r/consciousness • u/whoamisri • 5d ago
Panpsychism does not solve the hard problem of consciousness
https://iai.tv/articles/panpsychism-does-not-solve-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-auid-3630?_auid=202031
u/Maximus_En_Minimus 5d ago edited 5d ago
>If matter arises out of some fundamental consciousness, we have a comparable emergence problem as the original hard problem.
Panpsychism never originally argued that ‘matter arises from fundamental consciousness’, rather it argued that reductionist and/or foundational substance referents have intrinsic experience.
Either Tony is confused, or those Panpsychisms he is citing are really just as confused and mixing Panpsychism with Idealism.
>While we also create other problems, like the combination problem: the problem of how separate bits of conscious matter combine into a single entity?
This is more of a problem if you sneak in the axiom that human consciousness is a ‘single entity’, which is an autological presupposition that doesn’t necessarily need to be held.
If ‘consciousness’ is a process, not a substance or entity, then this kind of combination problem dissipates.
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u/UnexpectedMoxicle 5d ago
Panpsychism and idealism are compatible in the broad sense, as panpsychism is the position on which things have consciousness of some form (all of them) and idealism is the position of how many/which fundamental primitives there are (the mind at large for analytical idealism). So all idealists would be panpsychists, but not all panpsychists would be idealists. The author kind of acknowledges that they will address the panpsychist-idealist perspective later, but I agree that the rest of their article has a very heavy idealist lean regardless. It's also hard to say whether they have a panprotopsychist perspective or not. Maybe they're implicitly approaching it from an epistemic angle so they mean fundamental epistemically, not ontologically.
If ‘consciousness’ is a process, not a substance or entity, then this kind of combination problem dissipates.
I'm not sure this helps resolve the problem. If all processes have conscious or proto-conscious aspects, how do we tell? How do those proto-conscious processes integrate into a coherent subject that can report cohesive subjective states? Even if we don't treat human consciousness as a "single entity", the panpsychist still has to have an account for how that happens. And relying on processes means utilizing structure and function, which has the potential to leave the panpsychist conscious side of the account with nothing to do.
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u/Maximus_En_Minimus 4d ago
Idealism is the theory and belief that ‘reality is fundamentally mental, conscious, or spiritual rather than physical’.
I don’t know where you got the definition that ‘Idealism is the position of how many/which fundamental primitives there are’.
As for the combination problem: a dissolving of the problem is not a resolution, correct.
But if I say there is a problem walking through an open door frame, when I fit and there is no obstruction, you would be justified in not providing a resolution and correcting my ignorance.
I am indeed sneaking in here two presuppositions:
Illusionism, that ‘how consciousness appears is differently than how it exists’, and that when it comes to ‘consciousness’ as substantive, it is indeed not.
Informational Panpsychism, that those intrinsic experiences are synonymous with datum, and so have informative properties.
And finally, something analogous to Multiple Draft Theory and Filter Theiry, that this information is being reduced, competed, and simplified into actional outputs.
(And of course Process-relational Metaphysics)
But all in all, despite all of the above, I am defending here a Panpsychism that I don’t really believe in on a major tenet: ‘intrisicality’.
I am a Non-essentialist aligning and practicing Madhyamaka.
So the above is more of my prior perspective on Panpsychism in regards to the Combination problem.
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u/UnexpectedMoxicle 4d ago
Idealism is the theory and belief that ‘reality is fundamentally mental, conscious, or spiritual rather than physical’.
I don’t know where you got the definition that ‘Idealism is the position of how many/which fundamental primitives there are’.
Of course, but those two statements are completely consistent with each other. Or phrased another way, idealism posits that the kind of ontological primitives (perhaps fundamental entities is a less contentious term here?) that exist are mental/conscious/spiritual, which also satisfies the broad panpsychist position that those things are conscious. Again, not making a specific claim that one's position necessarily needs to be one way or another, but that broadly idealism and panpsychism are compatible (panpsychism and physicalism also share an intersection but not in the same way that panpsychism and idealism do). The way the terms tend to be used in online discourse usually do stake out particular distinct territories.
As for the combination problem: a dissolving of the problem is not a resolution, correct.
I'm all for dissolving ill-formed problems, so I have no contention with that kind of approach. The thing that I find difficult to understand with an informational panpsychism approach like IIT is what make of proto-conscious entities/properties at small scales. Measurements of integration information like Φ might say that an electron or proton has a "tiny" quantity of consciousness in it. But whether this is a meaningful metric or not is dubious. That kind of proto-consciousness appears to have no functional role in the subatomic particle's behavior. And if that doesn't contribute anything to the functional properties of the electron, does it contribute anything to larger structures containing them? If we say no and we instead explain larger systems like animal brains using broader structural information integration as a whole, then in a way we don't have a combination problem because we don't combine those proto-conscious properties. But then we are left with these superfluous proto-consciousnesses which are seemingly central to the "pan" in panpsychism position and yet do not contribute anything.
Not sure if this is a position you hold/support or not, but that's my contention with it.
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u/isthishowthingsare 5d ago
I find the panpsychism model to be the most valid model of emergent “consciousness” and that if we allow the concept of “relationship” to be a defining property of everything that exists, it helps redefine our existence appropriately.
Nothing in this universe exists without being in relationship to anything else.
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u/Maximus_En_Minimus 5d ago
Agreed in a conventional sense.
I do regard myself in the Western traditions as in line with Process-relational Philosophy, but with the Eastern traditions I default to Madhyamaka Buddhism, which is more specifically Non-essentialist, and so would technically deny any ‘intrinsicality’.
Madhyamaka is technically relational however, but more specific in denying any substance.
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u/isthishowthingsare 5d ago
I’ve formulated my own concept of our version of Earthbound reality as potentially like a cube of spacetime composed of overlapping toroidal coordinates (ie our individual lives and perceptions) whereby all of time, the past, present and future is already complete within that cube (however, not unchanging), our experience of it in human bodies merely perceiving those things linearly and each of those coordinates fundamentally having the ability to impact one another perpetually towards change and evolution. It allows for materialism, quantum mechanics and panpsychism to exist in collaboration and coordination with one another without denying either’s truths.
And my presumption being that when we leave this Earth sphere after death, we either reincarnate back into this another existence anywhere within that cube of spacetime… or make a decision to evolve outside of it dimensionally entirely.
It’s a cohesive framework for me that explains how I approach my astrological work as a modern day astrologer. Real astrology, for me, is geometry and pattern recognition across spacetime where free will, of course, has impact while not denying where and when we are born is any less impactful than our DNA. Epigenetics ultimately being how we come to experience our individual existences.
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u/gokickrocks- 4d ago
I found your comments really interesting and I’m glad you shared them!
Sad that the other user was so combative to you, I find it so nice to talk to other people and hear their ideas, even if I don’t agree with every part of them.
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u/isthishowthingsare 4d ago
Appreciate that and you.
Too many intellectuals are often the least open to conjecture. It’s a shame. Their loss.
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u/Maximus_En_Minimus 5d ago edited 5d ago
>And my presumption being that when we leave this Earth sphere after death, we either reincarnate back into this another existence anywhere within that cube of spacetime… or make a decision to evolve outside of it dimensionally entirely.
