Yes, if “subject” is understood compatibly. Wittgenstein uses “metaphysical subject” or “philosophical I” to say basically what I am saying, at least as I interpret him.
The subject in this sense is the “presence” of a “streaming perspectival fragment” of the shared umvelt. But “subjective-as-consciousness” is weirdly intensely situated in “subject-as-flesh.” So the brain is obviously involved here. If the sentient creature is intensely social and linguistic, the shared umvelt is largely there in terms of the time-binding significance of signs, which are indeed empirical objects that play a special sign-like role.
‘Subject of experience’ - three words. In line with my post above — not necessarily conscious or sentient - not a subject in the same sense as the human subject. But not just an object, in the way stone is an object.
I’d put it this way. The being or presence of the world itself strangely “located.” As “pure consciousness” the “I” is just the presence of the world itself. But this “pure consciousness” is “from-the-POV” of an object ( organism ) in the world.
Our views may diverge on this point. To me, the “being” of the world is not “outside of” this “consciousness,” as if this “consciousness” was an emergent stuff “in” the world. Consciousness is being. Being is not a stuff. Consciousness as being is not “inside stuff.” The shared world itself is fundamentally “from a point of view.” So objects are fundamentally “fragmented.”
This approach is not compatible with the usual understanding of time as something global. It is not compatible with an absolute time in which “consciousness” emerges as one kind of stuff from a prior kind of stuff.
Even Peirce was already this radical. Heidegger is more explicit on focused on this issue, at least as I read him. Fasching pretty blatantly identifies consciousness with being, but I don’t recall him addressing what this implies about time and the structure of objects.
I’m not saying that you said it, just to be clear.
I just always emphasize it when I sketch my view, because I expect my sketch to be misread as just another flavor of “so the world is inside my pineal gland.”
As I currently understand your view, you are an indirect realist, more or less. Consciousness emerges at some point and imposes form on something otherwise mostly formless, but with enough form ( I presume ) to explain the emergence of consciousness.
Just to more exactly answer your question. The cat is there for the mouse. The mouse is there for the cat. But I don’t think the cat or the mouse is there for the cheese. The “being” of the cat and the cheese is “scattered” across or “as” the consciousness of all sentient entities that perceive them, etc. To oversimplify.
Basically there’s a “big picture” to be grasped and then the clean up of many details. Even if you or someone else doesn’t come to endorse the view, I think it’s a fun option to contemplate. But it’s so unlike the dominant approach that it’s not easy to get a handle on.
If I had to pick a single book that made it click for me, that would be Mach’s famous book, but studying phenomenology set me up for what I’d call a conceptual leap into a post-dualist framework.
Well, I prefer the term “panexperientialism” myself. This type of “experience” at the most fundamental level is non consciousness at least as process philosophy types use it. The term psychical is often used used to juxtapose physical, to indicate both the material and mental aspects of nature. Extensive use of the term “consciousness” leads to such objections as “rocks are conscious” or “electrons are conscious” which for most people sounds silly and leads to rejection of the notion out of hand. Unfortunately “everything is conscious” is often used as shorthand for panpsychism and that is very misleading as most lay persons understand the term.
Yes, you’re right about all of that. I was thinking I should not use the word panpsychism because of the etymology. But then I think of what Goff wrote In this article:
So he’s been using it the way I mean it since at least 2017.
Plus, those who don’t go along with the idea at all aren’t using the word in any way for their own purposes. So, while it would be nice if a different word had been chosen in the first place ("panexperientialism” is an excellent choice), it’s not like the way I want to define “consciousness” differently than the way most people have been thinking of it forever. Yeah, I think I’m right, but I know it’s unreasonable to expect the world to accommodate me. But those of us who think anything similar to the way I do can work with “panpsychism”, and everybody else will just call us crazy regardless of the term we use.
This seems as radical an emergence as that of (mind, experience, mentality, awareness, sentience, consciousness :pick your preferred term) from insentient inert matter or purely physical entities. It just places the ontological break at a different point in nature. It is still an extreme (read magical) rupture in the overall continuity of nature.
Discussing rocks, puddles, mud, sand, etc. as examples of “entities” attributed “consciousness” by panpsychism rather misses the point. These are all “simple aggregates” with no complex internal structure which would give them any kind of integrated information processing or presentation. Instead it is the more fundamental units of nature (particles to some: in my view an unfortunate terminology) which as active events are embedded in the totality of nature and in relationship to surrounding events and also caught in the flow of time and the active process of nature that possess the primitive form of “subjective grasping and feeling” prehension that ultimately can give rise to higher forms of mental function. There is a reason Whitehead called his system a “philosophy of organism”.
As for the phenomenologists and the notion of the shared “umvelt” common shared perceptual experience being all we can know of the world and the “lebenswelt” (lifeworld), I am far too much of a realist to confine myself to just the present texture of my sensory world. Yes we are thrown in the world “dasein” being in the world and nothing exists independently of the world from which it arises and on which it depends. The world is a process and we can “know” more of it than the skeptics (Hume, Kant and the whole school of phenomenology) would like to admit or allow. Our success in surviving and remaking the world indicates this and we assume much more in the daily process of living (hard core common sense beliefs: Griffin) than such philosophical musings allow.
