some "global hidden relationship" meaning that the universe is itself an organism.

 

[apeiron]

I've read through and pondered all you've said and I still can't understand what you mean by dimensional reduction. Could you please clarify?

I mean going from 3D volume to 2D plane to 1D line to 0D point. Constraints that cut down the dimensions available for interaction and change.

So the regular world is generically 3D. Chemistry mixes freely in every direction in unconstrained fashion.

When a chemical reaction is confined to a 2D film, this constraint can be informational. It concentrates the reagents and so can speed the reaction. Indeed, it can do much more by way of organising.

See for example Wächtershäuser's surface metabolism theory of the origin of life (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron–sulfur_world_theory) or even just regular use of membranes like the endoplasmic reticulum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endoplasmic_reticulum).

So surface films are the kind of gray area, first step towards life, that Tam was demanding evidence of - but then ignored.

If you constrain the dimensionality of physical interaction still further, then you can get an even more radical step towards computational control over biophysical processes. As we have with RNA and proteins. A linear molecule like RNA becomes a code that the world can read sequentially. A direction of interaction is enforced and becomes thus a sequence of point contacts.

In a 3D soup, you can wander about in any direction. In a 2D plane, you must flow across a surface and so it is easier to create gradients, easier to ensure the chemical contacts you seek to bring about. Get down to 1D, and there is just a line to follow.

This is the little trick that allows a molecular code to become separate from the world it encodes. And also a verbal code. Enforcing a serial form on attempts to express thoughts means you have to chunk and organise.

This is what top-down causality is about. By the global constraint on local freedoms (such as restricting 3D interactions to 2D surfaces, or 1D chains) you "discover" new local properties or potentials.

Reducing the dimensions available for interaction makes big differences in the world. You get "strong emergence".

 

[apeiron]

Yes, there’s no question that dyadic relationships can only communicate information within a larger context. But I don’t think the local/global dichotomy is very helpful for understanding how this works. In the world I experience, I don’t find anything “global” – though my local environment has many different aspects on different scales in space and time. And the same seems to be true of the atom’s world.

I would still argue that for anything to be seen to change, then there must also globally be the larger world that didn't change. So events (whether treated as occasions, particles, interactions or any other form of localised action) necessarily imply contexts. You can't have the one unless you have the other.

And consciousness is about the manufacture of such states of high contrast mental organisation. There is in every moment a state of clear mental prediction (we are already expecting the walls to hold firm, the floor to still be there, the sun continue to shine, the fridge to continue to hum). So there is a global backdrop of "nothing changing". And even action motion and change is part of this state of prediction. We already expect a falling ball to keep falling.

This is what then makes any unexpected sources of change so directly noticeable. If the fridge stops droning, suddenly you wake up to the fact of what is not there. You attend to a localised event - even though the event is the absence of something.

Your mind has to keep the world as "still" as possible - discount all sources of change so as to have a global mental backdrop that can detect the changes that are significant, surprising, or otherwise events worthy of the bright focus of awareness.

Even in your system, I believe you need quite a few different dichotomies to make a world.

It does boil down to just the two cannonical dichotomies of local~global and vague~crisp. And these are themselves of course the single dichotomy of becoming~being - the development from vague and perfectly symmetric potential to crisply dichotomised, or asymmetric, scale.

It seems that at the fundamental level, in physics, all interaction is dyadic and momentary. So the basic issue for me is, how does a web made of moments of one-on-one connection evolve into an environment that supports long-term spatial relationships between points of view that persist over time?

Here you are sticking to the view of time as something that moves along tick by tick. I see time as a scaled realm. So you do have what Stan Salthe calls a hierarchy of cogent moments. The largest scale in physics would be set by the speed of light, and so for our universe, in practice it is the particle horizon, or some other suitable measure of the visible universe.

Then some particular interaction would be bounded by its own more local light cone. If atom A is having an interaction with atom B, then that positive event is in fact happening within a global lightcone that includes all the other points or locales where atom A is simultaneously not having an interaction (but could have been!).

As to the peculiar character of QM – it describes a basic “quantum vacuum” made of “virtual events” that obey no laws, in which no conditions or parameters are definable. So let’s say any kind of “event” can happen at this base level. But apparently the only events that can become part of the “real” world that we (or anything else) can actually “observe” are dyadic interactions... and specifically, one-on-one connections between events that connect to other such events. Events that don’t connect, don’t participate, remain part of the indeterminate background.

Exactly. Again the point is that there must be this vacuum for there be this event that is not then part of the vacuum. You must have an "unchanged" background to have a "change" that stands out as a mark upon that background. You can't just have marks that exist in naked splendour. That's like the grin of the Cheshire Cat. Easy to say, impossible to do.

Then of all the possible events in this web of momentary connections, only those can be part of an observable world that also happen to participate in certain “lawful” patterns in the web, which make a context for defining each other.

This is different. Now you are talking about a history of marks. And this is where you need the kind of global state that can accumulate such a history. The vacuum (imagined as only a cold void, a zero point virtual sea) is indeed a bad surface to write upon. But a hot vacuum - the actual universe we find ourselves in - is a sea of real particles, real events, all busily thermalising away their energies. There is a global entropic gradient that gives a direction to all events, all localised changes, and so creates an arrow for time.

