Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 8

[Constance]

"But this isn’t what Heidegger means by the term. When Heidegger says “metaphysics,” he means the whole history of western philosophy—all the way from Plato, or in his more dismal moods, the presocratics—through Hegel. He means that calculative kind of thinking in which a thinking subject represents beings as objects, a thinking which furthermore maps this subjective/objective split onto a host of other dualisms: substance versus accident, eternal versus temporal, form versus matter, etc. Now Heidegger says that this tradition was overturned by Friedrich Nietzsche, who revealed the socalled intelligible realm as an unstable product of the sensible realm. This, Heidegger says, is what Nietzsche’s madman means when he cries through the marketplace that “God is Dead.” (slide) “The pronouncement ‘God is dead’ means: the suprasensory world is without effective power. It bestows no life. Metaphysics, i.e. for Nietzsche, Western philosophy understood as Platonism, is at an end.” (WN, 61). So Nietzsche proclaimed the end of Platonism, and he overturned it, but he didn’t overcome it, says Heidegger. Nietzsche still remains within the confines of metaphysics because (in Heidegger’s often strained interpretation of him), in order to free himself from God and the Forms as the site of ultimate value, he consolidated the human subject as the site of ultimate value. “God is dead,” the madman says, “and we have killed him.” This theocidal human subject becomes, for Heidegger’s Nietzsche, “ the executor of unconditional will to power ” (N, 95): the one who ultimately determines the value of being in the absence of transcendence, and for that reason, the human subject becomes the master of being itself. (slide) “Man enters into insurrection,” Heidegger writes in this same essay on Nietzsche, The world changes into object. In this revolutionary objectifying of everything that is, the earth…moves into the midst of human positing and analyzing. The earth can show itself only as the object of assault, an assault that, in human willing, establishes itself as unconditional objectification. Nature appears everywhere…as the object of technology (N, 100)."

This is from Rubenstein? Powerful in her restatement of H's position:

"So Nietzsche proclaimed the end of Platonism, and he overturned it, but he didn’t overcome it, says Heidegger. Nietzsche still remains within the confines of metaphysics because (in Heidegger’s often strained interpretation of him), in order to free himself from God and the Forms as the site of ultimate value, he consolidated the human subject as the site of ultimate value. “God is dead,” the madman says, “and we have killed him.” This theocidal human subject becomes, for Heidegger’s Nietzsche, “ the executor of unconditional will to power ” (N, 95): the one who ultimately determines the value of being in the absence of transcendence, and for that reason, the human subject becomes the master of being itself."

Yes, why Nietzsche was interpreted by many readers to mean: 'God is dead, so everything is permitted." Which has certainly become the presupposition in all materialist, mechanistic, technological 'thinking' in our 'modern age'. Looking forward to reading her.

 

[Constance]

@Constance -does anyone talk abouth this now? Are there any voices this big? Charles Taylor? Heidegger seemed already overwhelmed with the hydroelectric projects with our refusal to let being be.

Oh yes, environmentalist philosophers certainly do, including environmentally concerned phenomenologists.

 

[smcder]

Oh yes, environmentalist philosophers certainly do, including environmentally concerned phenomenologists.

I had a look again at "The Question Concerning Tecchnology" and did some more looking ... I remembered we've touched on this topic of technology and ecology/environment and that you were knowledgeable.

I came back across Alva Noe, tangentially, "You Are Not Your Brain" and whether there are NCCs. From his pages I found this article:

How Smart Are Horses?

Still wandering ...

 

[smcder]

Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy

The first chapter is available in PDF. It's protected though so I can't quote. It discusses MPs later philosophy, his turn from phenomenology to ontology, the flesh and chiasm. Along with ANW's process metaphysics, that MP's philosophy supports environmental well-being and prepares for a coherent ecological philosophy.

I have not read your MP post yet ... I'll do that next.

 

[smcder]

Looks to be a good resource, the lectures are all on Youtube

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/ConsciousnessWeb/Introduction/introductionSupplement.htm

 

[smcder]

This is from Rubenstein? Powerful in her restatement of H's position:

"So Nietzsche proclaimed the end of Platonism, and he overturned it, but he didn’t overcome it, says Heidegger. Nietzsche still remains within the confines of metaphysics because (in Heidegger’s often strained interpretation of him), in order to free himself from God and the Forms as the site of ultimate value, he consolidated the human subject as the site of ultimate value. “God is dead,” the madman says, “and we have killed him.” This theocidal human subject becomes, for Heidegger’s Nietzsche, “ the executor of unconditional will to power ” (N, 95): the one who ultimately determines the value of being in the absence of transcendence, and for that reason, the human subject becomes the master of being itself."

