Psience Quest

Since we're talking Animism, want to see if has any comments as he has probably thought more about this than I have...

(2024-01-02, 08:36 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Since we're talking Animism, want to see if has any comments as he has probably thought more about this than I have...

A quick note before bed just to let you know I've scheduled a more fulsome response for tomorrow. If I can't sleep, it might be sooner.

(2024-01-02, 08:36 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Since we're talking Animism, want to see if has any comments as he has probably thought more about this than I have...

Thanks, Sci, for the invitation to comment. I feel like I ought to start by commenting more broadly on the exchange between you and , but even though I've been reading each post, I don't feel like I have a strong enough grip on the specifics of your disagreement to be able to make a useful comment. Instead, then, I'll start by briefly recapping why I endorse dualism over monism. This repeats a lot of post #605 in the thread Is the Filter Theory committing the ad hoc fallacy and is it unfalsifiable?, and I debated whether or not it was worth the repetition, eventually deciding that the new contextualisation was useful.

Experience (or experiencing) from the subjective perspective is not, it seems to me, substantive (but nor is it abstract-conceptual nor a mere process either; it seems to be in an ontological category all of its own). Outside of solipsism proper, though, I can't make sense of subjective experience (or experiencing) unless it is entirely correlated from the objective perspective with a substance, in the sense that the objective substance is the substrate of subjective experience, or "what experience looks like from the outside". Note that by "substance" I mean a type of energy, the meaning of which I clarified in my answer to your question here.

Analytic Idealism - also going by cosmopsychism - and similar varieties of monism aka nondualism seem like an attempt at a metaphysical system of free-floating subjective experience without a substantive correlate: Bernardo Kastrup explicitly disclaims the existence of so-called "mind stuff". Substance is, though, snuck in through the back door: it is implicit in the explanation of individual psyches dissociating from the universal mind. Here, we have both explicit references to multidimensional structures (with the causal potency to split out a psyche), as well as implicit ones via simple analogies such as whirlpools, and more complex ones involving mirroring.

In my own analysis of Analytic Idealism, I charitably acknowledged the implied substantive (objective) aspect of experience so as to avoid conceptual problems with Analytic Idealism, but Bernardo might not actually consider that to be charitable: he might consider it to violate a fundamental axiom of his ontology.

Anyhow, that's the fundamental, inevitable dualism for me: that between subjective experience - what it "is" to be conscious from the inside - and the objective, substantive substrate of that (conscious) experience: a type of (mental) energy.

At this point, a question might come up: "You've argued elsewhere that epiphenomenalism is incoherent, but aren't you proposing here a model to which the same arguments apply, in which conscious experience is correlated with a substance?"

The answer is that, no, the same arguments don't apply, because I am proposing the exact opposite of epiphenomenalism: epiphenomenalism posits that the structure of a substance (physical matter) determines (with 100% correlation) conscious experience; I am proposing instead that conscious experience determines the structure (with 100% correlation) of its substantive substrate ("mental energy"). In the former, consciousness "steams off" and cannot interact with the substance which gives rise to it (and thus cannot interact with itself, which is epiphenomenalism's downfall); in the latter, consciousness in a sense "is" the substance of the structure which reflects it (from an external perspective), and thus it can interact with itself causally.

There also exist (at least potentially) those substances which are not (directly) correlated with subjective experiences, the paradigmatic example (from ) in the thread linked to above being that of a nail. Here, then, is a secondary dualism: between those substances (aka "mental energy") discussed above that directly correlate with - and form the substantive substrate of - experience, and those substances that (apparently) do not (physical matter, such as in the form of a nail, etc).

I think it's plausible that no substance in and of "the physical world" is directly correlated with experience, and that it is only via a proxy correlation with "mental energy" (a conscious mind aka soul) that physical matter forms a(n admittedly very tight) relationship with subjective experience. I think that this is plausible because physical matter as we know it doesn't look very much like something that is correlated with experiences: it is hard to see how something made up of tiny little particles could be a perfect correlate of a conscious experience; conscious experience just doesn't seem to be fine-grained in that way.

