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15015580 No.15015580 [Reply] [Original]

I've been thinking a lot about the hard problem of consciousness. In particular, the panpsychist/panexperientialist view supported by Alfred North Whitehead, Galen Strawson, Spinoza, etc has captured my attention as a compelling solution.

For the uninitiated, panpsychism essentially asserts that consciousness (or merely experience) manifests ubiquitously through reality, in particles, organisms, and possibly higher level systems such as ecosystems, societies, and celestial phenomena.

From what I can gather, there don't seem to be any proposed solutions to the hard problem outside of panpsychism, eliminative materialism, or possibly an esoteric kind of enactivism put forward by Francisco Varela et al.

Despite some minor internal issues with panpsychism such as the combination problem (which I argue does not arise in the Whiteheadian process philosophy formulation of panpsychism), the view seems to neatly address many of the issues in the philosophy of mind compared to the competing views.

Is there anyone on this board that knows anything about this material and wants to have a conversation? This stuff is really fascinating, and I'm trying to inch my way towards a position on the hard problem.

>> No.15015650

>>15015580

God this is such a verbose way of describing really simple concepts it reminds me why I hate so much of philosophy.

For thousands of years people have been noting a life-force to permeate through all beings and endow them with various "consciousness" or vitality, in Yoruba it's called Ase. Each culture describes this in different degrees of complexity, and the tradition you're referencing seems to take it to a more analytical note than most. Sure it's dazzling and something to ponder but it truly irks me that ancient truths can float around for centuries until some European takes a hold and over-complicates it when people have known it intuitively for ages. Don't get me wrong I see the appeal but I can't overlook the sheer pointlessness of it half the time this happens.

>> No.15015689

>>15015650
We have lost that intuitive view of the world, so I don't blame modern people for having to wade through the swamp of western philosophy and verbosity to rediscover it. It's actually amazing how far we have strayed from our roots in terms of thinking.

>> No.15015696

>>15015650
thanks for rephrasing it I was reading OP and thinking "what the fuck does this shit mean, is it really this fucking complicated"

>> No.15015707

Can you ask the question in two sentences or less? Then I'll be happy to answer

>> No.15015723

>>15015580
Positions on the Hard Problem fall into the following categories:

50% Fundamentally misunderstand (see: the concerning number of individuals who argue consciousness doesn't exist)

20% Inconsistent mystical or emergent nonsense

10% Panpsychism

10% Panpsychism but don't want to admit it

>> No.15015729

>>15015723
>people believe consciousness doesn't exist
how does that argument work?

>> No.15015748

>>15015729
they dont read guenon (pbuh)

>> No.15015754

>>15015580
I find the idea of panpsychism interesting but I don't understand fully yet
does it mean all things are sentient but in different degrees?

>> No.15015777

A pretty interesting take is Bernardo Kastrup's consciousness only ontology. A form of idealism, he theorizes that consciousness is the only thing that actually is. We don't have access to other consciousnesses because we're dissociated alters of the universal consciousness he calls mind-at-large. A pretty wacky collorary to it is that there is something it is like to be the universe: what we call the material world is how mind-at-large looks like from outside of it.

It sounds implausible, but it does have the advantage of asserting there is only one kind of stuff, as opposed to physicalism, which in asserting only matter and energy are real, leaves one with no actual explanation for what consciousness is, as consciousness does not reduce down to atoms/photons/etc.

You should read Thomas Nagle's What is it like to be a bat? if you haven't yet, and you also probably can get a lot more out of philosophy now, given the mystery of mind has been pretty central to most of it.

Religion also makes a lot more sense once one has digested just how bizarre consciousness is. I know the Bhagavad Gita made a lot more sense after I really internalized the hard problem, and this also really clicked:

https://realization.org/p/ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakra-gita.html

>> No.15015782

>>15015777
isn't that just cogito ergo sum again

>> No.15015783

>>15015650
>Click here
This is stupid shit right here. Panpsychism may be describing something that has been described for a long time, but that is not all it is doing. It is a field of philosophy which seeks to make this concept of consciousness valid, though deduction and experimentation. If you don't have that, there is nothing but intuition holding your view. Panpsychism is probably wrong but regardless you clearly know nothing about it and are just digging philosophy for no good reason

>> No.15015796

>>15015729
It's a hardcore physicalist perspective. Having asserted for more than a century that only that which is empirically observable is real, some scientists when faced with the fact consciousness is not observable, choose the conclusion that consciousness must not exist.