Yes, why Nietzsche was interpreted by many readers to mean: 'God is dead, so everything is permitted." Which has certainly become the presupposition in all materialist, mechanistic, technological 'thinking' in our 'modern age'. Looking forward to reading her.

Nietzsche carried(s) a huge burden for contemporary man. Many think that all the implications of what he saw haven't yet played out - an uncomfortable thought. He was racked with mental and physical ills that I think reflect a deep bodily involvement in his philosophy - he was visceral and his philosophy was visceral, a man with a chest as C.S. Lewis might put it - one of the last, not one of the Last Men who merely blinks.

And today he might merely visit a psychiatrist for a prescription.

 

[smcder]

This is from Rubenstein? Powerful in her restatement of H's position:

"So Nietzsche proclaimed the end of Platonism, and he overturned it, but he didn’t overcome it, says Heidegger. Nietzsche still remains within the confines of metaphysics because (in Heidegger’s often strained interpretation of him), in order to free himself from God and the Forms as the site of ultimate value, he consolidated the human subject as the site of ultimate value. “God is dead,” the madman says, “and we have killed him.” This theocidal human subject becomes, for Heidegger’s Nietzsche, “ the executor of unconditional will to power ” (N, 95): the one who ultimately determines the value of being in the absence of transcendence, and for that reason, the human subject becomes the master of being itself."

Yes, why Nietzsche was interpreted by many readers to mean: 'God is dead, so everything is permitted." Which has certainly become the presupposition in all materialist, mechanistic, technological 'thinking' in our 'modern age'. Looking forward to reading her.

Yes from Rubinstein. She is very powerful, I imagine her carrying Heidegger lightly on her shoulders as she leaps from Alpine peak to Alpine peak ... gaining rapidly on a certain solitary figure of grim appearance.

 

[smcder]

Thanks. That is clarifying, and I think a good position to occupy.



I want to read that critique. Does it occur later in "Real Physicalism" or in another paper by Strawson?



Also a must-read to add to the reading list we've accumulated in the last week. Glad you found it.

The critique of Dennetian eliminativism occurs early in the paper on Real Physicalism Entails Panpsychism. Strawson hammers on this misunderstanding of Descartes and compares it, unfavorably, to religious belief - which is about as strong a denunciation as I can imagine the mild professor making. He does seem rather opposed to religious belief.

Strawson also notes that Descartes "in his (Descartes') heart of hearts, was probably NOT a substance dualist. Or maybe he just didn't know what dualism was. Strawson talks more about this in his paper on Nietzsche's metaphysics - I'll see if I can find that. It's important to Strawson's claims that Descartes is the father of modern materialism and I'm curious because there has been, I think, a lot of work trying to correct the impression of Descartes as a dualist and also because I am curious at the strong response dualism seems to get - note the exchanges at the end of the video of this paper I posted and note in the review on the book about contemporary Dualism, also posted above, that the reviewer notes "this is a brave book".

 

[smcder]

More Strawsonian good humor

"There are fundamental points on which Nietzsche also agrees with that great and
much misunderstood genius Descartes, and with Locke, Hume, Kant, and Schopenhauer.
None of this is surprising. ‘Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to
think clearly’, as William James remarked (1890:1.145). There are always a few obstinate
thinkers around—none more obstinate than Nietzsche—and they may be expected to show
convergence in their views."

 

[smcder]

Nietzsche's Metaphysics? 2015

italics always mine

"One might think that Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza want to hang on to a robust notion of substance in a way that Nietzsche doesn’t, but there’s a fundamental respect in which this is not so—in which they’re at one. The great rationalists are not less radical than Nietzsche. All agree, of course, that something exists, and all agree that whatever exists is identical with (nothing substantially over and above) concrete propertiedness. This thesis is indeed radical and initially difficult tothink, given the structure of human thought and language, given in particular that ‘property’ is an intrinsically relational word that demands something for it to be a property of, but it’s sufficiently understandable for all that, and fully in line with the intuitive metaphysics of physics. Does it seem hard to think? Yes, but it’s not that hard, and it’s something one can cultivate and grow into—deeply. This is doing philosophy."

