Tag: panpsychism

Reducing felt experience requires not preemptively dismissing the solutions

Annaka Harris has a new audio book out which she is promoting. I haven't listened to it, but based on the interviews and spots like the one below, it appears that she's doubling down on the conclusions she reached in her book from a few years ago, that consciousness is fundamental and pervasive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP2swgDVl5M The … Continue reading Reducing felt experience requires not preemptively dismissing the solutions →

Fundamental and naturalistic panpsychism

In the art of the Japanese rock garden, the artist must be aware of the "ishigokoro" ('heart', or 'mind') of the rocks.

Nicolas Rouleau and Michael Levin have a new preprint out: Brains and Where Else? Mapping Theories of Consciousness to Unconventional Embodiments. The gist of the paper is that we should be open to seeing consciousness in places other than brains. While I'm onboard with that general premise, they take it to places that don't seem … Continue reading Fundamental and naturalistic panpsychism →

Russellian monism, the same as illusionism?

I usually have to wait for the audio version of these Mind Chat podcasts, but this one seemed a reasonable length and I had some time this weekend. Keith Frankish, an illusionist, and Philip Goff, a panpsychist, interviewed Noam Chomsky for his views on consciousness. (The video is about 72 minutes. You don't necessarily need … Continue reading Russellian monism, the same as illusionism? →

The issues with biopsychism

Recently, there was a debate on Twitter between neuroscientists Hakwan Lau and Victor Lamme, both of whose work I've highlighted here before.  Lau is a proponent of higher order theories of consciousness, and Lamme of local recurrent processing theory. The debate began when Lau made a statement about panpsychism, the idea that everything is conscious … Continue reading The issues with biopsychism →

Layers of consciousness, September 2019 edition

A couple of years ago, when writing about panpsychism, I introduced a five layer conception of consciousness.  The idea back then was to show a couple of things. One was that very simple conceptions of consciousness, such as interactions with the environment, were missing a lot of capabilities that we intuitively think of as belonging … Continue reading Layers of consciousness, September 2019 edition →

The problems with panpsychism

Late last week, there was a clash between philosophers on Twitter over panpsychism.  This was followed by Philip Goff, an outspoken proponent of panpsychism, authoring a blog post arguing that we shouldn't require evidence for it.  This week, Susan Schneider did a (somewhat confusing) Big Think video arguing that panpsychism isn't compatible with physics, and … Continue reading The problems with panpsychism →

What is it about phenomenal consciousness that’s so mysterious?

I learned something new this week about the online magazine The Conversation.  A number of their articles that are shared around don't show up in their RSS feeds or site navigation.  It appears these articles only come up in searches, although it's possible they show in in the site's email newsletter, which I'm not subscribed … Continue reading What is it about phenomenal consciousness that’s so mysterious? →

Panpsychism and layers of consciousness

I've written before about panpyschism, the outlook that everything is conscious and that consciousness permeates the universe.  However, that previous post was within the context of replying to a TEDx talk, and I'm not entirely satisfied with the remarks I made back then, so this is a revisit of that topic. I've noted many times … Continue reading Panpsychism and layers of consciousness →