There, then, are the reasons why I think dualism (at two levels) makes sense whereas monistic idealism doesn't, before even getting to which fits the survival evidence best (and I think dualism does anyway).

Now, to finally answer your question:

In fact, I haven't thought about animism deeply, but I do tend to endorse it, firstly because members of animistic cultures like those of indigenous Australia have experiences with spirits abiding not just in animals and plants, but also in the land itself - the Dreaming explains how they got there - and I find those experiences compelling, and secondly because the dualism (at two levels) that I've defended above provides a perfectly sound basis for this. It even seems possible that the so-called "physical" world is not entirely directly uncorrelated with experience, and that some of what we think of as inert matter in fact natively supports consciousness, such that animistic spirits are more directly "identical" with the physical world, in the sense that supposedly "physical" entities are themselves animate, rather than (merely) "hosting" otherwise disembodied spirits ("mental energy"). This, though, seems difficult to reconcile with the hard sciences, and might require a new metaphysical understanding of physical reality, which perhaps something like Wolfgang Smith's concept of "the corporeal" might help to support.

How all of this relates to, and whether it is of any help in resolving, the disagreement between you and , I can't say! If you like, I could reread the exchange more carefully and try to identify what needs resolution, and then try to offer that resolution.

(2024-01-04, 07:22 AM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]Now, to finally answer your question:

In fact, I haven't thought about animism deeply, but I do tend to endorse it, firstly because members of animistic cultures like those of indigenous Australia have experiences with spirits abiding not just in animals and plants, but also in the land itself - the Dreaming explains how they got there - and I find those experiences compelling, and secondly because the dualism (at two levels) that I've defended above provides a perfectly sound basis for this. It even seems possible that the so-called "physical" world is not entirely directly uncorrelated with experience, and that some of what we think of as inert matter in fact natively supports consciousness, such that animistic spirits are more directly "identical" with the physical world, in the sense that supposedly "physical" entities are themselves animate, rather than (merely) "hosting" otherwise disembodied spirits ("mental energy"). This, though, seems difficult to reconcile with the hard sciences, and might require a new metaphysical understanding of physical reality, which perhaps something like Wolfgang Smith's concept of "the corporeal" might help to support.

Thanks for the reply!

So if I understand you there are spirits but they don't control every aspect of causality of the "physical"?  That does seem to be the best interpretation of not just actual claimed spirits but also at least some of the "alien" cases given the deep weaknesses in the nuts & bolts position.

Of course there need not be some sharp division between these entities and the human dead, as there doesn't seem to be a reason why humans couldn't would be unable to choose to be elemental spirits after a particular physical incarnation. Maybe this is why the dead have been seen in UFO and Fairy cases...

I do agree that it seems difficult to reconcile what we normally think of as consciousness as making up the world, one of the reasons I am not an Idealist. Among those the reasons there is also the tricky question of the brain's relation to consciousness, the arguments by Kastrup and WJ Mander about the brain being what thoughts look like isn't all that convincing.

I don't really get what the physical exactly is in your paradigm - is it made of some kind of energy that is an extension of mental energy? I read this as possible supporting a Dual Aspect Monism:

Quote:Anyhow, that's the fundamental, inevitable dualism for me: that between subjective experience - what it "is" to be conscious from the inside - and the objective, substantive substrate of that (conscious) experience: a type of (mental) energy.

I say this because it seems you are saying there is one substance but it has an internal feeling?

Regarding:

Quote:I think that this is plausible because physical matter as we know it doesn't look very much like something that is correlated with experiences: it is hard to see how something made up of tiny little particles could be a perfect correlate of a conscious experience; conscious experience just doesn't seem to be fine-grained in that way.

I think the particles *could* have their own experiences, as per Penrose's own pondering I quoted above, but I'm not wedded to that since the important thing is all causation is mental causation. As Penrose notes the ultimate selection of a possibility in superposition is a decision of some kind.