 

[smcder]

@Constance this is the quote I had in mind re: Descartes and substances:

"Descartes is Mr. Substance, for most philosophers, but the popular version of early modern philosophy bears little resemblance to the true story, which is much more exciting.

Descartes was neither the first nor the last to think that ‘substance’ is an empty word, a mere place holder with no clear meaning other than ‘existent’ or ‘real’, and zero explanatory power. I believe this is one of the reasons he preferred the word ‘thing’, (Latin res, French chose) to the word ‘substance’. At the same time, he badly wanted to be left in peace to get on with his work, was anxious not to annoy the church, and used the word ‘substance’ increasingly in communication with others who weren't prepared to talk in other terms." 29

footnote 29

On this see Clarke 2003 chs. 1, 8, 9. For a brief account see Strawson 2009: 339ff. See also Descartes’s
advice to Regius about not stirring up trouble (letter of 1642, quoted in Clarke 2006: 224). It’s worth
mentioning, because not sufficiently well known, that Descartes held—in line, I think, with Nietzsche—that
all is one so far as the material universe is concerned: a single substance, one big extended thing with
different gradients of ‘texture’ at different places that we treat—ultimately falsely—as radically distinct
substances, objects, horses, cameras, railway lines, and so on.

 

[smcder]

https://faculty.unlv.edu/beisecker/...nd Replies/Strawson - Replies to Comments.pdf

I’m very grateful to all those who have written replies to my paper
‘Realistic monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism’ (‘RMP’),
and to the editors of the Journal of Consciousness Studies who have
provided a forum for the debate. I enjoyed all the papers, and the good
humour that characterized most of them, and I know that it is a great
privilege to have one’s views scrutinized in this way in an age in
which there is so much good work in philosophy and in which almost
all of us feel that our work is neglected. The sense of neglect is often
justified; too much is being written. Things haven’t improved since
1642, when Descartes — the hero of this piece — observed that ‘it is
impossible for each individual to examine the vast numbers of new
books that are published every day’.1

 

[smcder]

My experience since I first lectured on the ‘mind-body problem’ in
the late 1980s has been one of finding, piece by piece, through
half-haphazard reading, that almost everything worthwhile that I have
thought of has been thought of before, in some manner, by great philosophers
in previous centuries (I am sure further reading would
remove the ‘almost’). It is very moving to discover agreement across
the centuries, and I quote these philosophers freely, and take their
agreement to be a powerful source of support. Almost everything
worthwhile in philosophy has been thought of before, but this isn’t in
any way a depressing fact (see p. 200 below), and the local originality
that consists in having an idea oneself and later finding that it has
already been had by someone else is extremely common in philosophy,
and crucial to philosophical understanding.2

2. It is not particularly saintly not to be disappointed that one has been anticipated (although
it helps if the anticipator is a little in the past); that kind of disappointment is knocked out
of anyone who survives as a philosopher after writing a doctoral thesis on free will—a
process that invariably involves living through the problem in such a way that one feels
that it is peculiarly one’s own. A little inconsistency, furthermore, allows one to derive
considerable gratification both from observing that one has powerful allies among the
heroic shades of philosophy and from noting, in a deflationary
way, that the views of one’s living colleagues were put forward long ago by others.

 

[smcder]

Strawson is rich enough to continue mining until either he runs thin or the environmentalists pull our permits.

10. ‘Supervenience’
The supervenience thesis as formulated by Joseph Priestley in 1778 is that

‘different systems of matter, organized exactly alike, …would
feel and think exactly alike in the same circumstances’.72

He does not consider the converse supervenience thesis
[ii] if different minds thought and felt exactly alike in the same circumstances,
then they would be identical in respect of their material
constitution

and most, understandably, think [ii] is obviously false.

In fact, when people talk today of the supervenience thesis in the philosophy of
mind they usually mean plus the denial of [ii], although [ii] makes
no supervenience claim at all. I avoid the notion altogether when discussing
the mind-body problem, because although it is perfectly clear
it has never been of any real help, and has been very unhelpful in
appearing so helpful.