So basically I’m imagining that all the “laws” and “global constraints” in physics arise by chance, as the conditions that define this informational environment. In a given interaction, everything happens – but only insofar as the interaction happens to “obey” the laws (in a context of other interactions that happen to obey the laws) can it be “determinate” (and participate in the evolving context that let's other events be “observed”).

Certainly the Peircean view is that you have to start with spontaneous activity. So you have to have dyadic interactions before triadic habits of interaction can become established. So dyads are more primitive in that sense. They are pre-geometry or pre-systems if you like. But they are the tentative and fragile first actions, that must eventually develop into something more robust - events within a context, where the dominant interaction is now that between bottom-up construction and top-down constraint.

As to “non-locality” – first, my “local” context doesn’t include only what’s “near by” in space. When I see a star, I’m participating in an interaction over several light-years. But I’m not connecting with anything “global”.

Perhaps this is not something I have explained well enough. The global is the largest scale in terms of that interaction. Generally speaking, the universe is presumed to be homogenous and isotropic. We believe that it is the same over all possible scales. But some particular event can only know that to be true for a fact over its particular scale.

So maybe here is a key objective vs subjective, externalist vs internalist, distinction that can be drawn.

It would be objective to stand back and say the universe has these global properties even beyond the realms of what I have measured. But subjectively, every measurement has to exist within the lightcone of what it can actually measure. And that is a fact that needs to be worked into the epistemology. Which is indeed what hierarchy theory - particularly Salthe's internalist version - attempts to do.

So yes, clearly the “laws of physics” are “global” in the sense of “universal”. But I think they arise not out of the logic of dichotomy, but out of the complicated conditions that have evolved to let information be defined “locally” and communicated between local viewpoints.

If you are saying that everything starts just as spontaneous dyadic interactions, and only later becomes organised with a history, then that is the Peircean approach. It is also the kind of story modeled in phase transition physics. You must have fluctuations, localised correlations, to start anything happening.

But a view that then only recognises local dyads can never speak of the global order that arises as a consequence. Or at least, it cannot model that order in simple terms. It cannot speak of that global organisation in a direct manner.

 

[alt]

It depends on if your definition of dependence/interconnection for unitary subjects is complete or not. If there is something left, you can have some "global hidden relationship" meaning that the universe is itself an organism.

Interesting - thanks. I'm also very keen to see PhizzicsPhan's response to the question I posed - to repeat; (for PhizzicsPhan) ..

Push it all the way to the bottom - OK. Do you then also push it all the way to the top ? Meaning, do you believe that the universe, the largest macro you can imagine (whatever that might be) also has life and consciousness .. and 'psyche' ?


Apeiron, thanks for the explanation in post #94. I'm taking time to digest it all ..

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

alt, yes, this is where it gets quite interesting. If mind is ontologically fundamental - it is part and parcel of everything we see and detect - then "God is what mind becomes when it passes beyond the scale of our comprehension," as the physicist Freeman Dyson wrote in his 1988 book, Infinite in All Directions. This is the natural extension of Whiteheadian panpsychism, which satisfactorily explains consciousness life, matter, energy, mind and spiritual experience. Consciousness is a continuum from the simplest to the most complex structures in our universe. For Whitehead, the process of "concrescence," that is, becoming concrete, is universal and the entire universe becomes concrete in some manner in each moment, with an accompanying mentality. Whether the temporal scale of the universal consciousness is anything close enough to our own to meaningfully interact at our level is a big question mark. For Whitehead, there are two aspects to God: the "consequential" aspect, which I just described, and the "primordial" aspect, which is the set of all "eternal objects," that is, Platonic forms. I don't accept this second aspect in the way Whitehead did and I think his ontology could be improved by jettisoning the primordial aspect - unless we simply translate it into Brahman/ether/apeiron without any Platonic notion of pre-existent forms. It is, instead, simply the ground of being from which reality grows.

Anyway, this is going far beyond the original questions in this thread - but you did ask.

If you're curious, check out my in-progress book, Mind, World God, at:

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/mind-world-god-science-and-spirit-in-the-21st-century/12289274

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

This is interesting: I just went back to Panpsychism in the West and looked up Peirce. Skrbina categorizes him as a panpsychist, along with Chardin and Whitehead, even though Peirce himself seemed torn on this issue, depending on which work is at issue.

[Edit: Peirce wasn't torn on panpsychism; rather, he is more well-known for his work that doesn't relate to panpsychism. Skrbina makes a convincing case that Peirce was a panpsychist through and through even though Peirce used the terms "hylopathy" or "objective idealism" rather than panpsychism.]

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

"Viewing a thing from the outside, ... it appears as matter. Viewing it from the inside ... it appears as consciousness." C.S. Peirce, Man's Glassy Essence, 1892, p. 349. (Quoted in Skrbina's Panpsychism in the West, p. 154).

 

[Gold Barz]

Just a question about panpsychism, how serious is this view being taken anyways?