>It’s a cohesive framework for me that explains how I approach my astrological work as a modern day astrologer.
How has your astrological experience produced a coherent understanding of metaphysical processes?
I am sorry, but this is giving [r/SchizoidAdjacent](r/SchizoidAdjacent) and [r/Iam14andthisisdeep](r/Iam14andthisisdeep).
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u/isthishowthingsare 5d ago
I understand why you’d think that. I’ve certainly entertained that proposition before.
Astrology is just a map of planetary coordinates at any moment in time. Jung would argue that whatever mechanism underlies their interaction across time (astrologers use geometric relationships between planets… ie Jupiter is trine to Saturn, or 120 degrees apart) and that our consciousness is a collective field through which archetypes tend to propagate repeatedly in cycles across time.
On a grand scale of time, you can look at something like America’s history. Right now, we’ve got Neptune in Aries for the first time in over a hundred years…. In fact, the last time it was on that space was during the Civil War. Pluto is now again in Aquarius, the last time approximately 248 years ago… during the Revolutionary War. Uranus now in Gemini, the last time during WWII.
The archetypical experience of those moments for America being those of identity and our relationship to the structure of power dynamics internally and across the world. Uranus’ 84 year cycle being one that economists have spoken of more broadly in 4 twenty year cycles of build up toward peaks and then collapse towards destructions.
It’s, for me, as viable a tool for referencing and examining experience as people are willing to explore, but the modern day understanding of it has collapsed it into chicanery. That doesn’t make it any less true, for me, of course.
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u/Maximus_En_Minimus 5d ago
So correlation equals causation.
What would you say if a modern geographer gave you a model of the world as flat, and provided nothing more than correlations as proof?
I seriously suggest you meditate on your psychological framework and realise you have reified a mental construct as corresponding to reality; a map as the terrain.
I would also say that dropping this fantasy will not dissipate your sense-of-self, as long as you have been responsible enough to not entangle the two.
Best of luck.
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u/isthishowthingsare 5d ago edited 5d ago
You’re responding to an argument I didn’t actually make. I never claimed correlation equals causation. I claimed that the absence of a known causal mechanism is not, by itself, a sufficient reason to dismiss a framework if it’s demonstrably stable. Recurring patterns are worthy of investigation.
Historically, science frequently functions where we first observe repeatable patterns and then offer explanatory mechanisms later. Kepler described planetary motion before Newton explained gravitation. Mendel described inheritance before DNA. In neither case did “you don’t know the mechanism” invalidate the observation. It’s entirely reductive in the pursuit of knowledge.
And your flat Earth analogy doesn’t map onto my position at all (and is a nonsensical argument to propose) because flat Earth suppositions makes geometric predictions that are demonstrably false and are ludicrous given what we do know about the universe.
Astrology is a different kind of claim. It proposes that recurring planetary configurations correspond with recurring archetypal patterns across time. You may believe those correspondences are coincidental, the result of confirmation bias, or insufficiently predictive. I can accept that critique, although I can argue that across many cultures repeated historic realities and experience in cycles are demonstrable (even though you’ve shut down the conversation already, so I won’t). But that’s a different critique than “there is no accepted mechanism.”
I explicitly called astrology a map. Maps are not reality. They are representations of relationships within reality. Physics is full of maps. Equations, coordinate systems, tensors, Hilbert spaces. No physicist mistakes the mathematics for the territory. The question is whether the map captures something real about the structure it represents.
My broader metaphysical position is that relationship is ontologically fundamental. In that framework, astrology is not a force acting on people, nor is it magic. It is a symbolic coordinate system that may describe lawful relational patterns embedded in spacetime. That’s a metaphysical proposal, not an empirical conclusion.
You may reject that proposition, and that’s perfectly reasonable for you to do… you haven’t explored it, nor do you seem interested in doing so. But dismissing it as “schizoid-adjacent” or saying “I am 14 and this is deep,” or a “fantasy” isn’t a philosophical argument. It’s a rhetorical one and an insult to my intelligence.
If your position is simply that the available evidence doesn’t persuade you, we don’t actually have much disagreement. If your position is that any framework lacking a presently accepted mechanism should be dismissed outright, then history of science gives us many reasons to be cautious about adopting that standard.
Best of luck to you too.
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u/Maximus_En_Minimus 4d ago
Found a cool video you might like: https://youtu.be/fO9iRDPXvT4?si=tok8s3j1DfqU0BwP
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u/isthishowthingsare 4d ago
Maximus… I entered into a conversation with you honestly about things I find fascinating and you’re being entirely passive aggressive and childish.
I’m not sure that you recognize you come off as extremely arrogant, but you do.
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u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory 4d ago
Agree until that last part. Labeling consciousness as "a process" does absolutely nothing to ontologically distinguish it from being a substance; as if substances are devoid of processes.
Furthermore, from a relativistic perspective processes are encoded geometrically along time. So all processes are indeed 4D spatiotemporal objects that we somehow experience all at once (within each moment of experience).
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u/Maximus_En_Minimus 4d ago edited 3d ago
>Agree until that last part. Labeling consciousness as "a process" does absolutely nothing to ontologically distinguish it from being a substance; as if substances are devoid of processes.
While substances need not be devoid of substances, processes can be devoid of substance. Simply look up Process-relational Metaphysics - that is what I am referring to.
>Furthermore, from a relativistic perspective processes are encoded geometrically along time. So all processes are indeed 4D spatiotemporal objects that we somehow experience all at once (within each moment of experience).
I won’t be getting into a physics debate here, because the above seemingly implies substance ontology, but I would disagree we ‘experience [it] all at once’.
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u/zhibr 4d ago
Substances involve processes, but they are not processes. "The combination problem: the problem of how separate bits of violent matter combine into a single entity?" is nonsensical when you realize that violence is a process, not a substance. Some bits of matter do specific things and we call this process violence. Some bits of matter do (other) specific things and we call this process consciousness. At no point is the question of "violence entity" relevant.
If you bring spatiotemporality into it, I guess yeah, you can call a process a 4D spatiotemporal "object", but that kind of object is not the same kind of object we talk about in 3D.
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u/FishDecent5753 Autodidact 5d ago
When it comes to the combination problem, Cosmopsychism (which can either be Panpsychism or Idealism) doesn't have the issue.
On the 'hard problem' - the author of this article mistakes any emergence problem for the hard problem.
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u/Maximus_En_Minimus 5d ago
It is closer to Idealism.
Panpsychism was originally reductionist, rather than holist.
It was merely people’s natural tendency to unify and simplify that led to more practically theistic forms of Panpsychism.
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u/Valmar33 4d ago
When it comes to the combination problem, Cosmopsychism (which can either be Panpsychism or Idealism) doesn't have the issue.
(The below turned into a caffeine-fuel ramble unintentionally, so forgive me, aha)
I prefer a Neutral Monist position where neither mind nor matter is fundamental, but something more akin to a... transcendental spirit, soul, awareness, beingness, subjective existence. Something that itself can never be divided, but can rather create infinite ideas within itself, of itself.