But yes my experiences wouldn't be explicable in terms of particles, whether they are conscious or not they can't sum up to my experiences. Bottom Up Panpsychism seems implausible though I rate it a bit better than the nonsensical religion of Materialist/Physicalism.
 
As to the correct metaphysics, I tend to lean toward some kind of ultimate Monism, though I could see reality as having substances that are largely divided save for some overlap that allows for causality in particular circumstances. This could possibly be the best explanation for what a brain is and why it was necessary, but it seems difficult to say exactly what it means to have a specific interaction point in two substances that are otherwise near wholly divorced in nature.

(2024-01-04, 05:05 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks for the reply!

No worries. Just a caveat up front that I'm not claiming certainty here, neither by proof, revelation, nor anything else; these are just my current best attempts at understanding, and I'm open to revising them.

(2024-01-04, 05:05 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]So if I understand you there are spirits but they don't control every aspect of causality of the "physical"?

Yep.

(2024-01-04, 05:05 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]That does seem to be the best interpretation of not just actual claimed spirits but also at least some of the "alien" cases given the deep weaknesses in the nuts & bolts position.

I'm not well-studied on UFOs, but my impression is that at least some of the cases do involve nuts and bolts phenomena, even if those aren't all the phenomena that those cases involve, and even if other cases don't. Sure, though, at least some alien cases could involve disembodied consciousnesses aka spirits.

(2024-01-04, 05:05 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Of course there need not be some sharp division between these entities and the human dead, as there doesn't seem to be a reason why humans couldn't would be unable to choose to be elemental spirits after a particular physical incarnation.

It does seem logically possible, albeit that there might be a reason of which we're unaware.

(2024-01-04, 05:05 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Maybe this is why the dead have been seen in UFO and Fairy cases...

Interesting. I wasn't aware that that had happened.

(2024-01-04, 05:05 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I do agree that it seems difficult to reconcile what we normally think of as consciousness as making up the world, one of the reasons I am not an Idealist. Among those the reasons there is also the tricky question of the brain's relation to consciousness, the arguments by Kastrup and WJ Mander about the brain being what thoughts look like isn't all that convincing.

WJ Mander is new to me, and I'm not aware of what he's written/said on this, but yep, I agree: looking out at the world, including the soggy lumps of spaghetti-like matter we call brains, the claim "That's all conscious(ness)!" or "All of that is a thought!" or "You're inside The Mind looking at its ideas!" - or however it might be expressed - seems pretty implausible.

(2024-01-04, 05:05 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I don't really get what the physical exactly is in your paradigm - is it made of some kind of energy that is an extension of mental energy?

Riffing off "mental energy", "the physical" could simply be referred to as "physical energy": whereas "mental" energy is by definition (the objective aspect of) conscious(ness), "physical" energy is by definition not (conscious(ness)). The question as to whether it's an extension of mental energy - say, mental energy with its subjectivity and inner experience stripped from it - or of separate or novel origin is not one that I've attempted to answer so far.

(2024-01-04, 05:05 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I read this as possible supporting a Dual Aspect Monism:

Quote:Anyhow, that's the fundamental, inevitable dualism for me: that between subjective experience - what it "is" to be conscious from the inside - and the objective, substantive substrate of that (conscious) experience: a type of (mental) energy.

I say this because it seems you are saying there is one substance but it has an internal feeling?

I'm saying that with regard to "mental" energy (the outer, objective aspect of the inner, subjective aspect of conscious experience), yes, but I'm also saying that "physical" energy exists too - that which we commonly just call "matter".

So, I'm not in the end saying there's only one substance, although, as indicated above, I'm open to the possibility of the one deriving from the other.

(2024-01-04, 05:05 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I think the particles *could* have their own experiences, as per Penrose's own pondering I quoted above, but I'm not wedded to that since the important thing is all causation is mental causation. As Penrose notes the ultimate selection of a possibility in superposition is a decision of some kind.