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Gold, panpsychism is certainly a minority position but growing fast. At the annual Toward a Science of Consciousness conferences panpsychism boosters are increasingly common and panpsychist papers are appearing fairly regularly. Here's a list of prominent past and present supporters (from my recent paper):

Many respected thinkers have subscribed to some form of panpsychism, including the ancient Greeks Heraclitus and Empedocles, Plotinus in the 3rd Century CE, to Giordano Bruno in the 16th Century, Spinoza and Leibniz in the 17th Century, Immanuel Kant (in his earlier work) in the 18th Century, Arthur Schopenhauer and Ernst Haeckel in the 19th, and in the 20th Century William James, Gregory Bateson, the biologists J.B.S. Haldane, Sewall Wright, and C.H. Waddington, the paleontologist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the physicists Sir Arthur Eddington, Whitehead, David Bohm, Freeman Dyson, Roger Penrose, and the philosopher Bertrand Russell (to some degree). More recently, Galen Strawson, Stuart Hameroff, David Chalmers, William Seager, Gregg Rosenberg, Jonathan Schooler and many others have advocated panpsychist or quasi-panpsychist views.

 

[apeiron]

This is interesting: I just went back to Panpsychism in the West and looked up Peirce. Skrbina categorizes him as a panpsychist, along with Chardin and Whitehead, even though Peirce himself seemed torn on this issue, depending on which work is at issue.

[Edit: Peirce wasn't torn on panpsychism; rather, he is more well-known for his work that doesn't relate to panpsychism. Skrbina makes a convincing case that Peirce was a panpsychist through and through even though Peirce used the terms "hylopathy" or "objective idealism" rather than panpsychism.]

Tam, before you claim Peirce as one of your own, perhaps you ought to read what he said. It is pretty clear.

See The Architecture of Theories where he explains why objective idealism is NOT panpsychism. From http://danmahony.com/peirce1891a.htm

The old dualistic notion of mind and matter, so prominent in Cartesianism, as two radically different kinds of substance, will hardly find defenders to-day. Rejecting this, we are driven to some form of hylopathy, otherwise called monism. Then the question arises whether physical laws on the one hand, and the psychical law on the other are to be taken―

(A) as independent, a doctrine often called monism, but which I would name neutralism; or,

(B) the psychical law as derived and special, the physical law alone as primordial, which is materialism; or,

(C) the physical law as derived and special, the psychical law alone as primordial, which is idealism.

The materialistic doctrine seems to me quite as repugnant to scientific logic as to common sense; since it requires us to suppose that a certain kind of mechanism will feel, which would be a hypothesis absolutely irreducible to reason,―an ultimate, inexplicable regularity; while the only possible justification of any theory is that it should make things clear and reasonable.

Neutralism is sufficiently condemned by the logical maxim known as Ockham's razor, i.e., that not more independent elements are to be supposed than necessary. By placing the inward and outward aspects of substance on a par, it seems to render both primordial.

The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws. But before this can be accepted it must show itself capable of explaining the tridimensionality of space, the laws of motion, and the general characteristics of the universe, with mathematical clearness and precision; for no less should be demanded of every Philosophy.

So there are three options. Dual aspect theories that see mind and matter as the irreducible properties of substance are a form of monism. Which Peirce rejects. Instead he says the material world emerges from mind.

Or "mind", as you then have to pay careful attention to how Peirce views firstness, or vagueness. It is indeed pretty psychological at times, but you have to work out whether he means literally, analogically or generically.

But anyway, this is not panpsychism, except in some unacceptably loose sense.

The big difference is that dual aspect theories take both aspects of substance to just exist. Material and experiential properties are just what they are. Essences in the old sense. So no matter how finely you chop matter, you will find the properties still there, still inherent.

But Peirce argues something completely different. He says in the beginning there is just "mind". An unformed disorder of "feeling" - a psychical version of the apeiron in fact. Then the material world develops out of this in emergent fashion.

So it is not matter/mind all the way down. The material aspects dissolve and all that is left is the raw potential of unformed mind. This is why it is a species of idealism, not materialism, not monism.

 

[alt]

Hi PhizzicsPhan

Anyway, this is going far beyond the original questions in this thread - but you did ask.

You know, I went back to check on that, and it isn't that far off. In any case, I appreciate your response - we got to push the envelope sometime, I suppose!

Consciousness is a continuum from the simplest to the most complex structures in our universe

One would of course, encounter opposition, or at least argument to this, depending on ones definition of consciousness - a much debated subject. But we all agree (I think) that an atom is animate, and that we are a group of animate atoms. And we attribute consciousness and intelligence to ourselves. Hooray ! In the same vein then, it is not a stretch IMO, to attribute consciousness to more complex structures (all the way up ?) that we are constituents of. So I guess I'm saying I see it the way you do.

Whether the temporal scale of the universal consciousness is anything close enough to our own to meaningfully interact at our level is a big question mark.

A blink in the eye of Brahma (10,000 years, say) would reveal a hollow Earth with an internal sun :-) (note, mods - humor intended)

"God is what mind becomes when it passes beyond the scale of our comprehension"

Yes, Dyson's point is an interesting one. Wordsworth goes one further, bringing it back to nature and man (note the underlined);

.. There I beheld the emblem of a mind
That feeds upon infinity, that broods
Over the dark abyss, intent to hear
Its voices issuing forth to silent light
In one continuous stream; a mind sustained
By recognitions of transcendent power,
In sense conducting to ideal form,
In soul of more than mortal privilege.
One function, above all, of such a mind
Had Nature shadowed there, by putting forth,
'Mid circumstances awful and sublime,
That mutual domination which she loves
To exert upon the face of outward things,
So moulded, joined, abstracted, so endowed
With interchangeable supremacy,
That men, least sensitive, see, hear, perceive,
And cannot choose but feel. The power, which all
Acknowledge when thus moved, which Nature thus
To bodily sense exhibits, is the express
Resemblance of that glorious faculty
That higher minds bear with them as their own.