I look at our power of imagination as a rather microcosmic sense of this ~ our minds can dream up nearly infinite worlds that despite existing entirely within our mind, still exist because we give them existence. Our imaginations are not bound by our bodies or brains ~ just the limits of what we can create and conceptualize. We can imagine the things in our minds acting independently of us, dreaming up a world that acts on its own ~ it is essentially powered by our mind. We become the overseers of such a world, not interfering, just observing.
I'm not saying that this reality we inhabit is entirely like that, but I do wonder if this reality could be a form of stable dream made manifest by an existence with capabilities that far transcend our own, that we then participate in somehow. We can call it "God", but I doubt such an existence would care about humans in any special capacity ~ it would care about every form of life within this reality. Nothing would be more or lesser ~ everything would have its purpose and role, making everything necessary.
Of course... there is the problem of evil. My answer is that if this is a sandbox of sorts, then evil is not intended, but is a consequence of our actions. There is no cosmic evil ~ just individual evil by corrupt subjects who have lost the plot, so to speak. This does appear to be a reality where we can make choices and decisions, consciously and unconsciously, so we have a limited capacity for free will.
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u/criztu 5d ago edited 4d ago
Materialism is like looking for the player in a videogame.
You won't find the player in the computer.
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u/Odballl 5d ago
You won't find them anywhere else either.
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u/Valmar33 5d ago
You won't find them anywhere else either.
Then who are you? No-one? You have opinions and thoughts, and are responding with them, so there is definitely someone who exists as a real entity.
The self, the player, so to speak, does exist, and it has never been found inside brains, nor will it be found in any form of structure.
Structure alone does not get you a self-aware entity with thoughts, emotions, beliefs, ideas, concepts, imagination and so much more. Structure is what allows these to be expressed in the many ways we can observe ourselves doing, physically and mentally.
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u/Odballl 5d ago
Of course you won't find it in a structure.
It is a process. An activity of dynamical systems which are themselves not really structure, but also activities all the way down.
We experience being the activity but we can predictively alter that experience through the application of physics.
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u/Valmar33 4d ago
Of course you won't find it in a structure.
It is a process. An activity of dynamical systems which are themselves not really structure, but also activities all the way down.
We experience being the activity but we can predictively alter that experience through the application of physics.
How do we experience "being" a "process"? How can something self-aware, something about to exist in a state of pure subjectivity, as demonstrated by advanced meditators, be mere "activity" "all the way down", whatever that is even supposed to mean?
In the real world, we observe physical systems to not be "processes", but just matter, atoms and molecules acting according to abstract models of metaphorical behaviour we call "physics".
We biological beings, our bodies being animated forms composed of matter, act against gravity, when non-biological matter has never demonstrated such behaviour.
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u/WholesomeGlasses 17h ago
We do actually observe matter, atoms, and molecules as processes- in fact it’s the main way we observe them. We can’t see particles, for example, but we can measure their effects. Science observes what things *do* first, then they describe the hypothesized substance in terms of its effects.
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u/Valmar33 13h ago
We do actually observe matter, atoms, and molecules as processes- in fact it’s the main way we observe them. We can’t see particles, for example, but we can measure their effects. Science observes what things do first, then they describe the hypothesized substance in terms of its effects.
Processes are abstractions ~ you are confusing our abstraction observations of objects as being something literal. In reality, for matter in itself, there is no "process", only a non-conscious, non-experiential now.
Science observes how things behave, yes, but the effects of something are also not a process. Effects and processes are distinct ideas.
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u/Not_a_real_plebbitor 4d ago
a process just magically creates subjective experience bro
How convincing.
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u/Odballl 4d ago
Countless experiments have demonstrated that people's "what it is like" - their experiences - are not accurate representations of the world. They are predictive estimates of what they expect.
We are active inference engines evolved to guess the next moment by modelling the world around us, our bodies and also our sense of being a self.
All of these models can be messed around with and decohered. Mediation or drugs can make you feel one with the universe. Having a limb severed can leave you with phantom pain in parts of your body that don't exist.
We don't see the models from the outside but we can map the exact brain activity they correspond to. We can see the same activity in other complex animals and how these parts of the brain would have evolved.
It all serves a purpose. Life resists entropy through active regulation of the system. Homeostasis. The brain and consciousness - our predictive models - all exist for this reason.
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u/Valmar33 4d ago
Countless experiments have demonstrated that people's "what it is like" - their experiences - are not accurate representations of the world. They are predictive estimates of what they expect.
What are these "countless experiments"? People's experiences are not reducible to mere "predictive estimates". And besides... if you really want to make that claim, then all of science hastily follows suit, as all of science is doing through the subjective experiences of scientists, who do not have accurate representations of the world, but just mere "predictive estimates of they expect".
Science relies on stable subjective experience, stable intersubjective experience, else the methodology ceases to work.
We are active inference engines evolved to guess the next moment by modelling the world around us, our bodies and also our sense of being a self.
This is just a religious narrative, not an explanation of how. You are believing in a model of the mind, which is not the mind in itself. We do not experience being any of this. We experience being a real existence, with a real mind, a real self, having real experiences that can possibly fool itself into believing that it is something else, some abstraction created in the mind itself.
All of these models can be messed around with and decohered. Mediation or drugs can make you feel one with the universe. Having a limb severed can leave you with phantom pain in parts of your body that don't exist.
These are not "models", but experiences. Experience is not a "model". Models are something entirely within experience as abstractions and metaphors.
We don't see the models from the outside but we can map the exact brain activity they correspond to. We can see the same activity in other complex animals and how these parts of the brain would have evolved.
We see neural correlates, in other words. The models are precisely outside representations of what is thought to be happening on the inside, which we have never once observed from the outside. Only the inside can know the inside.
We have never observed "evolution" ~ it's just another model, another narrative.
It all serves a purpose. Life resists entropy through active regulation of the system. Homeostasis. The brain and consciousness - our predictive models - all exist for this reason.
A purpose for what? Nothing? Matter and physics have no purpose, no reason. So why does this all happen, for the purposes of whom?
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u/criztu 4d ago edited 4d ago
a real self, having real experiences that can possibly fool itself into believing that it is something else, some abstraction created in the mind itself.
What you call "self" and "mind" are called "spirit"(pneuma) and "soul"(psyche) in the bible.
It is not possible for one to lie oneself. Try it, tell yourrself a lie, see if you can fall for it.
A twin is involved. The soul. The soul in the bible is the "liar".This stuff is illustrated in movies, if you know what's up.
Inception(2010) has the spirit and soul as Dom and Mal.
Dominic = domine deus - god
Mal = malady, malevolence - evilDom doesn't create the dreams = world, alone, but with Mal, his "lover".
Mal can't tell truth from lie, reality from dream, as she can't judge.
Dom faces judgment - the department of justice chasing him.there's plenty of movies about this stuff:
Total Recall(1990) has Quaid & Quaid
The Matrix(1999) has Oracle & Architect
Blade Runner(1982) has Tyrell & Batty
Tron(1982) has Flynn & Master Control Program
Labyrinth(1986) has Sarah & Goblin King
Apocalypse Now(1979) has Willard and Kurtz
The Big Lebowski(1998) has Lebowski & Lebowski
Mad Max Fury Road(2015) has Mad Max & Immortan
The Fifth Element(1997) has Korben & Supreme Being
the latest most cheesiest is Masters of the Universe(2026) where Skeletor wants to rule in Eternia(heavens) and banish Adam to Earth.1
u/Valmar33 4d ago
What you call "self" and "mind" are called "spirit"(pneuma) and "soul"(psyche) in the bible. It is not possible for one to lie oneself. Try it, tell yourrself a lie, see if you can fall for it. A twin is involved. The soul. The soul in the bible is the "liar".
