> But what does the theory of emergent consciousness say? In my first reply to you, I wrote that at this point we don't have any candidate explanations for con

> But what does the theory of emergent consciousness say? In my first reply to you, I wrote that at this point we don't have any candidate explanations for consciousness. Instead, we have various beliefs about what form such an explanation might take (panpsychism and emergent physicalism are both of this type), plus the beliefs that no such explanation is possible, or that consciousness is some sort of illusion or delusion, or even that it simply does not exist. None of them have reached the point where one can apply Occam's razor to pick a winner. > We posit the existence of... the state of existing absent qualia. What do you mean here? In general, what would the state of existing absent X mean? > The whole problem is that we can't get to grips on what it is we are explaining. We can't even start. Given that you believe this, it seems inconsistent for you to consider panpsychism to be an idea that could lead to an explanation, let alone the only one that could succeed... > Occam's Razor says this: only seek an explanation for things for which [we?] have evidence. ...and as this is what you think Occam's razor says, it seems inconsistent for you to pick panpsychism on the basis of Occam's razor, given that you have just said we can't even start to get to grips on what it is we are explaining. Turning now to your new points, I'm not sure what you are saying here, but your primary concern seems to be an ethical one. The impression I get is this: firstly, you deprecate the way a presumed absence of a soul in some things has been used to justify treating them in ways that should be regarded as an unethical way to treat humans. Secondly, you see science's presumption that not all things have consciousness as being used to substitute for the presumption that not all things have a soul in an equally-deplorable version of the above ethical argument, which, if anything, is worse, on account of it being notionally a scientific argument. If I am close to understanding your position, then this is not really anything to do with Occam's razor - it seems that you are reaching for it because you want a reason for everyone to believe in a proposal that you feel has better ethical implications than the alternatives. If that is so, then I think we should just agree to disagree over whether this is an effective way to approach either consciousness or ethics. There is, however, something still to be said about the specific arguments presented in your final paragraph: > We have no evidence for souls. By the same logic, we have no evidence for the absence of souls. We have no evidence for the existence of a highest prime number, yet we have evidence for the absence of a highest prime number. I have no evidence for there being a tiger in the room I currently occupy, yet I do have evidence for the absence of one. > We do have evidence for consciousness. We have no evidence for unconsciousness. The evidence for consciousness has only been found in certain animals with well-developed neural systems. As these comprise only a small fraction of everything we know to be on Earth, there is evidence for some of the things we know of being without consciousness.