(from, The Prelude, Book 14th, Conclusion)

Wordsworth seems a panpsychist too, I think.

If you're curious, check out my in-progress book, Mind, World God

I checked your link, but couldn't find any text of your in-progress book. If something of it is available on line, I'd like to have a look at it.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Apeiron, I think we're actually saying the same thing but for some reason you don't like the panpsychism appellation.

Look, there are different levels of explanation and terms such as idealism, monism and panpsychism (not to mention physicalism, materialism, etc.) are themselves a bit squishy. Here's how I see it: there is a non-psychical substrate to reality (which I've mentioned previously) that we can call Brahman/apeiron/ether or simply the "vacuum" as modern physics sometimes does. This is the neutral monist substrate from which reality grows. Matter, as Peirce points out, springs from this substrate.

Peirce himself states, as I quoted previously that matter is what is viewed "from the outside" and mind what a thing is for itself "from the inside."

How is this not panpsychism?

Peirce also uses the term "hylopathy" - all things feel. How is this not panpsychism?

Now, we could split hairs and I suspect you will by saying that dual aspect panpsychism isn't the same as "objective idealism." But when we square Peirce's various statements it seems quite clear that his intent was to stress that mind is omni-present. And this is panpsychism.

When I am obliged to get technical in expressing my views, I describe my position as either "panexperiential physicalism," the same phrase Griffin uses, or "panexperiential neutral monism," to stress that there is a neutral substrate that is neither mind nor matter - pure Spirit, to use Hegel's term.

Last, idealism is a form of monism, labeled more technically "idealist monism," as opposed to "materialist monism," otherwise known as materialism. Distinguishing idealism and panpsychism becomes a matter of semantics and the two shade into each other quite easily.

Neutral monism, as I just described, suggests that there is a neutral substrate that can be described as neither mind nor matter. It is somehow beyond the subject/object distinction and to grok this it appears we need to move more into the spiritual and experiential realm and away from the word games of philosophy.

 

[apeiron]

Just a question about panpsychism, how serious is this view being taken anyways?

Let a panpsychist answer that question for you...

First, although the panexperientialist starting-point overcomes what has thus far been considered the heart of the mind-body problem, it has obviously not been easy for philosophers and scientists to see why we should adopt that starting-point. Second, even when the basic idea is accepted, it is far from obvious how to work out this idea in a plausible way (as illustrated by the failure of Leibniz, hardly a dimwit). That these are indeed severe difficulties is shown by the reception panexperientialism (usually called 'panpsychism') has received thus far. Although some version of it has been proposed by a number of first-rate philosophical and scientific minds (such as Leibniz, Fechner, Lotze, Peirce, Bergson, James, Whitehead, Hartshorne, Sewall Wright, and David Bohm), it is scarcely considered in mainline discussions of the mind-body problem. Virtually everyone assumes that we must choose between some version of dualism (including epiphenomenalism) and some version of materialism. Thanks partly to Nagel-who believes that some version of panpsychist physicalism must be true but also suspects it to be 'unintelligible' (1979, pp. 181-2, 188-9; 1986, pp. 49-50)-some contemporary philosophers do mention it. But they usually dismiss it quickly as 'implausible' (Seager, 1991, p. 241n),2 'extravagant' (McGinn, 1991, p. 2n), or even 'outrageous' and 'absurd' (McGinn, 1982, pp. 31-2). Panexperientialism clearly has an uphill battle.

http://www.ctr4process.org/publications/Biblio/Papers/David%20Ray%20Griffin%20-%20Panexperientialist%20Physicalism.html

On the science side, it is favoured by quantum consciousness theorists and psi researchers. So it risks being judged by the company it keeps.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Apeiron, glad you found Griffin's paper. I know David fairly well (he lives very near me in Goleta) and he would very likely agree with me that things have changed quite a bit since he wrote that paper 15 years ago. Panpsychism, due in no small measure to Chalmers and Hameroff (the organizers of the annual TSC conferences), as well as Griffin himself and others like Seager who is now firmly in the panpsychist camp, is definitely on the upswing.

Anyway, the fact that a view is a minority view has little to no bearing for me. I evaluate ideas on their inherent strengths, not their supporters or lack thereof.

And a key problem that has plagued panpsychism, the "combination problem," is exactly what I address in my forthcoming JCS paper.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

PS. Your last comment in #105 is rather strange considering that you have regularly cited Peirce as the base for your ideas and he is clearly a panpsychist.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

alt, I love the Wordsworth poem - thanks for sharing.

As for my book, there is a preview available and a free pdf download, at least there is when I click on the link. If you can't find it give me your email and I'll send you a pdf.

 

[apeiron]

Look, there are different levels of explanation and terms such as idealism, monism and panpsychism (not to mention physicalism, materialism, etc.) are themselves a bit squishy.

No, it is the way that you are using the terms that is squishy.

Now, we could split hairs and I suspect you will by saying that dual aspect panpsychism isn't the same as "objective idealism." But when we square Peirce's various statements it seems quite clear that his intent was to stress that mind is omni-present. And this is panpsychism.

It was Peirce who was "splitting hairs" here. And if you read enough Peirce, you will find it hard to pin him down to a final view. As I said, you have to decide on balance whether he is being literal, analogical or generic.