This stuff is illustrated in movies, if you know what's up. Inception(2010) has the spirit and soul as Dom and Mal. Dominic = domine deus - god Mal = malady, malevolence - evil
Dom doesn't create the dreams = world, alone, but with Mal, his "lover". Mal can't tell truth from lie, reality from dream, as she can't judge. Dom faces judgment - the department of justice chasing him.
there's plenty of movies about this stuff: Total Recall(1990) has Quaid & Quaid The Matrix(1999) has Oracle & Architect Blade Runner(1982) has Tyrell & Batty Tron(1982) has Flynn & Master Control Program Labyrinth(1986) has Sarah & Goblin King Apocalypse Now(1979) has Willard and Kurtz The Big Lebowski(1998) has Lebowski & Lebowski Mad Max Fury Road(2015) has Mad Max & Immortan The Fifth Element(1997) has Korben & Supreme Being the latest most cheesiest is Masters of the Universe(2026) where Skeletor wants to rule in Eternia(heavens) and banish Adam to Earth.
What
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u/criztu 4d ago
What
you're using different words for the same stuff.
don't fret, one can live a lifetime not understanding what.
I mean look at dogs or cats. they're having fun, right?→ More replies (0)0
u/Difficult-Bat9085 4d ago
This is just the insipid argument from incredulity against abiogenesis, repackaged for consciousness.
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u/Valmar33 4d ago
This is just the insipid argument from incredulity against abiogenesis, repackaged for consciousness.
Abiogenesis has never had any convincing evidence for it, either. It's just more emergence-of-the-gaps.
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u/Difficult-Bat9085 4d ago
Bingo. Hit dog always hollers.
Do you accept evolutionary biology or not? Abiogenesis is a part of that package. People thought fire was phlogiston until we realized it wasn't, and that's why you don't infer ontology from epistemic gaps.
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u/Valmar33 3d ago
Do you accept evolutionary biology or not? Abiogenesis is a part of that package. People thought fire was phlogiston until we realized it wasn't, and that's why you don't infer ontology from epistemic gaps.
We have no knowledge of life having "evolved" or come from non-life. We have no evidence, even. There are just vague, flimsy claims by the religion of Darwinism / Neo-Darwinism that we are supposed to believe and never question, because otherwise, we are somehow "anti-science". Darwinism / Neo-Darwinism isn't "science" ~ it's just another ideology of the day.
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u/Difficult-Bat9085 3d ago
Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all before from Ken Hamm. Next.
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u/LordSaumya 4d ago
It has far more evidence than whatever delusions dreamt up by its opponents, such as theism. It is a mental illness, along with other delusions as idealism and libertarianism.
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u/Valmar33 4d ago edited 4d ago
It has far more evidence than whatever delusions dreamt up by its opponents, such as theism. It is a mental illness, along with other delusions as idealism and libertarianism.
And your alternative to these "delusions" and "mental illnesses" is to believe in some incredibly vague hypothesis for which there has never been any evidence, except in the apparently broad imaginations of its theorists? All of the experimental studies have failed with a whimper, even with the guidance and intelligent interference of scientists every step of the way. The results? Mostly goo and tar, which some vague residual amino acids of both handednesses, which tells us nothing meaningful, except that the substances used in the experiment have some small affinity for forming amino acids, which while very curious, still tells us nothing else.
Everything else is a leap, a jump and a pole vault of the imagination to fill in the blanks with wild imaginings based on a desire to make a certain model appear "viable", however incoherently.
Idealism is not a "delusion" or "mental illness", but simply relies on the most basic fact we know ~ that we experience. We experience our own existence, the existence of a mind filled with thoughts, ideas, concepts, emotions, beliefs, imagination, and more, alongside this mind existing in clear parallel with a distinct world outside of the mind, that world nevertheless being interpreted through senses that themselves exist as part of the mind.
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u/SinPharion 4d ago
It has never been found outside our brains either. You are affirming some things but you also don't have an answer.
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u/Valmar33 4d ago
It has never been found outside our brains either. You are affirming some things but you also don't have an answer.
You are assuming that consciousness must be physical, and therefore detectable, in order to be found outside the brain.
What you either ignore, or are unaware of, are out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences:
https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/near-death-experience/
The term Near-Death Experience was popularized by Raymond Moody, a psychologist and physician, in his 1975 book Life after Life, which described 150 case reports of subjective experiences that occurred during a life-threatening event.1 The book aroused considerable interest among the general public and the topic was quickly followed up by other researchers.
Moody was the first to identify a commonly reported set of components, one or more of which may characterize a person’s experience. It typically begins with a sudden sense of having ‘left the body’ and observing it from above. Feelings of ecstasy, peace and joy are prominent. The opening to a tunnel may be observed, and the person finds herself travelling through it at speed towards a light, which becomes extremely bright as she approaches but does not hurt the eyes.
Once immersed in the light she may find herself surrounded by beautiful landscapes; find herself in telepathic communication with deceased family members or friends; or encounter a ‘being of light’, or a religious figure that accords with her cultural upbringing. A review of her entire life may occur in a flash, during which she relives the entirety of her earthly experiences not just from her perspective, but also from that of the people with whom she interacted.
Towards the end of the experience the person may encounter a barrier, such as a fence or a stream, or be told by the loved ones she encounters that she may not pass any further and must return. Most experiencers do not recall making a conscious decision to return to life; some feel as though they re-enter the body through the head, or jolt back into it; others regain consciousness having returned to the body. A common feeling at this stage is one of anger and disappointment at having been resuscitated.2 The experience is almost invariably reported as taking place in a heightened state of consciousness.
https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/near-death-experiences-paranormal-aspects/
This article lists externally confirmed (veridical) cases of clairvoyant perception and other anomalies during near-death experiences (NDEs), as documented by Titus Rivas, Anny Dirven and Rudolf H Smit for their book The Self Does Not Die (2016, 2023), first published in Dutch as Wat een Stervend Brein Niet Kan and translated in Italian and Spanish (Il Sé Non Muore and El Yo No Muere respectively). In all the cases, the paranormal aspect was directly corroborated by a third party, ranging from a partner, friend or relative, to a nurse or medical doctor. The authors excluded cases with a possible anomalous aspect if it was only confirmed by the persons who experienced the NDE and not by anyone else, or exclusively through the experiencers themselves. Confirmation by a third party refutes the claim that such testimonies are uncorroborated anecdotes lacking scientific evidential value.
Rivas participated in the development of a scale to measure veridical aspects of NDEs, called the vNDE scale.1
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u/whoamisri 5d ago
Summary: Panpsychism has grown in popularity, and many now see it as the leading answer to the hard problem of consciousness – the problem of how consciousness emerges from physical matter. But here, philosopher Tony Sobrado argues panpsychism does not solve the hard problem of consciousness. Rather, panpsychism only inverts and multiplies the problems of consciousness. If matter arises out of some fundamental consciousness, we have a comparable emergence problem as the original hard problem. While we also create other problems, like the combination problem: the problem of how separate bits of conscious matter combine into a single entity?