It's understandable in a sense: asserting that things that are not empirically observable are real is a Death of God level event, a real coup de grace to basically all of modernity and post-modernity.

>> No.15015810

>>15015796
what is consciousness then, according to that worldview?
never been into philosophy so I'm quite retarded sorry

>> No.15015819

>>15015783

Let me rephrase that for you: A group of intellectuals have decided that phenomenon can only be legitimate under specific criteria and have taken it upon themselves to prove the truth of this...to themselves.

Stop thinking Western epistemology is the only "valid" system because it's the most edified. It's a self-disservice if you rely on Western analytical systems to verify your intuitions for you. No one ever arrived at truth waiting for science to catch up to what they understood innately. Western epistemology is not a "universal", it only claims to be.

>> No.15015820

>>15015782
It's not entirely novel. It draws immensely from eastern philosophy. Descartes was a dualist though, while Kastrup is proposing a monism.

>> No.15015824

>>15015810
Different guy, but Daniel Dennett was a major proponent of this view, and he basically claims that consciousness is an elaborate illusion and that it boils down to neurological processes

>> No.15015830

>>15015810
Daniel Dennet, the main proponent of this view, calls consciousness an illusion. Which is profoundly silly of course: what is perceiving the illusion other than a consciousness?

>> No.15015861

>>15015810
It's nothing to the eliminative materialists. They outright deny the idea that people are having experiences and that we are equivalent to machines (or that consciousness is an illusion). And when faced with things like qualia (the experience of seeing blue or the sensation of pleasure/pain) they simply deny its reality since it's, to them, not empirical. It honestly seems to take consciousness so much for granted that it doesn't occur to them how odd it is that anything is (seemingly) experiencing anything.

>> No.15015887

>>15015819
I never assumed that. Strawman already. I explained the basic reason why this is not just a pretentious rephrasing of woo and intuition. gtfo

>> No.15016033

>>15015861
reminds me of some buddhists desu

>> No.15016045
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15016045

>>15015580
Why do you type like that?
>For the uninitiated
go back
>et al.
nigga this isn't your works cited. also
>Spinoza
lmao. go read ibn arabi and the sufis; the hard problem is an analytic fable that whines about how science can't come to the conclusions the ancients already had sorted out.

>> No.15016053

>>15015650
didn't read the thread before I responded. fpbp

>> No.15016064

>>15015689
bruh what the fuck is the intuitive view of the world. shitty beliefs you come up with when you're a retarded 12 year old don't count for shit buddy :).

>> No.15016075

Panpsychism is a poor man's attempt at non dualism/pantheism. It is all crap anyway. Non dualism doesn't make any sense.

>> No.15016175

>>15016075
>Non dualism doesn't make any sense.
The vast majority of the time when people are asked what their issue with it is it turns out to be some misconception resulting from them not actually having studied the primary texts involved. There are many many pages of writing where they anticipate and answer every single objection or point of confusion imaginable.

>> No.15016182

>>15016175
>There are many many pages of writing where they anticipate and answer every single objection or point of confusion imaginable.
Every philosophy does that. It's called sophistry.

>> No.15016193

>>15016175
What convinced you that it's the right cosmovision?

>> No.15016214

>>15016193
Reading the Ashtavakra Gita already linked by someone else in this thread gave me my first intuitional understanding of it, reading Shankara made me realize how logical it was, and then when I started to read various Sufis, Christian mystics, etc it became obvious to me that countless people from around the world throughout history had arrived at practically the same conclusions and that they had good reasons for doing so

>> No.15016349

>>15016214
It all lies in their understanding of the tripartite notion of being. Mainly the central unity of the intellect as in ibn Rushd. It doesn't make it right, but as any atheist is bound to become a theist, any non-dualist is bound to become a dualist.

>> No.15016709

>>15015580
>consciousness (or merely experience) manifests ubiquitously through reality, in particles, organisms, and possibly higher level systems such as ecosystems, societies, and celestial phenomena.


yes it does and it's not a good thing.

