Time and relationships (or, consciousness per Martin Heidegger)

[PhizzicsPhan]

Conrad, thanks for the explanation of Heidegger's viewpoint. I agree entirely. And this is the basis of the panpsychist position: the universe is indeed the sum total of all interconnected subjects. From the top to the bottom. There is no objectivity without subjectivity. Schopenhauer also had a lot to say on this and I highly recommend The World as Will and Representation.

Would you say Heidegger is a panpsychist? Apparently most scholars don't view Heidegger as panpsychist.

 

[apeiron]

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.

I don't see the relevance of the difference. The only thing either variety of theory claims as beyond physicalism is qualia, the subjective experiencing, not the cognition. So they are not different in the respect that matters here.

BTW I don't buy that you can separate cognition from qualia. It is contrary to the neuroscientific evidence. Even when your eyes are doing something so simple as following a moving light, there is "neural computation" involved.

In a paper in the journal Nature, he and his colleagues showed how nerve cells in the retina respond most actively to the leading edge of a moving object. They also fire slightly ahead of it.

http://bmes.seas.wustl.edu/WhitakerArchives/00_annual_report/meister.html

So it is a false dichotomy in the first place.

 

[apeiron]

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.

So what does your "theory" predict as the difference in consciousness that results from cerebellectomies vs decerebration?

The cortex and cerebellum are reasonably equivalent on measures of complexity such as neural number and synaptic density. Yet cutting one out has quite different results to cutting the other out?

Why is this so according to your field coherence theory?

 

[Ferris_bg]

ConradDJ,

I am sorry we spammed your thread with our "pan-____________-ism", but I can't ignore others questions posed at my comments.

apeiron,

A lot of philosophers use panexperientialism and panpsychism as identical terms, but I think the "little" difference is actually not little at all, because I can't imagine a form of reductive panexperientialism (it always implies emergence), but I can very well imagine a form of reductive panpsychism (where if you know the M of the single particles you can know the M of the subject they form).

About the separation of cognition from qualia, I posted a https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=447726"). I showed that such type of physicalism implies multiple mental states or some kind of interruption. Now in Griffin's panexperiential physicalism this is not a problem at all, because the two mental states can be linked together (P ~ Q | P ~ M), so that the mental state is unified (the "what it is to smell a rose" and your thought about some equation at the same time appear to you as a single unified mental state, but they could be in fact two or more, which you experience as one). I probably sound like some guy from "Inception", but that's only because we still have to use language and not telepathy haha.

EDIT: If you want to read more on the pan-topic, check http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q...Z9BaU&sig=AHIEtbTBPYFYRXlhx3Abtwbt57K7OCPOmw".

The key panexperientialist move is thus to divorce the existence of experience from the existence of mentality, or more specifically, from the existence of cognition.

 

[ConradDJ]

Conrad, thanks for the explanation of Heidegger's viewpoint. I agree entirely. And this is the basis of the panpsychist position: the universe is indeed the sum total of all interconnected subjects. From the top to the bottom. There is no objectivity without subjectivity...

Would you say Heidegger is a panpsychist? Apparently most scholars don't view Heidegger as panpsychist.

No... I think Heidegger would say, you need to think more deeply about the meaning of “subjective consciousness”, and “objective reality” too. (He said that sort of thing a lot.)

I’m glad you’re in sympathy with my explanations. I get that you’re working on the basic issue, how to understand the world as made of all the relationships between us.

But I don’t think your argument for “panpsychism” is helpful. You say – “...when we define our physical constituents as wholly lacking in mind then it is literally impossible for mind to ‘emerge’ from this wholly mindless substrate.” This seems to take it for granted that we know what “mind” is, at a fundamental level – in spite of the fact that the term is being generalized so broadly that it includes both your mind and the mind of an atom.

So I think most of us feel that “panpsychism” or “panexperientialism” is just a theory with no content. Ok, atoms have “mind” – so what does that mean? I agree with Apeiron – we need to see what conclusions you draw from this that have empirical significance.

When we talk about “mind” or “consciousness”, we’re always starting from our own personal consciousness... the one each of us has been evolving since we were born, by learning how to relate to the world as other humans do, and above all by learning how to have talking-relationships with other people, and with ourselves. These are things that not even other animals do. So it makes no sense to me to generalize about “mind” or “conscious experience” while ignoring their roots.

Unfortunately, Philosophy has a long history of ignoring these roots, treating “Mind” – and specifically, the kind of logical mind a philosopher has – as if it were something primal and universal. So even though I see that you’re trying to work out a deeper understanding, I think the label “panpsychism” only continues this tradition of covering over what really needs to be thought about.

Exactly the same could be said about “materialism”. The Cartesian dichotomy of subject-mind and object-matter covers over a deeper difference that we need to learn about. You and I can agree (with Leibniz) that “the universe is the sum total of all interconnected subjects” – but we’re not close yet to understanding what that phrase actually says, or what kind of “system” makes these “interconnections” work the way they do.

The first question should be – where does your own subjectivity come from, in this world of interconnection? And your answer seems to be, in essence, it was there from the beginning. That may be satisfying to you – and you have a lot of company, in the philosophical tradition – but I don’t think it really helps. The kinds of relationships atoms have are obviously different from the kind you and I are having. Until we understand those differences and how they evolve, it won't mean much to talk about the "mind" or "experience" of something that can't talk.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

A quick note on the difference between panexperientialism and panpsychism: there isn't any.

Both suggest that subjectivity, qualia, experience, mind, interiority, whatever term you prefer, is inherent to actuality. That is, there is no actual stuff without subjectivity.

Griffin coined the panexperientialism appellation to be able to discuss (sell) his ideas, based explicitly on Whitehead, without facing the silly objections to panpsychism that have plagued the theory for centuries - in particular the one I've already mentioned as to rocks and chairs having minds (they don't, but their constituents do).

