Being aware and realizing that you are aware and can never not be aware as long as you are alive and awake can be a frightening and even horrifying experience. There have been times in my life where it has literally hurt to know I am aware. Or feeling trapped in my body and having panic attacks. What helps is realizing it is thought playing games every time. Who is it that hurts to be aware? Who feels trapped in their body?
The illusion is self-fulfilling. Everything you see is light retracted through the lens of your eye, bounced onto your retina in a certain way, then communicated to the visual processing part of your brain via electrical signals. You never directly see the world, it is put together by the visual part of your brain, which then breaks the scattering of information down into objects, colours, textures, etc. and passes it on to the thinking parts of the brain to make sense of it. If that is an illusion, then so might even be your very thoughts.
Here's what many mean, when they say it's an illusion: it's not anything like what we deduce from introspection: th-cam.com/video/6Uy5-mOGgC8/w-d-xo.html
Excellent compilation! This nexus of people and ideas has been the subject of my own project for over a decade now. I'm researching and applying to grad schools now to continue this project. Great work here!
Oh is that so? Do those atoms contain have the semantic properties that made you type this? Clearly a thought along the lines of "I disagree with this, and so I will assert that I disagree with this sarcastically" arose, and this thought unarguably contains SEMANTIC PROPERTIES. Something physical with ONLY physical properties will not give rise to semantics, otherwise we have a contradiction of two very things
Right, Chalmers is good. Therefore I quoted him several times in the documentary. But he has no cosmological (or metaphyiscal) conception to explain how the world works - Whitehead has (I think)!Best, Michael
True. I think Chalmers is more of a restless seeker still, not fully convinced to have found something he can believe in to build a full cosmology on (and maybe he never will). Thanks for that video, Michael. It's so well put together, you must have put a lot of heart and thought into this. I'm excited to read "Process and Reality" now. Are you still working on that other video you mentioned?
Exactly. And Chalmers' restlessness is a good thing, because in science and philosophy searching for errors is always important in order to learn from our mistakes.Now, concerning "Process and Reality": I think that it's one of the most important philosophical books, but unfortunately it's very hard to read. Whitehead was a philosophical genius, but anything but a good writer. It's "a labyrinth-book" (Isabelle Stengers 2002, 2014, p. 122). Here's an anecdote: as you may know, "Process and Reality" is a reworking of the Gifford Lectures, Whitehead gave in 1927-28 (at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland). A Dr. J. M. Whittaker, who was a visitor of the first of these lectures, reported that an audience of about 600 came to this first lecture. And then he continues: "Whitehead's first lecture [...] was completely unintelligible [...]. The audience at subsequent lectures was only about half a dozen at all, so I am told, for I fear that I myself was one of the backsliders." (see Lowe 1990, p. 250) So, I fear you "must put a lot of heart and thought into this", too (I really appreciated that wording - Thanks!). But it pays!!
Susan Blackmore's objection to the "theatre of consciousness" misses the mark. It's almost a straw-man to attack the substantiality of consciousness by attacking the silly idea of a spectator inside the brain. In fact, we feel consciousness anywhere our attention goes. We can feel an almost split consciousness, especially in pathological cases but also under extreme psychological and existential stress. We can definitely feel "like" one with the external world or some things/people in the external world. We can get caught in the moment or in group-behaviours and do things almost unconsciously, while feeling it like a sort of stream as in dance or sex or panic attacks. We can also feel like we are possessed by an overbearing mental force, like when we give into vices or pains or pleasure, even some forms of strong compassion. Consciousness is really a fluid entity more than a simple spectator caged in the skull. Searle seems to also miss this fluidity. Consciousness does not need to be essentially discrete. It may be a dispersed phenomenon that presents to us as a kind of limited "peak" or "crest" focussed on itself. The conscious self needs not be the ego focussed on itself - the ego is a boundary of consciousness, not consciousness itself. This is the worldview of many forms of spirituality like Hinduism or Buddhism. The conscious ego may be like a wave in the ocean of consciousness - upon merging in the ocean, consciousness that not cease to be, it rather expands and only loses its own egocentric boundaries.
I have not seen any such thing before. This is simply excellent that how intelligently a video is developed almost exactly on the parameters of research paper; editing based on giving different aspects with references. A right usage of video... excellent!!!
Oh, thank you, that's really good to hear (or: to read)! I think the mind-body-problem is a scientific and metaphysical question. And so, the parameters of a research paper are the right way to deal with the question rationally in such a video documentary. Again, thanks for your comment! Best, Michael
The Materialist view is that mind can be reduced to matter. If this is correct, that mind is ultimately physical 'stuff', then the human pursuit of truth through science and reason boils down to physical matter trying to understand itself. Physical matter is defined as something that has no mental life, so it is logically impossible for mere matter to seek understanding of anything. It surely follows then that mind cannot be reduced to matter. Consciousness must exist in matter for matter to give rise to mind... R D Laing sums it up in saying "An object cannot know that it is nothing but an object"
quote: "... consciousness cannot arise by magic, it must have some basis in matter. " This is why physicists make bad philosophers, they already have a whole host of unexamined assumptions which function as "religious" or ideological beliefs like the above quote. Philosophy is the process of removing all your assumptions until you have none at all, at which point you can inquire "what is the world", "what or who am I" and crucially "what is the meaning and basis for motivation".
I agree that we all - philosophers, scientists, theologians, economists etc. - must question all our assumptions. There's no certainty at all. (But: the quote is by Colin McGinn, a philosopher!) Best, Michael
I disagree both that Panpsychism is derived from religious assumptions and that "Philosophy is the process of removing all assumptions until you have none at all". Good philosophy is about identifying & questioning the assumptions on which (almost) all Science & Philosophy is necessarily founded! The one example of 'removing all assumptions' is Descartes radical scepticism, from which he derived the Cogito - i.e. the only thing I can be certain that exists is me aka consciousness! So, why is it not a property known to Science? As Chalmers says, either it emerges from insentient matter, through some unexplained mechanism (as if by magic), or, more plausibly, is a primitive subjective property of reality. If the latter is the case, an objective Physics would not be able to detect it, as a SUBJECTIVE (not objective) property of matter. That's the essential reasoning : no religious or unscientific assumptions involved. What I like about the presentation is, that it's not at all dogmatic, and presents Panpsychism as one possible metaphysical ontology, yet its assumptions and arguments seem highly reasonable. In contrast, as a scientist, I cringe at the dogmatic scientism so often presented as the "scientific view". Philosophy is a great antidote!
Out of the absolute nothingness,conciousness,who is also nothing appears .Conciousness is the first concept,you have to go the state ,ore non-state prior to conciousness .
Thekstuart : ancient esoteric mysticism aka kabbalah re-branded what part of Europe are all these physicists from ? none of there theory's have any empirical scientific evidence
Thank you, too! In the description of the video (see above) there is a link where you can find all the resources, listed in a PDF file. Best, Michael Schramm .. Here's the link once again: www.uni-hohenheim.de/wirtschaftsethik/Panpsychism_2016_Resources.html
I disagree with Whitehead's conception of a non-creator God but I really admire his panpsychist metaphysical framework. I have enormous respect for Whitehead and his ability to provide a theory for the working of a physical reality that even science can't explain. Whitehead was able to 'logicalize' conciousness, something never done in any of the sciences and that is much appreciated from this genius.
projecting our consciousness into the near future in order to acquire plans of future actions,... not just reacting but rather consciously choosing. Semantically defined as "freewill".
I run a simulation of everything that is likely to happen and I am NOT present in the physical location of the "now",... or I am in both places at once.... sort of,.. in a sense.... for lack of better vocab anyway.
Consciousness is the basis of a topic, but after that we must ask why consciousness allows for individualized egos that no one but the beholder can control or experience. Once the ego is in place or removed it makes for a completely different life than with or without it
Consciousness is the "is"-ness of anything that you are conscious of. I wasn't aware of the universe forming 14bn years ago, so it doesn't exist in consciousness. 14bn years passed since creation and I barely think a second might have passed. That is the power of consciousness. Without it, time has no meaning.
Traumata from the outside world > effect our emotins > effect the chemistry of our brain. People don't just get depressed, because their "machine" has lost some oil. They do because something or someone has inflicted pain on them. And *_then_* the chemicals in the brain get unbalanced.
sure,.... and there is the physical also... vitamin D is needed to produce serotonin, (which is required for balance; aka not depressed specifically). Darn pesky facts. ;-) not bifurcated logical fallacy,.. all cause and effect adjusting the fluctuating field of probability valuing...... then there is physical therapy for the brain by choice.
Apparently I've been a panpsychist most of my life. It's the most natural idea to explain consciousness. That's why no algorithm can ever be conscious in the sense of having experiences/qualia. Robots based on current computer design will always be zombies. But this is awesome. So many ideas to tie it all together. Science needs to take all this into account. There'll be no singularity before people take this seriously.
