Panpsychism | Robert Wright & Galen Strawson [The Wright Show] 

This was my favorite interview so far....thanks Bob. Panpsychism is weird to contemplate, but Strawson is a very clear thinker. and presents a compelling argument.

Strawson’s interview on the Panpsycast is another great one if you’re looking for more :)

Please balance your volumes. In this one Robert Wright is much louder than guest.

Bob Wright is a knowledgeable guy himself in so many areas and that's a thing hard to find these days.this channel deserves more views.

Time to interview Philip Goff!

Good one Bobbie! Bravo

25:36 nice little explanatory section from Galen which is easily understood.

I just read the Nigel Warburton's interview of Strawson which appears in the February - April 2018 issue of _New Philosopher,_ so I appreciated this additional info on Strawson's philosophical stance.

Galen says he avoids the threshold problem because more "primitive" (for lack of a better word) consciousness is already there and evolution just takes advantage of it, but that really is just skirting the whole problem isn't it? I mean he himself makes a distinction between the sort of baseline consciousness that's just a natural phenomena of the universe as it is, and the consciousness that a subject (his term) experiences. There's still a threshold and to say "evolution just takes care of it" strikes me as handwaving.

59:00 If the only thing you know for sure is consciousness, why do you committ to physicalism?

we are all waves that temporal conditions cause to manifest as well as to dissipate - but the ocean is eternal

Strawson says that the constituent parts of a rock are conscious, but that the rock itself is not. However "I" seem to be some kind of aggregate - like the rock - and I have consciousness. The gap then is how does the aggregate become conscious at the aggregate level?

Watch from 25:05... ish. Starts getting to the nitty gritty. All good though A parsimonious and elegant idea indeed

Yup

13:00 Why some buddhist might deny consciousness: There´s a long debate in India, between the Vedic tradition and Buddhism; the Vedic says Pure Consciousness is never changing; Buddhists say everything changes, and only the Void is.

31:17 the interchange gets to the heart of Galen's view. .... 31:59 "....here's one way to put it......" ... "....global replace....."

Let Strawson speak, Bro

So I had never heard of panpsychism before today. But, I had come to this conclusion in my own mind, and have been thinking about it for a long while. I don't know if anyone will ever read this, but I feel like just putting my ideas out and sharing how I came to this conclusion. It's gonna be random, and sound like shit. I'm not educated, I'm not a philosopher. I'm just some fuckin guy! =D So firstly, I had learned that physicists deal with things in terms of "information." A photon which leaves the sun and hits a rock thus heating it, is information. Fundamentally, my theory is, that the transfer of information is consciousness. Now in regards to the threshold they mentioned, I think that threshhold is both real and not real. It's real in the sense, that once a sufficiently complex organism takes shape, consciousness can now manipulate it's environment. I suppose that's obvious, but it sounds to me like the argument of the "threshold" is that there is no fundamental consciouness to the universe, but after a certain threshold it arises. I don't think that's correct. I think that simply the threshold is an organism which has reached sufficient ability to interact with it's environment, thus consciouness is now able to act. I've been learning a lot about biology and evolution. I think there's evidence for consciousness playing a role in evolution. But to detail how is hard for me. I'm not exactly eductated...I just watch university lectures on youtube lol. But consciouness makes choices in evolution which are not necessarily directly a cause of a logical sex selection, or other forms of natural selection. Yea, this idea is hard for me to expand on. But my point is that even evolution's path is and has always been partially driven by a conscious factor. There's tons of examples that I've been learning as I watch university lectures on evolutionary biology and the fundamental sciences that are used in anthropology. The various systems of the body, hormones, all that stuff. As I learn more and more it only seems to confirm my theory. Although I think an evolutionary biologist would not see it my way at all. This is just the perspective I have and maybe it warps how I see things. But I came up with this theory on my own, BECAUSE of what I've learned and continue to learn about science. The universe must be conscious. We are made of the universe. We are the same stuff, if we can be conscious the universe as a whole must be conscious in some form. I suppose a panpsychist agrees with that? I've also started watching jordan petersons biblical lectures. And everything he says in those lectures seems to confirm what I'm saying. Which sounds crazy, because it's about the bible and "god" and all this. But the way he describes it, and the way im interpreting things, everything in the bible is related to our actual physical reality. The story of cain and abel brothers. One brother is rewarded for his worship, another is punished. I don't think it's a point about god, it's a point about the fundamental nature of existance. Sometimes you do everything right, and you still end up homeless. Life is like that. It's not that god punished you, it's that sometimes things go wrong. These infinitely complex systems which physicists do not have the math to understand (for example predator prey relations within a certain ecosystem are insanely complex far beyond what we can figure out with math, at least that's one example that I read). God is simply the universe, the universe has consciousness. Not to say that "god" is passing down all these laws, i don't believe in any of that. I'm an atheist. So maybe this sounds silly how I am wording things, but the point is that in my mind, the way jordan peterson is interpreting the bible makes it sound like it's very much based in the physical universe. Hell is burning forever in rejuvinating fire. Well, we breath oxygen, it burns, it makes us grow we use it for energy. Life is suffering. I don't know, sounds to me like this is hell. It's a stretch I know but this is just stuff thats wandering around in my head and has helped me think more about this panpsychism thing. Guess that's all I got for now.

Why should we jump to the conclusion that consciousness is at the bottom of the stack? Just because consciousness and experience is the only thing we know, that does not mean that it didn't emerge from our brains. If they insist that consciousness is the fundamental thing, then it is just as likely that something else can be the fundamental thing.