Humans have a hard time grokking non-human minds. No, the mind of an atom is not much like the mind of a human. But the essential feature, subjectivity, unitarity, interiority, is there - or so we infer based on the best available evidence.

The most simple anatomy of mind I can suggest is 1) perception and 2) internal processing of perceptions that results in a choice as to how to manifest in the next time quantum. So an atom's mind is its perceptions (electromagnetic, gravitational, etc. forces that act on it) and its very rudimentary choice as to how to react to those perceptions. Atoms, being highly rudimentary minds, almost always behave as the mathematics of physics would tell us. But they occasionally diverge, as quantum physics also tells us can happen, and this is a result of that rudimentary mind choosing a different path than the habitual path.

And this process complexifies at each level of actuality, from atoms to molecules, cells, etc.

 

[apeiron]

A lot of philosophers use panexperientialism and panpsychism as identical terms, but I think the "little" difference is actually not little at all, because I can't imagine a form of reductive panexperientialism (it always implies emergence), but I can very well imagine a form of reductive panpsychism (where if you know the M of the single particles you can know the M of the subject they form).

That Kind paper makes the same point I made. Panexperientialism is no milder than panpsychism as both make claims about qualia as fundamental.

But I see that you agree with her that panexperientialism creates a difficulty as many would feel cognition is an inextricable aspect of experiencing.

In the spirit of splitting hairs, I could add that pansemiosis would seem to be committed to the belief that cognition is in fact what is fundamental, not qualia. So physical reality is irreducibly dependent on habits of interpretance. A semiotic structure of interaction.

This might help Tam who seems not to understand the difference as yet.

Panexperientialism believes Q --> C
Panpsychism believes Q = C
Pansemiosis believes C --> Q

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Cognition is just complex qualia. That's it.

 

[apeiron]

Cognition is just complex qualia. That's it.

And your "theory" handles the difference between cortical complexity and cerebellar complexity how exactly? Let's get back to the real world at some stage please.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

apeiron, when you can bring yourself to write theory and not "theory" I will humor you. Otherwise you'll have to wait for the paper to come out.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Conrad, post #126 generally addresses your points. But let me add a few thoughts.

You seem to be assuming that panpsychism or panexperientialism require a far more complex mind to be "pan-ed" than I am suggesting. As I wrote in #126, mind, at its root, is just the process of information transfer between subject and object(s) and a rudimentary choice as to how to manifest in the next moment. This choice results from the processing power ("connectivity index"in my theory) of each actual entity. For extremely simple actual entities like atoms, the connectivity index, the ability to make choices, is extremely simple. And this is why we see such regularity in simple actual entities like atoms, electrons, molecules, etc.

At the most basic level of actual entities, what I call "simple subjects," there is the brute fact of perception and internal connectivity. There is no explanation below this level, it just is. We can certainly hypothesize that even an atom or an electron has some complexity (as Bohm did with respect to electrons), but at some point we have to just accept that there is some ability to process rudimentary perceptions in the most simple subjects. That is what it means to be actual. We don't know if electrons or quarks qualify as "simple subjects" and I suspect not, but my theory is meant to be a general theory of consciousness and psychophysical laws that will remain valid no matter what current physical theories hold to be the constituents of nature (as Whitehead did with his "actual entities" and Koestler with his "holons").

I've mentioned before that my theory relies on the Perception Index (PI) x the Connectivity Index (CI) = Omega (capacity for phenomenal content/experience/choice).

"Field coherence" is also a necessary component of my theory but the type of field coherence required for a unitary subject to arise as opposed to mere aggregates is a matter of additional research, a framework for which I'm fleshing out currently in Part 2 of my JCS paper (to be published separately).

In sum, it seems that Heidegger was saying essentially what Whitehead and other panpsychists were saying (though I haven't read Heidegger yet, so can't say for sure on this point - I'm relying on your digest).

 

[apeiron]

apeiron, when you can bring yourself to write theory and not "theory" I will humor you. Otherwise you'll have to wait for the paper to come out.

Such a tease. As if you had an answer.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Of course I have an answer apeiron - mine is a general theory.

 

[ConradDJ]

A quick note on the difference between panexperientialism and panpsychism: there isn't any.

Both suggest that subjectivity, qualia, experience, mind, interiority, whatever term you prefer, is inherent to actuality. That is, there is no actual stuff without subjectivity...

No, the mind of an atom is not much like the mind of a human. But the essential feature, subjectivity, unitarity, interiority, is there...

The most simple anatomy of mind I can suggest is 1) perception and 2) internal processing of perceptions that results in a choice as to how to manifest in the next time quantum. So an atom's mind is its perceptions (electromagnetic, gravitational, etc. forces that act on it) and its very rudimentary choice as to how to react to those perceptions...

And this process complexifies at each level of actuality, from atoms to molecules, cells, etc.

Cognition is just complex qualia. That's it.

At the most basic level of actual entities, what I call "simple subjects," there is the brute fact of perception and internal connectivity. There is no explanation below this level, it just is... We don't know if electrons or quarks qualify as "simple subjects" and I suspect not, but my theory is meant to be a general theory of consciousness and psychophysical laws that will remain valid no matter what current physical theories hold to be the constituents of nature.

Essentially what I object to here are two things. One is that “subject” and “object” are taken for granted as basic... so the nature of “mind” is taken as something “internal” to “actual entities”. Now as a “thinker” I do spend a lot of time “in my head”. But Heidegger’s first main point was that our “conscious existence” is fundamentally all about being out there in the world. We are “out there” in our relationships long before we develop any sort of “interiority”. This experience we “thinkers” have of existing inside our own minds is not basic at all but derivative.