But yes my experiences wouldn't be explicable in terms of particles, whether they are conscious or not they can't sum up to my experiences. Bottom Up Panpsychism seems implausible though I rate it a bit better than the nonsensical religion of Materialist/Physicalism.

Yep, I agree (except for not being sure about all causation being mental causation), although I'm talking more about correlation than summing up: if, say, my experience was one of pleasure while listening to a beautiful piece of music and thinking about how to design an algorithm for a program I'm writing, the perfect correlate (or external appearance) of that full experience would need to include the billions (trillions? quadrillions? I don't know the exact magnitude) of subatomic particles in my brain, which just seems silly. Even an experience as complex as that one just doesn't seem to be divisible to that extent, and so a vast quantity of subatomic particles doesn't seem to be a good candidate for the perfect correlate of (my) inner, subjective experience.

(2024-01-04, 05:05 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]As to the correct metaphysics, I tend to lean toward some kind of ultimate Monism, though I could see reality as having substances that are largely divided save for some overlap that allows for causality in particular circumstances. This could possibly be the best explanation for what a brain is and why it was necessary, but it seems difficult to say exactly what it means to have a specific interaction point in two substances that are otherwise near wholly divorced in nature.

I simply don't see an interaction problem anymore, at least not given my framing of a dualism between "mental" and "physical" energies. There are interactions between different physical energies in the forms of different types of subatomic particles: why not, then, between different energies at the higher levels of mental and physical? As for a "specific interaction point": I don't see the need for one; my model is one of "solvency", in which mental and physical energies are, so to speak, "in solution" with one another, such that the interaction occurs broadly rather than at a single specific point.

(2024-01-06, 06:11 AM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]..................................................................

I simply don't see an interaction problem anymore, at least not given my framing of a dualism between "mental" and "physical" energies. There are interactions between different physical energies in the forms of different types of subatomic particles: why not, then, between different energies at the higher levels of mental and physical? As for a "specific interaction point": I don't see the need for one; my model is one of "solvency", in which mental and physical energies are, so to speak, "in solution" with one another, such that the interaction occurs broadly rather than at a single specific point.

I try to understand this. Let's use the example of an actual event that does sometimes happen - an NDE OOBE. How to interpret this? The human is apparently a complex combination of an immaterial subjective conscious entity or spirit which is the inner aspect of this spirit's "mental energy", the objective aspect of "Mental Energy" ("Mental Energy" apparently shares aspects of both the objective and the mental/subjective), and the physical body and brain. The spirit therefore can (as sometimes experienced and observed during NDE OOBE) pass entirely freely through material walls. In doing this without any interference it of course must leave the physical body behind.

These observations seem clearly to imply dualism of some kind.

Unfortunately, these observations also seem to imply that this concept doesn't solve the problem of interaction - there is still a basically mysterious interaction between two fundamentally different things, the objective aspect of "Mental Energy", and the immaterial inner spiritual subjective mental aspect or quality of it (which is the seat of subjective experience). And there is a direct causal relationship going both ways.

But two fundamentally different things presumably can't interact, any more than the quale of the color red of an object can interact with the weight of the object. The two things are different fundamental aspects or qualities of the same object, and these two things can't possibly directly interact, since red doesn't have a weight and vice versa.

Sci has suggested that causality is probably mental in its essence, but the suggested existence of "Mental Energy" and our everyday experience of embodiment seem to predict that causation can also be physical-to-mental.
 
My own interpretation of these problems is to accept that at the core this is a fundamentally impenetrable mystery inevitably resulting from our limited human nature. That it is most likely that there is no way sentient beings of our human level can possibly understand the innermost nature of what goes on in these interactions. Or even more fundamentally, with "causation" itself as an even more basic feature of our designed reality. We have to just accept that this mysteriousness of how two fundamentally different things can still interact is simply a fact of our reality, analogous to the fundamentally unknowable mystery of what really goes on when two solid objects come in contact. Collective atomic electric field interactions enter into the observed impenetrability, but that is just the outermost layer of a many-layered whole. The core of this causal onion is a fundamental mystery built into our reality. Another example would be the unknowable innermost nature of the fundamental relationship of the gravity force between two objects to the masses of the two objects and the square of the separation distance between them.