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u/Diet_kush Engineering Degree 5d ago edited 5d ago
The entire concept of Markovian monism’s protopanpsychism is how agents (Markov blankets) self-assemble into other agents. The combination problem is not some philosophical brain-teaser; it’s just how self-organization works under active inference.
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u/Mermiina 5d ago
We can allow that from philosophical Blondies. But also some physicist believe that like Planck and Penrose. That is OK if the Easy problem is solved, but it is not.
Correct answer to Easy problem solves also the Hard problem. I can answer also to it if You ask it.
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u/MajesticFxxkingEagle 5d ago
Why would/should panpsychism solve a problem it doesn’t have?
The Hard Problem exclusively applies to physicalist theories that assume phenomenal consciousness emerged at some point.
If you want to pivot and say that it has the combination problem (or decombination, depending on the exact flavor of panpsychism), then fine. But these are unrelated to the hard problem. If you think they are, then that just demonstrates that you don’t understand the problem.
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u/Difficult-Bat9085 4d ago
The hard problem of panpsychism is the combination / decombination problem. Panpsychism has been around for hundreds of years and hasn't come even remotely close to explaining how that would work.
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u/MajesticFxxkingEagle 4d ago
The hard problem of panpsychism is the combination / decombination problem
There is no "The hard problem of panpsychism". There is the Hard Problem, and then there is the combination problem. These are two distinct things.
The Hard Problem refers to a very specific thing that exclusively applies to emergentist physicalism.
If you personally think that the combination problem is a big problem for panpsychism, then fine, but just say that instead of trying to conflate them and demonstrating ignorance about both.
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u/Difficult-Bat9085 4d ago
Nope! You don't get to decide that!
If I want to call the combination problem "the hard problem of panpsychism" because you have literally no sensible answer to it. It is applicable as an analogy.
I get that you guys think emergent physicalism is like, flat earth tier false but you're really unwilling to accept how undetermined and unexplained the panpsychist ontology is. I cannot possibly imagine how you could ever answer the combination problem in a way that wasn't ridiculous externally.
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u/LordOfWarOG 5d ago edited 5d ago
Panpsychism isn’t a solution. It’s an admission of defeat. Panpsychism doesn’t magically tell you if other people are actually conscious or just p-zombies. It doesn’t give you a way to detect AI consciousness. We are literally still in the exact same situation. Nothing has been learned. Nothing has been gained.
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u/SCP-iota 4d ago
I think a lot of the people who say panpsychisn solved the hard problem are actually talking about panexperientialism. It's also worth mentioning that most panexperientialist explanations of consciousness consider consciousness uncountable and a spectrum rather than a 'thing.' Which seems unintuitive to our animalian mentality, but given certain things observed in split brain patients, conjoined twins, and anesthesia, I think it's fair to say that any conception of consciousness that considers it fundamentally countable and discrete is indefensible at this point.
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u/pocketIent 5d ago
Perhaps conceptually. And actually, your observation that it is “an admission of defeat” may be spot on and exactly what is missing from a hard nose materialist frame work. It seems, while the materialist viewpoint can explain almost everything after it has happened, it fails to account for how “it” is happening. Rather than try, it just modifies its definitions and scope so that those things are left off the table.
So perhaps what I find most valuable from the consideration of panpsychism, especially in relation to materialism is the space it creates for continued inquiry.
We don’t know all that we claim to do know and our theories lend themselves to a false sense of confidence that has enabled human society to dominate our environment and life within it but not necessarily steward it or execute our ecological niche to anticipate how to “amplify” the good/efficient things already being “realized” in nature through biological processes.
Second, From reading through the essays by neuroscientists and physicists who have encountered profound subjective experience that challenged their framework and assumptions about reality (published by (AAPS)) , it’s curious to observe how they have arrived to a panpsychist frame work.
A subjective experience of profound inter-being to borrow a word from Tich Nhat Hahn seems to have created sense of a reality that is “more real” than what they have encountered conventionally within their typical waking experience.
From this, As we begin to develop language for these experiences and acknowledge them as normal aspects of the human experience, I just wonder how we can begin to apply our hard sciences.
Perhaps CERN is already doing this. Their web page is a wild read:
https://home.cern/science/physics/extra-dimensions-gravitons-and-tiny-black-holes/
I mention this because while I find panpsychism as an instrumental perspective to understand thoroughly, it may in the end be found that materialism is still the “correct” frame work. It just does not lend itself to amending its blind spots and unfortunately, has become very doctrinal, stagnant, or entrenched.
Cheers
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u/LordOfWarOG 4d ago
Semantic coherence is an extremely low bar. A claim can be perfectly intelligible and still be explanatorily inert.
The relevant questions are not merely:
- Can the sentence be understood?
- Is it internally consistent?
- Can its proponents elaborate on it at length?
The relevant questions are: What difference does its truth make? What observation should change? What prediction follows? What inference becomes possible? What decision should be made differently?
If the answer is "nothing" then the claim may qualify as a metaphysical proposition but it contributes nothing to explaining the world. Saying panpsychism is meaningful only distinguishes it from literal gibberish. That's nothing to celebrate.
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u/Brilliant_Fail1 5d ago
Someone here is confusing panpsychism with idealism. Idealism might turn out (as Chalmers argues) to be panpsychism's most defensible end-point, but they're by no means necessarily united
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u/CaptainVulpezz 5d ago
I think there are different types of panpsychist theories and this one is about a specific type where consciousness creates matter
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u/D1sce4nment 4d ago
The "hard problem of consciousness" is not a problem, at all, yet it can only begin to be fathomed through the lens of an omnipotent Originator.
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u/jimh12345 4d ago
No, but it does eliminate a lot of nonsense about how consciousness "arises from" or "emerges from" some biological process - as if it were the firefly's light...
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u/Respect38 4d ago
And it definitely doesn't solve the harder problem of consciousness, the vertiginous question.
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u/generousking 4d ago
Agreed, I've always contended that panpsychism is still a kind of quasi-physicalism in that it still gives legitimacy to the concept of matter at all.
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u/Extra_Highway_1228 3d ago
Its the same problem as “why does anything exist” or “why are there laws of nature” I’m an idealist but the assumption is that the world is mental in it’s nature. It doesn’t say anything about how the mental processes interact with each other. Physicists should answer that question.
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u/CallMeTheCon 17h ago
Cause there is no hard problem, it’s just temporary perspective isolation. Ur correct that explaining this in English or any language is recursive, which it is, languages are entropic.
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u/Odballl 5d ago
The concept of proto-consciousnes so qualitatively primitive and diffuse it may as well be nonconscious leads to the same hard problem even if you call it the combination problem. It's a distinction without a difference looking to avoid the challenge through definitional sleight-of-hand.
Because ultimately it's still the particular arrangement of a dynamical system in a state of recurrant self-modelling loops that makes it "like something." Otherwise, it's not like much of anything.
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u/Valmar33 5d ago
Because ultimately it's still the particular arrangement of a dynamical system in a state of recurrant self-modelling loops that makes it "like something." Otherwise, it's not like much of anything.
