Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Papus79]

I think we'd be getting absurd if panpsychism catching on turned into a discussion over whether basalt should have UN rights.

Why not? Please answer![/quote]

This hits that point powerfully.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmJYZ1NIn1Y

It depends how badly we want to be ruled/dominated by a group who doesn't tie themselves in such pretzel knots that they can't exist as a functional society.

Panpsychism is a theory that does no work. It seems little more than a bit of wished for magic in your life.
If panpsychism was false everything would appear exaclty as it does.
What's the point?

Should I read that as 'even if it's true it's BS because it does nothing?'. I'd have to say I'm not that much of a pragmatist. We haven't figured out what to do with E8 other than make videos about how strange it is (Antony Garrett Lisi might be the exception - trying to make a theory of everything with it), does that make E8 fictitious BS for fantasies? I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to relate to that way of thinking well enough to answer - to me its a lacuna.

[Sculptor1]

This hits that point powerfully.
http www youtube com watch CmJYZ1NIn1Y

How is this relevant?

[Papus79]

This hits that point powerfully.
http www youtube com watch CmJYZ1NIn1Y

How is this relevant?

I think we'd be getting absurd if panpsychism catching on turned into a discussion over whether basalt should have UN rights. I'd worry more if we'd emancipated factory-farmed chickens and put them at the top of the intersectional hierarchy but I see no sign of that happening anytime soon and probably for good reason - we aren't in evolutionary competition (that we know of at least) with chickens so our attitude toward them is largely indifferent other than as food source and thus a raw material to process for food.

[Sculptor1]

This hits that point powerfully.
http www youtube com watch CmJYZ1NIn1Y

How is this relevant?

I think we'd be getting absurd if panpsychism catching on turned into a discussion over whether basalt should have UN rights. I'd worry more if we'd emancipated factory-farmed chickens and put them at the top of the intersectional hierarchy but I see no sign of that happening anytime soon and probably for good reason - we aren't in evolutionary competition (that we know of at least) with chickens so our attitude toward them is largely indifferent other than as food source and thus a raw material to process for food.

I've bred chickens and thoughts are their welfare go unnoticed by them.
Panpsychipsm is a solution looking for a problem that does not exist.

[Sy Borg]

This hits that point powerfully.
http www youtube com watch CmJYZ1NIn1Y

How is this relevant?

I think we'd be getting absurd if panpsychism catching on turned into a discussion over whether basalt should have UN rights. I'd worry more if we'd emancipated factory-farmed chickens and put them at the top of the intersectional hierarchy but I see no sign of that happening anytime soon and probably for good reason - we aren't in evolutionary competition (that we know of at least) with chickens so our attitude toward them is largely indifferent other than as food source and thus a raw material to process for food.

I've bred chickens and thoughts are their welfare go unnoticed by them.
Panpsychipsm is a solution looking for a problem that does not exist.

Many humans fail to notice their welfare too.

We had pet chickens when I was young. They were well aware of their welfare.

[Papus79]

Panpsychipsm is a solution looking for a problem that does not exist.

It's not a solution to a problem necessarily, more like if it's true it's true and if it isn't it isn't and nerds - with a lot of time on their hands - want to know what's true even if it serves no immediate practical purpose.

[UniversalAlien]

Panpsychipsm is a solution looking for a problem that does not exist.

It's not a solution to a problem necessarily, more like if it's true it's true and if it isn't it isn't and nerds - with a lot of time on their hands - want to know what's true even if it serves no immediate practical purpose.

For the most part all of philosophy 'serves no immediate practical purpose' does it

But for some people deciding what is true, or what might be true is a purpose in itself. And to those of us, so inclined, there is a practical purpose - Mental exercise for example might improve brain health.

And of course why would I talk to the universe if panpsychism was not true
- And if true I can assume that when the universe talks back it has something to say

After all why talk to to a dumb unintelligent universe Get smart, the universe is pure intelligence

[Sculptor1]

How is this relevant?

I think we'd be getting absurd if panpsychism catching on turned into a discussion over whether basalt should have UN rights. I'd worry more if we'd emancipated factory-farmed chickens and put them at the top of the intersectional hierarchy but I see no sign of that happening anytime soon and probably for good reason - we aren't in evolutionary competition (that we know of at least) with chickens so our attitude toward them is largely indifferent other than as food source and thus a raw material to process for food.

I've bred chickens and thoughts are their welfare go unnoticed by them.
Panpsychipsm is a solution looking for a problem that does not exist.

Many humans fail to notice their welfare too.

We had pet chickens when I was young. They were well aware of their welfare.

My chickens were the best kept chickens that is was possible to do. They had free rein over 8 acres of land, and decided when to roost and when to wake. But they did not give a damn.
They did not even seem to notice when I cut their heads off. And the other chickens would have eaten the head had I let them.
Chickens rescued from battery farms, would come featherless, but within a couple of months would be indistinguishable from the rest of the flock, having adpoted innate programs for walking, pecking, scratching and fighting, as if nothing bad had ever happened to them.

So much for sentience.

[Steve3007]

So this includes not just humans, but also animals, plants, even rocks and stones.

This seems to me a bit like saying "EM waves are a spectrum, therefore all colours are blue".

It seems pretty clear that sentience isn't just confined to humans, and it also seems pretty clear that the extent to which it exists varies from species to species, with the result that it's not really possible to say "here is the dividing line between sentience and non-sentience". So it's a continuum; a spectrum. But it makes no sense to take a continuum representing continuously varying property X and simply declare "everything on that continuum is X". The fact that, by definition, continua don't have objectively existing discrete dividing lines on them doesn't mean that everything on them is the same.