I think it is a shame that Mysterianism is apparently unpopular in philosophy.

(2024-01-06, 06:14 PM)nbtruthma Wrote: [ -> ]Sci has suggested that causality is probably mental in its essence, but the suggested existence of "Mental Energy" and our everyday experience of embodiment seem to predict that causation can also be physical-to-mental.

Even the supposed "physical" would need to have its causation be mental causation since for any particular cause in time it is very difficult to explain why a particular effect must happen out of all possible things that can happen.

The one example of possibility selection I *do* know about [from the inside] is the one I perform through my own acts of volition.

There are hundreds of pages of philosophical texts that get deeper but that's the introductory reasoning for why someone would believe in the Volitional Theory of Causation. It doesn't really have to do with the paranormal, though I do think the sum of cases is suggestive of this causal theory.

(2024-01-06, 06:14 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]I try to understand this. Let's use the example of an actual event that does sometimes happen - an NDE OOBE. How to interpret this? The human is apparently a complex combination of an immaterial subjective conscious entity or spirit which is the inner aspect of this spirit's "mental energy", the objective aspect of "Mental Energy" ("Mental Energy" apparently shares aspects of both the objective and the mental/subjective), and the physical body and brain. The spirit therefore can (as sometimes experienced and observed during NDE OOBE) pass entirely freely through material walls. In doing this without any interference it of course must leave the physical body behind.

These observations seem clearly to imply dualism of some kind.

Unfortunately, these observations also seem to imply that this concept doesn't solve the problem of interaction - there is still a basically mysterious interaction between two fundamentally different things, the objective aspect of "Mental Energy", and the immaterial inner spiritual subjective mental aspect or quality of it (which is the seat of subjective experience). And there is a direct causal relationship going both ways.

But two fundamentally different things presumably can't interact, any more than the quale of the color red of an object can interact with the weight of the object. The two things are different fundamental aspects or qualities of the same object, and these two things can't possibly directly interact, since red doesn't have a weight and vice versa.

I appreciate your engagement and attempt at understanding. Re the bit I've coloured orange-red: you present a different framing to the one I do. In your framing, the two aspects of the one phenomenon interact causally with each other. In my framing, that they are dual aspects of the one phenomenon implies a relationship of shared identity rather than causal interactivity: mental energy is in a sense what subjective experience looks like from the outside; it is what subjective experience is objectively comprised of; it is the external representation of subjective experience. In short, there is no need for causal interaction because it is a singular phenomenon.

Now, maybe this is a matter of semantics; maybe it's just word games - and I do sometimes suspect that that's what a lot of philosophy and in particular philosophical disagreement boils down to! - but do you at least see the sense in my framing, and can you even see it as objectively coherent?

If not, then that's OK. Maybe I need to work on my framing, or maybe the conceptualisation is mistaken; again, I'm open to revision if my ideas at this point don't make sense. (And I can't even claim this as my idea anyway; I borrowed it from Analytic Idealism so as to fit it into dualism).

(2024-01-07, 11:05 AM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]I appreciate your engagement and attempt at understanding. Re the bit I've coloured orange-red: you present a different framing to the one I do. In your framing, the two aspects of the one phenomenon interact causally with each other. In my framing, that they are dual aspects of the one phenomenon implies a relationship of shared identity rather than causal interactivity: mental energy is in a sense what subjective experience looks like from the outside; it is what subjective experience is objectively comprised of; it is the external representation of subjective experience. In short, there is no need for causal interaction because it is a singular phenomenon.

Now, maybe this is a matter of semantics; maybe it's just word games - and I do sometimes suspect that that's what a lot of philosophy and in particular philosophical disagreement boils down to! - but do you at least see the sense in my framing, and can you even see it as objectively coherent?

