"Idealism starts with consciousness as fundamental and has to explain matter. It mostly succeeds but at the cost of a slightly embarrassing dependence on a cosmic mind holding everything together."
It succeeds absolutely, matter only exists as a concept/object that has no existence in and of itself.
Your phrase 'embarrassing dependence' reveals your own unquestioned biases and assumptions - presumably that it invokes a 'God' that you are certain cannot exist thus assume idealism must be wrong. (Like Einstein assumed physicalism/determinism was true and that the quantum experiments revealing apparent randomness must be wrong in some way.)
You might simply misunderstand the higher interpretation of what God means and assume the lower literal interpretation of a being who created reality.
God simply is another name for non-conceptual awareness. Spirit, consciousness, knowing are others.
Consider the possibility idealism is the best description of reality and write an essay assuming that position is true. You might be able to relax your desire to understand reality as an object - which is impossible!
So earlier today it occurred to me that scientists looking for which part of the brain produces consciousness are trying to figure out which part of a fish produces the ocean.
I decided it was too much of a zinger-line to not post somewhere but, just as I'm gonna drop it on X, I check my inbox and get sidetracked with this piece of absolute brilliance!
So yeah, you got the fish gag instead cos it's somewhat related to the whole panpsychism, chicken and egg deal and that's all the excuse I needed to dump it on you 😊
If I understand Yoneda lemma correctly, everything has a relational profile to everything else in the set. But with consciousness, I can only experience physical objects insofar as I can perceive them through my senses. A rock has no senses, but it still has a full relational profile -- this doesn't seem very analogous to consciousness to me!
both are merely structurally reacting to incoming data. Senses dont invent any new information but merely amplify, filter and translate things that even a stone is constantly bombarded with.
so a stone might not parse and differentiate between colors but it warms under the sun and vibrates because of sonic waves. it is still deeply engulfed in things appearing from its perspective. it is presented with vague/fuzzy force information without the ability to represent them into more meaningful reports.
The clue is to see that not just representational systems have an insight view. They have merely evolved to fill it more profficiently with useful, meaningful contents rather than immediate and brute environmental data.
the basic valence is simply there to stirr towards or away from certain kinds of signals/patterns.
Through evolution the body has essentially created its own language to communicate with itself as to what behavioral patterns it wants to reward and which to deter from.
so they are just kinds of information that start as very basic valence and can become very concrete and (meaning)-rich signals
> the basic valence is simply there to stirr towards or away from certain kinds of signals/patterns.
Can matter just move every way it wants, but doesn't know what to do until it feels valence? Or is it predetermined to move in a predictable way in response to valence? If it experiences no valence, will it sit still and do nothing, act randomly, or act according to libertarian free will?
> Through evolution the body has essentially created its own language to communicate with itself as to what behavioral patterns it wants to reward and which to deter from.
does "the body" do this rewarding and deterring directly, or do other conscious agents (other than myself) in the body do this?
In my view, there is some other consciousness inside of my mind, who is not me, who decides when I suffer. Is this something you would consider possible?
matter in principle is free to move how it wants under this framework. the laws we see are just calcified habits/patters that have proven preferable/most stable over time.
if it is free of any feedback there wont be a difference between free and random movement.
your body and mind under this framework isnt one thing but every part, ever cell is its own perspective, they all communicate and synchronize into something that operates like one mind but in principle it is one part informing another about the pain so you could say there are more conciousnesses, but I think the entire hive mind can also be described as one conciousness made of many communicating agents/perspectives. 😊
You did an excellent job explaining topics that are defined by their post definition. This is why I mostly left this area of headspace as a writer and a thinker.
I’m perfectly fine without knowing the exact details for the birth of awareness.
This is not because I’m putting it off to move the argument along, but I don’t need to pinpoint why consciousness develops. Because the truth is that we can sorta explain it…. I know we will one day, when we have developed the tools needed for such a task, there will be an answer.
Not everything needs to fit into the same paradigm. It’s foolish to assume it could. The amount of awareness of a molecule cannot serve me purposefully in any way.
That kind of measuring is still very far off.
Science, in theory, doesn’t need to pair perfectly with science in measurement and mechanics.
An atom is so incredibly small, and is so incredibly distant to its pieces, it’s like comparing our star system to a star system in a different galaxy. Which, for all we know, we might be living on the protons or neutrons of extremely massive things.
Point being, it doesn’t feel like the discussion and furthering of panpsychism should never be explored. At its best, it’s on the regular everyday constant, and still at the absolute bottom of the pile of questions.
Lol
I think we’ve talked enough that you know some of that is just poking at the whole goofy lot, but my thoughts are usually quite well informed.