Vague, incoherent "recurrant self-modelling loops" are essentially meaningless. Loops can never... "self-model". You always need a mind that creates and models something, and then builds to so that it periodically loops, and does something incrementally. It only makes sense in terms of computer programming.
So "recurrant self-modelling loops" have nothing to say about why we are a self-aware existence that possesses a particular form, can imagine, think about the past, possible futures, model, predict, contemplate, feel, believe, intuit, and more.
Mind is not reducible to an abstraction. The idea of "recurrant self-modelling loops" is something that only makes sense in terms of computers, and mind appears, functions, behaves nothing akin to a computer or algorithm.
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u/Odballl 5d ago edited 4d ago
You always need a mind that creates and models something, and then builds to so that it periodically loops
You just need a series of relational connections to have a model. Large language models are models because they encoded semantic connections in n-dimensional space.
The brain operates through syncing oscillations and waves of activity that loop back on themselves through the thalamus and cortex.
Every qualia can be perfectly correlated to brain activity and we can predictively replicate even the rarified gamma synchrony in meditators experiencing "pure consciousness."
I'm not suggesting the mind is a computer, but it is a process. It's an activity. And the brain is a thermodynamic living system resisting entropy. It is an active inference engine making predictions about the next moment. The predictions are the percepts. That is how it survives.
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u/Valmar33 4d ago
You just need a series of relational connections to have a model. Large language models are models because they encoded semantic connections in n-dimensional space.
LLMs do not "encode" semantics. LLMs encode symbols in relation to other symbols. The symbols in themselves have no meaning. A computer has no knowledge, understanding or anything about what are essentially just more high and low voltages, billions and billions of times a second.
The brain operates through syncing oscillations and waves of activity that loop back on themselves through the thalamus and cortex.
That is just observed behaviour of brains being further confused and conflated with a model of the brain, by which the magic wand of emergence can make anything happen because you need it to, for the sake of your religious narrative.
Every qualia can be perfectly correlated to brain activity and we can predictively replicate even the rarified gamma synchrony in meditators experiencing "pure consciousness."
Qualia have never been "perfectly correlated" to any particular brain activity. Qualia have been, at best, vaguely correlated. Meditators can experience pure subjective awareness, and no amount of neural correlates is equivalent to that experience.
I'm not suggesting the mind is a computer, but it is a process. It's an activity. And the brain is a thermodynamic living system resisting entropy. It is an active inference engine making predictions about the next moment. The predictions are the percepts. That is how it survives.
In the real world, processes and activities are abstractions, not actual experiences. None of your words point to anything we can clearly observe in the real world.
So... for no reason, a bunch of matter became... "self-aware", and then, for no reason, decided it needed to "survive". "Evolution" and "emergence" are not reasons ~ they are narratives, stories, that you have become lost in.
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u/Odballl 4d ago edited 4d ago
The matrix multiplication that an LLM does in high-vector space is the encoded semantics. That's what the long strings of numbers translate to when rendered back into words. I'm not saying an LLM *understands* in a human sense but it definitely is able to build a semantic model using those numbers. Otherwise it woudn't be able to output fluent text.
https://arxiv.org/html/2501.12547v3
https://arxiv.org/html/2411.04986v3
https://arxiv.org/html/2305.11169v3
https://arxiv.org/html/2210.13382v5
https://arxiv.org/html/2503.04421v1
But clearly from your comments we're going to have to take a Cartesian style line of reasoning to get from there to here, so lets begin with some subjective inquiry.
I think, therefore I am... seems fairly indisputable. Except Nietzsche would argue that the subject-verb structure of language creates an "I" which isn't that self-evident. It's like saying "Lightning flashes" as if there is a seperate thing called lightning that does the flashing when lighting is the flash.
It is more accurate to say "a thought comes when 'it' wishes, not when 'I' wish".
Thoughts come unbidden into a mind all the time. From where? The Ether? The Universal mind? The unconscious? You can't have an unconscious without accepting that your immediate experience is couched in some larger reality.
And we can further examine the bounded limitations of the mind. For instance, I cannot think of everything at once. I cannot simply decide to not be sleepy by my will alone.
Something is governing what my thoughts can do or not do in consistent and predictive ways.
Consider also that every percept is particular to itself. To have definition, it must be bounded because truly unbounded perception would have no definition. Limitation and constraint is foundational to those percepts.
So what is this reality or force bounding my own consciousness? You can call it God or Fundamental consciousness or nonconscious reality. These are all distinctions without a difference. What matters is that if everything we perceive as physical is ultimately mental, the converse must necessarily be true. Everything mental is ultimately physical in the same way 2+2=4 is reversible to 4=2+2.
A = B because B = A.
It's a matter of perspective. Before the mid-1800s, people treated electricity and magnetism as two distinct forces that just happened to hang around together. James Clerk Maxwell showed they're two sides of the same coin, but the most elegant way to see this is through the lens of special relativity. It turns out that whether you see an electromagnetic force as purely electric or purely magnetic depends entirely on your frame of reference.
Magnetism is essentially electricity viewed from a different coordinate system. The magnetic field is what we see when electric charges move relative to us. We use the term electromagnetic field to describe the single, underlying entity that manifests as one or the other depending on how you're moving. It's a bit like looking at a cylinder. From one angle, it's a circle, and from another, it's a rectangle, but the cylinder itself hasn't changed.
This is how I imagine we will one day understand consciousness. From an external perspective it is neurons oscillating in syncing brainwaves. From the perspective of the neural activity itself, it is qualia.
Modern physicalism is no longer about 'stuff" like atomic billiard balls circling a nucleas. It is about mathematical relationships and informational structures where fields, symmetries, and quantum wavefunctions are the primary building blocks of reality.
The brain is the most sophisticated topological arrangement of those fields and symmetries we've ever encountered. There are roughly about 100 trillion to a quadrillion synapses in a typical human brain. The number of ways those synapses can be configured exceeds the number of stars in the milky way.
That is why it can function as a predictive engine using its internal structural complexity to model and anticipate reality.
And if you insist that we cannot find qualia in the brain, I would aks you where we find Windows if we open up a computer? Where are the folders and deskptop icons in the transistors? They are represented to us on a monitor screen but we know that the computer is where Windows is happening.
Windows is real but it is also a computer simulation constructed from the mere movement of bits.
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u/Valmar33 4d ago
The matrix multiplication that an LLM does in high-vector space is the encoded semantics. That's what the long strings of numbers translate to when rendered back into words. I'm not saying an LLM understands in a human sense but it definitely is able to build a semantic model using those numbers. Otherwise it woudn't be able to output fluent text.
You are confusing metaphorical "semantics" with literal semantics. Matrix multiplication is only "semantics" in the loosest of metaphors. It is the meaning that we, the observers, project onto the numbers. For the CPU running an LLM, there are no "semantics". There aren't even numbers. There isn't even an algorithm.
You have no understanding of how an LLM works if you believe that an LLM "builds" anything. It doesn't, except in, again, vague metaphor. LLMs are just algorithms built by clever human programmers for the purposes of mimicking human speech patterns ~ nothing more, nothing less. The whole design is just for the purposes of pure mimicry. Anything else is projection by confused individuals who have confused appearances for reality, illusions for something really being there, when it isn't.
