5 ms·

Problems for Goff’s Panpsychism

27 points by danielam 4y ago

h2odragon 4y ago
the perversity of the universe tends towards maximum. Not only is everything aware in some sense, it's stubborn about doing its own thing.
ReadEvalPost 4y ago
I highly recommend Feser's Aristotle's Revenge that's mentioned in the article. Very much dismantles the pervasive materialist attitude.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  Can you expand on this?
- layer8 4y ago
  He also wrote Five Proofs of the Existence of God. His writings won’t convert any naturalist.
  - BadThink6655321 4y ago
    I'm a theist. His writings wouldn't have converted me, either.
keyle 4y ago
I read this whole page and I'm still very confused about this mad scientist rant I just read about. What's the point of arguing with "such said such thing" and "such other said the opposite" if you don't actually explain why this is important.
- majormajor 4y ago
  I would assume the import would be obvious to the intended audience, like if a philosopher commented on a discussion of async vs threaded parallelism asking why it wasn't explained why parallelism itself was important...
- trough 4y ago
  To explain the remark of majormajor a bit further: A philosopher can translate the attribution of the quotes to certain arguments or ‘thinking structure’ of the mentioned philosopher. It’s important not to see the argument and it’s supporting discourse in isolation but in the context given by the quoted philosopher’s work. This may look like name-dropping but is essentially a important as specifying if a certain mathematical trick only works in a Hilbert space.
lkrubner 4y ago
Peter Godfrey Smith covers some of this in his book Metazoa but he rejects pan-psychicism and tries to make us believe that pure materialism can explain consciousness, as it emerged in animals over the last 750 million years, going back to an unknown ur-brain that might have existed in the first bilaterian: https://www.amazon.com/Metazoa-Animal-Minds-Birth-Consciousness/dp/000832123X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=DZXB9BP7VXU8&keywords=metazoa&qid=1657068807&sprefix=metazoa%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Metazoa-Animal-Minds-Birth-Consciousn... However, I was not convinced by the material argument, which seems just as magical as any other explanation, as there comes a moment when we have to believe “then something magic happens and the creatures suddenly have real awareness of their surroundings.” Having read the book, which denounced pan-psychism, I actually found myself more favorably inclined to pan-psychism , since it clearly is no more magical then any other explanation.
tayo42 4y ago
Only skimmed so far but was Galileo’s Error supposed to be ripped apart like this? I thought it was intended to be more of a pop sci level over view of consciousnesses theories, some of their issues and just introduce panpsychism to non academic readers and how it might fit in.
superb-owl 4y ago
> the bizarre solution panpsychism proposes to the problem of how to fit consciousness into the natural world is completely unnecessary This line highlights the core difference between panpsychists and their critics. Personally, I think panpsychism is an elegant, simple, and natural solution to the Hard Problem. It strikes me as having a strong prior probability, i.e. if you were describing a hypothetical universe to me, I'd put the odds of "everything in the universe is capable of perception" at something like 50/50. Critics seem to think this is bizarre, and put it in the bucket of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". I understand why, but I disagree. I think this is yet another example of anthropocentric thought, which has continually fallen to more inclusive models (e.g. heliocentrism and evolution)
- protonfish 4y ago
  The problem with panpsychism is not that it is unnecessary or not anthropocentric, but that it is provably false. If everything was conscious then full anesthetic (removal of consciousness with neurotoxic chemicals) wouldn't work. It does work though, which makes it clear that consciousness is a property produced by a mechanism in the brain.
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    That’s a strawman though. Pansychism says that everything manifests qualia, not that you can’t change what kind of qualia with drugs — obviously you can, as anyone who has taken recreational ones knows. You can also change it with a bullet, though that doesn’t revert after.
  - simondw 4y ago
    Panpsychism doesn't claim that everything has complex sensory perception, higher reasoning, memory, etc. The hard problem isn't about any of those things, which indeed have clear neuronal correlates and can easily be turned off. The idea is that there's always "something that it's like to be X", where X can equally be a conscious human, an anesthetized human, a dead human, or an electron.
    - 4y ago
wincy 4y ago
What does a black hole feel like? Is it happy? Is it sad?