To me the generic interpretation makes the most sense. And so I would characterise his position as pansemiotic. What is universal is not the literal experiencing but the essential causal structure. Which would not be panpsychic.

Again, panpsychism is a reductionist substance ontology. Experience is an essence, a property of substance. Pansemiosis is a systems story. Experience is irreducibly triadic. It develops through organisation. It is about global form as well as local substance.

The problem with squaring Peirce's statements is that he did have his mystical moments. He did sort of believe in god at times. But he also talked about god and mind in such a deflationary way that they just don't mean what the everyday usages mean. And he was also careful to keep separate what he might like to believe from his more rigorous metaphysical arguments. So you could take his semiotic framework and drop the woo-woo bits quite easily.

This is why Peirce is popular with both theologians and systems thinkers. Each can emphasise the aspects that fits their more sharply distinguished worldviews. But again, this does not mean either can lump him with what he argued against.

When I am obliged to get technical in expressing my views, I describe my position as either "panexperiential physicalism," the same phrase Griffin uses, or "panexperiential neutral monism," to stress that there is a neutral substrate that is neither mind nor matter - pure Spirit, to use Hegel's term.

Well, I can go along quite a way with Griffin's panexperiential physicalism because it is a contorted form of systems thinking. It is more pansemiotic than panpsychic because it is about global constraints on local freedoms. He identifies experience with the development of organised states. So I read Griffin and think he has the basic elements, he just doesn't want to assemble them in the explicitly hierarchical fashion of a systems thinker because he is so concerned not to become a dualist - and systems thinking can sound dualistic (it is actually dichotomistic) because it takes both local and global causality as fundamental.

So panexperiential physicalism and objective idealism have an awful lot in common. They are both sophisticated and complex metaphysical positions - that when straightened out become a systems approach.

But "panexperiential neutral monism"? That just sounds a self-contradicting term. Neutral monism says things begin neutral (I would prefer Peirce's vague). And the neutral can't be both neutral and experiential. Experience is one of the things that develop out of a pleni-potential.

As I keep saying, you have to decide which camp you are in and stick to it.

Either you are a reductionist and believe that everything reduces to stuff - the local properties of substance - or you are a systems thinker and believe that everything develops, everything emerges from pure potential by way of an interaction between the local and the global, between local construction (the substantial causes) and global constraints (the formal causes).

Panpsychism takes the reductionist approach. Reality is made of a stuff that has material and psychic properties inherently.

Pansemiosis is a systems approach. Reality starts beyond stuff. It starts out as a raw potential. Then stuff emerges as a bootstrap process of self-organisation.

Arran Gare has done a bunch of good papers on these issues. You might particularly like to check Whitehead and Pythagoras (http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&sqi=2&ved=0CCYQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.concrescence.org%2Findex.php%2Fajpt%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F85%2F47&ei=sNaoTdOrNImiuQPVmPH8CQ&usg=AFQjCNEDIgm3xQD6ZOrVKl-_Itm3P5QA8A) where he compares Whitehead to Peirce and Bergson as well as systems approaches generally.

For instance...

Such ideas have been recently put forward again by
hierarchy theorists, notably by Howard Pattee, Timothy
Allen and Stanley Salthe, among others, who have
argued that emergence is associatedwith newconstraints
emerging which are not in the initial conditions.ä¢ While
developed without reference to pre-twentieth century
thought (or to Bergson), this conception of nature
revives Anaximander’s conception of cosmos as having
formed through the limiting of the unlimited (an idea
also taken up further developed by Schelling at the end
of the eighteenth century).ää Along with the notion
of dišerent minimum durations, or dišerent process
rates, this has enabled Pattee, Allen and Salthe to clarify
the nature of both emergence and hierarchical ordering
in nature. Treating time as pulsational rather than
atomic and treating causation as essentially a matter of
constraining,äß overcomes a number of di›culties in
Whitehead’s philosophy, but then requires a rethinking
of the nature of concrescence.

Last, idealism is a form of monism, labeled more technically "idealist monism," as opposed to "materialist monism," otherwise known as materialism. Distinguishing idealism and panpsychism becomes a matter of semantics and the two shade into each other quite easily.

Err, I think distinguishing positions is pretty important here. And the critical distinctions are between monism (some variety of reductionism, either material or idealistic), dualism (whether ontic mind-body Cartesian dualism or double aspect panpsychic substance dualism), and then thirdly, the systems alternative (which includes pansemiosis and even neutral monism, given the larger intent of neutral monism).

Neutral monism, as I just described, suggests that there is a neutral substrate that can be described as neither mind nor matter. It is somehow beyond the subject/object distinction and to grok this it appears we need to move more into the spiritual and experiential realm and away from the word games of philosophy.

The word games of some people's philosophy in fact do a good job of pinning it down. And science can make the ideas increasingly precise. So no need for grokking. Just patient scholarship.

 

[Pythagorean]

I now realize that I've misunderstood and misused the word "panspsychism".

The word first came to me here in physicsforums. The idea was that if consciousness is the result of a physical process, then that physical process, if it occurs outside of a living thing, would lead to consciousness still. But this is a systems view (consciousness still emerges from the interplay of the matter; it wasn't inherent).

That idea doesn't bother me, personally; it's a consequence of physicalism.

But panpsychism doesn't say that (as I've just learned for the first time); it actually says that all matter has a subjective experience or mind. I would disagree with panpsychism, then.