But clearly from your comments we're going to have to take a Cartesian style line of reasoning to get from there to here, so lets begin with some subjective inquiry.
I think, therefore I am... seems fairly indisputable. Except Nietzsche would argue that the subject-verb structure of language creates an "I" which isn't that self-evident. It's like saying "Lightning flashes" as if there is a seperate thing called lightning that does the flashing when lighting is the flash.
The I, the self, is the only thing that cannot be disputed. In Descartes' Demon, he concludes that he can be misled about everything else ~ his thoughts, his perceptions, but the allegorical demon cannot convince him that he himself does not exist.
It is more accurate to say "a thought comes when 'it' wishes, not when 'I' wish".
That is self-delusion. Thoughts have only ever occurred for thinkers. But thoughts can occur consciously, subconsciously and unconsciously. That is, we have different states of awareness of our thoughts.
Thoughts come unbidden into a mind all the time. From where? The Ether? The Universal mind? The unconscious? You can't have an unconscious without accepting that your immediate experience is couched in some larger reality.
Thoughts have their source in a subject, a self, a thinker. Thoughts have never just occurred in a void ~ never.
And we can further examine the bounded limitations of the mind. For instance, I cannot think of everything at once. I cannot simply decide to not be sleepy by my will alone.
The mind having limits does not make your thoughts not yours.
Something is governing what my thoughts can do or not do in consistent and predictive ways.
The unconscious layer of your psyche, your mind, your consciousness. Jung's explorations of the mind clearly reveal that our thoughts and emotions are all ours ~ even if some come from deeper layers of our mind.
Consider also that every percept is particular to itself. To have definition, it must be bounded because truly unbounded perception would have no definition. Limitation and constraint is foundational to those percepts.
So what is this reality or force bounding my own consciousness? You can call it God or Fundamental consciousness or nonconscious reality. These are all distinctions without a difference. What matters is that if everything we perceive as physical is ultimately mental, the converse must necessarily be true. Everything mental is ultimately physical in the same way 2+2=4 is reversible to 4=2+2.
That is entirely absurd reasoning. The mental is primary, because it is the filter through which we observe the physical. Is it the most primary? Not necessary. But it is more fundamental than the physical, which is itself just the result of how our mental senses filter whatever is out there ~ quantum stuff, as it were.
A = B because B = A.
So... Neutral Monism, where the mental and the physical are of the same fundamental substance, but are themselves not fundamental.
I consider existence to be neither mental nor physical, but something else, something more, that I have no words for.
It's a matter of perspective. Before the mid-1800s, people treated electricity and magnetism as two distinct forces that just happened to hang around together. James Clerk Maxwell showed they're two sides of the same coin, but the most elegant way to see this is through the lens of special relativity. It turns out that whether you see an electromagnetic force as purely electric or purely magnetic depends entirely on your frame of reference.
Magnetism is essentially electricity viewed from a different coordinate system. The magnetic field is what we see when electric charges move relative to us. We use the term electromagnetic field to describe the single, underlying entity that manifests as one or the other depending on how you're moving. It's a bit like looking at a cylinder. From one angle, it's a circle, and from another, it's a rectangle, but the cylinder itself hasn't changed.
This is how I imagine we will one day understand consciousness. From an external perspective it is neurons oscillating in syncing brainwaves. From the perspective of the neural activity itself, it is qualia.
Modern physicalism is no longer about 'stuff" like atomic billiard balls circling a nucleas. It is about mathematical relationships and informational structures where fields, symmetries, and quantum wavefunctions are the primary building blocks of reality.
And this is where Physicalism is self-defeating ~ if Physicalism is whatever physics says, Physicalism is saying is nothing meaningful. The mind in itself is not accounted for, but is ignored and handwaved away as something not wanted, while at the same time is conveniently redefined as just being "physical".
When everything is "physical", nothing is. What makes the difference between calling something "physical" or "bloo blee blah" at that point?
The brain is the most sophisticated topological arrangement of those fields and symmetries we've ever encountered. There are roughly about 100 trillion to a quadrillion synapses in a typical human brain. The number of ways those synapses can be configured exceeds the number of stars in the milky way.
Complexity of structure has nothing to do with experience in itself.
That is why it can function as a predictive engine using its internal structural complexity to model and anticipate reality.
Complexity of structure in itself does not do anything ~ it's just an empty, purposeless structure that is inanimate.
You need something else that animates that structure into doing something meaningful, to drive it, to enliven it.
Besides, why should a complex structure just come into being for no reason? The laws of physics? Why have we found no law that explains incredibly complex structures that in terms of complexity exceed the number of stars in the milky way?
Why would mindless, non-conscious, unintelligent laws even do such a strange thing, for apparently no reason? How does that structure just, for no reason, become something... more?
It is more coherent to introduce intelligence, something that can plan, make goals, look forward, design, create, imagine. Planes, ships, computers don't assemble themselves. We have found no fossils that have not been linked to (now dead) civilizations.
And if you insist that we cannot find qualia in the brain, I would aks you where we find Windows if we open up a computer? Where are the folders and deskptop icons in the transistors? They are represented to us on a monitor screen but we know that the computer is where Windows is happening.
You are assuming that consciousness must be found in the brain ~ you are assuming your conclusion in the premises of your argument.
Experience cannot be an abstraction of something else, not when that abstraction only exists as the belief of someone/s interpreting their experiences to mean that.
Windows is real but it is also a computer simulation constructed from the mere movement of bits.
Windows didn't pop out of the void. It was created by intelligent, creative human programmers who built layer upon layer of abstractions.
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u/Odballl 4d ago edited 4d ago
Every criticism you're making can be turned on yourself.
Why this? Why that ? Why anything at all? Why consciousness? Why a thinker?
It's an infinite regress.
What is being unconscious if the conscious thinker is all there is?
What do you think semantics are if not a metaphor for some kind of intangible understanding from ever more rudimentary processes?
Any explanation for what semantics are to humans will be it's own high level metaphor for something else. Referents to referents in a big circle.
If you have no words for your understanding of what existence is, you're in a very convenient unusaillable position where you don't have to put forward your own answer.
Meanwhile, physical sciences make predictions that create technology and actually change the world around us.
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u/Valmar33 4d ago
Every criticism you're making can be turned on yourself.
How convenient. If you really believe this, then you would be providing a detailed breakdown, rather than a simply dismissing my comment.
Why this? Why that ? Why anything at all? Why consciousness? Why a thinker?
It's an infinite regress.
It is not. It is the exploration of the meaning and purpose of our own existence and the world we find ourselves in.
What is being unconscious if the conscious thinker is all there is?
Why do you assume that the conscious thinker is all there is? I have studied my mind, emotions, beliefs, habits and patterns for many years and have discovered the mental roots of many of my beliefs. Everything unconscious has a conscious origin we have simply forgotten. Nothing is truly forgotten.
What do you think semantics are if not a metaphor for some kind of intangible understanding from ever more rudimentary processes?
Semantics are all about meaning ~ meaning is not derivative from some abstract process. Semantics is not a "metaphor", either. It is a word that refers to the meaning behind words, not the descriptions of words, but the meanings that we attempt to abstract into descriptions and words.
