On Friday, January 31, 2020 at 4:23:06 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 30 Jan 2020, at 18:59, Philip Thrift <[email protected] <javascript:>> > wrote: > > > > On Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 11:26:09 AM UTC-6, Brent wrote: >> >> >> >> On 1/30/2020 1:28 AM, Philip Thrift wrote: >> >> >> >> On Wednesday, January 29, 2020 at 6:17:11 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> On 1/29/2020 11:55 AM, Philip Thrift wrote: >>> >>> >>> Now the human brain IP-power is like 10^whatever times that of a rock. >>> >>> >>> Is it? A rock has a lot of atoms that can be a lot of states, like >>> 1e30. Maybe it has to do with connections and signals and sensors and >>> environment. Not IIT. >>> >>> Also, a human brain has more IP-power than that of a chimp - its >>> language ability shows that. >>> >>> >>> And your computer has more arithmetical ability than you do. >>> >>> Brent >>> >>> >>> >> If a rock has more information processing power than a brain, and if >> consciousness is information processing (a lot of it) then why isn't a rock >> conscious? >> >> But a rock isn't conscious! >> >> >> According to panpsychists (and maybe IIT) it is. >> >> Brent >> > > > from Ph.D. Thesis - Hedda Hassel Mørch > > https://www.newdualism.org/papers/H.Morch/Morch-dissertation-Oslo2014.pdf > > > What do defenders of panpsychism normally mean when they say that > everything is mental? It seems generally agreed upon that the “pan” of > “panpsychism” requires that mentality is to be attributed to at least every > fundamental and concrete thing, in addition to humans and other animals. > Being concrete means being non-abstract, perhaps in virtue of being > spatiotemporal, so numbers and other abstract objects are excluded from the > thesis. > > > This automatically makes that “panpsychism” incompatible with Mechanism. > With Mechanism, we are abstract, immaterial being. We can understand this > by the fact that in principle we can change our body for a new one every > morning, and we can download ourself on the net, etc. With Mechanism, we > possess a (local) body (emerging from infinitely many computations), and so > we are not that body: we possess it like we can possess a bike or a car. > Advantage: we can save our soul on an hard-disk. Problem (psychological > problem for some): we are duplicable, and duplicated by huge number > (perhaps transfinite cardinal) “all the time”, personal identity is an > indexical illusion, physics is reduced to arithmetic/meta-arithmetic, etc. > > > > The fundamental concrete entities are often taken to include at least the > ultimate particles of physics, but to exclude most ordinary objects like > tables, chairs and rocks. > > Therefore, panpsychism does not require that such ordinary objects [like > tables, chairs and *rocks*] have mentality > > > > But then why put some consciousness in their elementary parts, and what > make a brain transporting consciousness and not a table or a chair? > > An answer would that it is the organisation of matter which counts, but > then we are back to some form of mechanism. > > > > > > (as emphasized by Strawson [Realistic Monism*]. The same goes for more > esoteric objects sometimes considered by philosophers, such as undetached > rabbit parts or the set of my nose and the planet Venus (however, see Goff > (forthcoming) for an argument to the contrary). Such presumably > non-fundamental things can be regarded as mental only in virtue of having > mental parts or constituents, i.e., in the same indirect way that we > ordinary think of a society of people as having mentality. > > * > http://www.sjsu.edu/people/anand.vaidya/courses/c2/s0/Realistic-Monism---Why-Physicalism-Entails-Panpsychism-Galen-Strawson.pdf > > > > Physicalism entails a non Mechanist theory of Mind, but Physics never > address the problem of consciousness/matter, and is based on no evidence > available. Again, I think it is better to test simpler theory before > jumping to magical conclusion… > > I try hard to find some sense to “panpsychism” which would be coherent > with Mechanism (Darwin & Co.). The close I could imagine is that the > arithmetical truth would have some consciousness, but then it has to be > something rather weird. > > Only person are conscious. Consciousness is just knowledge, and knowledge > is just true belief. Physical consciousness is more: it is belief + truth + > consistency (that makes it “immediate” indubitable” and keep intact its > undefinability (that we feel when we introspect ourselves). > > This also has many consequences like explaining “free-will”, providing a > functional role to consciousness, and a general role in the selection of > the computational histories (but those are not related: free-will is NOT > that selection!). > > It provides also an objective theory of morality (or more general > Protagorean virtue), but the theory is “negative”. It says that it is > immoral to do moral. It explains that a religious or moral sermon leads to > the contrary effects, and explain why the institutionalisation of > religion/moral leads to Atheism and Suffering (a point rather well > explained by the Marquis de Sade, up to make him doubt at some point of > atheism, as Sade realise that if the goal is to make people suffering: the > institutionalisation of religion gives the better tool for doing this. You > can recognise the laws of “Wellcome to insecurity” by Lan Watts, but also > single out by the Taoists (Lie-tseu notably) and which all have the shape > []x -> ~x. Of course in theology (G) we have already a pretty simple > solution: > > []<>t -> ~<>t > > If I prove my consistency then I am inconsistent. Consistency is a sort of > abstract ancestor of all moral virtue, and somehow, morality is related to > surviving. > > People are attached to matter, and they are right, if they want to keep up > its existence, you need to reject mechanism. But Mechanism explain both > consciousness (and qualia, …) and the “matter appearance”, > > May be if you decide that number are God’s object of thought, that is > “ideal object”, then mechanism is a panpsychism, but that does not teach us > anything new, and it is better to avoid metaphysics at the level of the > numbers, given that we are using the numbers to define all the rest and > formulate the metaphysical question. > > What *is* coherent here (not with Mechanism, but with the “fundamental > result” (that Mechanism and Materialism are incompatible), is the search > for pretty weird theory of mind, when you want keep an ontological matter). > > Bruno > > > > > > I don't think that panpsychism is coherent with Mechanism (as I understand your definition of Mechanism).
And scientists seem to assign "lower-levels" of consciousness (experientiality) to at least some non-human animals. @philipthrift -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/fe44f777-fcd9-426c-9721-e53fa501996d%40googlegroups.com.
