Glen,
Thank you for writing. I would take the minimum conditions of pan psychism to
be that every object (i.e., every thing to which a noun may be applied) has
interests and acts in accordance with those interests. >From the point of view
of the "experience monist" (wtf) , panpsychism is an empirical assertion that
needs to be explored in the usual way: by diligent observation and careful
delineation of terms.
"Experience Monism" is itself a much more primitive position, so primitive that
my former student, now mentor, Eric Charles doubts that it is worth asserting.
It asserts only that experience is all we have and that, to the extent that we
talk of events beyond experience, we are, in fact, talking about structures in
experience. Thus, when we assert that something is real or true, we are
obligated to describe the properties of that experience, the experience of
realness or truthity.
Is it true that dirt has interests and acts in accordance with them? Maybe.
We'ld have to see. If not, though, there are many quasi telic process in nature
that raise that sort of question. My favorite is the manner in which an icy
puddle defends 32 degrees as its temperature. Does a n icy puddle have an
interest in remaining close to 32 degrees?
It would be great if you could "stop by" some Thursday morning I miss your
regular input. Much tho it drives me nuts.
By the way, there was a podcast called Hard Fork, I believe, in which a techy
type interacts with the new chatbot thingy, and ends up being stalked by it,
the bot declaring and persuing his enternal love. Now, a lot of audiobits are
spilled on explaining how the bot could have managed such a conversation
without any body considering the possibility that the techy's probing triggered
the intervention of some human, and that that human was teasing the living shit
out of the techy. A reverse Turing Test?
Nick
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 8:46 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Nick's Categories
Despite the ambiguity both Nick and DaveW rely on when they use the word
"dualism", the "psyche" in panpsychism need not be dualist. Experience monism
is a kind of panpsychism. When I asserted that there is something that it is
like to be dirt, I'm not implying there is a difference between "psyche" and
... matter or whatever else there may be. I'm asserting that whatever it is to
be dirt is the *same* as whatever it is to be human.
By even using the phrases "mental stuff" or "mental life", *you* are implicitly
asserting there are 2 things: mental and non-mental. There is no such
difference, in my opinion. Now, while I am often a moron, I don't deny that
people *think* there's a difference. E.g. when you finally get that snap of
understanding while running, or taking a shower or whatever, about some concept
you've been working on, it *feels* like pure mentation. The shift just feels
cognitive, not bodily. But I would maintain my stance that this is an
abstraction, a sloughing off of the bodily details. (The illusion is a
byproduct of focus and attention, which are mechanical implementations of
abstraction.) My stance is that, however cognitive such things feel, they
aren't. You wouldn't, *could not*, have arrived at that state without your
body, or if you had a different body.
Yes, as long as your body is *similar* to others' bodies, you could arrive at a
*similar* understanding, but not the same.
On 2/18/23 05:29, Eric Charles wrote:
> On 2/16/23 23:35, ⛧ glen wrote:
>> I don't know what you mean by "mental stuff", of course.
>
> Well... In this context, I mean whatever the "psyche" part of panpsychism
> entails.
>
> Given that I don't believe in disembodied minds, I'm with you 100% on
> everything you do being "body stuff". Which, presumably, leads to the
> empirical question of what types of bodies do "psyche", and where those types
> of bodies can be found.
>
> You say further that: 'No. Neither the dirt nor I do "mental stuff"'.
>
> Well, now we have something to actually talk about then! Dave West,
> unsurprisingly, stepped in strongly on the side of dirt having psyche in at
> least a rudimentary form, I presume he would assert that you (Glen) do mental
> stuff too. Dave also asserts that his belief in panpsychism /does/ affect how
> he lives in the world. Exactly to the extent that his way of living in the
> world is made different by the belief, panpsychism /_is_/ more than just
> something he says.
>
> Steve's discussion about what it would feel like to be the bit of dirt
> trampled beneath a particular foot is a bit of a tangent - potentially
> interesting in its own right. His discussion of when he, personally, starts
> to attribute identity - and potentially psyche - to clumps of inanimate stuff
> seems directly on topic, especially as he too has listed some ways his
> behaviors change when he becomes engaged in those habits.
>
>
--
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