27 points by danielam 4y ago

the perversity of the universe tends towards maximum. Not only is everything aware in some sense, it's stubborn about doing its own thing.

ReadEvalPost 4y ago

I highly recommend Feser's Aristotle's Revenge that's mentioned in the article. Very much dismantles the pervasive materialist attitude.

dr_dshiv 4y ago
Can you expand on this?
layer8 4y ago
He also wrote Five Proofs of the Existence of God. His writings won’t convert any naturalist.
- BadThink6655321 4y ago
  I'm a theist. His writings wouldn't have converted me, either.

keyle 4y ago

I read this whole page and I'm still very confused about this mad scientist rant I just read about. What's the point of arguing with "such said such thing" and "such other said the opposite" if you don't actually explain why this is important.

majormajor 4y ago
I would assume the import would be obvious to the intended audience, like if a philosopher commented on a discussion of async vs threaded parallelism asking why it wasn't explained why parallelism itself was important...
trough 4y ago
To explain the remark of majormajor a bit further: A philosopher can translate the attribution of the quotes to certain arguments or ‘thinking structure’ of the mentioned philosopher. It’s important not to see the argument and it’s supporting discourse in isolation but in the context given by the quoted philosopher’s work. This may look like name-dropping but is essentially a important as specifying if a certain mathematical trick only works in a Hilbert space.

lkrubner 4y ago

Peter Godfrey Smith covers some of this in his book Metazoa but he rejects pan-psychicism and tries to make us believe that pure materialism can explain consciousness, as it emerged in animals over the last 750 million years, going back to an unknown ur-brain that might have existed in the first bilaterian: https://www.amazon.com/Metazoa-Animal-Minds-Birth-Consciousness/dp/000832123X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=DZXB9BP7VXU8&keywords=metazoa&qid=1657068807&sprefix=metazoa%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Metazoa-Animal-Minds-Birth-Consciousn... However, I was not convinced by the material argument, which seems just as magical as any other explanation, as there comes a moment when we have to believe “then something magic happens and the creatures suddenly have real awareness of their surroundings.” Having read the book, which denounced pan-psychism, I actually found myself more favorably inclined to pan-psychism , since it clearly is no more magical then any other explanation.

tayo42 4y ago

Only skimmed so far but was Galileo’s Error supposed to be ripped apart like this? I thought it was intended to be more of a pop sci level over view of consciousnesses theories, some of their issues and just introduce panpsychism to non academic readers and how it might fit in.

superb-owl 4y ago

> the bizarre solution panpsychism proposes to the problem of how to fit consciousness into the natural world is completely unnecessary This line highlights the core difference between panpsychists and their critics. Personally, I think panpsychism is an elegant, simple, and natural solution to the Hard Problem. It strikes me as having a strong prior probability, i.e. if you were describing a hypothetical universe to me, I'd put the odds of "everything in the universe is capable of perception" at something like 50/50. Critics seem to think this is bizarre, and put it in the bucket of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". I understand why, but I disagree. I think this is yet another example of anthropocentric thought, which has continually fallen to more inclusive models (e.g. heliocentrism and evolution)

protonfish 4y ago
The problem with panpsychism is not that it is unnecessary or not anthropocentric, but that it is provably false. If everything was conscious then full anesthetic (removal of consciousness with neurotoxic chemicals) wouldn't work. It does work though, which makes it clear that consciousness is a property produced by a mechanism in the brain.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  That’s a strawman though. Pansychism says that everything manifests qualia, not that you can’t change what kind of qualia with drugs — obviously you can, as anyone who has taken recreational ones knows. You can also change it with a bullet, though that doesn’t revert after.
- simondw 4y ago
  Panpsychism doesn't claim that everything has complex sensory perception, higher reasoning, memory, etc. The hard problem isn't about any of those things, which indeed have clear neuronal correlates and can easily be turned off. The idea is that there's always "something that it's like to be X", where X can equally be a conscious human, an anesthetized human, a dead human, or an electron.
  - 4y ago

wincy 4y ago

What does a black hole feel like? Is it happy? Is it sad?