“The term panpsychism comes from the Greek pan ([πᾶν]): “all, everything, whole”) and psyche ([ψυχή]): “[soul], [mind]”);… more common terms now found in the literature include mind, [mental properties], mental aspect, and [experience]”.
Panpsychism holds that mind, or a mind-like aspect, is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality.
Or we will have to change the meaning of the word mind too.
Not sure if there is any point for projecting consciousness to lifeless objects reacting to physical force and energies. Consciousness is not meaningless physical reaction of lifeless objects. It is far more than that.
Yes. The exact definition of consciousness is widely debated, but if I had to intuitively describe what I mean when I believe myself to be conscious, I would say the following elements are essential:
Some kind of sensation that is experienced (seeing, hearing, or feeling your environment).
An ability to chain together multiple memories, so that there is a duration of experience.
Some self-awareness that you as an entity are a separate thing from your environment.
I am just arguing that what consciousness in all things is not some completely emergent property, but simply chains of reaction. These chains can form more complex, emergent systems. I think we can quantify the consciousness of anything in the universe using this idea. Obviously, I don’t have a formula yet, but it’s something that has been on my mind.
I mean there’s truth to that description.
Also, as the mind-body problem draws attention to, the experience element of consciousness is not exactly the same as the neural activity which generates it.
So if the neural signal is a consequence of molecular properties, and how different molecules interact with each other, then we might suppose that there is some sort of “phantom chemistry” which produces qualitative experience based on some hidden property that all particles have. A property which a panpsychist might call “mind”. It seems we start to get into the territory of completely untestable hypotheticals here, though.
Indeed! But I kinda like my approach. 
I think consciousness and thought are entirety different things. Someone has posted links to Mark Solms videos. I was watching this one, and disagree with him. At 2:36, he says:
There aren’t different forms of consciousness. There is consciousness - subjective experience - of different things. Different senses, in this example.
And I would love for someone to tell me about the “mechanism of consciousness”.
You know you are conscious, because you are having sensations. It’s not just things like photons hitting your retina, vibrations of air particles hitting your eardrum, molecules of specific shapes coming into contact with parts of your tongue, and ions passing through voltage-gated sodium channels in your neurons. Is that a description of qualia? Of consciousness by any definition?
There was an experience during those times. There just wasn’t awareness. They are different things. Our brain at those times is not active in ways that are experienced as awareness, or thinking, or feeling emotions.
I’m not going to pretend I can conceptualize, understand, or describe the subjective experience of an electron. It seems as bizarre to me as it does to anyone. But if it’s not there, then there’s no reason it would pop into being at any point.
Think of mass. What is the mass of a proton? Google says it is 1.67262192 × 10^-27 kg. Huh??? What kind of scale did they use to measure that? It’s impossible to try to imagine such a measure of mass. It’s nonsense. But if elementary particles do not have mass, then how do macro things? Do we think mass just pops into existence when you have a bunch of massless particles? Of course not.
I am arguing back that consciousness is a property of living agent. Conscious agents can do far more than blind physical reaction to physical force applied to them.
Conscious agents can communicate, interact, desire, pretend not being conscious, and also wake from being unconscious etc etc.
Consciousness also evolves from basic awareness to highly sophisticated intelligence from learning and living in the world.
Amoeba can interact and detect warm and cold, light and dark, but they are not regarded as being conscious.
Claiming walls and electrons are conscious sounds poetic metaphor in the fictions.
I disagree. I don’t think it’s a different kind of consciousness. I think it’s consciousness of a different kind of thing. A tree, as opposed to a person.
The analogy I’ve tried to use is vision. Looking at a blank white sheet of paper is not a different kind of vision than looking at the Grand Canyon, or someone you love, or anything else. We don’t have "blank white paper vision “, “Grand Canyon vision”, wife vision”, etc. The vision is the same, it’s just a different thing you’re looking at.
Really? I disagree.
I mean, these are patterns that we give names, but I still think they are just blind physical reactions.
You can give any names to anything in the world, but that would be your subjectivity with perhaps very little minority number of folks agreeing to it?
In my opinion, there is no evidence, reason or rational meaning to say physical objects or plants are conscious. But then I would like to remain open minded on these issues for the sake of educating myself even with the disagreeable ideas, if there is a possibility for interesting arguments supporting it.
It seems needing more robust and concrete argument for being a credible idea than just saying whatever reacts to force is a sign of being conscious.