His second main point was that having an (“authentic”) point of view on the world is not just “given” a priori, as “subjectivity”. Our “subjective” perception of a world of “objects” is an inauthentic viewpoint, a generalizing interpretation of our experience that we learn from others. It amounts to “stepping back” from our engagement with things to the detached perspective we call “objectivity” – very valuable, but ultimately limited... because the heart of what’s going on in the world is “out there” in the engagement. We need the “stepping back” way of thinking, but we also need a way of consciously reconnecting.

So my first objection is that what you are projecting as “simple and basic” is wrong. There are no simple “mind-atoms” in the world, any more than there are simple “matter-atoms”. You think you are talking about relationships, but all your categories (perception, choice, internal connectivity, unitarity, interiority) are all the traditional ways of talking about subjects “in relation to” objects. From my point of view, none of this gets anywhere near what it means to be in relationships, to have one’s ground of being in one’s relationships, which is what Heidegger was trying to describe.


My second objection is to this “reductive” style of thinking... this “pan-whatever“ business. It seems to me that the great contribution of Darwinian evolution was to show that the most complex and finely-tuned functional systems can arise through a series of unlikely accidents. Living systems involve many very different kinds of structures and processes, each of which arose in a specific set of circumstances, and then evolved to suit other contingencies that happened to arise in the species’ history.

If we want to, we can say that all of life amounts merely to self-replication. There is a very deep truth in that. But this is not really at all “reductive” – it states a problem that every species at every stage in its evolution has to solve in a different way, or go extinct. “Self-reproduction” doesn’t really describe any sort of “process” but (as Heidegger would say) a way of “being at issue” – something that can either succeed or fail, in each case, in each unique situation.

Now going back to ancient times, philosophers have again and again fallen in love with an Idea, and convinced themselves that “the All” was all about their Idea – whether “monistic” or “dualistic” or “triadic”, etc. There is a basic “mind-stuff” or “process” or whatever, that explains everything. In most of the sciences, this metaphysical style of thinking has gone by the boards, since Darwin... though it still lives on in physics, and of course, in philosophy. Physicists and philosophers still tend to believe, despite a vast amount of empirical evidence to the contrary, that the ultimate truth about the world must be “unified” by a single Idea.

Being myself a philosopher and the son of two philosophers, I’m deeply in sympathy with this traditional goal. And I have no sympathy at all for the “positivism” that sees no point in the quest for foundations.

But what Heidegger was doing was trying to develop a deeper, “existential” sense for what it means to be a foundation... what it takes to be a basis for something. Our traditional way of thinking wants to find something Simple at the bottom of things. As Aristotle says, whatever is Basic is what doesn’t itself need any basis. Or as you say - "There is no explanation below this level, it just is... "

But from Heidegger’s point of view (and mine), being a basis isn’t ever simple, there’s a difficult and complicated issue at every level, that can either succeed or fail. And it’s different at every level.

So yes, we do want to develop a “unified” view of existence as a whole, “the All.” But I think this involves understanding what’s “at issue” at each stage, in the evolution of relationships between things. Not the reduction of all the unique solutions to one “basic Idea”. The deep lesson is the one we all struggle to learn in our daily lives, about the problematic nature of being a basis for each other... to which there is no single or simple solution.

Atoms are, in fact, very complicated and very finely-tuned little “entities”. The electron-shell structure through which atoms relate to other atoms is remarkable, and the complexity of interaction going on within an atomic nucleus is quite literally incalculable. If you want “interiority” there’s plenty of it there! But things don’t get simpler as you go deeper, in the quantum realm, on the contrary. Nor, despite the efforts of hundreds of brilliant physicists over the past few decades, is there any actual evidence that they get more “unified”.

This is only the age-old prejudice that philosophy needs to outgrow. Until we do, we’ll just keep recycling the same old set of “theories” in new disguises. We shouldn’t be satisfied with that, and keep on “doing philosophy” as a collection of endless debates between “-isms”.


I apologize for going on at such length in these posts of mine. But this thread has been very helpful to me, and I really appreciate the opportunity to try to be more articulate... I hope it turns out to be helpful to a few others as well.

 

[John86]

That's a very fascinating view you have on evolution Conrad. Evolution of physical proceses doesn't have to be lineair in a sense that it has to become always more complex. Microscopic proceses at moleculair or in the quantum realm tent to mostly be more complex, than the theoratically worked steps before the testing

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Conrad, I appreciate your thoughts.

I think, however, that there is a fundamental disagreement about the fundament of thought. (Almost a palindrome...)

I agree with Descartes, Kant, Schelling, etc., that subjectivity is fundamental. It is the ONLY thing we know with certainty. And this seems to be incontrovertible. What do you know with 100% certainty? Only the fact of your own thought. Not even your "self" is certain - and this is where Descartes actually went astray, immediately after his initial correct insight.

There is, here, now, simply the stuff of thought, always changing. This is all we know. Everything else we think we know about the world "out there" is actually "in here," presented to our little Cartesian theater through various means.

This is of course the mind/body problem: how does each of our "in here" relate to the "out there"? How does the "out there" get "in here"? And is there any "out there" that doesn't have its own "in here"?

Panexperiential neutral monism suggests that every "in here," which I'll call a subject from now on, is also an "out there," which I'll call an object from now on. This is the case because the only thing we know - our own thought - is a subject, and we surmise that we/our bodies are objects for other subjects through our normal interaction with people and other thinking creatures like dogs, cats, etc. So the only objects we know with any intimacy at all are in fact subjects - our own subjects.

It is interesting that you bring evolution in as support for your ideas. I think you've got it backwards. Evolution shows that complexity arises from simplicity. Even though certain species can indeed become simpler over time this is anomalous and the general trend of evolution is clearly toward more complexity. And the other clear lesson from evolution is that the universe proceeds incrementally not discontinuously.