It is, however, popular, so let me record my view that although is surely correct, given the truth of physicalism, the
denial of [ii]may not be correct: not if we are realistic about the nature of mental reality, i.e. the nature of actual concrete mental contents.73

 

[smcder]

@Constance - shortly after the above, Strawson again makes the point about eliminativism:

On one view (worth noting because it illustrates the treacherousness of the terms in which the mind-body problem is discussed) it can’t be right. This is because the tightening of the question has produced a version of the identity theory about the relation between B* features and E features. But if a Yes answer is to be possible on the terms of the identity theory, then the theory must involve the assumption that B* features involve something more or other than E features.

But this assumption is necessarily false, if the theory is really an identity theory, by the basic logic of the identity relation. This is an old point thatmust surface whatever terms one uses:

• where can the gap be, for any supposed identity theorist, between radical eliminativism and panpsychism?

That's the point but it's worth looking one more level into the argument:

I am going to put this objection aside, however, because many will think that X and Y can plainly differ in their B* features while being identical in their E features even after the tightening has been carried out.

(It follows that they can’t be identity theorists, if they are real physicalists who are neither radical eliminativists nor panpsychists; I’d rather not enquire further into what they are.) It is, they will say, plainly possible that X and Y should differ in their B* features, even those B* features that are directly constitutive of their E features,75 while being identical in their E features.

Many of us have been brought up on this ‘token-identity’ possibility and find it very comfortable, and do not think it is threatened by the restriction of attention to colossally complex total experiential fields that is required by a serious metaphysical approach to the question.

That's deeply challenging. Gimme that Old Time Materialism!

 

[smcder]

"Well, that wraps up another one. Herr Professor is dead and dead just because he is a professor. There were indeed more things in heaven and earth, etc. etc. ... But you know - " I said to The Primate "- it raises interesting questions, practical and theoretical, for your kind."

The primate managed, around a mouth full of Madelines ... "Hey! What are these little cookies?? They are delicious, remind me of my childhood in The New Bronx."

The Veg and I just looked at one another and shook our heads, all of them, and collectively grinned.

"Wha-? I'm listening! I'm listening!' The Primate looked hurt.

"Well - you have, in your oddly constituted bodies, two brains - one here" I pointed to the Primates head "... and one here." I patted his lower thorax. "And the odd thing is they don't often get along."

The Veg jumped in "The one, smaller, in your gut, has the advantage of being nearer the ground, nearer where you live. The other often has its head in the clouds, despite your relative stature." The Veg pulled back its fronds in mock gesture but still appreciating the Primates bellicose capacities known widely among the sentient races. A Primate in a rage was a thing to behold, an Unholy thing and whole races lay in ashes in attestation to this fact.

The Primate just grinned and stuffed more cookies in his aperture. "Yeah ... like who do you want at your back in a bar fight? Rocky Marciano or Immanuel Kant?"

"Who is ... Immanuel Kant?" the Veg asked, stumbling over his ks and ts.

"A lightweight." the Primate proffered and I nodded as if I were certain, though I had thought the man was a minor philosopher, a footnote rather than a lightweight. But maybe that's what he meant - the Primate had an often inscrutable sense of humor.

The Primate pulled himself up and got serious for a moment. We knew what was coming, one of his profundities ... and he didn't disappoint.

"Here's the thing ... " he patted his stomach ... the Engineers got us of the planet ... but it was the philosophers" he patted his head "... that made it necessary."

- excerpt from The Serious Question of Professor Strawson

 

[smcder]

Another way to say the same thing



"Gort - cogito ergo sum?"

 

[Constance]

https://faculty.unlv.edu/beisecker/Courses/PHIL-352/Dave - Consciousness PDFs/Strawson - Realistic Monism and Replies/Strawson - Replies to Comments.pdf

I'm beginning to read this now and wondering if you think Strawson eventually gets much beyond the following, and if so where and how.

"3. Equal-status Monism In Mental Reality

I set out a version of this position called equal-status monism, according to which

reality is irreducibly both experiential and non-experiential, while being substantially single in some way W that we do not fully understand, although we take it that W is a way of being substantially single that does not involve any sort of asymmetry between the status of claims that reality has non-experiential aspects and claims that reality has experiential aspects. [On this view] it is not correct to say (a) that the experiential is based in or realized by or otherwise dependent on the non-experiential, or (b) vice versa. The truth is rather (c) that the experiential and non-experiential coexist in such a way that neither can be said to be based in or realized by or in any way asymmetrically dependent on the other; or if there is any sense in which one can reasonably be said to be dependent on the other, then this sense applies equally both ways …. To get an explicitly materialist form of equal-status monism one simply has to add in the words ‘properties of the physical’ in (c) to get ‘The truth is that the experiential and non-experiential properties of the physical coexist in such a way that neither can be said to be based in, or realized by, or in any way asymmetrically dependent on, the other, etc.’…. I will restate … this … although it is clear enough. All reality is physical (the basic materialist premise). [ii] There are experiential and non-experiential phenomena (unavoidable realism about the experiential, plus the assumption (!) that there is more to physical reality than experiential reality). [iii] Among physical phenomena, experiential physical phenomena do not depend on non-experiential physical phenomena …, or do not depend on them in any way in which non-experiential phenomena do not also depend on experiential phenomena.9