It is all material, material is made of atoms made of subatomic particles, made of quantum probabilities... so our brains are material, etc. and so how could conciousness not be fundemental. There would be no perception of the world to determine any theory without it. Wow thanks for this video its amazing.
What appears as duality is in Reality Continuum. Conscious and unconscious are ways of knowing/Awareness. Awareness is a way of being - that which is that knows experentially/existentially. Atom: Neutron = core self (Creative Intelligence) Proton = essential self (predilictions) Electron = social self (behaviour). Life Continuum - innermost, midmost and outermost: Creative Intelligence/Energy Creative Process Information Behaviour Outcomes
You put lots of work into this montage i assume. And i believe it was very much worth it. Thank you. Even if "i'm a bit late to the party". Also fife years later: this has only grown in importance to be discussed more broadly! Thank you for your work.
Thank you for the recognition! Yes, it was a lot of work to put it all together. I actually wanted to put together more videos, but there's just so much to do. But it's good if you find the video useful.
Chalmers's proposal of counting consciousness side by side with space and matter as a basic constituent of the world strikes me as nonsensical: it all happens as if Chalmers had never processed Kant's first Critique, so that he is willing to place what pertains to external phenomena (space. matter, ...) side by side with what not, namely, consciousness. Space and matter are not side by side with consciousness; they are within consciousness since they are just part of the form of external phenomena.
Well, I think that Kant was wrong. Space and time are not only within consciousness. They are not, as Kant holds, a priori „reine Formen der Anschauung“. As Einstein showed, they are objective (and relative) features of the world. And Whitehead's metaphysics assumes that the ontological basis for time, space and matter are these tiny microscopic events he calls "actual occasions". And these "actual occasions" are bipolar, too: they have a physical and a mental pole. Best, Michael
Do you really think physics can prove Kant wrong? In my very very humble opinion, this reveals you don't know how the whole thing works: all of physics remains within the realm of phenomena; physics can't prove anything about things in themselves; physics just permits to compute and predict the behavior of phenomena. The belief that physics is about things in themselves is just naive realism...
Let me put it this way: nobody knows how things are in themselves. (Let's say: only "God" could know ...) So, I think you're right in saying that "physics remains within the realm of phenomena". But: philosophy (e.g. Kant) or metaphysics remain within the realm of phenomena, too. All the evidence we have - in physics as well as in metaphysics - is OUR experience (in all its different forms). But the different forms of experience can be the critic for each other. So, for example, I think, metaphysics can be a critic of materialism (which is a metaphysical position) in main stream natural sciences. But reversely a natural science can be a critic of philosophy (e.g. Kant) or metaphysics, too. In my opinion, there are no "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA). So, as a result: philosophy has to take the evidences from physics into account, and physics the evidences from philosophy or metaphysics. That's my view. But, sure, I may be wrong. Best, Michael Schramm
Alfred North Whitehead Project Thanks for your response. There could be two ways in which philosophy could find out some things about things in themselves (against Kant's opinion). One: absolutely obvious laws of reason must apply to them; e.g. they must be self-identical and, if they are in discrete number, then 1+1=2 must hold for them (this is Russell's idea). Two: if someone looks at me, he will see of me my phenomenon but there are things I can know about myself no one else can: my inner experience; indeed, Kant would say this is no thing in itself but just a phenomenon of my inner sensibility; but I'm inclined to side with Leibniz, Schopenhauer,.. and recently Donald Hoffman in conjecturing that flows of conscious (in some degree) experience is the only kind of thing we can say with certainty the world is made of. Finally, I do agree that philosophy must take science into account; it must do so in order to improve its knowledge of phenomena. I hope these few words will be of interest to you. Best regards.
Bill Ottman of minds turned me on to Neil Theise; which prompted youtube to suggest Corey Anton's review of Neil Theis's video,.. which prompted youtube to suggest this video..... we all think a great deal and are interested in the same aspects of this grand puzzle we call reality. Just in case you wanted to know how I found this channel.
Can't really say "why" I'm so grateful for learning about what Whitehead really meant; maybe it's because I put off looking into the ideas for so many years. I've listened to this youtube at least five or six times. Finally, WHAT I THOUGHT I WAS GETTING INTO in approaching Whitehead is corrected!! What I wanted to believe it was...is swept aside! Whoever told me on the Whitehead Research Project page (fb) actual occasions [AOs] can be local...I THANK YOU! According to quotes in this tube, obviously most of'em were conceived by Whitehead as SHORT. And it seems that, according to these quotes, they ARE often confined to very small arenas (not to preclude their connections to all other AOs). According to what I've read thus far, though, there's still a doubt re whether or not a "society" of AOs (like a stone) can experience an AO wholly unto itself...all on its own, "local" to itself. As anyone knows who's read my comments on WRP's page, I've maintained the whole archetypal appeal of Whitehead's philosophy could have been [and could be] that YES, SHORT MOMENTS...EVEN AS LONG AS AN HOUR, OR A DAY, OR WEEK, OR MONTH OR YEAR...CAN BE EXTREMELY MEANINGFUL (hopeful or traumatic eg) FOR THE WHOLE WORLD. I see now, of course, that is not what Whitehead was talking about...or was this possible too? I have a right and anyone has a right to assume THIS WAS THE APPEAL...and that Whitehead was a couple times removed from it in terms of HIS writings breaking down HIS own particular "frame." Yes, I have a right and anyone has a right to think HIS version was a bit "off" from what is out there. But now I know for sure this was not where he was headed with it.
'The real actual things that endure are societies. They are not actual occasions.' ANW (23:36)
Ok, but this is weird: Look at the above two sentences in ANOTHER WHOLE WAY. One "other whole way" might contradict Whitehead's general thrust. What if angels are enabling this or that AO to produce whatever...develop in whatever way? Such a situation would be one feature of these hyper-short moments Whitehead believed in. But...having OTHER features as well...would make all the terminology pertinent to such hyper-short moments simply what it is...a human (and NOT exhaustive) conceptualizing of same. Thus, whatever or however these moments are, we cannot know EVERYTHING about them. And if we can't know everything about them...it could be, say, the aura energy of Aurobindo's "mental body"s is just as important! Or for that matter how energy propagates in string theory's "additional" dimensions. I'm saying...look for subtext in those two sentences. Look for a subliminal meaning...like: souls endure, not these actual occasions.
For the novice--> even though a "truther," DRG's excerpts are REAL useful in terms of breaking down Whitehead's "constructs" at 25:10.I will test here--> to see if TH-cam enables italics.
I see I was a little unclear. Let's see if I can put it another way. When I wrote "the whole archetypal appeal of Whitehead's philosophy" I meant, to my mind, it could have pertained to meanings of moments shared by numbers of creatures. IOW, for example, all the world's creatures sharing whatever meaning of whatever consectutive "absolute" moments. Of course, per relativity there are no absolute moments. But in a confined domain like the biosphere where gravity is fairly equal everywhere (hence time flow rate is pretty much exactly the same at all points)...a hundred million humans can share the meaning of a moment when suddenly the goalie's on the ground and it's plain the ball is behind him up against the net. Ten birds in a murmuration experience the directive (whatever its nature) to turn...in the same moment. Moreover, there "could" be some kind of universal (Earth-wide) quality, experienced by all Earth creatures, germane to each consecutive moment...VIA EPR (quantum entanglement)...or at least germane to some outstanding ones. I think I was way off, unless Whitehead had his "actual occasions" encompassing bigger and bigger distances. Since originally, when I thought this was what Whitehead was about, what I've mostly run into is talk (Whiteheadian talk/text) of numbers of actual occasions constiuting things as small as electrons...as the electrons move through time! It might seem weird that dramas in tiny, tiny, tiny spaces...for brief, brief, brief intervals were thought by Whitehead to be MORE REAL THAN ANY "SUBSTANCE," but consider the super short-lived top quark. It's basically just that (forgot, but I don't think it has "mass"). I can't buy this contention in caps, but won't go into it in any more length right now. I know, the dramas have to have actors. But this thing, folks, is AFAICS pretty much along the lines of Heraclitus' ideas...web without a weaver, etc. Like I say, I can't buy it. They say "Emptiness is form, and form is emptiness." For me (especially after the Calabi-Yao spaces theory) looks ONLY like...emptiness is form.
One has to keep in mind that Whitehead's original scientific field was "applied mathematics", that is: physics. So he conceived his tiny "actual occasions" in the light of modern physics. Current physical theories would say that the world is made up of "loops" (loop quantum gravity) or "strings" (string theory) that make up space and time. However, Whitehead has not understood these tiny "building blocks" of the world in a purely physical sense: events have both a physical pole and a mental pole. The so-called "matter" thus already contains a mind-potential. This mind-potential could later be amplified to consciousness, but only in beings with sufficient complexity, e.g. a central nervous system. In these very complex "societies" of "actual occasions" the brain is a kind of "amplifier" which transforms the mind-potentials into the stream of consciousness. Best, Michael
Gladys Wildgoose It's called hypnogigic state; it is a state well known to psychologists, neurologists and lucid dreamers. It's the state you are in before you fall asleep (especially if you do it slowly) and when you wake up (again, if you do it slowly it is actually longer).
