Panpsychism is not as crazy as it sounds.

[Coffee Jesus]

By random forces, we're actually talking about Darwinian selection, are we not? In which case, it makes sense that nature would select for intelligence but not necessarily consciousness (think computer).

I'm talking about other contributing factors besides natural selection and random mutation. These other "random forces" could be things like geography, climate, catastrophic events like meteors or hurricanes, the elemental composition of Earth, etc.

Whether or not consciousness is a local cosmic accident via the atoms that created the first life forms, that then evolved to produce brains like ours, or something deeply embedded in the fundamental structure of the Universe that guarantees it's arrival at some point in the history of time, seems like a pretty open ended question.

I'm not talking about the probability of life, but rather the probability of consciousness given that there is life. I'm suggesting that evolution doesn't necessarily lead to consciousness (although it does necessarily lead to intelligence), but it happened to in this instance because of extraneous factors.

[Chas]

By random forces, we're actually talking about Darwinian selection, are we not? In which case, it makes sense that nature would select for intelligence but not necessarily consciousness (think computer).

We're talking about other contributing factors besides natural selection and random mutation. These other "random forces" could be things like geography, climate, catastrophic events like meteors or hurricanes, the elemental composition of Earth, etc.

You seem not to understand natural selection. Those 'random forces' are part of the sieve that is natural selection.

[Coffee Jesus]

We're talking about other contributing factors besides natural selection and random mutation. These other "random forces" could be things like geography, climate, catastrophic events like meteors or hurricanes, the elemental composition of Earth, etc.

You seem not to understand natural selection. Those 'random forces' are part of the sieve that is natural selection.

Semantics.
You're right, but how natural selection did occur isn't necessarily how it had to occur.

[Mudhammam]

Whether or not consciousness is a local cosmic accident via the atoms that created the first life forms, that then evolved to produce brains like ours, or something deeply embedded in the fundamental structure of the Universe that guarantees it's arrival at some point in the history of time, seems like a pretty open ended question.

I'm not talking about the probability of life, but rather the probability of consciousness given that there is life. I'm suggesting that evolution doesn't necessarily lead to consciousness (although it does necessarily lead to intelligence), but it happened to in this instance because of extraneous factors.

I'm inclined to agree. What are your thoughts on this statement by Alan Watts (he was an ex-Anglican minister turned Eastern philosopher/popularizer in the West): "For if the behavior of an organism is intelligible only in relation to its environment, intelligent behavior implies an intelligent environment." I think he's equivocating on "intelligence," but more broadly speaking, in his "The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" (1966), he to some extent rightly makes an interesting plea for eliminating the distinction between self and world, writing: After all, your neurons are part of my external world, and mine of yours! All our insides are outside, there in the physical world. But, conversely, the outside world has no color, shape, weight, heat, or motion without "inside" brains. It has these qualities only in relation to brains, which are, in turn, members of itself. This leads him down into the line of thought that: "The fact that every organism evokes its own environment must be correct with the polar or opposite fact that the total environment evokes the organism. Furthermore, the total environment (or situation) is both spatial and temporal--both larger and longer than the organisms contained in its field. The organism evokes knowledge of a past before it began, and of a future beyond its death. At the other pole, the universe would not have started, or manifested itself, unless it was at some time going to include organisms--just as current will not begin to flow from the positive end of a wire until the negative terminal is secure. The principle is the same, whether it takes the universe billions of years to polarize itself into the organism, or whether it takes the current one second to traverse a wire 186,000 miles long." I'm not sure if Watts would be considered a panpsychist, but he seems awfully close.

[Coffee Jesus]

I think it's nonsense and/or out of context.

(although it does necessarily lead to intelligence)

I take that back. That was a strong statement.

[Mudhammam]

I think it's nonsense and/or out of context.

That's where all schisms seem to take root, though. What context is the proper text to understand the relation between the subjective and the objective, mind and matter?

(although it does necessarily lead to intelligence)

I take that back. That was a strong statement.