If not, then that's OK. Maybe I need to work on my framing, or maybe the conceptualisation is mistaken; again, I'm open to revision if my ideas at this point don't make sense. (And I can't even claim this as my idea anyway; I borrowed it from Analytic Idealism so as to fit it into dualism).

I guess I just can't follow you here. It seems to me that subjective experience by its very nature is completely private and inner, and simply has no objective aspect, it has absolutely no "looks like from outside", no quality of being an "external representation" of any objective physical thing. You simply can't physically separate yourself from a perception (composed of mind-stuff) and draw a representation of it. You fundamentally can't see or feel tactilely a thought, which is composed of mind. 

The ultimate inner nature of mind or a subjective experience composed of mind, is a mystery, but it is definitely of a different fundamental nature, a different existential category, than an objective fact of the world. Example: the subjective experiencing of the color red is not physical, whereas the objective reality of the red colored object is a physical reality in the physical world whose different aspects include mass, dimensions, and wavelengths of reflected light subjectively perceived as the color red. 

The objectively physically real object is composed of matter and energy which are in an entirely different existential category than whatever subjective perception is composed of, and therefore the objectively physically real object cannot be an "external representation" of the subjective perception or thought. Like the fact that the mass of an object is fundamentally not an external representation of its perceived color. Its mass has little or no relation to its color.

 
The subjective experiencing of the perception of the color red is an ineffable "thing" with absolutely no weight or physical dimensions, and therefore this subjective state of consciousness and perception simply has no physical aspect or quality. Any more than the subjective perception of the weight of a piece of steel when held in the hand has any actual objective reality of mass or dimensions.

I'm trying to say it in different ways, but basically the ineffable essence of the subjective perception itself is for a fact somehow completely composed of an immaterial "something" we term consciousness or mind, that cannot be objectively and physically seen, felt or smelled. Therefore, subjective perception simply has no objective physical aspect or quality.

(2024-01-06, 08:32 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Even the supposed "physical" would need to have its causation be mental causation since for any particular cause in time it is very difficult to explain why a particular effect must happen out of all possible things that can happen.

The one example of possibility selection I *do* know about [from the inside] is the one I perform through my own acts of volition.

There are hundreds of pages of philosophical texts that get deeper but that's the introductory reasoning for why someone would believe in the Volitional Theory of Causation. It doesn't really have to do with the paranormal, though I do think the sum of cases is suggestive of this causal theory.

I don't quite see this as any sort of certainty. It seems to me that though some cause-effect events are definitely due to human volition, many others are due to mechanical causation, physical interactions between different objects whose motions and energies have been determined by previous (physical not mental) mechanical interactions, and so forth going back ad infinitum, with the exception of the interference caused by previous human volitional interactions in this causal chain. A common example of such a mixture of both volitional and mechanical cause-and-effect would be a game of pool. An extreme example of a purely predictable predetermined cause-effect sequence is the interaction of planetary bodies in space with each other and with the Sun, following with great exactitude the Newtonian laws of motion except under certain circumstances where Einsteinian relativity calculations are even more accurate. These laws predict with great accuracy what particular effect in celestial mechanics results from what particular cause, without mental causation or volition entering the picture.
   
This is the reason why in truth, in a vast range of circumstances, determinism obtains, where a particular effect indeed must happen out of all possible things that can happen.

This determinism of course ultimately applies completely only in the upper size range of dimensional scale in the absence of human volition. At the smallest scale of the elementary particles making up matter and energy it boils down to quantum mechanical interactions between elementary particles, which may according to certain interpretations of the theory inherently involve the observations of some sort of mind. But this is just with some interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Also of course, there is also a metaphysical/philosophical interpretation which would posit that all of reality is "mind stuff" and that therefore at the lowest, most basic level, all of our reality is some form of consciousness, and that therefore conscious volition somehow enters into all physical events.