Are the likes of Dennett, Humphrey, Blackmore, not familiar with the metadata of experiments and the mountain of evidence indicating that both conscious intention and conscious attention, can effect the material world. What about the basic "observer effect"? Or is there none so blind as those who refuse to see....?
To produce all our output from our inputs we have to experience the inner movie. Subjective experience was necessary for our survival. But does the universe require subjective experience to exist? It appears to me that it depends on the interpretation of my phrase. It seems like it needs conscious observers for the universe to exist. Does the universe itself need to have its own consciousness to exist? Perhaps. Or perhaps we are its consciousness. Are there dead universes with no life? How was ours at some point devoid of it? Does the experience of the future define the universe in the past? The multiverse? What causes the first cause? How can there be a first cause, if it must be caused by something? Does the future cause the past? Is the mind the cause of the universe in some recurring sense?
Hey, A.N. Whitehead Project at 9:04 - 10:11 what was the name of that exact book you got that quote from by Charles Birch? Thanks and also this video was amazing. Please keep up the good work and I myself am writing an essay and making a video based upon it called, 'The Materialist Delusion.'
Hi Ellis, there is a link at the end of the video description which leads to a PDF with all the resources. There you can see that the Birch Quote is taken from: Birch, Charles (2008): Why Aren't We Zombies? Neo-Darwinism and Process Thought, in: Cobb, John B. (Ed.): Back to Darwin. A Richer Account of Evolution, Grand Rapids (Michhigan) / Cambridge (U.K.): William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 250 - 262.So, I'm waiting for your "Materialist Delusion". Best, Michael
Talk to neuroscientists about how neurons create representations of the world and how those representations are used to make predictions about sensorimotor data and generates commands to the motor system.
Very nice video in the manner in poses "new possibilities" have been nice if there was some homage to Bergson who greatly influenced Whitehead and Sheldrake, and in my view a more interesting explanation of consciousness and matter.
Great work!!! Question: can you give us the sources of the material you have incorporated in the video? Let's say the interviews of Searle, McGuinn, Chalmers...? Thanks in advance...
Hello Alvaro Puertas Villavicencio, first, thanks for your interest! I really appreciate that. But in the description of the video (see above) there is a link where you can find all the resources, listed in a PDF file. Best, Michael Schramm .. Here's the link once again: www.uni-hohenheim.de/wirtschaftsethik/Panpsychism_2016_Resources.html
Hi Michael! I just noticed the link! Thank you again! Keep up with such a great job! By the way, do you know about the relationship between pansychism/consciousness and other disciplines that could be of interest for a beginner like myself?
@@alfrednorthwhiteheadprojec4278 Thanks for the great video. Unfortunately, the link seems to have expired. I checked wayback but your link isn't archived. So, I was wondering if you have a new link?
I think i'm coming to accept panpsychism. The main issue with religious dualism, where there is a soul seems to be how can damage to the brain affect the mind? And the issue with materialism as I have simply reduced it to is, if matter is not conscious, how can alot of matter in a certain configuration bring about consciousness? I think it is analogous to believing that adding zeros to one another will get you 1
Magic! You dont need to add zeroes to get one! All you need is ONE zero and youve already got one! Zero exists only in mental functions. Can anything outside of human consciousness posit a "zero?"
BTW I think brain damage can affect the mind, not because the brain is a generator of consciousness, but an accumulator of consciousness. Damage the container and it starts to leak and lose cohesion.
Interesting and well put together video. I don't see how free will is relevant to pansychism though, I found that part of the video odd although interesting in its own right.
"I hope my theory is correct because, as a "scientist", I don't want to be wrong." That's not science but religion. I am appalled to hear such a statement from one calling himself a scientist. A real scientist would want to be wrong in order to perpetuate further scientific discovery.
If consciousness does not exist the denial of the existence consciousness is inexplicable. How can an unconscious 'thing' deny the existence of anything? The real question involves the investigation of what actually IS. That fact that 'denial' is possible is an indication of consciousness. To disagree with this POV one must argue that he or she does not exist. Now that is a real problem!
Multi-disciplinary science yields the answers to these ponderings. Best to take note of the material at my channel.... start with the playlist titled "Watch in this order" in order to know who you are dealing with, how I think, how I perceive reality and then move on to how to understand consciousness and much much more.... simplified and compressed for the attention spans and/or majority demographic of youtube, (keep in mind that everything I say in the videos is not even remotely close to the full complexity of my thoughts on the topic... my thoughts don't fit neatly into constrained boxes). I tell you of "my" material because "I" know that "you" will enjoy it and/or find solace in the science; not for "shameless self promotions". (what "self"? composite self? heh heh "you'll" see)
Hi John! Thanks for your encouragement! Well:(a) Currently I'm workin' on a new video project, entitled: "Is there Empirical Evidence for God?" So, this video will be a theological argument that deals with Richard Dawkins' assertation that "in the case of God, there is not a tiny shred of evidence for the existence of any kind of God." (th-cam.com/video/of-8Q3HySjE/w-d-xo.html, 44:39 min.) My own result: yes, there IS empirical evidence for a kind of "God", but as Whitehead already said: “[T]he concept of God [...] is not the God of the learned tradition of Christian Theology, nor is it the diffused God of the Hindu Buddhistic tradition. The concept lies somewhere between the two.” (Whitehead, Alfred N. (1948): Essays in Science and Philosophy, New York: Philosophical Library, p. 69)(b) And afterwards I will turn to a subject I call "Business Metaphysics". Short explanation: "Metaphysics" deals with the question, how the world really works (in general) - and I think that Whitehead put things here on the right track. Consequently, "Business Metaphysics" deals with the question, how the business world really works (in general). And I think that (neo-classical)mainstream economics usually commits a "fallacy of misplaced concreteness", because its abstract market models do neglect the polydimensionality (including the moral dimension) of concrete transactions.Best, Michael
Oh…maybe, just maybe...... Well I heard there was a secret chord (OM) That David played and it pleased the Lord (universal consciousness) But you (material scientists) don't really care for music, do you? Well it goes like this: the fourth, the fifth The minor fall and the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah Hallelujah [x4] Your faith was strong but you needed proof You saw her (Lila play of Brahman) bathing on the roof Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you She tied you to her kitchen chair She broke your throne (fear scientific dogma) and she cut your hair And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.....
Thanx for that interesting question! I think there are (at least) two major differences that distinguish panpsychism from animism. If "animism" is the belief that all things have feelings or have a soul, including things like water sources, trees, stones or bacteria, then a Whiteheadian panpsychist would not agree that water sources or stones or elementary particles are conscious. Elementary particles or stones or trees are not self-aware and cannot feel pain. And here are the two systematic differences: first, in panpsychism "mental" qualities appear gradually graded. An elementary particle is not conscious, it only has a kind of proto-consciousness or "mind potential", wheras a human being is really conscious. Therefore it's true that the term "panpsychism" (pan = "all"; psayche = "soul") is a little bit misleading, because not "all" things really have a "soul". Second, Whitehead and especially Hartshorne made a distinction between mere "aggregates" on the one hand and "compound individuals" on the other (in the video I refer to this distiction at 24:45 min. ff.) A stone, a screw or a cloud are mere "aggregates" which show no signs of spontaneity. Not every accumulation of smaller units is a real individual. But higher animals or humans are examples of "compound individuals": they are structured, they have a central nervous system, and this central nervous system works - in the words of the physicist Freeman Dyson (video 38:05 Min. ff.) - as a kind of "amplifier" that uses the (tiny) mind potentials of elementary particles and translates it to the stream of our conscious mind. Best, Michael Schramm
I find it interesting that I have reached many of the same conclusions as Alfred North Whitehead and I barely use math at all, (have learned much about math though and used many extra-sensory perceptional devices that were created in part by math).
Ok, right - not many, but a few. But, unfortunately Xenophanes was right: "For all is but a woven web of guesses." Or as Karl Popper said: "We do not know: we can only guess." (Logic of Scientific Discovery, p. 278)
Alfred North Whitehead Project pretty good thinking for their time... Things are a little different now with the advancements in our sea of knowledge and our ability to absorb them with the emergent phenomena that is the internet combined with the time gifted to some of us because of the Industrial Revolution as well as technology like robotics for example... These gifts allow expanded consciousness to become almost boundless until it ceases to have the ability to biologically function. Furthermore, guessing is not logical even though I understand what he was saying... The first step is admit to ourselves what we do not know so that we can then ask the right questions... Which will lead to research which will lead to more questions and some more research but eventually we have a tremendous amount of the puzzle pieces and then we are left with a handful of possibilities that are extremely higher in probability or value then all the guesses of the past forms of our consciousness. Here's a question for you... Why learn from the trough of the wave of Consciousness when you can join the crest of the wave and see over the future crests?... Expand Consciousness into the realm of hyperconsciousness through the power of evidence based reasoning, combined with cause and effect analysis that is supported by lateral verification?