My reason for mentioning this straight away is that I take it that real (realistic) physicalists must be equal-status monists, given the argument in RMP that the experiential cannot possibly emerge from the wholly and utterly non-experiential. If one is a realist about the experiential, a real realist about the experiential (see p. 3), one faces the fact that any asymmetry or one-way dependence or reducibility must be to the detriment of the non-experiential. I am going to continue to assume for purposes of argument that monism is true, in spite of the difficulties in the notion:10 both insofar as I continue to assume for ad hominem purposes that physicalism is true (for whatever physicalism is it is a monist position), and on my own account — at least until the term ‘physical’ falls apart (see p. 234 below). No monism can be ‘neutral’, however, given that there is no sense in which experience considered just as such can be mere appearance, in the sense of not being really real at all,11 and given that this is so — given that neutral monism is out — , it looks as though the only monism that really makes sense, given the certain existence of experience, is experiential or panpsychist monism. If so, continued use of the word ‘physicalist’ will sound ever more oddly, with an increasingly reductio ad absurdum ring, and equal-status monism will turn out to be a pipe-dream — unless, that is, Spinoza can save it. . . . .

[7] M1994, pp. 99, 105; M2003a, p. 73; RMP, p. 8. Compare in particular Crane and Mellor 1990. McGinn objects to it, as does Macpherson, at least in part; but I embrace it, for I am only trying to set out what one has to say if one is a (realistic) physicalist.

[8] In M1994 I justified calling myself a materialist or physicalist as follows: ‘Why do I call myself a materialist, rather than a “?-ist”? My faith, like that of many other materialists, consists in a bundle of connected and unverifiable beliefs. I believe that experience is not all there is to reality. I believe that there is a physical world that involves the existence of space and of space-occupying entities that have nonexperiential properties. I believe that the theory of evolution is true, that once there was no experience like ours on this planet, whether panpsychism is true or false, and that there came to be experience like ours as a result of processes that at no point involved anything not wholly physical or material in nature. Accordingly, I believe that however experiential properties are described, there is no good reason to think that they are emergent, relative to other physical properties, in such a way that they can correctly be said to be nonphysical properties. Finally, with Nagel (1986, p. 28), I believe that one could in principle create a normally experiencing human being out of a piano. All one would have to do would be to arrange a sufficient number of the piano’s constituent electrons, protons, and neutrons in the way in which they are ordinarily arranged in a normal living human being. Experience is as much a physical phenomenon as electric charge’ (p. 105)."


Steve, is McGinn's response to Strawson available online? I'm not persuaded by Strawson's argument for panpsychism in terms of 'experiential physicalism coexisting with non-experiential physicalism'. I found Kafatos more persuasive in his identifying interaction and entanglement in the quantum substrate as the origin of complex systems in nature that eventually, with the beginnings of life, become self-aware. I think there is an ontological difference that arises with life, which Strawson seems unwilling to acknowledge. I should probably read the whole of Strawson's paper responding to his critics' comments in the JCS volume, but I'm reluctant to do so without also having his critics' comments available to read online, so taking the easy way out in asking you whether Strawson adds significantly to his own argument for panpsychism in his responses to his critics, and if so where.

 

[smcder]

I'm beginning to read this now and wondering if you think Strawson eventually gets much beyond the following, and if so where and how.