What does pansemiotic mean?

 

[apeiron]

But panpsychism doesn't say that (as I've just learned for the first time); it actually says that all matter has a subjective experience or mind. I would disagree with panpsychism, then.

What does pansemiotic mean?

It means that all existence is systematic. It arises from unformed potential as an interpretive process. Limits placed on the limitless.

So in a loose way, it is "mental" in that it talks about interpretation. There has to be something like a self-observation. There has to be a global point of view or some kind of strong top-downness that constrains things to be.

But this is a generic description. Interpretation is a general or universal process rather than a literal claim that interpretation = experiencing in the usual sense.

 

[alt]

alt, I love the Wordsworth poem - thanks for sharing.

As for my book, there is a preview available and a free pdf download, at least there is when I click on the link. If you can't find it give me your email and I'll send you a pdf.

Ah ! Got the book now, thanks. I'll start reading.

As to the Wordsworth, I'm glad you liked it. Those guys (and those before them, and those before them, etc) pondered the same things - and it is good that we should continue to ponder them today.

This is a great thread.

 

[Deveno]

reading this thread makes me feel rather, um, stupid. i am not quite sure exactly what is at stake with the various positions involved.

there is something qualitatively different between myself and my guitar. i rather doubt it has a name for itself. this same difference is less marked between my cat and i, he has some of this "self-awareness" (for example, he recognizes his name), but it appears to be to a lesser degree. plants? gosh, I'm not sure...

so, i think a dynamic system needs a certain threshold of complexity and self-organization before consciousness emerges. that said, i see nothing to preclude some superset of myself possessing the same characteristic, perhaps to an even higher degree.

this thread has made for some fascinating reading, and only a little sniping.

if i were pressed to sum up my way of looking at things, i would say it is something like:

Ø = 1

the null set is a weird thing, it has every property, but none of them are realized. it is usually seen as a very small thing, smaller than anything else, but i see it as very large, just empty. a vast wall-less container. but, as soon as you put something IN it, all of a sudden you have distinction, in and out, me and not-me. and i think consciousness hinges on that distinction, a division between subject and object.

i'm probably not saying this very well.

it's like the universe is this huge potential function. there's not really anything there, just a potential for being there. but as soon as you introduce a constraint, it induces being. the potential becomes kinetic, no longer an it-is-what-it-is, but something with a history to it, a directedness. i suppose duality is built-in to this view, but in light of the fact that there is duality, describing half of it suffices. the idea that losing degrees of freedom can create self-organization...i can go along with that, it seems to me to be another way of describing what i am saying so poorly.

the thought that consciousness might be distributed down to even the sub-sub-atomic scales of existence...seems to dilute the concept of consciousness down to worthless. it totally fails to capture the distinction between alive and non-living. consciousness seems to be a sort of fire, burning the fuel of genetically-directed organisms as it goes. it's rather peculiar, that DNA should be able to create such a profusion of delicate homeostatic dynamic systems based on such a simple code, and odder still that some of these systems evolved to become creatures that devised languages to talk about the DNA, but here we are.

anyway, i think that there are different kinds of consciousness, and at the risk of sounding anthropomorphic, we have the best kind going. dolphins may be able to sing, but can they make digital copies of 18th century dolphin hits? and i think this special kind of consciousness we have is inextricably bound up in the fact that we can construct a (largely faithful) internal model of what seems to be what other people we observe seem to model internally. this multiple layering of: i see what you see, and imagine you imagining what i imagine I'm seeing. in other words, we can rectify, both linguistically, and conceptually, a consistent world in which our concepts and the words we use to describe the the concepts and the world are consistent with our perceived observation of other people's use of the same concpets and words. perhaps some other species share a similar ability, but they haven't told us, and until they do, it doesn't count.

i think meaning arises when the maps are good. and i think that reflection, is the distinguishing hallmark of consciousness (using the word in both senses). so it at least requires a brain, or some other physical structure suitable for such mappings. salt crystals don't have it.

 

[Ferris_bg]

PhizzicsPhan, Apeiron,

I think you both make the same mistake and use panpsychism and panexperientialism as an interchangeable terms and they are not. Therefore the definitions of your concepts get messed up.

This is the original http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2982" . Basically Griffin shows adequate way for escaping the epiphenomenalism, which as according to Kim the non-reductive physicalism theories entail.

If you want we can discuss the both papers in a separate thread.

 

[apeiron]

PhizzicsPhan, Apeiron,

I think you both make the same mistake and use panpsychism and panexperientialism as an interchangeable terms and they are not. Therefore the definitions of your concepts get messed up.

Perhaps you can briefly outline the difference for us then? Griffin does not even use the word panpsychism, let alone spell out a difference. And neither does Kim do anything but say Griffin's panexperientialism is Griffin's term for his approach to panpsychism. So there is not much to go on in those papers.

Anyway, as I said, I do not see Griffin as a million miles away from Peirce or a systems view. Whereas Tam, and others like Hameroff, just have a non-theory in my view. They treat matter and mind as two essences somehow localised in the same substance. No explanation given. So I agree they are not interchangeable terms here.

As to Kim's arguments, I would reiterate that he does not deal with the systems view at all in his work. The systems claim is that top-down constraints restrict local freedoms. So they actively shape their own micro-causes (even as the micro-causes also make for the global states of constraint). Thus the systems view goes far beyond ideas about mereological supervenience. It sees even the micro-causes as something that must develop, not something that pre-exist.