I don't see why one needs to raise the issue of free will, be it on the panpsychic or the side of those objecting. Surely you can have unfree property dualism? If you can have that, why not Strawson's unfree "weak" panpsychism?
Well, true, these are two different subjects: panpsychism and free will. And surely the free will hypothesis is much more ambitious than panpsychism as such. But, for me it makes much more sense to tie panpsychism and free will together. Because: "mind" (in the panpsychic sense) deals with possibilities, with decisions among possibilities. And: deciding between different possibilities or different possible futures IS a kind of free will (which need not to be conscious). So, in my view the mental is always "free" to some degree (although much is determined) - in the case of an electron this freedom is rather small (but it's there, as quantum physics shows), in the case of a stone as a whole it's next to zero, in the case of a human being with a central nervous system the freedom is remarkable larger. So, for me "mind" implies such a thing as "free will". Best, Michael
Alfred North Whitehead Project Thank you for your considered reply. I may not be on board with panpsychism as such, although it does seem possible to talk about "consciousness" as a property, as we do with duration, charge and so on. I'm wary of talking about quantum mechanics, as the math is well above my pay grade. So, I'll confine my remarks to a rather simple, perhaps naive question and leave it at that: is it not fallacious to mix the terms "free will" and freedom so...um...freely? These "decisions" are either caused or random. I don't see how one can get "free will" from that. Thanks for introducing me to Whitehead. I started down the rabbit-hole last weekend. It's not unlike reading Heidegger, except this is not phenomenology but rather metaphysics (I think).
Dear Matt, you're saying: "decisions" are either caused or random. Well, These are two possibilities. But: per definition "panpsychists" DO think that there is a third possibility, namely that decisions are really some kind of decisions. Because: If every elementary particle really has "some rudimentary form of mind" (physicist Freeman Dyson) - that's the hypothesis of panpsychism (otherwise we humans should be "Zombies") - then it has a rudimentary capacity to make "decisions" which are not totally caused by past events and which are not completely random. Best, Michael Schramm
Saying "decisions are really some kind of decisions" does seem to place us back at square one. I don't know how you can escape causality or randomness. Even if quarks possess a quantum of consciousness, it's quite a stretch to then say they are making decisions, and even if they are, these "decisions" would either be caused or random, so that doesn't get you free will either! The old Aristotelian self-caused agent problem. I suppose you could say that there is the possibility of a teleos in the universe, and this is what the "deciding property" is aligning itself with, but that seems unwarranted. We can't just keep adding properties ad infinitum. Panpsychism does offer the possibility of grounding a science of consciousness in the notion of mind/proto-mind as a fundamental property. This is certainly appealing, and only seems "wacky" at first blush. Chalmers is awesome! Love the older footage where he's sporting his metalhead look.
What's the difference between the determinacy of QM Systems and of classical (mechanical) Systems? But anyway: most quantum physicists are saying actually that the Quantum world is indeterministic. Best, Michael
Stephen Paul King, Searle is not incorrect. And that piece you provided a link to, is scant on detail. QM systems are not deterministic! Are you familiar with Bell's theorem?
I'm not a "professional" philosopher, but, aren't non-metaphysical theories equivalent to materialist/physical/mindless theories? So calling panpsychism "metaphysical" should be a positive asset of the theory as clearly any purely "physical" theory lacks the very thing that makes the world go round and is therefore incomplete. Plus the word "physical" is just as vague as "metaphysical". The only difference is the emotion that people attach to the words. The only way forward is to start testing out the theories. Until then, all we get is more vague concepts that surely will turn out to be "pink flying elephants". And discussing these elephants without experiments will not get us anywhere.
Well, you're surely right in saying that at the end of the day and if it's possible, we should test our metaphysical hypotheses experimentally. The problem is: in many cases this isn't possible. And in these cases the only thing we have are metaphysical hypotheses. But maybe some day we are able to test the more reasonable metaphysical hypotheses. And I think that the panpsychist hypothesis is such a reasonable one. Best, Michael
As I understand it, all our theories are "physical" in nature, i.e., of the observed world (entities that interact with measuring devices) as experienced by a consciousness full of concepts like ours. But the subjective experiences themselves (what it's like to be the scientist thinking those theories) are all "metaphysical" in nature, meaning "first person". So "physical" is a description "from the outside" whereas a "metaphysical" theory would be a description of what it's like from the inside (though the description and the experience would still be very different entities). I guess that most experiments that suggest themselves are all "borderline" ethical. There are examples of people that share a brain by birth, so maybe that's a good start. I haven't come across anything else that looks like an attempt to construct such experiments. Is anyone trying to do that to your knowledge?
The first objection is wholly untrue. Consciousness is a smear. Split brain patients experience this, rat brains have been wired together, memories can be disconnected, and people can be "locked in." Conciousness is merely augmented by memory structures that allow it to retain its experience and by senses that allow its connected components to see outside of itself. Boundless consciousness is merely that which exists outside these barriers. Of course we cannot perceive it. It is built that way. The stuff could be flowing in and out of us all the time, but we only perceive what our senses and memory trap and feed back to us. When we sleep dreamless sleep, who knows where we go, what we do, or what influence we exert on the universe. Boundless experience is either useless, existing only in Planck frames at single simultaneous states, or all-retaining, given the webbed network formed by the macroscopic view of galactic clusters and any deterministic states which can be retraced. We see the repetition of order from the smallest to the largest... from a giant neural network of galaxies to the smallest interplay between quarks and virtual particles. How can anyone possibly deny the potential of all this to operate as one vast Boltzmann brain?
The timeless and uniting polarity (not dividing duality) of Matter and Soul is the essence, the source, the base of all physical brain-consciousness. The fact of those immaterial SOUL-SELVES WITHIN all and every kind of multi-universal matter, is giving rise to this physical brain`s mind as one`s Ego, spirit and I-ness, known as "CONSCIOUSNESS". Panpsychism is identical to former "animism" or this named "panentheism": It designs that experience of this intuitively FELT wisdom of one`s own eternal and spaceless SOUL-SELF. This immaterial SELFNESS unites all existence into ONENESS (= alias `God`.) SOUL-SELVES` wisdom should be named "AWARENESS" and not as `consciousness`, merely being part of those always dying matter-brains! "Awareness is everywhere, consciousness obviously not."
![Panpsychism | Robert Wright & Galen Strawson [The Wright Show]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ydqAhPNuyY/mqdefault.jpg)
![Panpsychism | Robert Wright & Galen Strawson [The Wright Show]](/img/tr.png)
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I can't believe how many people fall for the old "consciousness is an illusion" line - who or what is witnessing this illusion?!
Being aware and realizing that you are aware and can never not be aware as long as you are alive and awake can be a frightening and even horrifying experience. There have been times in my life where it has literally hurt to know I am aware. Or feeling trapped in my body and having panic attacks. What helps is realizing it is thought playing games every time. Who is it that hurts to be aware? Who feels trapped in their body?
SongOfCelestia Daniel Dennett says consciousness is an illusion. Have you watched the entire video?
The illusion is self-fulfilling. Everything you see is light retracted through the lens of your eye, bounced onto your retina in a certain way, then communicated to the visual processing part of your brain via electrical signals. You never directly see the world, it is put together by the visual part of your brain, which then breaks the scattering of information down into objects, colours, textures, etc. and passes it on to the thinking parts of the brain to make sense of it. If that is an illusion, then so might even be your very thoughts.
Here's what many mean, when they say it's an illusion: it's not anything like what we deduce from introspection: th-cam.com/video/6Uy5-mOGgC8/w-d-xo.html
Tmuk2 Descartes disproved the possibility of consciousness being a mere illusion centuries ago.
Excellent compilation! This nexus of people and ideas has been the subject of my own project for over a decade now. I'm researching and applying to grad schools now to continue this project. Great work here!
The atoms floating around my brain decided to make me type this. Thanks!
Oh is that so? Do those atoms contain have the semantic properties that made you type this? Clearly a thought along the lines of "I disagree with this, and so I will assert that I disagree with this sarcastically" arose, and this thought unarguably contains SEMANTIC PROPERTIES. Something physical with ONLY physical properties will not give rise to semantics, otherwise we have a contradiction of two very things
Lol
Everything I ever thought about consciousness has been brought up before by David Chalmers, He's always two steps ahead. Gonna watch cat videos now.
Right, Chalmers is good. Therefore I quoted him several times in the documentary. But he has no cosmological (or metaphyiscal) conception to explain how the world works - Whitehead has (I think)!Best, Michael
True. I think Chalmers is more of a restless seeker still, not fully convinced to have found something he can believe in to build a full cosmology on (and maybe he never will).
Thanks for that video, Michael. It's so well put together, you must have put a lot of heart and thought into this. I'm excited to read "Process and Reality" now.
Are you still working on that other video you mentioned?