>> No.15016714

>>15015887
hes right

>> No.15016906

>>15015580
I think the most elegant solution to the hard problem is cosmopsychism (idealism). And then if you try to account for the fine tuning problem, you end up with panentheism. I write about this stuff at psychedral.com

>> No.15016919

>>15015650
I love AAVE. All light bulbs will see themselves speedily replaced by our bright pineal flourescence beaming from our teeth and palms and making the mayonnaise jars and snowmen shamble back into their arboreal caves and swamp gutties. The thing about AFRICAN philosophy is that you can feel the RYTHM of the thought, a lot better the foggy limp dick European philosophy

>> No.15016968

>>15016919
racism, looks like you got Egg on your face, mayo boy

>> No.15016982

https://discord.gg/FFwRXKq

>> No.15017180

>>15016919

What are you even talking about? Obviously African Traditional Religion and philosophy is based on intuition like every ancient religion. Modern African philosophy doesn’t eschew Western influence and is in fact largely materialist and analytical. It’s really in America that you get black Americans who attempt to synthesize the intuitive with the analytical for a post-colonial epistemology. But that’s beside the point, plenty of European philosophy is valuable and obviously a large chunk of it is hardly analytical at all, but concepts like what’s described in this post specifically are just redundant in the context of philosophy on a global level. That concept of Ase with the Yoruba is also found in Native American cultures and many Eastern as well. Now when you get someone like Hegel, for example, who takes the old truths and attempts to build upon them (I.e elaborating on Spirit) then something valuable is done. But if you just regurgitate traditional wisdom into useless analytical terms so all the bougie academics can like it you’re just wasting time. Somehow you got it in your head that I was asserting intuitive traditions unanimously above the analytical and I guess that’s your trigger? Whatever just read more.

>> No.15017717

>>15016349
It doesn't sound like you know what you are talking about desu

>> No.15017956

>>15016064
Your beliefs will die with the boomers :)

>> No.15017989

I see this universe as a little bitty thing in the vast Cosmos of minds. societies and various groups being conscious is like them forming an angel due to do their collectivity which is something swedenborg talked about. Even two people that are very close can form another kind of being. in Christianity you get this idea of a body of Christ of many members. Probably some groups of angels listed in the New Testament like principalities could be a collection of certain like-minded Minds which form a big enough group to have an influence over others. My vision of reality was one of a complex interweaving of various kinds of unions of which is too hard to describe but I think a psychedelic trip might be able to express it. I'm thinking that science studying occultism will reveal more about reality eventually. Reality is Stranger than just plain old materialism.

>> No.15018008

The only scientist guy that I know that is trying to take occult-like phenomenon seriously is Rupert sheldrake. He has some interesting theories such as morphological Fields I think it was called.

>> No.15018057

>>15018008
Oh here is a quote from Rupert that speaks about his morphic thing.
>Horgan: I admit that I'm still not sure what morphic resonance is. Can you give me a brief definition?

>Sheldrake: Morphic resonance is the influence of previous structures of activity on subsequent similar structures of activity organized by morphic fields. It enables memories to pass across both space and time from the past. The greater the similarity, the greater the influence of morphic resonance. What this means is that all self-organizing systems, such as molecules, crystals, cells, plants, animals and animal societies, have a collective memory on which each individual draws and to which it contributes. In its most general sense this hypothesis implies that the so-called laws of nature are more like habits.

>> No.15018139

>>15015689
This, the point is that this perennial truth is necessarily formulated for different circumstances and times, western philosophy has to work out its own issues.

>> No.15018157

>>15017180
>Now when you get someone like Hegel, for example, who takes the old truths and attempts to build upon them (I.e elaborating on Spirit) then something valuable is done. But if you just regurgitate traditional wisdom into useless analytical terms so all the bougie academics can like it you’re just wasting time
Please explain how Hegel is *not* regurgitating traditional wisdom into analytical terms for bougie academics?

>> No.15018257

>>15018157

He is, but the word “just” is crucial, hence I specified his elaboration on Spirit as valuable. If there is a unique, truth-adjacent (and that is ofc disputable) quality to what’s being developed then regardless of its class affiliation it can be made useful. Otherwise what’s the point?

>> No.15018595

>>15015824
>>15015830
From what I understand, Dennett, along with many other "illusionists" don't actually believe that consciousness doesn't exist; they claim that what they actually mean when they call consciousness an "illusion" is that our phenomenal experiences aren't an accurate representation of the underlying physical phenomena in the brain which "cause" those sensations. Which is true but also utterly trivial and completely unrelated to the mind-body problem they keep harping on about.