This is called "the principle of continuity" and is itself a very powerful argument for panpsychism and against emergentist materialism. This is the case because when we study the natural world we don't see sharp jumps - nature abhors sharp jumps. Yes, species themselves display some discontinuity with their cousins, but evolutionary biologists (my first training) are clear that evolution doesn't proceed through "hopeful monsters," but rather through incremental change. Punctuated equilibrium doesn't change this statement - even this "saltational" theory of evolution still requires lengthy spans of time and small changes to achieve speciation.

Sewall Wright, the American biologist, said it well: "Emergence of mind from no mind is sheer magic." Mind doesn't emerge - it is always there in some form and it complexifies as form complexifies. This is the key insight from biology.

Now, I also infer a ground of being, the neutral substrate for reality (Brahman/ether/apeiron), because it seems clear to me that there has to be a foundation for reality to rest upon. If there is no base, no ultimate level of being, it all just falls away and there is nothing. We clearly have something, however - an entire universe. Thus, for this universe to stand it must have a foundation.

This last point is a contentious one between Buddhism and Vedanta. Buddha famously taught that there is no foundation, it is all "dependently arising." But some schools of
Buddhist thought agree with Vedanta and many descriptions of the Buddhist "Emptiness" sound to me just like Vedanta's Brahman. Indeed all things are in process, all dependently arising, but there must be a substrate to have process. Otherwise, what is there to process?

So we may simply have to disagree on the fundament, and I should read some more Heidegger at some point. But what I have read thus far seemed to mistake psychology for ontology. Heidegger didn't seem to be looking for fundamental ontology separate from any human viewpoint, which is what ontology desires.

Again, my panexperiential neutral monism is a general theory that can apply to quarks to quagga mussels to quasars. And this is what philosophy should be seeking, as well as science.

 

[apeiron]

This is called "the principle of continuity" and is itself a very powerful argument for panpsychism and against emergentist materialism. This is the case because when we study the natural world we don't see sharp jumps - nature abhors sharp jumps.

Discontinuity is as basic to nature as continuity. We see it all the way from quantum jumps and big bang phase transitions to the freezing of water, the onset of chaos, to mitotic replication and the sudden emergence of symbolic thought in Homo sapiens.

Nature loves sharp jumps as much as it abhors them it seems.

 

[apeiron]

So yes, we do want to develop a “unified” view of existence as a whole, “the All.” But I think this involves understanding what’s “at issue” at each stage, in the evolution of relationships between things. Not the reduction of all the unique solutions to one “basic Idea”. The deep lesson is the one we all struggle to learn in our daily lives, about the problematic nature of being a basis for each other... to which there is no single or simple solution.

How can this "unification that isn't a unification" succeed?

It sounds as though you are arguing that only local particulars are authentic (the actual dyadic interactions which are everywhere going to be different and individual).

The general is identified with the inauthentic. So the global rules, the universal truths, Peircean thirdness, the laws of physics, the unified field theories, are all wrong as a basis of reality. There is only the local atomic particulars.

But you can't actually have the local without the global. You can't have "just the interactions" without the space and time that is necessary to separate them - to allow them to be particular. Atoms have to have voids to be atoms. It is incoherent to talk about events without having the contexts that allow them to be distinguishable as events.

Even in Heidegger's philosophy it seems, this dichotomy is inescapable. It is basic and fundamental. You need the inauthentic to ground the concept of the authentic. The authentic is particular and definite only in relation to what it is not.

And once you accept that the duality of a metaphysical dichotomy is basic, rather than the monad of either the particular, or the general, either the authentic or the inauthentic, then it is a short step to the triad of a developmental ontology where both the particular and the general then have to be unified within something else - a ground of naked potential such as the Apeiron or Vagueness.

Again, your argument wants to take local particular and individual interactions as the basis of reality. But to be able to distinguish even one end of an interaction from the other, a larger context is already implied (and so ontically required) in this very distinction.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

I agree entirely with apeiron's #138 comment.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

apeiron, responding to #137: I agree that at the most basic level natural loves jumps and I have argued that quantum theory needs to embrace quantized time as well as quantized matter. These quanta are apparently the brute facts of the universe upon which everything is built.

But beyond that level nature generally abhors jumps, particularly when we reach cell-based life. The growth of symbolic thought was indeed rapid from an evolutionary point of view, but it was hardly discontinuous. It was, rather, continuous each step of the way as far as we can tell.

So I'll amend my statement: "Nature abhors jumps except at the most fundamental quantum level; and she particularly abhors jumps once the level of cell-based life has been reached."

 

[apeiron]

So I'll amend my statement: "Nature abhors jumps except at the most fundamental quantum level; and she particularly abhors jumps once the level of cell-based life has been reached."

I would put it differently. Nature love discontinuity over all scales as much as it loves continuity over all scales.

Reductionism always wants to reduce the intrinsic complexity of polar opposites to an either/or. Either nature must love one thing, or it must love the other. But a systems approach is based on dependent co-arising. Polar alternatives are in fact the creatively complementary. They are the synergistic.

So it would be "against nature" for one pole to be suppressed at the expense of the other. Because nothing can actually exist as a persisting whole, a lasting state of structure and process, unless there is that synergistic interaction to power it.

If you think of the actual "science of complexity" that arose in the 1980s, it was all about the "edge of chaos", about self-organising criticality. And this was completely based on the dichotomy of the discrete and the continuous in a "scalefree" (ie: a powerlaw distribution of scale) fashion.

In a critical system, the product of a persisting dissipative balance, you have to have a constant balance of integration and differentiation over all scales of observation. Continuity and discontinuity is a fractal story.

So where nature is "lively", it is marked by this critical balance that loves continuity and discontinuity with equal vigor.

And then for the complex to itself become complex - to get systems arising within a system - you need the radical discontinuity of the epistemic cut. But of course, by the same argument, you have to look around for the matching radical level of continuity that must also be produced in the process.