Honestly, the Japanese Shinto belief system probably does the best job, existing well before these words. And it does so by being exactly complex enough to hold interest, while maintaining a layman’s level of practice and belief. It also doesn’t care if anyone believes it. Which is more advanced that most of human history. lol. 😝😁👊🏼👊🏼
This still avoids the main motivation for modern (the past 400 years) philosophy's attachment to physicalist/dualist/idealist/panpsychist, process-oriented/panexperientialist/cosmopsychist solutions:
Brahman (beyond theist and non theist, personal and non personal "concepts" - that is, Parabrahman or Purushottoma)
If there is a timeless intelligence infinitely greater than human intelligence, it's then very easy to see that what we call "'matter" and "mind" are BOTH reflections of That.
No combination problem, no emergence problem, no hard consciousness problem (or as Chalmers points out, the much harder problem of so-called self existent "matter")
This has been known and agreed upon by the greatest Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Taoist, Neo-Confucian, Vedantic, Tantric, indigenous and other contemplatives, and once we get past our fears, we can get on with radically transforming our science, health care, education, economics and politics in a way which integrates the best of contemporary evolutionary understanding.
Don - the Right Brain mystic, recommends John Makransky's sustainable compassion training which integrates fundamental pristine awareness (Rigpa) with the "soul" qualities of love, compassion, kindness and care, within a modern neuroscientific/psychological/evolutionary framework, and deeply informed by the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) philosophy of Buddhism. Add a pinch of Sri Aurobindo's integral Advaita and perhaps Abhinavagupta, Lleweleyn Vaughan-Lee's eco spirituality and Father Keating's Centering prayer, and you're off to the races!
Philip Goff’s constitutive panpsychism makes the decisive move: consciousness is the intrinsic nature of physical reality — what matter is like from the inside, rather than something matter produces. We have never once observed consciousness from the outside. Every single thing we know about it we know from direct experience. The edifice of “brains produce consciousness” is an inference built on top of the one thing we actually have unmediated access to — experience itself. Goff argues, against Dennett’s illusionism, that you cannot use the very thing you are trying to explain away to explain it away. The illusion is itself experience. The argument defeats itself.
"Idealism starts with consciousness as fundamental and has to explain matter. It mostly succeeds but at the cost of a slightly embarrassing dependence on a cosmic mind holding everything together."
It succeeds absolutely, matter only exists as a concept/object that has no existence in and of itself.
Your phrase 'embarrassing dependence' reveals your own unquestioned biases and assumptions - presumably that it invokes a 'God' that you are certain cannot exist thus assume idealism must be wrong. (Like Einstein assumed physicalism/determinism was true and that the quantum experiments revealing apparent randomness must be wrong in some way.)
You might simply misunderstand the higher interpretation of what God means and assume the lower literal interpretation of a being who created reality.
God simply is another name for non-conceptual awareness. Spirit, consciousness, knowing are others.
Consider the possibility idealism is the best description of reality and write an essay assuming that position is true. You might be able to relax your desire to understand reality as an object - which is impossible!
fair! I was unnecessarily harsh here! 😅
But my main objection lies with God as complete definite object.
If we have a more Sunyata like or apophatic approach to the divine I actually agree with it mostly 😊
So earlier today it occurred to me that scientists looking for which part of the brain produces consciousness are trying to figure out which part of a fish produces the ocean.
I decided it was too much of a zinger-line to not post somewhere but, just as I'm gonna drop it on X, I check my inbox and get sidetracked with this piece of absolute brilliance!
So yeah, you got the fish gag instead cos it's somewhat related to the whole panpsychism, chicken and egg deal and that's all the excuse I needed to dump it on you 😊
If I understand Yoneda lemma correctly, everything has a relational profile to everything else in the set. But with consciousness, I can only experience physical objects insofar as I can perceive them through my senses. A rock has no senses, but it still has a full relational profile -- this doesn't seem very analogous to consciousness to me!
both are merely structurally reacting to incoming data. Senses dont invent any new information but merely amplify, filter and translate things that even a stone is constantly bombarded with.
so a stone might not parse and differentiate between colors but it warms under the sun and vibrates because of sonic waves. it is still deeply engulfed in things appearing from its perspective. it is presented with vague/fuzzy force information without the ability to represent them into more meaningful reports.
The clue is to see that not just representational systems have an insight view. They have merely evolved to fill it more profficiently with useful, meaningful contents rather than immediate and brute environmental data.
Where does pleasure and suffering come from in this philosophy?
the basic valence is simply there to stirr towards or away from certain kinds of signals/patterns.
Through evolution the body has essentially created its own language to communicate with itself as to what behavioral patterns it wants to reward and which to deter from.
so they are just kinds of information that start as very basic valence and can become very concrete and (meaning)-rich signals
> the basic valence is simply there to stirr towards or away from certain kinds of signals/patterns.
