Panpsychism is not as crazy as it sounds.

[Mudhammam]

Panpsychism is basically the idea that all matter in some sense conscious. That's not to say that all matter has a mind, as that is obviously only true of brains. It's also not to say that all matter is aware or perceptive, in the way that we experience awareness and perception through visual experience and our brain processes. But consider the idea that all matter, ranging from particles to brains, have an experiential component, call it protophenomenal or protoexperiential or even protoconscniousness. It SOUNDS like a very absurd idea at first but this is why I don't think it should.

Even a materialist, as I presently consider myself to be, must account for the strange fact that the Cosmos IS in some sense Mind, that is through beings such as ourselves and of course throughout a grading spectrum on the evolutionary tree of life. At some point in evolution it seems that "consciousness," the ability to feel, entered the picture. Now as I see it, there are few different reasonable hypotheses to draw from this:

1) There is a fundamental law in Nature, like physical laws, that determines an experiential component, extrinsic to matter, to arise only when a certain kind of informational threshold is met, transmitted by and through a particular arrangement of functioning machines, such as neurons. Call it a psychophysical law. This law would dictate that when precise conditions are met, say it a biochemical structure (AI proponents might deny this requirement) organized in a specific way, arranged to interact with other biochemical structures, that is the overall mapping of a network of smaller systems (think brains), then consciousness emerges, ranging in quality depending on the preceding factors. For some, consciousness might be a very weak experience in comparison to ours, lacking in the richness and of course the analysis. At any rate, it seems like consciousness on this must be viewed as an emergent property which suggests a deeper underlying law on par with those of gravity and motion. That is to say, information, how certain particles interact (on the cellular level), has both a physical aspect and a phenomenal aspect. This is still monism and along the lines of some atheistic thinkers, such as Spinoza, who believed matter and mind were the same underlying "stuff" expressed in two different ways.

2. The other option I think is fascinating and not entirely implausible is that all matter has an instinsic experiential component, a degree of consciousness. Now that seems hard to believe but only if you imagine consciousness for a thermometer or an atom to be something like your consciousness. It wouldn't be. Those things likely don't feel anything that we would relate as feeling but in some sense, even the most faintest you can imagine, a feeling component exists within them. Perhaps it is only felt by a subject when other conditions are met at a higher level, perhaps a biochemical and/or informational organization one.

At any rate, I find subjectivity vs. objectivity one of the most amazing aspects of the Cosmos. There must be a materialist account for this and I'm beginning to find the common functionalist view misguided. Consciousness is not merely function, and if it is, what effect does it have on the physical that underlying "unconscious" (at least to us) neural processes cannot accomplish without any experiential aspect to it? Epiphenomenalism seems to run into a Darwinian problem. If consciousness is basically useless, perhaps a "byproduct" of other functions, why did/does evolution select for it? These are all questions I'm sure you have discussed countless times before but have you considered panpsychism?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Yes it is.

Boru

[Whateverist]

I'm all in favor of leaving room for mysteries which resist our powers to understand. But I don't think this everything is conscious. Perception and cognition only exists in the domain of organisms IMO. In as much as living things put themselves together in part from non-living things, you could say everything has the potential for consciousness by virtue of its ability to constitute a living organism. But then I think we have a level problem. In a multi-cell creature such as ourselves, the consciousness we experience seems to exist at the level of organs, not on a cellular level. How cells give up their independence to play a role in a collective of cells is nothing I know anything about. I do believe consciousness is fragmentary but I don't believe it derives from the suppressed consciousness of each cell. Do you?

There is a sense in which our being conscious and self-aware is at the same time consciousness of the cosmos itself. What else is there to be aware of except that which exists? But I don't imagine any mega-multi-cellular creature that exists in relation to us as the individual cells of our bodies exist to us. Do you?

What we can be sure of is that we at least are conscious as multi-cell animals. We don't know about what is below or beyond us, we only know what we experience. Still that is pretty cool.

[tor]

Is my table conscious?

[Heywood]

Is my table conscious?

In a certain sense your table is observant. A photon that hits it will it in a particular place. For that to happen an "observation" has to be made to collapse the wave function.

[tor]

Is my table conscious?

In a certain sense your table is observant. A photon that hits it will it in a particular place. For that to happen an "observation" has to be made to collapse the wave function.

Do you understand what you're saying or you just say things without knowing what they are?

[Mudhammam]

In as much as living things put themselves together in part from non-living things, you could say everything has the potential for consciousness by virtue of its ability to constitute a living organism.

Doesn't that suggest something like a fundamental psychophysical that our current understanding of physical laws don't account for?

But then I think we have a level problem. In a multi-cell creature such as ourselves, the consciousness we experience seems to exist at the level of organs, not on a cellular level.

But individual cells, granted they're not conscious in any way our consciousness is like, organized together as a fuctioning organ, have an experiential quality, a felt quality, a conscious awareness such as our own. At one point does this experiential quality become "realized" by the system? What about a system like a roundworm that has 302 neurons? Probably not at that level. So it's some arbitrary number and then somehow (seems very magical), consciousness emerges? Like I said, seems suggestive of some fundamental law that modern physics hasn't discovered.

How cells give up their independence to play a role in a collective of cells is nothing I know anything about. I do believe consciousness is fragmentary but I don't believe it derives from the suppressed consciousness of each cell. Do you?

It's hard to imagine that's the case, admittedly.

There is a sense in which our being conscious and self-aware is at the same time consciousness of the cosmos itself. What else is there to be aware of except that which exists? But I don't imagine any mega-multi-cellular creature that exists in relation to us as the individual cells of our bodies exist to us. Do you?

Again, it's difficult to imagine but what other emergent qualities such as consciousness aren't? Known physical laws seem to leave any room for it.

[Heywood]

In a certain sense your table is observant. A photon that hits it will it in a particular place. For that to happen an "observation" has to be made to collapse the wave function.

Do you understand what you're saying or you just say things without knowing what they are?

Tor, I have come to the conclusion that I have a better understanding of how this world we share works then you do.

[tor]

Do you understand what you're saying or you just say things without knowing what they are?

Tor, I have come to the conclusion that I have a better understanding of how this world we share works then you do.

I have come to the opposite conclusion.

[MindForgedManacle]

In a certain sense your table is observant. A photon that hits it will it in a particular place. For that to happen an "observation" has to be made to collapse the wave function.

Sure, the relevant quantum systems interact, which is what "observation" means in the language game of quantum mechanics. If you're trying to press that any further you're equivocating on the word "observation".