[Sy Borg]

I've bred chickens and thoughts are their welfare go unnoticed by them.
Panpsychipsm is a solution looking for a problem that does not exist.

Many humans fail to notice their welfare too.

We had pet chickens when I was young. They were well aware of their welfare.

My chickens were the best kept chickens that is was possible to do. They had free rein over 8 acres of land, and decided when to roost and when to wake. But they did not give a damn.
They did not even seem to notice when I cut their heads off. And the other chickens would have eaten the head had I let them.
Chickens rescued from battery farms, would come featherless, but within a couple of months would be indistinguishable from the rest of the flock, having adpoted innate programs for walking, pecking, scratching and fighting, as if nothing bad had ever happened to them.

So much for sentience.

Plenty of sentience in chickens. I find them to be pleasant and responsive animals that soon remember particular humans.

[Papus79]

And of course why would I talk to the universe if panpsychism was not true
- And if true I can assume that when the universe talks back it has something to say

I'd put a finer point on it - it might not talk back to us at all. Synchronicities, can't remember if I suggested it in this forum or somewhere else, could just be signs that our decisions, urges, desires, etc. are fed through us rather than originating with us and so it tells us just how deterministic things are.

'It' doesn't necessarily need to be a sub-in for God, nor care about us in the slightest bit either. There's also little reason to believe that anything that evolved by completely different parameters would necessarily be anything like us. We're steeped in our parameters of evolution (fitness payouts for survival) so deeply that we can barely find our way out of them and you can see something equally horrible in our media landscape and in all sorts of layers of social interactions - truth is for the weak and the dead, lies are for the strong. To some degree I think John Gray (philosopher) has the right approach in his sort of Daoism-flavored atheism.

I'd agree with the rest of your post though that if we don't find ways to engage ourselves a) we waste away and get deconstructed by the traumas that this world dishes out lavishly or b) someone else will be glad to find ways to use our attention to their own ends.

[Pattern-chaser]

To say the universe is alive is an abuse of language. I'm all for having an open mind as long as your reason does not fall out of the hole.

I would say it's the use of metaphoric language, not abuse. Reason does not evaporate just because we fail to stick to the literal use of words.

Why not just say what you mean? After all is said and done, all language is metaphor. Just choose a better word.

If a river runs, that's metaphorical; if you or I run, that's literal. But I take your point. I just don't think this is as simple as metaphor vs. literal. How often do we choose to use language - written or spoken - in a precise and accurate way, including all necessary detail? Not often. That's the point, I think.

There is a time and place for precision, and it occurs unusually often on a philosophy forum, but only in those topics that tend toward an analytic or scientific viewpoint. This is not such a topic, I don't think. So posters have referred to "living", "sentient", or whatever, using language in our default, human, way: general and approximate. In this context, there isn't one "better word", there are a number of effective synonyms (even though they all have different meanings, if we flip to precision-speak).

[Sculptor1]

I've bred chickens and thoughts are their welfare go unnoticed by them.
Panpsychipsm is a solution looking for a problem that does not exist.

Many humans fail to notice their welfare too.

We had pet chickens when I was young. They were well aware of their welfare.

My chickens were the best kept chickens that is was possible to do. They had free rein over 8 acres of land, and decided when to roost and when to wake. But they did not give a damn.
They did not even seem to notice when I cut their heads off. And the other chickens would have eaten the head had I let them.
Chickens rescued from battery farms, would come featherless, but within a couple of months would be indistinguishable from the rest of the flock, having adpoted innate programs for walking, pecking, scratching and fighting, as if nothing bad had ever happened to them.

So much for sentience.

Plenty of sentience in chickens. I find them to be pleasant and responsive animals that soon remember particular humans.

A slug can be habituated to a food source too. so what?

[Sculptor1]

To say the universe is alive is an abuse of language. I'm all for having an open mind as long as your reason does not fall out of the hole.

I would say it's the use of metaphoric language, not abuse. Reason does not evaporate just because we fail to stick to the literal use of words.

Why not just say what you mean? After all is said and done, all language is metaphor. Just choose a better word.

If a river runs, that's metaphorical; if you or I run, that's literal. But I take your point. I just don't think this is as simple as metaphor vs. literal. How often do we choose to use language - written or spoken - in a precise and accurate way, including all necessary detail? Not often. That's the point, I think.

There is a time and place for precision, and it occurs unusually often on a philosophy forum, but only in those topics that tend toward an analytic or scientific viewpoint. This is not such a topic, I don't think. So posters have referred to "living", "sentient", or whatever, using language in our default, human, way: general and approximate. In this context, there isn't one "better word", there are a number of effective synonyms (even though they all have different meanings, if we flip to precision-speak).

You are dodging. You are just not dodging very well.
Why no precision? Is it because you have not coherent theory or is there another reason?
The "literal" "metaphorical" division you speak of is not especially relevant since the relationship between the signifier and the signified is always arbitrary; words change through time; and what was once literal can become metaphorical and vice versa.
Nonetheless when you take words like "live", "sentient", or "conscious" that are specifically designed to DISTINGUISH things like humans from things like rocks and lumps of clay, then you need a pretty good theory with evidence to back it up unless you want it to sound silly.
So yeah - maybe all oranges are blue?

[Pattern-chaser]

However, panvitalism/panbiotism—the view that everything has life/is alive—does use the concept of life literally, doesn't it?

I'm not sure that it does. If we use a strictly biological/scientific definition of life, then their use of such words cannot be literal. But if we broaden our use of language just a little, as humans normally do when engaging in social discourse, then their use of "living" could be seen as sort-of-literal. I think it's intended in a way that you would see as metaphorical, even if they don't.