“The new declaration, signed by biologists and philosophers, formally embraces that view. It reads, in part: “The empirical evidence indicates at least a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates (including all reptiles, amphibians and fishes) and many invertebrates (including, at minimum, cephalopod mollusks, decapod crustaceans and insects).” Inspired by recent research findings that describe complex cognitive behaviors in these and other animals, the document represents a new consensus and suggests that researchers may have overestimated the degree of neural complexity required for consciousness.” #phylosphyofmind#consciousness#panpsychism https://www.quantamagazine.org/insects-and-other-animals-have-consciousness-experts-declare-20240419/
“Inspired by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s metaphysics of monads, I will focus on a relational explanation of how simple subjects could constitute complex experiences, without them having to combine in virtue of their subjectivity. I call this view monadic panpsychism.”
The opprobrium panpsychists sometimes face is shocking. Yet, on the other end, I rarely see other theories receiving such spirited support. Maybe the fact that it's so polarising speaks volumes of its epistemic value, at the very least as a deep and thorough critique of established mores in literature on consciousness 🧠
My #philosophy paper is also available to download, for free, on PhilPapers, so if you're interested in #panpsychism have a look! 📚
Apart from being unaffected by the seemingly insuperable issue of subject combination, I will demonstrate that monadic panpsychism also has tools to address other kinds of the combination problem. That alone justifies the need for a new formulation of panpsychism, one which faces unique difficulties but also offers unique solutions.
In the future, I'd like to find myself in something other than #panpsychism because I don't exactly like the sort of attention it's getting, or what the theory is becoming, especially in popular discourse (but also, to a certain extent, in academia). I think I'll delve more deeply into the physicalist and cognitive science side of things when it comes to consciousness 🧠
Hi everyone, this is my second profile, which I plan to turn into an educational project in the near future. I'm not yet sure on the specifics, so I'm open to suggestions! 🙏🏻
If anyone still has Twitter and they want to help me out with metrics, apparently they count tweets about papers, sooo... If you find my new paper interesting, insightful or so bad that you can't believe it got publish, please considering tweeting a short review and link to it 😀
Meanwhile, in the field of neuroscience, people who have no clue what consciousness is are calling out other people who have no clue what consciousness is for not having a clue what consciousness is.
I think it is unfair to say #IIT is pseudoscience & the letter is a cheap shot at further closing down the scientific mind, especially since people who signed represent views of consciousness which are equally unsupported by evidence.
My bet is that consciousness, whatever it will turn out to be, will have absolutely NOTHING to do with information or information-processing.
Also, of course, #panpsychism is silly. Everybody knows that, right?
Though dogged in his desire to confirm the below pictured "pseudoscientific" (plain false tbh) model of the solar system, #Kepler also stuck to the data and thus ended up elaborating three robust laws of planetary motion which paved a significant part of the way towards Newton's later laws.
If I've understood the now (imo) become distasteful dispute between #IIT advocates and critics, then I believe this historical example contains important lessons for both.
I guess the argument is whether the hard problem exists or not. My argument is that it doesn’t probably have to.
If I want to find an opposing theory that i guess that comes at the problem from a “materialistic” position, which is most counter to my “virtual” position is #panpsychism. That would put the qualia as deriving from the universe observing itself.