7 ms·
This seems like a very modern academic way of circling back to the way some old cultures believe(d) everything has a spirit. It says more about the way we perce
by IIAOPSW 2y ago
This seems like a very modern academic way of circling back to the way some old cultures believe(d) everything has a spirit. It says more about the way we perceive and conceptualize the world than it does about the world itself. Conscious entities tend to reason about conscious entities, and they can extend that reasoning ability to non-conscious things by modelling them as a conscious entities that happen to be very shy.
I forget which Greek philosopher it was who described the forces of nature in terms of solids "loving" the ground and "hating" the sky and likewise the other forms of matter "loving" and "hating" various positions in space.
Everything is conscious (in the minds of the things which are actually conscious).
- llamaimperative 2y agoYou have not understood the argument for panpsychism
- ASalazarMX 2y agoWhich is not a great loss in itself, as panpsychism is a useless theory that offers no insight into the working of consciousness, nor evidence or experiments to gather it. It's not much more than a philosophical fantasy tale.
- llamaimperative 2y agoPeople said the same thing about plate tectonics. The boundary of what is testable has always been moving and it’s honestly a little astounding that this isn’t obvious to everyone making this argument.
- ASalazarMX 2y agoPlate tectonics provided evidence and made predictions which can be tested. The pseudoscience of panpsychism can't provide evidence, nor experiments to prove or falsify it. Saying that everything is conscious is a huge claim, it can't be accepted just for the goodness of our hearts.
- llamaimperative 2y agoYou should read more about how plate tectonics (and many currently accepted scientific theories) were received contemporaneously.