"3. Equal-status Monism In Mental Reality

I set out a version of this position called equal-status monism, according to which

reality is irreducibly both experiential and non-experiential, while being substantially single in some way W that we do not fully understand, although we take it that W is a way of being substantially single that does not involve any sort of asymmetry between the status of claims that reality has non-experiential aspects and claims that reality has experiential aspects. [On this view] it is not correct to say (a) that the experiential is based in or realized by or otherwise dependent on the non-experiential, or (b) vice versa. The truth is rather (c) that the experiential and non-experiential coexist in such a way that neither can be said to be based in or realized by or in any way asymmetrically dependent on the other; or if there is any sense in which one can reasonably be said to be dependent on the other, then this sense applies equally both ways …. To get an explicitly materialist form of equal-status monism one simply has to add in the words ‘properties of the physical’ in (c) to get ‘The truth is that the experiential and non-experiential properties of the physical coexist in such a way that neither can be said to be based in, or realized by, or in any way asymmetrically dependent on, the other, etc.’…. I will restate … this … although it is clear enough. All reality is physical (the basic materialist premise). [ii] There are experiential and non-experiential phenomena (unavoidable realism about the experiential, plus the assumption (!) that there is more to physical reality than experiential reality). [iii] Among physical phenomena, experiential physical phenomena do not depend on non-experiential physical phenomena …, or do not depend on them in any way in which non-experiential phenomena do not also depend on experiential phenomena.9

My reason for mentioning this straight away is that I take it that real (realistic) physicalists must be equal-status monists, given the argument in RMP that the experiential cannot possibly emerge from the wholly and utterly non-experiential. If one is a realist about the experiential, a real realist about the experiential (see p. 3), one faces the fact that any asymmetry or one-way dependence or reducibility must be to the detriment of the non-experiential. I am going to continue to assume for purposes of argument that monism is true, in spite of the difficulties in the notion:10 both insofar as I continue to assume for ad hominem purposes that physicalism is true (for whatever physicalism is it is a monist position), and on my own account — at least until the term ‘physical’ falls apart (see p. 234 below). No monism can be ‘neutral’, however, given that there is no sense in which experience considered just as such can be mere appearance, in the sense of not being really real at all,11 and given that this is so — given that neutral monism is out — , it looks as though the only monism that really makes sense, given the certain existence of experience, is experiential or panpsychist monism. If so, continued use of the word ‘physicalist’ will sound ever more oddly, with an increasingly reductio ad absurdum ring, and equal-status monism will turn out to be a pipe-dream — unless, that is, Spinoza can save it. . . . .

[7] M1994, pp. 99, 105; M2003a, p. 73; RMP, p. 8. Compare in particular Crane and Mellor 1990. McGinn objects to it, as does Macpherson, at least in part; but I embrace it, for I am only trying to set out what one has to say if one is a (realistic) physicalist.

[8] In M1994 I justified calling myself a materialist or physicalist as follows: ‘Why do I call myself a materialist, rather than a “?-ist”? My faith, like that of many other materialists, consists in a bundle of connected and unverifiable beliefs. I believe that experience is not all there is to reality. I believe that there is a physical world that involves the existence of space and of space-occupying entities that have nonexperiential properties. I believe that the theory of evolution is true, that once there was no experience like ours on this planet, whether panpsychism is true or false, and that there came to be experience like ours as a result of processes that at no point involved anything not wholly physical or material in nature. Accordingly, I believe that however experiential properties are described, there is no good reason to think that they are emergent, relative to other physical properties, in such a way that they can correctly be said to be nonphysical properties. Finally, with Nagel (1986, p. 28), I believe that one could in principle create a normally experiencing human being out of a piano. All one would have to do would be to arrange a sufficient number of the piano’s constituent electrons, protons, and neutrons in the way in which they are ordinarily arranged in a normal living human being. Experience is as much a physical phenomenon as electric charge’ (p. 105)."


Steve, is McGinn's response to Strawson available online? I'm not persuaded by Strawson's argument for panpsychism in terms of 'experiential physicalism coexisting with non-experiential physicalism'. I found Kafatos more persuasive in his identifying interaction and entanglement in the quantum substrate as the origin of complex systems in nature that eventually, with the beginnings of life, become self-aware. I think there is an ontological difference that arises with life, which Strawson seems unwilling to acknowledge. I should probably read the whole of Strawson's paper responding to his critics' comments in the JCS volume, but I'm reluctant to do so without also having his critics' comments available to read online, so taking the easy way out in asking you whether Strawson adds significantly to his own argument for panpsychism in his responses to his critics, and if so where.

I dont know yet but I doubt it. He restarts a little into the paper section 9 or 10? Not sure. But I doubt he moves beyind this as I think he would have put that upfront.

 

[smcder]

@Constance would Strawson see Kafatos' as emergence?