Exactly. And Chalmers' restlessness is a good thing, because in science and philosophy searching for errors is always important in order to learn from our mistakes.Now, concerning "Process and Reality": I think that it's one of the most important philosophical books, but unfortunately it's very hard to read. Whitehead was a philosophical genius, but anything but a good writer. It's "a labyrinth-book" (Isabelle Stengers 2002, 2014, p. 122). Here's an anecdote: as you may know, "Process and Reality" is a reworking of the Gifford Lectures, Whitehead gave in 1927-28 (at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland). A Dr. J. M. Whittaker, who was a visitor of the first of these lectures, reported that an audience of about 600 came to this first lecture. And then he continues: "Whitehead's first lecture [...] was completely unintelligible [...]. The audience at subsequent lectures was only about half a dozen at all, so I am told, for I fear that I myself was one of the backsliders." (see Lowe 1990, p. 250) So, I fear you "must put a lot of heart and thought into this", too (I really appreciated that wording - Thanks!). But it pays!!
Susan Blackmore's objection to the "theatre of consciousness" misses the mark. It's almost a straw-man to attack the substantiality of consciousness by attacking the silly idea of a spectator inside the brain. In fact, we feel consciousness anywhere our attention goes. We can feel an almost split consciousness, especially in pathological cases but also under extreme psychological and existential stress. We can definitely feel "like" one with the external world or some things/people in the external world. We can get caught in the moment or in group-behaviours and do things almost unconsciously, while feeling it like a sort of stream as in dance or sex or panic attacks. We can also feel like we are possessed by an overbearing mental force, like when we give into vices or pains or pleasure, even some forms of strong compassion. Consciousness is really a fluid entity more than a simple spectator caged in the skull.
Searle seems to also miss this fluidity. Consciousness does not need to be essentially discrete. It may be a dispersed phenomenon that presents to us as a kind of limited "peak" or "crest" focussed on itself. The conscious self needs not be the ego focussed on itself - the ego is a boundary of consciousness, not consciousness itself. This is the worldview of many forms of spirituality like Hinduism or Buddhism. The conscious ego may be like a wave in the ocean of consciousness - upon merging in the ocean, consciousness that not cease to be, it rather expands and only loses its own egocentric boundaries.
I have not seen any such thing before. This is simply excellent that how intelligently a video is developed almost exactly on the parameters of research paper; editing based on giving different aspects with references.
A right usage of video... excellent!!!
Oh, thank you, that's really good to hear (or: to read)! I think the mind-body-problem is a scientific and metaphysical question. And so, the parameters of a research paper are the right way to deal with the question rationally in such a video documentary. Again, thanks for your comment! Best, Michael
The Materialist view is that mind can be reduced to matter. If this is correct, that mind is ultimately physical 'stuff', then the human pursuit of truth through science and reason boils down to physical matter trying to understand itself.
Physical matter is defined as something that has no mental life, so it is logically impossible for mere matter to seek understanding of anything. It surely follows then that mind cannot be reduced to matter. Consciousness must exist in matter for matter to give rise to mind...
R D Laing sums it up in saying "An object cannot know that it is nothing but an object"
quote: "... consciousness cannot arise by magic, it must have some basis in matter. "
This is why physicists make bad philosophers, they already have a whole host of unexamined assumptions which function as "religious" or ideological beliefs like the above quote.
Philosophy is the process of removing all your assumptions until you have none at all, at which point you can inquire "what is the world", "what or who am I" and crucially "what is the meaning and basis for motivation".
I agree that we all - philosophers, scientists, theologians, economists etc. - must question all our assumptions. There's no certainty at all. (But: the quote is by Colin McGinn, a philosopher!) Best, Michael
Consciousness arising from unconscious matter is magic on its own.
I disagree both that Panpsychism is derived from religious assumptions and that "Philosophy is the process of removing all assumptions until you have none at all". Good philosophy is about identifying & questioning the assumptions on which (almost) all Science & Philosophy is necessarily founded!
The one example of 'removing all assumptions' is Descartes radical scepticism, from which he derived the Cogito - i.e. the only thing I can be certain that exists is me aka consciousness! So, why is it not a property known to Science? As Chalmers says, either it emerges from insentient matter, through some unexplained mechanism (as if by magic), or, more plausibly, is a primitive subjective property of reality. If the latter is the case, an objective Physics would not be able to detect it, as a SUBJECTIVE (not objective) property of matter. That's the essential reasoning : no religious or unscientific assumptions involved.
What I like about the presentation is, that it's not at all dogmatic, and presents Panpsychism as one possible metaphysical ontology, yet its assumptions and arguments seem highly reasonable. In contrast, as a scientist, I cringe at the dogmatic scientism so often presented as the "scientific view". Philosophy is a great antidote!
Out of the absolute nothingness,conciousness,who is also nothing appears .Conciousness is the first concept,you have to go the state ,ore non-state prior to conciousness .
Thekstuart : ancient esoteric mysticism aka kabbalah re-branded
what part of Europe are all these physicists from ? none of there theory's have any empirical scientific evidence
Here I go again on my own. Going down the only road I've ever known.
Amazing video. Thank you for putting this together
Great compilation and clear explanation of panpsychism - Thanks! Btw anyone know the source of the Rupert Sheldrake clip near the end?
Thank you, too! In the description of the video (see above) there is a link where you can find all the resources, listed in a PDF file. Best, Michael Schramm .. Here's the link once again: www.uni-hohenheim.de/wirtschaftsethik/Panpsychism_2016_Resources.html
I enjoyed this very much I really appreciate the spectrum of philosophies presented. Its very helpful to see the contrasting perspectives presented.
Consciousness does come from magic and so does existence.
I disagree with Whitehead's conception of a non-creator God but I really admire his panpsychist metaphysical framework. I have enormous respect for Whitehead and his ability to provide a theory for the working of a physical reality that even science can't explain. Whitehead was able to 'logicalize' conciousness, something never done in any of the sciences and that is much appreciated from this genius.
I don't always get this view of myself that i'm living inside my head. Most of the time it feels i'm above myself.
projecting our consciousness into the near future in order to acquire plans of future actions,... not just reacting but rather consciously choosing. Semantically defined as "freewill".
I run a simulation of everything that is likely to happen and I am NOT present in the physical location of the "now",... or I am in both places at once.... sort of,.. in a sense.... for lack of better vocab anyway.
I'm beside myself.
Great compilation, thank you very much!
Consciousness is the basis of a topic, but after that we must ask why consciousness allows for individualized egos that no one but the beholder can control or experience. Once the ego is in place or removed it makes for a completely different life than with or without it
Consciousness is the "is"-ness of anything that you are conscious of. I wasn't aware of the universe forming 14bn years ago, so it doesn't exist in consciousness. 14bn years passed since creation and I barely think a second might have passed. That is the power of consciousness. Without it, time has no meaning.
Traumata from the outside world > effect our emotins > effect the chemistry of our brain.
People don't just get depressed, because their "machine" has lost some oil. They do because something or someone has inflicted pain on them.
And *_then_* the chemicals in the brain get unbalanced.
sure,.... and there is the physical also... vitamin D is needed to produce serotonin, (which is required for balance; aka not depressed specifically). Darn pesky facts. ;-) not bifurcated logical fallacy,.. all cause and effect adjusting the fluctuating field of probability valuing...... then there is physical therapy for the brain by choice.
It's all the same. Brain, nervous system, energy system, body, chakras, auras, whatever the fuck - all the same.
What are you talking about?
Apparently I've been a panpsychist most of my life. It's the most natural idea to explain consciousness. That's why no algorithm can ever be conscious in the sense of having experiences/qualia. Robots based on current computer design will always be zombies.
But this is awesome. So many ideas to tie it all together. Science needs to take all this into account. There'll be no singularity before people take this seriously.
I don't think panpsychism in any way implies what you suggest about algorithms/computers. If anything it shows the opposite.
very good video where you bring out different experts opinions
Wow, very informative video. I am a fanatic about the hard problem and I think you just made my fix very convenient. Thank you very much!
Thank you very much for this work
It is all material, material is made of atoms made of subatomic particles, made of quantum probabilities... so our brains are material, etc. and so how could conciousness not be fundemental. There would be no perception of the world to determine any theory without it. Wow thanks for this video its amazing.
"Amazing"? Sounds good! Thank you, Michael
What appears as duality is in Reality Continuum.
Conscious and unconscious are ways of knowing/Awareness. Awareness is a way of being - that which is that knows experentially/existentially.
Atom:
Neutron = core self (Creative Intelligence)
Proton = essential self (predilictions)
Electron = social self (behaviour).
Life Continuum - innermost, midmost and outermost:
Creative Intelligence/Energy
Creative Process
Information
Behaviour
Outcomes
You put lots of work into this montage i assume. And i believe it was very much worth it. Thank you. Even if "i'm a bit late to the party".
Also fife years later: this has only grown in importance to be discussed more broadly!
Thank you for your work.
Thank you for the recognition! Yes, it was a lot of work to put it all together. I actually wanted to put together more videos, but there's just so much to do. But it's good if you find the video useful.