 

[alt]

PhizzicsPhan, Apeiron,

I think you both make the same mistake and use panpsychism and panexperientialism as an interchangeable terms and they are not. Therefore the definitions of your concepts get messed up.

This is the original http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2982" . Basically Griffin shows adequate way for escaping the epiphenomenalism, which as according to Kim the non-reductive physicalism theories entail.

If you want we can discuss the both papers in a separate thread.

I never even heard of the term panexperientialism until I came across it in this thread. A search for that term in Wiki defaults to panpsychism and says ..

In philosophy, panpsychism is the view that all matter has a mental aspect, or, alternatively, all objects have a unified center of experience or point of view.

Panexperientialism, as espoused by Alfred North Whitehead, is a less bold variation, which credits all entities with phenomenal consciousness but not with cognition, and therefore not necessarily with fully-fledged minds.

So a panpsychist would always place a rock for example, under panexperientialism, unless he thought that that rock had a fully fledged mind ? Am I on the right track ?

 

[JDStupi]

"...Even if we had any senses, we should be situated toward such a world precisely as inanimate objects are toward the present one, provided we suppose that these objects have an absolutely transitory and instantaneous consciousness without memory―a supposition which is a mere mode of speech, for that would be no consciousness at all"

C.S. Pierce ...Just browsing through, might be relevant for those of you claiming C.S. Pierce as a panpsychist

 

[Ferris_bg]

Panexperientialism, as described by Griffin, holds that "everything experiences, or is capable of experiencing". Here by "experiencing" Griffin means the non-cognitive aspect of consciousness - the qualia (Q). So the single particles can have Q, but are lacking M (a fully developed cognitive mind). Panpsychism grants both M and Q.

As Griffin points out "panexperientialism clearly says that the mind emerges from the brain". Mental causation is logically consistent in his panexperiential physicalism, because Q is present in P thus there is no problem the higher level order M to be reported by P or to causally interact with P. That is the core idea of his response to Kim, who has showed that mental causation in non-reductive physicalism is only possible when causal over-determination exists. So Griffin finds a solution to this. But there is always a catch you know. And the catch in his view is the so called "combination problem" or how does Q develops to M in the brain, and not in the rock, when Q is present in all particles.

 

[ConradDJ]

Without hoping to talk anyone out of their pan-____________-ism, I’d like to try explaining Heidegger’s thought once again, maybe in simpler terms.

“Pan” (meaning “all”) is the oldest word in our intellectual vocabulary. Before it had any other concept to work with, Greek philosophy began with “the All” as its subject... the world as a whole, as one thing. That was a profoundly new idea.

By trying to imagine what it could mean, “the All”, these men were learning to see the world as if they were outside it and independent of it. They were inventing the conceptual standpoint that gradually evolved into scientific objectivity, through which we’re gained so much in the way of understanding. Less fortunately, it also evolved a kind of intellectual life in which people attach to “-isms” and argue about them, which has been much less fruitful.

The essence of the Greek intellectual achievement is to create for itself a universal “quasi-viewpoint”, abstracting from any actual point of view on things. Abstracting from what physics calls the viewpoint of “the observer”.

We all know how valuable it is to be able to see the world “from outside” in this way. What was at first only barely imaginable to a few crazy philosophers has gradually become the everyday objective reality we all imagine around us all the time, the world of facts.

Now Heidegger’s essential point is that this way of imagining the world is limited by its very universality. It can uncover the facts, but it can’t perceive what’s fundamental. It can’t get at what’s ultimately going on here, at where the facts are coming from, so to speak. It can't see what the facts are telling us about the world.

For Heidegger, what’s fundamental about existence – about the world we actually live in together, that each of us sees “from inside” – is that it’s always and exclusively one’s own. It’s always from my specific point of view in space, in this particular context of relationships, in this unique ongoing moment “now”, summing up my whole past and creating a future. Most importantly, this “own point of view” arises in its relationships with other points of view.

So what Heidegger suggests is simply that at bottom, the world is a web of connections between “own” points of view, in real time. The world is the world each of us lives in and experiences, in our respective, interconnected present moments, now. And the fundamental character of this web of being-in-relationships can only be seen “from inside” it.

The time and space of “existence”, lived from inside, are very different from the global time and space of objective “reality”. Existence is structured as an “environment” – it’s made of the many unique contexts that each perspective has in its own present connections with others. This business of “being in one’s local context” is the whole show. “Being here, from this point of view, now” has its own complex, multi-leveled structure – whether we’re talking about a human’s point of view or an atom’s. This context involves close relationships and distant ones, things are happening in many time-scales at once. But all this articulates the uniquely located "here and now" -- there's nothing global or universal about this side of the world that's one's own.

Now when we universalize our perspective, we gain a great deal. We gain a theoretical standpoint on the whole universe, and ways of investigating facts to an amazing depth, way beyond the scope of everyday experience. But we also entirely lose sight of the different kinds of structure our world has “from inside”.

Heidegger believed that this “environmental” kind of world-structure, that only exists for me and for you, from this particular point of view that each of us has for our own, is what’s basic. And that makes sense to me, but I’m not trying to prove it’s true. It’s hard for me even to find language for it.

