Natural Selection Seems Insufficient

[Angrboda]

As to rocks being partially conscious, once you empty out the set of qualities a paradigm case of consciousness possesses, self-awareness, ability to reason, experience, memory, and so forth, it becomes clear that you're just applying the word consciousness to things regardless of whether they display the traits and qualities of consciousness.  You want to inherit the larger set of traits where you have evidence, and assume a minimum supposed set where the traits are absent.  This is using the word consciousness in different cases within the same argument as if they referred to the same thing, the same qualities, and the same processes when they clearly do not refer to the same phenomenon.  This is basic equivocation.  Consciousness means one thing when applied to a human, and something else when applied to a rock or a potato, or to undifferentiated matter.  This is the fallacy that grounds most panpsychism: the problem that the word and concept of consciousness is being used inconsistently, and therefore much of the claims are simply unsound.  Whatever it is that I am doing is definitely not the same thing that the rock is doing.  The only way around this is to assert it without evidence, that the rock and I share something even if you have no evidence for the claim that we do.

I am not getting your point here. You don't believe in differing degrees of self-awareness? Do you believe that plants are alive?
(A) Are plants as sentient as we are?
(B) Are plants the same as rocks in terms of sentiene?

You may disagree with my beliefs about sentience, but you haven't shown them illogical, implausible, or impossible. You just don't like my beliefs.  But I'm not sure why you think that your dislike of my beliefs is relevant to this debate.

I'm pointing to a structural deficiency in the way you are applying the concept of consciousness. It means different things at different times. That's equivocation, and until it's fixed, your words aren't worth anything. It has nothing to do with whether I like your ideas or not. It has to do with a problem in trying to stretch the one word to all these different things. At the end of the day, the word doesn't mean anything in your mouth because you've applied it to things for which the only evidence that your claim is valid is your say so. Panpsychism is neither here nor there with me. I simply don't find it coherent for the reason stated. Nor do I find ipse dixit arguments that a rock has some properties in common with me toward which the label consciousness can be meaningfully applied persuasive. There's a reason such arguments are considered fallacious. And to repeat a complaint which has already been lodged, it isn't my job to show that your ideas are implausible or impossible. I have shown that they are illogical. And your responses to that have been enlightening.