Indeed. But (slight off topic) doesn't the idea of a deterministic Universe imply fatalism, and in turn, the necessity of intelligence?

[Coffee Jesus]

I think it's nonsense and/or out of context.

That's where all schisms seem to take root, though. What context is the proper text to understand the relation between the subjective and the objective, mind and matter?

I called the quotes nonsense because they didn't make sense.

"The organism evokes knowledge of a past before it began, and of a future beyond its death. At the other pole, the universe would not have started, or manifested itself, unless it was at some time going to include organisms--just as current will not begin to flow from the positive end of a wire until the negative terminal is secure."

Language is a means to translate between two different perspectives, the subjective and the objective, but this guy is conflating our perspective on reality with reality itself. By this reasoning, I would be right to tell you that you will stop existing when I die.

I take that back. That was a strong statement.

Indeed. But (slight off topic) doesn't the idea of a deterministic Universe imply fatalism, and in turn, the necessity of intelligence?

Not if we're pretending that we don't know certain things, or imagining a hypothetical scenario in which things are different.

[Mudhammam]

That's where all schisms seem to take root, though. What context is the proper text to understand the relation between the subjective and the objective, mind and matter?

I called the quotes nonsense because they didn't make sense.

"The organism evokes knowledge of a past before it began, and of a future beyond its death. At the other pole, the universe would not have started, or manifested itself, unless it was at some time going to include organisms--just as current will not begin to flow from the positive end of a wire until the negative terminal is secure."

Language is a means to translate between two different perspectives, the subjective and the objective, but this guy is conflating our perspective on reality with reality itself. By this reasoning, I would be right to tell you that you will stop existing when I die.

That's a good point. I get the sense that someone of his viewpoint would argue that on one level reality would continue, but this is a level of reality that is akin to the biblical void, essentially indescribable. We might think of it as a reality of fields, rather than the concrete objects that we perceive via the human brain, itself an image that is created by the mind (as the addition of another "head" seems to lead us to an infinite regress of heads). I imagine this is why "mind" is so fundamental to this train of thought, because in some sense it seems to suggest that without mind there is nothing but energy and matter with no shape or form. It doesn't appear very far off from solipsism, which is why I find idealist philosophies misguided.

Indeed. But (slight off topic) doesn't the idea of a deterministic Universe imply fatalism, and in turn, the necessity of intelligence?

Not if we're pretending that we don't know certain things, or imagining a hypothetical scenario in which things are different.

But if outside our imagination, things couldn't be any different, then intelligence in the Universe seems to be an inevitable result once the initial quantum event sets the "cosmological constants," no?

[MJ the Skeptical]

Clearly minds are sparse in the cosmos so it's just bullshit to claim you are surrounded by them other than beings with brains. If you want to essentially call every object conscious, or smaller yet, every particle conscious, you're free to be wrong.

This comes down to being pseudoscience when analyzed. People want to cling to ideas like Panpsychism or Panantheism or interesting ideas in Quantum Physics to keep their beliefs of divinity "conscious"

[Mudhammam]

Divinity anywhere is nonsense let alone everywhere. If you want to essentially call every object conscious, or smaller yet, every particle conscious, you're free to be wrong.

This comes down to being pseudoscience when analyzed. People want to cling to ideas like Panpsychism or Panantheism or interesting ideas in Quantum Physics to keep their beliefs of divinity "conscious"

Divinity everywhere and within the nature of everything is pantheism.
Panpsychism is that the fundamental stuff of mind--which is not just electrochemical pulses but something more abstract, distinct from the physical, such as a thought of a pink elephant or a memory of a deceased family member--that IS a feature of the Universe as basic as gravity, and everything from the simplest forms of matter contain some form of it though it is realized by "us," our brain, our collection of cooperating and competing nerve cells, as conscious experience that emanates through countless, speedy neural firings

Where pantheism implies "soul" as this kind of deity, panpsychists are often naturalists in that mind is a natural phenomenon, not merely arising by natural law, but an integral law itself.