The thing is, we’re all so used to living “in the real world” of objective facts that it’s hard to start imagining the world as we actually see it around us, in real time. A world where there are no facts, a world of momentary connections, impressions, expressions and anticipations. We hardly have even primitive concepts for describing this contextual connectivity we live in... though we’re incredibly adept at objectifying our world, automatically translating all our experience into the universal perspective we take for granted.

To me, the mystery of quantum theory and the mystery about “consciousness” define the boundaries of our traditional intellectual world. I think that so long as we keep inventing models of the world as a whole, from outside, as a vast body of objective fact, these two issues will remain opaque. Not only will we find no real answers, it will not even become clear what the real questions are. And that’s been the situation already for a long time.

But it’s not that QM and consciousness really have anything to do with each other. It’s just that both involve the structure of a web of communicative relationships, that can only seen from a point of view inside it.

So I suggest that unless you’re thinking from the standpoint of your own conscious existence in your relationships with others, then any talk about “consciousness” or about the “mental” vs the “physical”, etc. is going nowhere. If you talk about “mind” or “conscious awarenss” as objective attributes of certain kinds of things, you’re taking a point of view that excludes from the start what you’re trying to understand... you’re abstracting from the “own point of view” within the web that each of us “things” always has, in this moment.

But this “authentic” standpoint – even though it’s where we always are, in our lives, and the only standpoint anything actually has – is very abnormal for us, and still very foreign to our intellectual tradition. It’s a terra incognita that’s open for us to explore, but we’re all just beginners here.

I know there’s a lot of pleasure in inventing theories about “the All”, and I wouldn’t want to deprive anyone of something I’ve enjoyed so much myself. It’s great. But I think the real work to be done now needs a different point of view.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Apeiron, if you can accept Griffin's panexperiential physicalism, my job is done here :)

Pansemiotism = panexperientialism, as I have mentioned before. The essence of both is interiority, subjectivity, no matter how simple. A world of objects only cannot give rise to subjects without magic or miracles.

Granted, there is a kind of magic in transitioning from the pure potentiality of Brahman/ether/apeiron, but far better for this magic to occur at the beginning of the chain of being rather than at an arbitrary mid-point in the chain of being, as is argued in the mainstream emergentist materialism.

I use the term panpsychism more generally than panexperientialism because the former term is simpler and has far more currency than the latter. And to me they actually mean the same thing because, again, the essence of both (and pansemiosis/ism) is that interiority is built into all things. The outside and inside are dual aspects of each real thing. As matter complexifies, so mind/interiority complexifies.

Galen Strawson's version of panpsychism is probably the closest to mine. Griffin invented the term panexperientialism in the 1970s to avoid the silly objection to panpsychism that "you're saying rocks have minds?" No, no modern panpsychist or panexperientialist says rocks have mind. Rather, the constituents of a rock have extremely rudimentary minds and the rock itself is most likely a "mere aggregate." As is a chair, table, etc.

My forthcoming JCS paper addresses this issue in detail, suggesting that the key for solving this "combination problem" (what is a unitary subject rather than a "mere aggregate") is field coherence. This idea relies on time being quantized at a fundamental level. We can suggest that the Planck moment (10 to the negative 44 seconds) is the time quantum or chronon. And the universe is re-created with each ticking chronon. Information can travel only so far within each chronon and this is the fundamental limit for what can be a unitary subject. As matter learns how to bootstrap various pathways for faster information transfer, such as high energy storage in cell-based life, it can then lead to far larger unitary subjects than are possible without these bootstrapping techniques.

Last, apeiron, you inaccurately categorize panpsychism as a type of dualism. Obviously, these categories are debatable but I think it's an unhelpful move to categorize dual aspect panpsychism/panexperientialism as a type of dualism because this categorization ignores the fact that a certain type of dualism is necessary to explain the mind/body problem.

It is undeniable that there is a subject here, now, and it is writing to you. The subject I call my "self" is always changing, but it is undeniably here, now, as Descartes famously pointed out (and then went quickly astray in his consequential musings). The subject that is me clearly has a number of objects that present themselves to me. This is the fundamental subject/object distinction that is the mind/body problem.

Cartesian dualism "solves" the problem by suggesting that mind and matter are fundamentally different substances that somehow interact. This "somehow" is the key problem behind this type of dualism - it makes little sense to posit two fundamentally different substances without any clear means of interaction. And it's redundant in many ways.

Dual aspect panpsychism (inside and outside are two aspects of each real thing) obviously has some shades of dualism because it admits two basic features of the universe. But it is not dual aspect substantialism like Descartes' system. Rather, it posits just one substance that has two basic features - an outside and an inside. To be more accurate, the Whiteheadian version of panpsychism posits one basic process that has these two aspects. Whitehead was careful in stressing that his ontology did not deny substance entirely - what can process work with if there is no substance? Rather, he emphasized process and substance.

Actually, one more thing: I call my system "panexperiential neutral monism" for the same reason that Peirce called his system "objective idealism": there is a neutral substrate in my system that is neither mind nor matter; mind and matter only appear as the actuality from the pure potentiality of Brahman/ether/apeiron. The actuality is panpsychist, but the neutral substrate is not. So whereas Peirce's idealist substrate is not objective for him, the "objective" description refers to his notion of matter as condensed mind.

I'm not saying my system is the same as Peirce's (I haven't read enough to map out the parallels), I'm just saying the appellations have a similar logic. And Peirce was also a panpsychist of some stripe because he recognized that mind must be ontologically fundamental.