Thank you so much
We plentyof things without thinking about it. I dont think about lifting my arm, I just do it if I need to.
Chalmers's proposal of counting consciousness side by side with space and matter as a basic constituent of the world strikes me as nonsensical: it all happens as if Chalmers had never processed Kant's first Critique, so that he is willing to place what pertains to external phenomena (space. matter, ...) side by side with what not, namely, consciousness. Space and matter are not side by side with consciousness; they are within consciousness since they are just part of the form of external phenomena.
Well, I think that Kant was wrong. Space and time are not only within consciousness. They are not, as Kant holds, a priori „reine Formen der Anschauung“. As Einstein showed, they are objective (and relative) features of the world. And Whitehead's metaphysics assumes that the ontological basis for time, space and matter are these tiny microscopic events he calls "actual occasions". And these "actual occasions" are bipolar, too: they have a physical and a mental pole. Best, Michael
Do you really think physics can prove Kant wrong? In my very very humble opinion, this reveals you don't know how the whole thing works: all of physics remains within the realm of phenomena; physics can't prove anything about things in themselves; physics just permits to compute and predict the behavior of phenomena. The belief that physics is about things in themselves is just naive realism...
Let me put it this way: nobody knows how things are in themselves. (Let's say: only "God" could know ...) So, I think you're right in saying that "physics remains within the realm of phenomena". But: philosophy (e.g. Kant) or metaphysics remain within the realm of phenomena, too. All the evidence we have - in physics as well as in metaphysics - is OUR experience (in all its different forms). But the different forms of experience can be the critic for each other. So, for example, I think, metaphysics can be a critic of materialism (which is a metaphysical position) in main stream natural sciences. But reversely a natural science can be a critic of philosophy (e.g. Kant) or metaphysics, too. In my opinion, there are no "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA). So, as a result: philosophy has to take the evidences from physics into account, and physics the evidences from philosophy or metaphysics. That's my view. But, sure, I may be wrong. Best, Michael Schramm
Alfred North Whitehead Project Thanks for your response. There could be two ways in which philosophy could find out some things about things in themselves (against Kant's opinion). One: absolutely obvious laws of reason must apply to them; e.g. they must be self-identical and, if they are in discrete number, then 1+1=2 must hold for them (this is Russell's idea). Two: if someone looks at me, he will see of me my phenomenon but there are things I can know about myself no one else can: my inner experience; indeed, Kant would say this is no thing in itself but just a phenomenon of my inner sensibility; but I'm inclined to side with Leibniz, Schopenhauer,.. and recently Donald Hoffman in conjecturing that flows of conscious (in some degree) experience is the only kind of thing we can say with certainty the world is made of. Finally, I do agree that philosophy must take science into account; it must do so in order to improve its knowledge of phenomena. I hope these few words will be of interest to you. Best regards.
I do not endorse your assumption that we can know nothing of things in themselves,. But I do believe like you that science and philosophy overlap.
Bill Ottman of minds turned me on to Neil Theise; which prompted youtube to suggest Corey Anton's review of Neil Theis's video,.. which prompted youtube to suggest this video..... we all think a great deal and are interested in the same aspects of this grand puzzle we call reality.
Just in case you wanted to know how I found this channel.
When I seen the thumbnail pic and "2016", I thought Mr Chalmers had again,.....blanked the barbers. ;-)
"composite individuals" interesting thought.... I offer the term mass of microbiological symbiotic consciousness
Wonderful excepts in this video
Can't really say "why" I'm so grateful for learning about what Whitehead really meant; maybe it's because I put off looking into the ideas for so many years. I've listened to this youtube at least five or six times. Finally, WHAT I THOUGHT I WAS GETTING INTO in approaching Whitehead is corrected!! What I wanted to believe it was...is swept aside! Whoever told me on the Whitehead Research Project page (fb) actual occasions [AOs] can be local...I THANK YOU! According to quotes in this tube, obviously most of'em were conceived by Whitehead as SHORT. And it seems that, according to these quotes, they ARE often confined to very small arenas (not to preclude their connections to all other AOs). According to what I've read thus far, though, there's still a doubt re whether or not a "society" of AOs (like a stone) can experience an AO wholly unto itself...all on its own, "local" to itself. As anyone knows who's read my comments on WRP's page, I've maintained the whole archetypal appeal of Whitehead's philosophy could have been [and could be] that YES, SHORT MOMENTS...EVEN AS LONG AS AN HOUR, OR A DAY, OR WEEK, OR MONTH OR YEAR...CAN BE EXTREMELY MEANINGFUL (hopeful or traumatic eg) FOR THE WHOLE WORLD. I see now, of course, that is not what Whitehead was talking about...or was this possible too? I have a right and anyone has a right to assume THIS WAS THE APPEAL...and that Whitehead was a couple times removed from it in terms of HIS writings breaking down HIS own particular "frame." Yes, I have a right and anyone has a right to think HIS version was a bit "off" from what is out there. But now I know for sure this was not where he was headed with it.
'The real actual things that endure are societies. They are not actual occasions.' ANW (23:36)
Ok, but this is weird: Look at the above two sentences in ANOTHER WHOLE WAY. One "other whole way" might contradict Whitehead's general thrust. What if angels are enabling this or that AO to produce whatever...develop in whatever way? Such a situation would be one feature of these hyper-short moments Whitehead believed in. But...having OTHER features as well...would make all the terminology pertinent to such hyper-short moments simply what it is...a human (and NOT exhaustive) conceptualizing of same. Thus, whatever or however these moments are, we cannot know EVERYTHING about them. And if we can't know everything about them...it could be, say, the aura energy of Aurobindo's "mental body"s is just as important! Or for that matter how energy propagates in string theory's "additional" dimensions. I'm saying...look for subtext in those two sentences. Look for a subliminal meaning...like: souls endure, not these actual occasions.
For the novice--> even though a "truther," DRG's excerpts are REAL useful in terms of breaking down Whitehead's "constructs" at 25:10.I will test here--> to see if TH-cam enables italics.
I see I was a little unclear. Let's see if I can put it another way. When I wrote "the whole archetypal appeal of Whitehead's philosophy" I meant, to my mind, it could have pertained to meanings of moments shared by numbers of creatures. IOW, for example, all the world's creatures sharing whatever meaning of whatever consectutive "absolute" moments. Of course, per relativity there are no absolute moments. But in a confined domain like the biosphere where gravity is fairly equal everywhere (hence time flow rate is pretty much exactly the same at all points)...a hundred million humans can share the meaning of a moment when suddenly the goalie's on the ground and it's plain the ball is behind him up against the net. Ten birds in a murmuration experience the directive (whatever its nature) to turn...in the same moment. Moreover, there "could" be some kind of universal (Earth-wide) quality, experienced by all Earth creatures, germane to each consecutive moment...VIA EPR (quantum entanglement)...or at least germane to some outstanding ones. I think I was way off, unless Whitehead had his "actual occasions" encompassing bigger and bigger distances. Since originally, when I thought this was what Whitehead was about, what I've mostly run into is talk (Whiteheadian talk/text) of numbers of actual occasions constiuting things as small as electrons...as the electrons move through time! It might seem weird that dramas in tiny, tiny, tiny spaces...for brief, brief, brief intervals were thought by Whitehead to be MORE REAL THAN ANY "SUBSTANCE," but consider the super short-lived top quark. It's basically just that (forgot, but I don't think it has "mass"). I can't buy this contention in caps, but won't go into it in any more length right now. I know, the dramas have to have actors. But this thing, folks, is AFAICS pretty much along the lines of Heraclitus' ideas...web without a weaver, etc. Like I say, I can't buy it. They say "Emptiness is form, and form is emptiness." For me (especially after the Calabi-Yao spaces theory) looks ONLY like...emptiness is form.
One has to keep in mind that Whitehead's original scientific field was "applied mathematics", that is: physics. So he conceived his tiny "actual occasions" in the light of modern physics. Current physical theories would say that the world is made up of "loops" (loop quantum gravity) or "strings" (string theory) that make up space and time. However, Whitehead has not understood these tiny "building blocks" of the world in a purely physical sense: events have both a physical pole and a mental pole. The so-called "matter" thus already contains a mind-potential. This mind-potential could later be amplified to consciousness, but only in beings with sufficient complexity, e.g. a central nervous system. In these very complex "societies" of "actual occasions" the brain is a kind of "amplifier" which transforms the mind-potentials into the stream of consciousness. Best, Michael
Subbed,.. much better than the majority of youtube
thanks for this video!
When your sleeping fast asleep and u wake up in dreamland, what’s that ? Philosibin is a key to the beginning
Gladys Wildgoose It's called hypnogigic state; it is a state well known to psychologists, neurologists and lucid dreamers. It's the state you are in before you fall asleep (especially if you do it slowly) and when you wake up (again, if you do it slowly it is actually longer).
@@adrianobulla7875 I don't think that's what he was asking about. He means, what is the dream that he is in? so once he's asleep.