And this is why we have life and mind as systems which display far greater levels of autonomy, integrity, autopoiesis, ascendancy, or whatever you want to label it, than the surrounding non-living realm of entropification and dissipative structure.

By introducing the sharp boundary-making device of the epistemic cut, life and mind moves itself into a separate realm of "subjective" existence. It has a continuity of existence (represented by its goals, memories, anticipations) that is removed from the hurly burly of the "objective" realm.

So again, your metaphysical orientation is reductionist. If nature displays a fruitful dichotomy, your urge is to reduce that inherent complexity to a singular pole of existence.

Nature produces "mind" as its highest level of complexity. A complex complexity in that it involves systems within systems, worlds within worlds. But you want to break that down so that there is only the monadically simple. Mind gets reduced to a property of substance.

Of course, you then say that there is a level of ur-stuff below that. You talk of the ether/brahman/apeiron. There is a base level that is a pure potential, and not yet either mind or matter.

So in the end, you agree reductionism does not work. The simple is not simple enough if it is something that definitely and crisply exists. But now you have still scrunched up the notion of mind, and all the complex complexity it represents in its full splendour, down to trivialised "drops of experience". You have made what you seek to explain so reduced, it has become a hard and discrete property of matter - the "inner qualia".

While this shrinking of the critical issues to microscopic scale then makes the essential transition - the development of a simple ur-potential into a complex world - harder to see, it does not actually remove the problem. You still have to explain how there is this evolution from the ether/brahman/apeiron level to a level where something actually exists, whether this first level of existence is double aspect panpsychic or not.

 

[JDStupi]

My problem is in the justification for the jump from

[...] subjectivity is fundamental. It is the ONLY thing we know with certainty. And this seems to be incontrovertible

and

[...]This is the case because the only thing we know - our own thought - is a subject, and we surmise that we/our bodies are objects for other subjects through our normal interaction with people and other thinking creatures like dogs, cats, etc. So the only objects we know with any intimacy at all are in fact subjects - our own subjects

to the supposition that all objects possesses "consciousness".

The general trend of reasoning seems to be using an epistemological observation to ground an ontological conclusion. I don't see how " [that] the only objects we know for certain are our own [have subjective experiences]" suggests that all objects behave similarly.

The key word there is "suggests", what do you mean by suggests? Having 100% certainty in the fact that our own bodies as "objects" possesses a "subjectivity" is by no means a sufficient condition for concluding that "therefore all objects must have some degree of subjectivity".

You are certainly not resting your argument for panexperientalism on that premise.

Your next contention is most likely that "mind" cannot arise from "no-mind" and so this is a premise for your pan______ism. My first question is what is mind? How do you define mind? Do I have a mind when I am sleeping? If you define "mind" in a broad sense a la Gregory Bateson you would say that when I am sleeping I have mind, namely my body is performing certain "mental" activities such as regulating my blood and breathing and other normal bodily functions. To be certain, an individual in a coma would have mind in that sense as well. My point here is that even if you define mind in this broad sense, you still cannot justify that all objects must have internal experience. This example demonstrates that "mental processes" are by no means a sufficient condition for concluding that objects have "qualia" or an internal experience.

Now, that "mind" in the sense of a "conscious" (even that term is subject to analyses) qualia experiencing subject cannot emerge from no-mind may be a relatively uncontroversial assertion. However, I have yet to see any justification for how come it is claimed that "mind" in the broad Bateson sense cannot emerge from no-mind.

Your assertion that "nature's continuity" serves as evidence for your positition is wrong. It serves as evidence that qualia experiencing subjects did not just emerge, it does not serve as evidence that "ergo qualia must be fundamental". Moreover, I would agree with apeiron's assertion that it is certainly not "continuous or discrete" but both. There certainly are jumps in nature.

You seem to stretch vocabulary beyond its limits. Atoms have "rudimentary perceptions"? I don't even know what it means to say that I have rudimentary perception when I am sleeping (excluding dreaming) never mind that an atom has "perceptions". Does a quark-gluon plasma have "perception"? Unless you are using percpetion in a sense which is nowhere near what people mean by perception generally, then I fail to see how you can say that.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

JD, you've asked and answered your first question: the principle of continuity supplies perhaps the key argument for panexperientialism, along with many other lines of reasoning I've fleshed out in this thread. For more detailed discussion, see my series of essays (1-4 in particular):

http://www.independent.com/news/eco-ego-eros/

I've also explained what I mean by mind a number of times in this thread so I suggest you review what's been said so far. Again: mind is, at its essence, a subject, an object, and a link between the two. The subject-object relation is a brute fact that cannot be further explained. Why? Because we know subjectivity is fundamental and we infer that it goes all the way down due to the principle of continuity and many other lines of reasoning.

I respect Bateson highly, but I don't adopt his overly broad approach to "mind." To solve the combination problem we need further limitations on what is to be considered a unitary subject.

The "link between the two" I described above is what I mean by "perception." I've also explained previously what I mean by perception: any reception of information. So an atom perceives electromagnetic, gravitational, etc., forces in every moment of its existence. Whitehead uses the term "prehension" to distinguish this generalized reception of information from biological perception but I prefer to just use perception and explain that it is broader than our biologically chauvinist notions of perception.

Do you have a mind when you are sleeping? No. "Your" mind is only the flickerings of field coherence in the network of relationships that is your brain/body/universe. "You" don't actually "have" a mind. "You" are a particular brain/body/universe relation in each given moment.

"You" are the actual occasions of experience (to use Whitehead's term) in each moment. Your general waking consciousness is the result of gamma synchrony (30-90 Hz) achieved by various parts of your brain in concert with parts of your body and, of course, with the rest of the universe through your various connections to the rest of the universe - dominated by the five traditional senses.