This might be a helpful suggestion. We should stop using the word consciousness, which is a loaded word, to describe the behavior of materials or energy fields. For starters reject the term "laws" of nature or physics because who created these "laws"? That is a remnant of deistic thinking from the past. Why not use the term agent/agency, which implies the ability to sustain a particular form despite contextual forces, or change form depending on the energetic contextual field? Form is the fundamental presence of agency or will. Leave the term consciousness to the higher forms of being that have reproduced their existence, evolved, and even become self consciously aware. At the root of it all is--agency--whether it is energetic, chemical, or biological. Unfortunately we are trapped by the language we use. Whitehead understood this.

Unless I misunderstood him, Galen said he was not familiar with the philosophy of Telliard de Chardin. If so, I'd like to suggest that he read an article on on the site www.planetaryphilosophy.com/2017/05/chardin-and-panpsychism/ I'm not in anyway religious, but I think that encouraging Galen to look at de Chardin's concept of the noosphere might interest him, not that he'll ever read this comment, but sometimes it's fun to pose ideas to yourself :) Within Galen's dialogue here I can detect that Galen is still a bit imprisoned by the legacy he inherited from his father Peter Strawson. Just saying...

What separates your consciousness from another person's consciousness? If there's no physical world than there's no way to separate individuals, and so this means that panpsychism is really just solipsism.

What caused the Fundamental consciousness?

29:00 The buildings are out there also in Berkeleys mind, but because they are perceived as ideas by God.

Wait, he thinks a curtain having a conscious experience ridiculous? Wasn't it the point that since all fundamental building blocks of the universe has consciousness so the human brain which is the collection of that, having its own consciousness not mysterious? I thought all physical collections having consciousness was the point of it all, human imposed or not. He can say curtains do have consciousness but it's nothing like an animal's consciousness and it is very dull, but I don't think he can get away with "curtains don't have consciousness" in his view.

If you think you know consciousness, then you don't know what consciousness is. Nobody talks about different degrees (or levels) of consciousness. If there is such a thing, then the nature of complex interactions (that is different levels of interactions) may lead to different degrees of consciousness. Thus, a bigger brain does not necessarily translate to higher level of consciousness. When someone reaches a higher level of consciousness (after deliberate effort of some kind),- such as these two brilliant minds- they have triggered a complex level of integration within the brain via different degree of dendritic connections or even altering the ratio of neuroglial cells to neurons. Humans have the capacity to reach higher level of consciousness because they have the necessary foundation (their unique brain and also complex societal input which then can interpret), whereas animals or rocks and tables do not. BUT what is consciousness? LOL!

This Strawson fella has something in his mind what the ancients called ether or soul. He dismissed all the questions that were repeatedly asked to explain about this "thing" he calls "consciousness" and kept giving some unrelated quotes from some famous people. Where can we find it, how can we detect it, what is its function... He just says "I don't like these questions". It's like "I'm selling something very important, you need to buy it, but I will not tell you anything about this thing." Any reasonable person will say "No, thanks".

A better name for his philosophy of mind would be zzzzzzpsychism.

Bob should get colin Mcginn on this show asap. great episode btw

How a proper interview would be conducted, “Hi. What is panpsychism?” As another prominent author may have said, “Lordy!”

Wych

Wright talks ten times more than the guest.

Pan - one stuff but physics has a lot to say about it The table as a whole/set is not conscious but the atoms in the table are. (Individuals in football team are conscious but football team isn't) Why aren't we zombies Evolution finds consciousness stuff and tunes it

I guess it depends on whether you believe there is a classical, continuous universe or whether everything can ultimately be reduced to a quantum theory of everything. Current evidence strongly suggests gravity is an emergent property of space-time and matter, described by General Relativity with the other forces resulting from quantum field phenomena. Some physicists want to try and quantize everything, even replacing relativity with some type of quantum version, which is yet to pan out. Many have tried, it has not succeeded. If gravity is an emergent phenomenon then so too may be consciousness, given certain threshholds. We don't know yet. Gravity does not exist except under certain conditions, at least according to modern theories. It is not fundamental like the strong force for example, unless there is a "graviton," a "gravity field," etc. The jury is out. Conclusion: we don't know. Until we resolve whether gravity and hence space and time are continuous or quantized we cannot prove whether or not consciousness is emergent or fundamental. It remains a mystery.

I respect Robert Wright, but this was one of the most plodding, confusing interviews I’ve ever tried to listen to, mostly due to the interviewer.

Robert Wright needs to let his guest speak for himself. What a terrible interviewer.

What a load of rambling for such a simple concept. Everything that contains Moisture in any form is conscious and can retain experiences, just watch the secret of water, even though it's a new discovery, can't explain, but these concepts are what I've always believed since my teens.

Panpsychism is just another form of Solipsism.

I know what panpsychism is. It's yet another mundane example of when someone uses a pretence to truth, rationality, reality tracking and practical/extensional utility (empirical adequacy on occasion)); where the actual truth, rationality, reality tracking and practical/extensional utility are not all that relevant- just the pretence is. Wherein the actual productivity of this (characteristically 'representational') activity consists in it's being essentially social, has perlocutionary value (general psychological, cognitive and affective shits and giggles (both inter and intra-personally)) and various latent functional dividends (e.g.: “now that we're friends, can I borrow your wife?”). Couple this with a decent admixture of attentional blindness and you have a behavioural phenomenon that is incredibly ubiquitous (spanning all kinds of social interactions), yet goes pretty much unnoticed by all and sundry (attentional blindness). This video is confirmation of at least that.