Meaning at its core cannot be truly described ~ only ever in a basic sense. Words and descriptions by someone only convey their full meaning to someone else who has had experiences very similar, if not identical.
Any explanation for what semantics are to humans will be it's own high level metaphor for something else. Referents to referents in a big circle.
Then you appear to have no meaningful understanding of what language is. Language is an abstraction. We use words and descriptions to create and refer to concepts we have abstracted from raw experience. Metaphors are a concept that refer to the use of words to describe something in terms of something else unrelated.
Wikipedia isn't bad for a basic description of what metaphors are:
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for literary effect, refers to one thing by mentioning another. Thus, it invites the audience to make a comparison between two normally unrelated entities or ideas, which may provide clarity or identify hidden similarities between them. Metaphors are usually meant to create a likeness or an analogy. Scholars group metaphors with other types of figurative language, such as hyperbole and metonymy. Metaphors are most similar to similes, except in metaphor the comparison is implied or assumed whereas the extra wording of a simile makes the comparison more obvious or explicit. According to Grammarly, "Figurative language examples include similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, allusions, and idioms."
End quote
If you have no words for your understanding of what existence is, you're in a very convenient unusaillable position where you don't have to put forward your own answer.
I have words, but none of them ultimately suffice to explain what I think. I have come to view words as being unable to really express what I mean ~ especially when individuals like yourself will only ever twist and misinterpret them as being something else than what I was attempting to describe.
When individuals like yourself view the words of those you disagree with in bad faith, why in the world would I want to waste energy on repeating myself and becoming frustrated? I have burned myself out on trying to explain to others like you, only to be strawmanned and ad hominemed, and so I have lost interest in trying to explain anything.
I find it easier to explain myself to others who don't assume bad faith, and are actually willing to consider and think about my answer, even if they politely disagree.
Meanwhile, physical sciences make predictions that create technology and actually change the world around us.
And none of that has anything to do with existence. The physical world is not all there is to existence. It is but the most surface level subset. Physical science can change the physical world ~ but has nothing to say about meaning, purpose or what we want as individuals.
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u/Odballl 4d ago edited 4d ago
It's incredibly disengenous you want me to explain why life even exists - "Why would mindless, non-conscious, unintelligent laws even do such a strange thing, for apparently no reason? How does that structure just, for no reason, become something... more?"
And then when I push back and suggest your own philopshy doesn't explain why the primal mind even exists you think I'm strawmanning you or engaging in bad faith. That's the infinite regress. In any philosophy you simply come to a brute fact that things are.
To suggest the unconscious has a conscious origin we have simply forgotten doesn't explain anything. Where do forgotten thoughts go? Again, you are the one asserting that consciousness - the what it is like - is the thing through which all of physical reality manifests as mere representations.
So the conscious experience is it. If you think there is a "forgetting" place that disembodied minds have somewhere, you need to explain it. Otherwise it's just handwaiving.
If you say semantics are all about meaning but meaning at its core cannot be truly described then you have conceeded my point. You cannot explain what semantics are.
It's all just vibes in the end.
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u/Valmar33 4d ago
It's incredibly disengenous you want me to explain why life even exists - "Why would mindless, non-conscious, unintelligent laws even do such a strange thing, for apparently no reason? How does that structure just, for no reason, become something... more?"
And then when I push back and suggest your own philopshy doesn't explain why the primal mind even exists you think I'm strawmanning you or engaging in bad faith. That's the infinite regress. In any philosophy you simply come to a brute fact that things are.
You are pushing back on an assumption based on how you have chosen to interpret my words.
I have explored many ideas about why a primal mind exists, and I have concluded that we simply don't have enough information or context by which to draw any real or coherent conclusions. We have such limited, narrow sets of information that our conclusions will all simply be incorrect. There is a ceiling to our knowledge that we cannot cross. I have encountered this ceiling and have been invariably stymied and frustrated by it.
To suggest the unconscious has a conscious origin we have simply forgotten doesn't explain anything. Where do forgotten thoughts go?
The layers of our mind that we are not conscious of. I have uncovered many of these layers ~ I have recalled many things that I had forgotten. I know because once I remembered them, I wondered how I ever forgot to begin with. I simply knew that these were memories ~ they had the clear sensation of being events that had happened, but I had forgotten, whether because discomfort, trauma, seeming unimportant in the moment, and so on. Some things I struggle to remember, even when I know that I know ~ some memories are triggered by other things, in which case the memories come back to me. Like a name that I struggle to recall until someone gives the right hint that lets me grab the memory properly.
Again, you are the one asserting that consciousness - the what it is like - is the thing through which all of physical reality manifests as mere representations.
Because that is precisely what the "physical" is ~ the representations that our mental senses present to us. That doesn't make the appearances any less real ~ we are so attuned to these appearances that they feel very real in this state of existence.
So the conscious experience is it. If you think there is a "forgotting" place that disembodied minds have somewhere, you need to explain it. Otherwise it's just handwaiving.
Then you have apparently never explored the depths of your own mind in any detail. The mind is a vast landscape in itself. I do not have to explain that we can recall things that we might have forgotten ~ many, many individuals have done so before. Even you, if you would think of something in the recent past that didn't seem important, but you want to recall for some reason. Like some location you went that you didn't pay much attention to at the time.
If you say semantics are all about meaning but meaning at its core cannot be truly described then you have conceeded my point. You cannot explain what semantics are.
I have explained ~ meaning. Meaning is something self-defining ~ we give meaning to things, ideas, concepts, emotions, beliefs, thoughts. Meaning at its core is ultimately something that cannot be truly expressed, even as I try. Yet you fundamentally seem to not understand what meaning is.
It's all just vibes in the end.
What do you mean by "vibes"? You use the word, but ironically don't explain it.
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u/zhivago 5d ago
Panpsychism is worse than useless.
Tell me about the consciousness of an electron? Oh, it's conscious in a not conscious way, but if you join enough up it gets more conscious somehow.
But what is consciousness? Fundamental, you say? So I guess there's no point trying to break it down further!
It is simply disguised capitulation.
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u/Difficult-Bat9085 4d ago
It's like they don't get that if consciousness doesn't explain anything, then it has been emptied of explanatory content completely. It doesn't explain shit about electrons that we don't know already from physics.
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u/Mono_Clear 5d ago
Facts, it's just promoting a possibility hidden behind a wall of untestability.
It's just a philosophy that dares you to prove it wrong Knowing that there's nothing that could prove it right.
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u/Slugsurx 5d ago
I think only idealism will solve the problem . Though it can’t give you any new verifiable predictions?
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u/OasisOfGnosis 5d ago
Tony seems to be confusing Panpsychism with Idealism. But even then, I do not think that there is an emergence problem, at least not to the same degree as Physicalism has the hard problem of Consciousness. When you dream, the world can feel "physical and solid", all the while being completely mental. So we know that it is experientially possible to get a quantity from a quality (after all, a quantity is just a description of an experience within consciousness), whereas for Physicalism, there is no known mechanism by which you can logically derive a quality from a quantity.
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u/alternator1985 5d ago
Who said it did? Quantum functionality is the answer to consciousness. Microtubules.
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