When "you" dream, it is not the normal, habitual you. Rather, it is different configurations of brain/body that leave traces available to your normal waking consciousness. Each person consists of countless constituent "yous" that aren't accessible in terms of direct communication. There is a society of mind in a vast hierarchy beneath each complex subject/actual entity that is a human being.

And as I've already mentioned, very likely an infinitely complex hierarchy above the human level of existence.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

apeiron, I've explained a number of times that I am NOT advocating consciousness as a "property" of matter. Mind and matter are two aspects of the same thing. Mind/matter (what I call "menter" in my JCS paper) is the limitation of pure potentiality.

As for the epistemic cut you assert to explain the emergence of life and mind, I've explained in detail the flaws in this reasoning and you have yet to address my points adequately. Why and where does the epistemic cut arise phylogenetically and ontogenetically? You criticize my ideas as lacking in detail and yet your working theory lacks even the beginning of an operational framework. How does your theory apply to reality?

The solution to a slippery slope is to slide to the bottom, the fundament, apeiron. Apeiron, accept the apeiron :)

Anaximander was a panpsychist. Peirce was a panpsychist. Why aren't you a panpsychist?

You make a decent point, however, about the need to explain the fundamental emergence of actuality from potentiality. Whitehead delves into this in detail in Science and the Modern World and Process and Reality, though I don't accept his theories in whole. I do accept, however, that the fundamental emergence of actuality from potentiality is the "creative advance" that is the temporal flow, the laying down of the universe, in each moment. This is a process whereby each locus of the universe prehends prior actual entities and decides how to manifest in each moment. This universal process is the universe.

I've also suggested that this process may map onto the time quanta suggested by the Planck moment (10 to the minus 44 seconds), though this number is not necessarily the ultimate time quantum. So each tick of the universe is a time quantum and each time quantum is itself a consequence of each actual entity at its simplest level manifesting from the previous round of actuality.

I could go on, but this is probably sufficient for now.

 

[apeiron]

apeiron, I've explained a number of times that I am NOT advocating consciousness as a "property" of matter. Mind and matter are two aspects of the same thing. Mind/matter (what I call "menter" in my JCS paper) is the limitation of pure potentiality.

What is an "aspect" then?

At least the idea of local properties of substantive objects is a well understood ontic concept. It is very easy to introduce vague terms that lessen your committment to any actual position and so allow you to elude specific criticism. It is a familiar tactic called hand-waving.

As for the epistemic cut you assert to explain the emergence of life and mind, I've explained in detail the flaws in this reasoning and you have yet to address my points adequately. Why and where does the epistemic cut arise phylogenetically and ontogenetically? You criticize my ideas as lacking in detail and yet your working theory lacks even the beginning of an operational framework. How does your theory apply to reality?

Pattee's theory is well enough understood and accepted among theoretical biologists. Their views count rather more for me here.

I answered you in some detail and won't waste further comment.

Anaximander was a panpsychist. Peirce was a panpsychist. Why aren't you a panpsychist?

I am sure that I am in grave danger of being added to your list of believers. You have a loose way with citations as I noted early on.

I do accept, however, that the fundamental emergence of actuality from potentiality is the "creative advance" that is the temporal flow, the laying down of the universe, in each moment. This is a process whereby each locus of the universe prehends prior actual entities and decides how to manifest in each moment. This universal process is the universe.

So there is still no story on how that first drop of experience arises out of a prior state of non-experiencing. Where does this power to prehend come from? It is sounding very chicken and egg, is it not? You need a locus to prehend, and prehension to have a locus.

That is the problem with panpsychism of any stripe. Consciousness is explained away (as just something that is always there) rather than explained (as something that comes into being for a reason which is the object of the theory).

I could go on, but this is probably sufficient for now.

You could always have a go at answering my cortex/cerebellum question. Please.

 

[Ferris_bg]

You still have to explain how there is this evolution from the ether/brahman/apeiron level to a level where something actually exists, whether this first level of existence is double aspect panpsychic or not.

Yes, basically panpsychism doesn't solve anything by itself. Even Chalmers acknowledges that, although he favors and supports the http://consc.net/papers/nature.html" , in which the "ether/brahman/apeiron" is called "(proto)phenomenal".

Accepting mind as a part of nature avoids some problems, but again you are still in the middle of the desert, when it comes to explaining the evolution of mind, the formation of the consciousness we refer to, etc. As William James said panpsychism faces its own problem of emergence.

And one more thing for those still following the discussion to think about - why we need mind or matter, when we have "ether/brahman/apeiron"? I'll tell you - we don't. Our need is justified only by our evidence of what we call mind and matter. Thats a problem I see in general with neutral monism theories, but its again another thread by itself.

 

[ConradDJ]

I agree with Descartes, Kant, Schelling, etc., that subjectivity is fundamental. It is the ONLY thing we know with certainty. And this seems to be incontrovertible. What do you know with 100% certainty? Only the fact of your own thought.

...Now, I also infer a ground of being, the neutral substrate for reality... because it seems clear to me that there has to be a foundation for reality to rest upon. If there is no base, no ultimate level of being, it all just falls away and there is nothing...

Again, my panexperiential neutral monism is a general theory that can apply to quarks to quagga mussels to quasars. And this is what philosophy should be seeking, as well as science.

How can this "unification that isn't a unification" succeed?

It sounds as though you are arguing that only local particulars are authentic (the actual dyadic interactions which are everywhere going to be different and individual).

The general is identified with the inauthentic. So the global rules, the universal truths, Peircean thirdness, the laws of physics, the unified field theories, are all wrong as a basis of reality. There is only the local atomic particulars.

But you can't actually have the local without the global. You can't have "just the interactions" without the space and time that is necessary to separate them - to allow them to be particular... It is incoherent to talk about events without having the contexts that allow them to be distinguishable as events.

With apologies for another very lengthy post... which I hope those following the pan-X-ism discussion will feel free to skip.