Can matter just move every way it wants, but doesn't know what to do until it feels valence? Or is it predetermined to move in a predictable way in response to valence? If it experiences no valence, will it sit still and do nothing, act randomly, or act according to libertarian free will?
> Through evolution the body has essentially created its own language to communicate with itself as to what behavioral patterns it wants to reward and which to deter from.
does "the body" do this rewarding and deterring directly, or do other conscious agents (other than myself) in the body do this?
In my view, there is some other consciousness inside of my mind, who is not me, who decides when I suffer. Is this something you would consider possible?
matter in principle is free to move how it wants under this framework. the laws we see are just calcified habits/patters that have proven preferable/most stable over time.
if it is free of any feedback there wont be a difference between free and random movement.
II wrote this essay to show how prefrences come about: https://leftbrainmystic.substack.com/p/the-reality-of-preference?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=4pukh2
your body and mind under this framework isnt one thing but every part, ever cell is its own perspective, they all communicate and synchronize into something that operates like one mind but in principle it is one part informing another about the pain so you could say there are more conciousnesses, but I think the entire hive mind can also be described as one conciousness made of many communicating agents/perspectives. 😊
ooh agentic panperspectivalism is a fun one! gosh all the other pan-blah blahs are so boring 🥲
anyway, this hit me in a weird spot. your writing is delightful
You did an excellent job explaining topics that are defined by their post definition. This is why I mostly left this area of headspace as a writer and a thinker.
I’m perfectly fine without knowing the exact details for the birth of awareness.
This is not because I’m putting it off to move the argument along, but I don’t need to pinpoint why consciousness develops. Because the truth is that we can sorta explain it…. I know we will one day, when we have developed the tools needed for such a task, there will be an answer.
Not everything needs to fit into the same paradigm. It’s foolish to assume it could. The amount of awareness of a molecule cannot serve me purposefully in any way.
That kind of measuring is still very far off.
Science, in theory, doesn’t need to pair perfectly with science in measurement and mechanics.
An atom is so incredibly small, and is so incredibly distant to its pieces, it’s like comparing our star system to a star system in a different galaxy. Which, for all we know, we might be living on the protons or neutrons of extremely massive things.
Point being, it doesn’t feel like the discussion and furthering of panpsychism should never be explored. At its best, it’s on the regular everyday constant, and still at the absolute bottom of the pile of questions.
Lol
I think we’ve talked enough that you know some of that is just poking at the whole goofy lot, but my thoughts are usually quite well informed.
Honestly, the Japanese Shinto belief system probably does the best job, existing well before these words. And it does so by being exactly complex enough to hold interest, while maintaining a layman’s level of practice and belief. It also doesn’t care if anyone believes it. Which is more advanced that most of human history. lol. 😝😁👊🏼👊🏼
This still avoids the main motivation for modern (the past 400 years) philosophy's attachment to physicalist/dualist/idealist/panpsychist, process-oriented/panexperientialist/cosmopsychist solutions:
Brahman (beyond theist and non theist, personal and non personal "concepts" - that is, Parabrahman or Purushottoma)
If there is a timeless intelligence infinitely greater than human intelligence, it's then very easy to see that what we call "'matter" and "mind" are BOTH reflections of That.
No combination problem, no emergence problem, no hard consciousness problem (or as Chalmers points out, the much harder problem of so-called self existent "matter")
This has been known and agreed upon by the greatest Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Taoist, Neo-Confucian, Vedantic, Tantric, indigenous and other contemplatives, and once we get past our fears, we can get on with radically transforming our science, health care, education, economics and politics in a way which integrates the best of contemporary evolutionary understanding.
Don - the Right Brain mystic, recommends John Makransky's sustainable compassion training which integrates fundamental pristine awareness (Rigpa) with the "soul" qualities of love, compassion, kindness and care, within a modern neuroscientific/psychological/evolutionary framework, and deeply informed by the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) philosophy of Buddhism. Add a pinch of Sri Aurobindo's integral Advaita and perhaps Abhinavagupta, Lleweleyn Vaughan-Lee's eco spirituality and Father Keating's Centering prayer, and you're off to the races!
Philip Goff’s constitutive panpsychism makes the decisive move: consciousness is the intrinsic nature of physical reality — what matter is like from the inside, rather than something matter produces. We have never once observed consciousness from the outside. Every single thing we know about it we know from direct experience. The edifice of “brains produce consciousness” is an inference built on top of the one thing we actually have unmediated access to — experience itself. Goff argues, against Dennett’s illusionism, that you cannot use the very thing you are trying to explain away to explain it away. The illusion is itself experience. The argument defeats itself.