>> No.15018730

>>15016033
Buddhists don't deny the idea of consciousness. They just don't believe it to have self-nature, which I do agree with (but that is a whole other discussion). They actually have a term for it: vinnana.

>> No.15018736

>>15018595
Yea it seems kind of like a word game being played to hold on to a pure materialist worldview. Which isn't to say it's not a valid view, some people just take it too far.

>> No.15018963

Schopenhauers philosophy directly answers the hard problem and could be considered adjacent to panpsychism. (The world as Will)

For Schopenhauer the principium individuationis (principle of individuality) is constituted of time and space, being the ground of multiplicity. But I guess that is addressing the problem of other minds.

>> No.15018978

>>15018730
Many schools of Buddhism do however deny that there is a persistent witness or self, which to me does not align with how we actually experience our awareness as a continuum

>> No.15019316

>>15018257
>I specified his elaboration on Spirit as valuable
I'm asking why you think his elaboration of Spirit is valuable

>> No.15020237

Any dualists in tonight?

>> No.15020367
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15020367

>>15020237
I'm multidimensionalist

>> No.15020419

>>15016182
>well argued points are sophistry
lmfao

>> No.15020763

>>15017717
why?

>> No.15021038

>>15019316

It's a means by which we can understand the metaphysical structure of history and therefore study the psychic influences that advance and oppress different civilizations. Consciousness of these factors give us an easier time for solving many of the existential crises people / communities undergo at a given time, which of course grants us a higher potential for taking care of and nurturing our fellow man.

>> No.15021099
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15021099

>>15016214
>>15016349
>>15017717
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism
>Even though neoplatonism primarily circumscribes the thinkers who are now labeled Neoplatonists and not their ideas, there are some ideas that are common to neoplatonic systems, for example, the monistic idea that all of reality can be derived from a single principle, "the One".
>Neoplatonism also had a strong influence on the Perennial philosophy of the Italian Renaissance thinkers Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, and continues through nineteenth-century Universalism and modern-day spirituality and nondualism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy
>The Perennial philosophy (Latin: philosophia perennis),[note 1] also referred to as perennialism and perennial wisdom, is a perspective in spirituality that views all of the world's religious traditions as sharing a single, metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine has grown.

>Perennialism has its roots in the Renaissance interest in neo-Platonism and its idea of the One, from which all existence emanates. Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) sought to integrate Hermeticism with Greek and Jewish-Christian thought,[1] discerning a Prisca theologia which could be found in all ages.[2] Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) suggested that truth could be found in many, rather than just two, traditions. He proposed a harmony between the thought of Plato and Aristotle, and saw aspects of the Prisca theologia in Averroes (Ibn Rushd), the Quran, the Kabbalah and other sources.[3] Agostino Steuco (1497–1548) coined the term philosophia perennis.[4]

>A more popular interpretation argues for universalism, the idea that all religions, underneath seeming differences, point to the same Truth. In the early 19th century the Transcendentalists propagated the idea of a metaphysical Truth and universalism, which inspired the Unitarians, who proselytized among Indian elites. Towards the end of the 19th century, the Theosophical Society further popularized universalism, not only in the western world, but also in western colonies. In the 20th century universalism was further popularized in the English-speaking world through the neo-Vedanta inspired Traditionalist School, which argued for a metaphysical, single origin of the orthodox religions, and by Aldous Huxley and his book The Perennial Philosophy, which was inspired by neo-Vedanta and the Traditionalist School.

IS THIS A GUENON?

>> No.15021121
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15021121

>>15016214
>Shankara

Shankara is crypto-Buddhism and not really a good intro to Indian philosophy. I'd go for something closer to the Vedas, like Ramanuja or Bhaskara, even Madhva. Advaita can be interesting as a soft intro to Mahayana though, which it's 95% drawn from.

>> No.15021247

>>15015729
these guys are right >>15015824 >>15015830

read daniel dennett's "quining qualia" paper easily found online for a good summary of the physicalist position


>>15015777 good post

>> No.15021807

>>15015824
>he basically claims that consciousness is an elaborate illusion and that it boils down to neurological processes
Cant you use the same argument in reverse to say that rocks are consciousness and the illusion is the arbitrary human made distinction between us and rocks where physicalists are just knee jerk assuming that means they have experiences?