I feel like I’m arguing here on the one hand with Descartes, and on the other with Hegel. That’s not a bad thing, since they were both profoundly original thinkers dealing with the fundamental issue of ontology. But there’s no winning this kind of argument... what we can do is to try to clarify the premises each of us is building on.

To me, Descartes represents the beginning and Hegel the end of the heroic period in modern philosophy... the period in which Reason breaking through to the fundamental Answer seemed imminent. This is where the spirit of modern Science was born, in a deep belief that we can soon understand Everything through careful thought.

What the beginning and end of this period had in common was a dedication to Certainty. PhizzicsPhan follows the Cartesian formula faithfully – start with what we Know absolutely, and then a little rational argument gets us to an Answer that seems 100% certain... or at least, is clearly the only reasonable one.

Hegel’s sense of absolute Certainty is almost opposite to this. He sees how many ways Reason can go wrong, and has to go wrong, in the process of its self-education. The things that seem most clearly true, at one stage, turn out to be delusions at another. His sense of Certainty, like Apeiron’s, comes from a hard-won ability to see the Answer in the complex interplay of opposite kinds of truth... all of which are needed in the grand scheme. It feels Certain not because it’s the only reasonable answer but because it’s the one that can make sense of all the reasonable answers and fit them together. From this magisterial point of view, the Cartesian kind of commitment to a particular Right Theory or “-ism” seems kind of quaint.

Now Heidegger’s deep belief was not in Certainty of any kind. He lived through the two World Wars when the most cilivized countries in the world were using science to destroy each other’s populations. He saw even physics and mathematics radically questioning their own 19th-century foundations. Today we’re used to this sort of questioning... scientists in general no longer believe in an ultimate, philosophically-grounded Answer at all. So it’s hard for us to realize how deeply the sense of being on the verge of The Answer had permeated Western culture, during the 19th century – or what a violent disillusionment was forced on the intellectual world in the first half of the 20th. Particularly in Germany, where the insanity and the ensuing destruction were most intense.

What Heidegger believed was that the terribly uncertain struggle to find your own authentic viewpoint is what gives us a window into the depths of existence. Neither the Cartesian nor Hegelian sense of Reason could get beneath the surface of the inauthentic view, the general and reasonable view of reality we can all agree on, the plane on which ordinary science makes its daily progress toward more and better information.

So this is my premise too. I don’t believe we’re on the verge of The Theory that answers everything. But I hope we’re close to breaking through to a radically different way of seeing the world around us, that will reconfigure all the questions. I don’t have confidence that rational arguments from evidence will get us where we need to be. It seems all too clear to me – the state of physics being only one example – that we’re no longer making real progress toward a fundamental truth. But I believe such a truth is possible. It’s not The Answer, not a Right Theory... it’s a different intellectual viewpoint on the world.

I don’t believe in a magisterial Reason that can see the whole universe from outside and grasp its Logic in a formula. What feels deeply right to me is that there’s a truth in seeing the world from one’s own unique viewpoint, enmeshed in one’s relationships. This kind of truth has no access to Certainty or to any “global” reference-frame... everything is “local” and in play, in the here and now. In my authentic view, I don’t even get to “see” both sides of a single relationship I’m in.

Now clearly such a limited personal viewpoint can’t be The Basis for Science. We need the kinds of thinking to which PhizzicsPhan and Apeiron have dedicated themselves. Hegel was right – the Truth is a process with many stages, and we need them all.

But Heidegger’s argument was that the detached, globalizing, generalizing view of the world was inherently limited – specifically in its ability to grasp what’s ontologically fundamental. Traditional philosophy sees the world in its own image. It wants a logical process, it wants a “clear and distinct” Answer that follows from rational argument based on objective evidence.

This is all good – and certainly far better than the prevailing style of academic philosophers, who chug along “proving” things without believing in anything that matters to anyone but themselves.

But the point I’m trying to make – not to prove, only to make plausible – is that we can’t understand the world we live in scientifically, unless we can also understand it “from inside”. Because ultimately, the world exists only “from inside” – only for the unique individuals who are actually participating in the web of one-on-one relationships. Not “observing” it in their own heads, but participating, being out there with each other, making the web happen. I think this is what’s fundamental. More than any picture of a Reality no one actually lives in.

And like Heidegger, I’m trying to imagine what kind of “categories” are needed for this kind of thinking, which none of us yet knows how to do... even though ultimately, our own limited and authentic viewpoint is the only one any of us have.

 

[Ferris_bg]

ConradDJ,

Lets say one invents a device with which one has the power to go "inside" in others and participate in their relationships exactly in the way they are. In other words my brain gets linked to yours, and I can feel your qualia, depending not on my "brain configuration", but on yours. So my experiences, during the time I participated in the world like you do, get stored somewhere and I can later access them somehow. So I can later say, ConradDJ's qualia from bier drinking felt "better" than mine. This kind of method get repeated by all people so that some "qualia map" is established. Now, if you agree with the logic of this example (if you disagree you can change it the way it applies best), what are the benefits of this "qualia map"?

 

[JDStupi]

The subject-object relation is a brute fact that cannot be further explained. Why? Because we know subjectivity is fundamental and we infer that it goes all the way down due to the principle of continuity and many other lines of reasoning.

We know that subjectivity is our epistemological brute fact, this does not warrant an extension to it being an ontological brute fact. Saying that the abstract relation between subject and object is a brute fact is not the same as saying qualia is fundamental is a brute fact. The idea of the abstract subject-object relation being fundamental in fact seems related to apeiron's speech about "the epistemic cut".

As for the epistemic cut you assert to explain the emergence of life and mind, I've explained in detail the flaws in this reasoning and you have yet to address my points adequately.

I may have missed something, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I have yet to see this alleged "detailed explanation" of the flaws in his reasoning.
First, apeiron's notion of "the epistemic cut" isn't apeiron's notion of the epistemic cut. It has a history, and if your intereted in that line of reasoning there are books available.