Yes, if that’s what we are claiming. Which we are not. But, as I just posted, I know the world isn’t going to redefine consciousness for me. (Although it would be nice if there was any consensus on a definition, and it wasn’t covering as much ground as it does.)
If you equate “subjective experience or interiority” with “consciousness”, this works and many writing in the field of mind do just that but to the lay audience or even many posters in the forum that terminology just sounds “silly”.
If you think as I do, that reality is a process and the fundamental unit of reality are “events” (not particles, a particle is just the result of a measurement or interaction and a bit of an unfortunate term) then you are stuck with the flow of time (past, present and future) and how one event perishes and a new event forms. How novelty arises in nature and how the universe engages in creative advance. Deep contemplation of this problem led Whitehead (who never uses the term panpsychism or consciousness in his discussion of this) to the notion of prehension (primitive non conscious experience or relatedness to the larger reality). It also leads to unrealized potentials or possibilities (as eternal objects or forms) as the percussors of actuality, but that is for a different day.
It’s true. Although the lay audience and many posters in the forum should accept the definition of “panpsychism” that those of us who champion the view give them, instead of saying, “Because of the etymology, the word must mean that electrons and atoms can think, so your position is obviously wrong.”
Yes, that’s very good.
Yes. Although I guess it came about because of the way the universe presents itself to us. I think it’s important that it doesn’t present as a mental landscape, or whatever other ideas we might come up with that seem to be more in line with what is actually happening. But that aside, things consistently seem to be that way, and we can work with this view. Meaning thinking of water as particles called hydrogen and oxygen, with the hydrogen atoms arranged in a 104.5° angle works fine. In a practical sense, as the old saying goes, if you can’t tell the difference, what difference does it make? Not that I don’t think we should continue to try to get a better understanding of how things really are. It will surely have practical applications, but, imo, the pursuit of knowledge is its own reward.
When discussing these things language becomes a problem, one of the reasons Whitehead invented many new terms in his philosophy. Our everyday language centers around the notion of independent objects with inherent properties. " The ball is red" subject - adjective. The process view is that this is completely wrong even though it represents our everyday construction and notion of external reality.
There are no independent objects (everything depends on the reality in which it arises, on which it depends). There are no permanent objects (only the appearance of permanence due to repeating patterns of events). There are no inherent properties only relationships (measurements, sensory perceptual processing). All these things are part of nature, we do not artificially bifurcate or divide nature in our actual experience (seeing red is a “real” part or aspect of nature and should not be dropped out of our explanatory system as a “secondary” quality. This of course includes mind, sentience and consciousness, all parts of nature that require philosophical (even if not scientific explanation).
I read this as a conflation of life with consciousness.
Abiogenises references how inorganic matter became organic, asking how did the process of life and then evolution begin. Asking when did the rocks and debris of the universe start reproducing, growing, etc.
Panpsychism references all matter being consciousness regardless of whether it is living. Even if the rock were consciousness, that doesn’t suggest it’s alive and it would remain a mysterious event if the rock underwent abiogenesis, started reproducing and then evolving.
The point being that panpsychism, as a theory, doesn’t demand life. Pansychism would hold that the rocks on Mars were consciousness, but wouldn’t suggest there was life on Mars. The key to bringing life on Mars seems less related to the mysterious consciousness of its rocks, but instead to things like presence of water, the average temperature, types of elements available, etc.
There early earth when such transformations occurred was highly volatile and it is believed the first forms of life took place near some thermal vents underwater where conditions were right for basic chemistry to happen, biology occurred much later.
The grounds of chemistry the different make up of different material combined, reacted etc with each other forming different types of matter longer chemical chains etc so there was a huge step from non-organic to organic at some distant point in time.
So I’d say that matter itself could be conscious but it would also rely on external process which itself involves the transient nature of matter or transformation itself is a process
I’ve heard people explain consciousness as something that evolved because it gives a survival advantage, and is therefore selected for. My take on the idea of this thread is that it is possible that chemical processes that are not considered alive could be affected by consciousness in the same way chemical processes that are considered alive are. So those chemical processes evolved until life begins.
All that seems good to me, since I’m a panpsychist. But we don’t have any consensus on the definition of life, so it’s difficult to say where the cusp is.
I would use the term synergy to describe your last post. Chemical processes (or even consciousness) can affect matter. Just as thought itself can shape a piece of wood to give it form.
To give it life though is much more difficult which is why there’s still some mysteries regarding origin of life and consciousness.
I agree that the question of the emergence of life and the emergence of mind in nature are separate questions. There may of course be some relationship as all of nature is process and relatedness but most panpsychists would assert that some form of mind precedes life (as typically defined) .
I take issue with the assertion that “panpsychism would hold that the rocks on Mars were conscious” as this is a proposition that almost no serious or scholarly proponent would assert. Rocks and other simple aggregates would not have any form of integrated information or experience whereas the individual components elements of the rock would be held to have some form of primitive subjective individual experience (usually a form of primitive experience unlike any type of human consciousness). Again terminology in the philosophy of mind is a bit of a problem (shambles).