Fantastic thank you!
If a person believes they are nothing more than a very complex robot why ought we trust their robotic pronouncements about consciousness anyway?
They overlook the simple fact that conciousness is not the primary state,the question is ,what is prior to conciousness?
There is no consciousness
Promote panpsychism! Promote all indiviudal paths of research! Only together can we find the answers!
That's exactly what I'm trying to do. Best, Michael
Are the likes of Dennett, Humphrey, Blackmore, not familiar with the metadata of experiments and the mountain of evidence indicating that both conscious intention and conscious attention, can effect the material world. What about the basic "observer effect"? Or is there none so blind as those who refuse to see....?
Study various non-dualistic traditions, especially the tattvas of various Hindu traditions. Those are where the answers are to be found.
To produce all our output from our inputs we have to experience the inner movie. Subjective experience was necessary for our survival. But does the universe require subjective experience to exist? It appears to me that it depends on the interpretation of my phrase. It seems like it needs conscious observers for the universe to exist. Does the universe itself need to have its own consciousness to exist? Perhaps. Or perhaps we are its consciousness. Are there dead universes with no life? How was ours at some point devoid of it? Does the experience of the future define the universe in the past? The multiverse? What causes the first cause? How can there be a first cause, if it must be caused by something? Does the future cause the past? Is the mind the cause of the universe in some recurring sense?
Hey, A.N. Whitehead Project at 9:04 - 10:11 what was the name of that exact book you got that quote from by Charles Birch? Thanks and also this video was amazing. Please keep up the good work and I myself am writing an essay and making a video based upon it called, 'The Materialist Delusion.'
Hi Ellis, there is a link at the end of the video description which leads to a PDF with all the resources. There you can see that the Birch Quote is taken from: Birch, Charles (2008): Why Aren't We Zombies? Neo-Darwinism and Process Thought, in: Cobb, John B. (Ed.): Back to Darwin. A Richer Account of Evolution, Grand Rapids (Michhigan) / Cambridge (U.K.): William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 250 - 262.So, I'm waiting for your "Materialist Delusion". Best, Michael
Talk to neuroscientists about how neurons create representations of the world and how those representations are used to make predictions about sensorimotor data and generates commands to the motor system.
Also, around 21:00 on randomness, I'd like to see a proof that any given sequence of number is random.
Thanks
Open individualism solves the problems of panpsychism
Very nice video in the manner in poses "new possibilities" have been nice if there was some homage to Bergson who greatly influenced Whitehead and Sheldrake, and in my view a more interesting explanation of consciousness and matter.
I must admit that I don't know much about Bergson yet - but I surely should! Best, Michael
Nice put together!
Materialism is where to big money is. That's why they are so faithful to the dogma.
What if conscious and unconscious are extensions of the continuum of awareness, itself an extension along with experience of the continuum of Life?
Anyone have the source for the lecture of the older guy with the CERN logo behind him?
In the description there is a link to a resource document with all the resources
Great work!!! Question: can you give us the sources of the material you have incorporated in the video? Let's say the interviews of Searle, McGuinn, Chalmers...? Thanks in advance...
Hello Alvaro Puertas Villavicencio, first, thanks for your interest! I really appreciate that.
But in the description of the video (see above) there is a link where you can find all the resources, listed in a PDF file. Best, Michael Schramm .. Here's the link once again: www.uni-hohenheim.de/wirtschaftsethik/Panpsychism_2016_Resources.html
Hi Michael! I just noticed the link! Thank you again! Keep up with such a great job! By the way, do you know about the relationship between pansychism/consciousness and other disciplines that could be of interest for a beginner like myself?
@@alfrednorthwhiteheadprojec4278 Thanks for the great video. Unfortunately, the link seems to have expired. I checked wayback but your link isn't archived. So, I was wondering if you have a new link?
Thanks!!
I think i'm coming to accept panpsychism. The main issue with religious dualism, where there is a soul seems to be how can damage to the brain affect the mind?
And the issue with materialism as I have simply reduced it to is, if matter is not conscious, how can alot of matter in a certain configuration bring about consciousness? I think it is analogous to believing that adding zeros to one another will get you 1
Right. I think, panpsychism is a metaphysical speculation So I cannot prove it), but it is the only one that fits the facts. Best, Michael
Magic! You dont need to add zeroes to get one! All you need is ONE zero and youve already got one! Zero exists only in mental functions. Can anything outside of human consciousness posit a "zero?"
Boaz Awunde Dicks That is a beautifully simple analogy that I'm gonna steal.
BTW I think brain damage can affect the mind, not because the brain is a generator of consciousness, but an accumulator of consciousness. Damage the container and it starts to leak and lose cohesion.
Could higher-order representationalism be compatible with panpsychism?
Interesting and well put together video. I don't see how free will is relevant to pansychism though, I found that part of the video odd although interesting in its own right.
This is great stuff.
"I hope my theory is correct because, as a "scientist", I don't want to be wrong." That's not science but religion. I am appalled to hear such a statement from one calling himself a scientist. A real scientist would want to be wrong in order to perpetuate further scientific discovery.
Can I scream now?
Sounds like none of these guys ever tripped on Psilocybin.
If consciousness does not exist the denial of the existence consciousness is inexplicable. How can an unconscious 'thing' deny the existence of anything?
The real question involves the investigation of what actually IS. That fact that 'denial' is possible is an indication of consciousness. To disagree with this POV one must argue that he or she does not exist.
Now that is a real problem!
Multi-disciplinary science yields the answers to these ponderings. Best to take note of the material at my channel.... start with the playlist titled "Watch in this order" in order to know who you are dealing with, how I think, how I perceive reality and then move on to how to understand consciousness and much much more.... simplified and compressed for the attention spans and/or majority demographic of youtube, (keep in mind that everything I say in the videos is not even remotely close to the full complexity of my thoughts on the topic... my thoughts don't fit neatly into constrained boxes). I tell you of "my" material because "I" know that "you" will enjoy it and/or find solace in the science; not for "shameless self promotions". (what "self"? composite self? heh heh "you'll" see)
Agreed, great video. Will we be seeing more in the near future? Everything else I've come across re Whitehead and Process Theory on TH-cam is shit.
Hi John! Thanks for your encouragement! Well:(a) Currently I'm workin' on a new video project, entitled: "Is there Empirical Evidence for God?" So, this video will be a theological argument that deals with Richard Dawkins' assertation that "in the case of God, there is not a tiny shred of evidence for the existence of any kind of God." (th-cam.com/video/of-8Q3HySjE/w-d-xo.html, 44:39 min.) My own result: yes, there IS empirical evidence for a kind of "God", but as Whitehead already said: “[T]he concept of God [...] is not the God of the learned tradition of Christian Theology, nor is it the diffused God of the Hindu Buddhistic tradition. The concept lies somewhere between the two.” (Whitehead, Alfred N. (1948): Essays in Science and Philosophy, New York: Philosophical
Library, p. 69)(b) And afterwards I will turn to a subject I call "Business Metaphysics". Short explanation: "Metaphysics" deals with the question, how the world really works (in general) - and I think that Whitehead put things here on the right track. Consequently, "Business Metaphysics" deals with the question, how the business world really works (in general). And I think that (neo-classical)mainstream economics usually commits a "fallacy of misplaced concreteness", because its abstract market models do neglect the polydimensionality (including the moral dimension) of concrete transactions.Best, Michael
Who sheared David Chalmers?
Oh…maybe, just maybe......
Well I heard there was a secret chord (OM)
That David played and it pleased the Lord (universal consciousness)
But you (material scientists) don't really care for music, do you?
Well it goes like this: the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah [x4]
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her (Lila play of Brahman) bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to her kitchen chair
She broke your throne (fear scientific dogma) and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.....
So what seperates panpsychism from animism?
Thanx for that interesting question! I think there are (at least) two major differences that distinguish panpsychism from animism. If "animism" is the belief that all things have feelings or have a soul, including things like water sources, trees, stones or bacteria, then a Whiteheadian panpsychist would not agree that water sources or stones or elementary particles are conscious. Elementary particles or stones or trees are not self-aware and cannot feel pain. And here are the two systematic differences: first, in panpsychism "mental" qualities appear gradually graded. An elementary particle is not conscious, it only has a kind of proto-consciousness or "mind potential", wheras a human being is really conscious. Therefore it's true that the term "panpsychism" (pan = "all"; psayche = "soul") is a little bit misleading, because not "all" things really have a "soul". Second, Whitehead and especially Hartshorne made a distinction between mere "aggregates" on the one hand and "compound individuals" on the other (in the video I refer to this distiction at 24:45 min. ff.) A stone, a screw or a cloud are mere "aggregates" which show no signs of spontaneity. Not every accumulation of smaller units is a real individual. But higher animals or humans are examples of "compound individuals": they are structured, they have a central nervous system, and this central nervous system works - in the words of the physicist Freeman Dyson (video 38:05 Min. ff.) - as a kind of "amplifier" that uses the (tiny) mind potentials of elementary particles and translates it to the stream of our conscious mind. Best, Michael Schramm
has David Chalmers never availed himself of the word 'emergent' ?
julian Holman He’s written papers on it. Google “Strong and Weak Emergence”. Should be able to read it as a PDF.