Why and where does the epistemic cut arise phylogenetically and ontogenetically?You criticize my ideas as lacking in detail and yet your working theory lacks even the beginning of an operational framework. How does your theory apply to reality?

Pointing out that apeiron is unable to point out when the epistemic cut arose exactly and then arguing the point that that is a reason against his viewpoint says nothing except that you may be insisting on false standards of exactitude. The non existence of a sharp line when the "epistemic cut" occurred does not say anything about its validity, in fact the question "When exactly did the epistemic cut occur?" may be a falsely phrased question. Is the lack of knowledge of exactly when life arose (which this question is closely related to) entail that evolution is a vague theory?

The epistemic cut is a much more modest theory than proclaiming that subjectivity must be fundamental. The epistemic cut simply arises from considerations about life and the measurement problem, and they do not posit the extra entity of "fundamental qualia".

In fact, the assertion that everything has "fundamental qualia" doesn't even seem to be justified by your definition, unless you are playing word-games and equating qualia with receptivity of information.

Do you have a mind when you are sleeping? No. "Your" mind is only the flickerings of field coherence in the network of relationships that is your brain/body/universe. "You" don't actually "have" a mind. "You" are a particular brain/body/universe relation in each given moment

Yes, I apologize for my cartesian-laden english, I understand that there is no "I" who is some object who posseses a "body" and floats around in the world. "I am my body" in the Merleau-Ponty sense.

But in any case, that still has yet to say anything, my only point was I am not experiencing qualia in that state. That I am not experiencing qualia in one state is not a sufficient condition for concluding that therefore no other body experinces qualia, however it does serve as one counterexample to the assertion that all things experience qualia (well actually it only serves as sufficient to conclude that not everything has qualia at all times). Given that your epistemic grounds for asserting that everything has qualia is based off your experience, it would be largely assymetrical to ignore a portion of your (lack of) experience in favor of your conclusion.

Also, out of curiosity, do you explicitley presuppose free will's truth? Because you speak of electrons being conscious and therefore making "choices".

I respect Bateson highly, but I don't adopt his overly broad approach to "mind."

Wait wait wait wait, Bateson has an overly broad approach to mind? But defining perception as "receptivity of information" and some type of mathematical "field coherence" isn't an overly broad defintion of perception? I'm stumped.

Not to mention that founding your notion of "the subject" on a mathematical abstraction doesn't seem to solve much. You realize you have basically equated mind with anything that can exist, but in doing so have lost what people mean by mind and consequently have solved nothing. That which you call mind is not identical to what everybody else calls mind and the problem of emergence. It might share one property with that notion, namely "receptivity of information" which your notion also happens to share with everything else that exists.


To be sure, I don't have a problem with your process metaphysics or even your assertion that "mind is a subject and object and a relation between the two", but then your mind definition is virtually identical to epistemic cut. If you can't find whaen aperion's epistemic cut happens, how then can you find when your epistemic cut happens? If you say "slide to the bottom" sure, now we're at the measurement problem. I'll accept that. I won't accept the assertion that everything must have qualia. I won't accept the assertion that what you mean by "mind" and "subject" and "perception" is anything like what most people mean mind and emergence and perception. Because it is not the same notion, it doesn't solve the problems peculiar to that notion.

If all your asserting is "subject, object and a relation between the two is fundamental and all things are 'behaving' (in a loose sense) based off of available information" then I can agree, all you're asserting is the primacy of the measurement problem, saying that it isn't a problem but a feature of reality and elaborating a Bohrian relationalist metaphysics.
Fine. Then say that. "Mind is fundamental and all things are perceiving" now that you have redefined the word though, you can't jump back and say you've solved the problems of perception and mind.

It just seems to me like I am claiming to be solving for x and then solve for y, but then say "let y=x" and then saying "therefore x", clearly violating the law of existential instantiation.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Conrad, again, thanks for the thoughts.I can see that you're a deep thinker committed to achieving your own synthesis.

I should clarify at this point that I agree entirely in the need for humility and acknowledge that we'll never know the Answer. There is no Ultimate Truth. It's all a matter of more or less plausible stories that use the best available evidence and the best lines of reasoning. I love Whitehead's statement from Process and Reality:

"How shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly.”

So if I have come across overly certain in my views, I want to stress now that there is no certainty - only inquiry. And, at the same time, a conviction that the views I'm putting forward, while by no means certain or final, are better (from my point of view) than the prevailing metaphysics and better than any other set of solutions I've come across to date.

See the last three essays in my series, On Logic, On the Heart and On Explanations:

http://www.independent.com/news/eco-ego-eros/

However, it also seems that you're not understanding what I've been writing.

You state:

"But the point I’m trying to make – not to prove, only to make plausible – is that we can’t understand the world we live in scientifically, unless we can also understand it “from inside”. Because ultimately, the world exists only “from inside” – only for the unique individuals who are actually participating in the web of one-on-one relationships. Not “observing” it in their own heads, but participating, being out there with each other, making the web happen. I think this is what’s fundamental. More than any picture of a Reality no one actually lives in."

I couldn't have said it better. I agree 100%. And this is the point of panpsychism - it explains the world "in here" and "out there" by accepting that all objects are subjects are objects are subjects - in perpetual oscillation as the creative advance proceeds.

It seems that you are currently taken with Heidegger's efforts to magisterially sweep away all previous efforts at philosophy - this is after all how Heidegger fans describe his role. But keep in mind that Heidegger was writing at exactly the same time as Whitehead, who was the last truly systematic philosopher, present at the creation of modern physics' twin jewels (quantum mechanics and relativity), who also had a deep familiarity with the western philosophical tradition. Heidegger may have found himself a Whiteheadian if he had had a chance to take in his views.