What if the agreed upon words and ideas are wrong? People distinguished space and time for most of history. I would bet the vast majority of people still do. I do, even though I know better. It seems obvious. And it doesn’t make any difference in daily life.
But it’s wrong. And the mistake prevented us from understanding other very important things for a very long time.
What if some commonly held ideas about consciousness, ideas that we’ve had for millennia, and which are woven into our language, are wrong? Existism can’t prove his idea about consciousness. I can’t prove mine. But nobody else can prove theirs. Without proof, we all just choose the one that makes sense to us.
Maybe laying the generally accepted and understood meanings aside for a while will let us progress in some way.
Putting aside generally accepted concepts, what language are you intending to communicate in? Space and time, while they may not mean what we thought, are still understood by everyone. And if you simply say our understanding of time is wrong and propose eliminating this word from use, then no one will arrive on time anywhere because they won’t be able to agree on time. If you want to say that the use of the word “consciousness” is an error, then prove it. There is the word “reaction.” Why should the word “consciousness” be given the SAME meaning as the word “reaction”? For what?
Newton discovered that the same laws apply on Earth and in the heavens. Before him, people thought the two areas were governed by different laws. Turns out gravity works the same everywhere. People had made a mistaken distinction.
I think that’s what we’re talking about here. If Existism is correct, than we have been thinking of one thing as though it is two, and our language grew within that mistaken thought. It it’s a mistake, then it should be corrected. The inconvenience doesn’t matter.
Obviously, there’s no justification for trying to change how we use these words at the moment. Some evidence would be nice. But, considering the lack of evidence for any other theory of consciousness, it’s worth trying to view things this way, and see what might come of it.
So you believe there’s no difference between a conscious person and someone in a coma or under general anesthesia? And if there is a difference between these states, what do you propose calling it?
I don’t understand. Of course there’s a difference. The brain activity between the two is very different.
It’s not just brain activity. There are also easily understood subjective sensations and behavioral reactions that are visible even without special measurements. For example, a person hears what is said to them, sees and recognizes objects, and reacts appropriately. If you recall yourself in a state of deep, dreamless sleep, then in a waking state, you will understand that in the first case, there is no perception of the world at all, while in the second, a person develops a coherent picture of the world. When a person is asleep or under anesthesia, some reactions are retained; that is, they still have reactions. But there is no coherent picture of the world in the head—what we have always called consciousness. You propose equating consciousness and reactions. Let’s assume you have done so. But then how would you describe in other words a person without a coherent picture of the world in their mind? We say they lack consciousness, but they still have reactions. But if you equate these concepts, how would you describe such a state?
First things first. No, I do not. I believe @Existism is the one proposing this. I’m just trying to explain how I think it might be viewed.
I didn’t intend what I said to be an exhaustive list of the differences between someone who is awake and someone who is asleep/in a coma/under general anesthesia. You said I believe there is no difference. That is false, and I mentioned a huge difference.
You equate consciousness with mental activity. I do not, and I don’t think Existism does, either, even if we have different ideas about the nature of consciousness. I believe consciousness is present even when there is no coherent picture of the world in mind.
This is false. It’s like saying movement is the same thing as the muscle causing it.
A reaction is not consciousness, but is a result, or the output, of consciousness -
stimulus > conscious analysis and synthesis involved in decision making > response
I would hardly call the vastly complex electro-chemistry of neural circuits in a brain “nothing”
I understand your point. But the point is that we need a separate term to describe the phenomenon of subjectively representing a coherent picture of the world. Traditionally, this is precisely what people call consciousness in different languages. We need this term precisely to distinguish between a person whose perception of the world is distorted and a person who does have it. Just as we need to distinguish between an animal that exhibits behavior that indicates the presence or absence of such a picture in its perception.
Reactions to the surrounding world vary, I don’t dispute that. But the emergence of a subjective representation of the world is a very specific phenomenon that necessarily requires an unambiguous definition. If we don’t call it consciousness, then what should we call it?
“Conscious” is not a clearly defined term. Awake and conscious mean the same thing. Asleep, in a coma, and under general anesthesia all fall under the umbrella of unconscious.
But that’s not nearly the only way we use the word. Nagel’s “what it’s like” idea. Qualia. Thinking. Awareness. Sentience. Others. Not all of those are clearly defined, either.
So I don’t think it’s impossible for our messy communication to accommodate Existism’s idea.
But, it is Existism’s idea. I got no dog in this race, so I’m not going to try to work it out in any detail. I think you’re all wrong, and wish you would all start using “consciousness” the right way! 