I find it interesting that I have reached many of the same conclusions as Alfred North Whitehead and I barely use math at all, (have learned much about math though and used many extra-sensory perceptional devices that were created in part by math).
Well, there are many ways to the same truth ... Best, Michael
Alfred North Whitehead Project indeed... At least a few.
Ok, right - not many, but a few. But, unfortunately Xenophanes was right: "For all is but a woven web of guesses." Or as Karl Popper said: "We do not know: we can only guess." (Logic of Scientific Discovery, p. 278)
Alfred North Whitehead Project pretty good thinking for their time... Things are a little different now with the advancements in our sea of knowledge and our ability to absorb them with the emergent phenomena that is the internet combined with the time gifted to some of us because of the Industrial Revolution as well as technology like robotics for example...
These gifts allow expanded consciousness to become almost boundless until it ceases to have the ability to biologically function.
Furthermore, guessing is not logical even though I understand what he was saying... The first step is admit to ourselves what we do not know so that we can then ask the right questions... Which will lead to research which will lead to more questions and some more research but eventually we have a tremendous amount of the puzzle pieces and then we are left with a handful of possibilities that are extremely higher in probability or value then all the guesses of the past forms of our consciousness.
Here's a question for you... Why learn from the trough of the wave of Consciousness when you can join the crest of the wave and see over the future crests?...
Expand Consciousness into the realm of hyperconsciousness through the power of evidence based reasoning, combined with cause and effect analysis that is supported by lateral verification?
I prefer to observe what can be observed and arrive at understanding,... until then I waste no energy with guesses.
I don't see why one needs to raise the issue of free will, be it on the panpsychic or the side of those objecting. Surely you can have unfree property dualism? If you can have that, why not Strawson's unfree "weak" panpsychism?
Well, true, these are two different subjects: panpsychism and free will. And surely the free will hypothesis is much more ambitious than panpsychism as such. But, for me it makes much more sense to tie panpsychism and free will together. Because: "mind" (in the panpsychic sense) deals with possibilities, with decisions among possibilities. And: deciding between different possibilities or different possible futures IS a kind of free will (which need not to be conscious). So, in my view the mental is always "free" to some degree (although much is determined) - in the case of an electron this freedom is rather small (but it's there, as quantum physics shows), in the case of a stone as a whole it's next to zero, in the case of a human being with a central nervous system the freedom is remarkable larger. So, for me "mind" implies such a thing as "free will". Best, Michael
Alfred North Whitehead Project Thank you for your considered reply. I may not be on board with panpsychism as such, although it does seem possible to talk about "consciousness" as a property, as we do with duration, charge and so on. I'm wary of talking about quantum mechanics, as the math is well above my pay grade. So, I'll confine my remarks to a rather simple, perhaps naive question and leave it at that: is it not fallacious to mix the terms "free will" and freedom so...um...freely? These "decisions" are either caused or random. I don't see how one can get "free will" from that.
Thanks for introducing me to Whitehead. I started down the rabbit-hole last weekend. It's not unlike reading Heidegger, except this is not phenomenology but rather metaphysics (I think).
Dear Matt, you're saying: "decisions" are either caused or random. Well, These are two possibilities. But: per definition "panpsychists" DO think that there is a third possibility, namely that decisions are really some kind of decisions. Because: If every elementary particle really has "some rudimentary form of mind" (physicist Freeman Dyson) - that's the hypothesis of panpsychism (otherwise we humans should be "Zombies") - then it has a rudimentary capacity to make "decisions" which are not totally caused by past events and which are not completely random. Best, Michael Schramm
Do you mean that decisions are self-caused?
Saying "decisions are really some kind of decisions" does seem to place us back at square one. I don't know how you can escape causality or randomness. Even if quarks possess a quantum of consciousness, it's quite a stretch to then say they are making decisions, and even if they are, these "decisions" would either be caused or random, so that doesn't get you free will either! The old Aristotelian self-caused agent problem. I suppose you could say that there is the possibility of a teleos in the universe, and this is what the "deciding property" is aligning itself with, but that seems unwarranted. We can't just keep adding properties ad infinitum.
Panpsychism does offer the possibility of grounding a science of consciousness in the notion of mind/proto-mind as a fundamental property. This is certainly appealing, and only seems "wacky" at first blush.
Chalmers is awesome! Love the older footage where he's sporting his metalhead look.
Searle is wrong about quantum indeterminacy! QM systems are deterministic, but not in the same way that classical systems are.
What's the difference between the determinacy of QM Systems and of classical (mechanical) Systems? But anyway: most quantum physicists are saying actually that the Quantum world is indeterministic. Best, Michael
Karl Svozil has some nice papers on the details of the difference. For example: arxiv.org/abs/1707.08915
Ah, thanx! I'll look at it.
Stephen Paul King, Searle is not incorrect. And that piece you provided a link to, is scant on detail. QM systems are not deterministic! Are you familiar with Bell's theorem?
Yes. I know a bit about Bell's theorems...
I'm not a "professional" philosopher, but, aren't non-metaphysical theories equivalent to materialist/physical/mindless theories? So calling panpsychism "metaphysical" should be a positive asset of the theory as clearly any purely "physical" theory lacks the very thing that makes the world go round and is therefore incomplete. Plus the word "physical" is just as vague as "metaphysical". The only difference is the emotion that people attach to the words.
The only way forward is to start testing out the theories. Until then, all we get is more vague concepts that surely will turn out to be "pink flying elephants". And discussing these elephants without experiments will not get us anywhere.
Well, you're surely right in saying that at the end of the day and if it's possible, we should test our metaphysical hypotheses experimentally. The problem is: in many cases this isn't possible. And in these cases the only thing we have are metaphysical hypotheses. But maybe some day we are able to test the more reasonable metaphysical hypotheses. And I think that the panpsychist hypothesis is such a reasonable one. Best, Michael
As I understand it, all our theories are "physical" in nature, i.e., of the observed world (entities that interact with measuring devices) as experienced by a consciousness full of concepts like ours.
But the subjective experiences themselves (what it's like to be the scientist thinking those theories) are all "metaphysical" in nature, meaning "first person". So "physical" is a description "from the outside" whereas a "metaphysical" theory would be a description of what it's like from the inside (though the description and the experience would still be very different entities).
I guess that most experiments that suggest themselves are all "borderline" ethical. There are examples of people that share a brain by birth, so maybe that's a good start. I haven't come across anything else that looks like an attempt to construct such experiments. Is anyone trying to do that to your knowledge?
The first objection is wholly untrue. Consciousness is a smear. Split brain patients experience this, rat brains have been wired together, memories can be disconnected, and people can be "locked in." Conciousness is merely augmented by memory structures that allow it to retain its experience and by senses that allow its connected components to see outside of itself. Boundless consciousness is merely that which exists outside these barriers. Of course we cannot perceive it. It is built that way. The stuff could be flowing in and out of us all the time, but we only perceive what our senses and memory trap and feed back to us. When we sleep dreamless sleep, who knows where we go, what we do, or what influence we exert on the universe. Boundless experience is either useless, existing only in Planck frames at single simultaneous states, or all-retaining, given the webbed network formed by the macroscopic view of galactic clusters and any deterministic states which can be retraced. We see the repetition of order from the smallest to the largest... from a giant neural network of galaxies to the smallest interplay between quarks and virtual particles. How can anyone possibly deny the potential of all this to operate as one vast Boltzmann brain?
Bashar brought me here :D
Quantum world is not a world of chance. Modern physics need to come out of its infancy. It's embrassing.
Time only exists as a particle/wave in human consciousness and the same works for gravity. They are not natural forces like wind or fire.
Quantum world is not a world of chance. Modern physics need to come out of its infancy.
damn this thumbnail
Chalmers doesn‘t believe in panpsychism
These materialists sound like raving lunatics. It's all an illusion but somehow we think hope pretend that it's real?
The timeless and uniting polarity (not dividing duality) of Matter and Soul is the essence, the source,
the base of all physical brain-consciousness. The fact of those immaterial SOUL-SELVES WITHIN
all and every kind of multi-universal matter, is giving rise to this physical brain`s mind as one`s Ego,
spirit and I-ness, known as "CONSCIOUSNESS". Panpsychism is identical to former "animism" or this
named "panentheism": It designs that experience of this intuitively FELT wisdom of one`s own eternal
and spaceless SOUL-SELF.
This immaterial SELFNESS unites all existence into ONENESS (= alias `God`.)
SOUL-SELVES` wisdom should be named "AWARENESS" and not as `consciousness`, merely being
part of those always dying matter-brains! "Awareness is everywhere, consciousness obviously not."
Based and Whiteheadpilled
Chalmers is clueless.
What a joke