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The best case against panpsychism I believe was advanced by complexity theorist Joe Norman: it's not unreasonable to believe that "consciousness" emerges at som
by alexpetralia 7y ago
The best case against panpsychism I believe was advanced by complexity theorist Joe Norman: it's not unreasonable to believe that "consciousness" emerges at some levels of a complex system and not at others. No, we can't explain _why_ this is - since we hardly understand complex systems - but we do understand that phenomena exists (emergence) at some scales and not at others. Consciousness could be one of them.
- uoaei 7y agoA binary distinction requires a binary definition, and thus a threshold. Without a threshold, the spectrum is continuous. The assertion of panpsychism is that it is impossible and therefore improper to set a threshold at all.
- ajuc 7y ago> A binary distinction requires a binary definition No it doesn't. See absolute value of x on real numbers - it is usually defined as: abs(x) = x if x >= 0, else -x but it can also be defined as sqrt(x * x). You can use this trick to define arbitrarily complex "binary" f(x) as a combination of these. And there are many other tricks of course. But math is one thing, we see spectrums everywhere in reality and yet quantum mechanics is discrete (quantized :) ).
- uoaei 7y agox * x has two 2nd roots, namely, x and -x, and the result of this "function" (in quotes because it doesn't obey the definition thereof) requires you to choose arbitrarily between them, thus creating a dichotomy.