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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
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Michael Allen
Paranormal Adept
@Michael, you ask "What does it mean to be ontologically late?" I think you'd have to read the first several sections of the paper to answer that question, but most probably you should read the whole thing. I was just about to write a post to you quoting several paragraphs from farther on in the paper (pp. 347-38) that I think are particularly clarifying, but I think the paper needs careful reading as a whole to absorb what Whitmore is laying out regarding both how MP thinks the ontology of being [as a question posed by conscious human beings] from the basis of our lack of knowledge of our world's and our own origins. To the idealist notion of a singular transcendence of consciousness and mind over/outside of the world -- a 'transcendence' arrived at in this late point in the evolution of life on our planet {vastly remote from the Big Bang theory and efforts, such as @Soupie has made, to locate consciousness as existing at or below the quantum substrate} -- MP opposes the recognition of the world's transcendence of consciousness in the extent, complexity, and history of all that has preceded us, all that we cannot sense and do not know about the origins of both matter and mind. The subject of prereflective consciousness as developed by MP, which I have been trying to develop here for a long time, is difficult to articulate, but Whitmore makes a strong and valuable effort to clarify its existential and ontological consequences for philosophy. His paper seems to me to be essential reading for participants in this thread. Quoted paragraphs from Whitmore:
"... Merleau-Ponty’s concern is to think through a philosophy that recognizes what is before and beyond the scope of constituting consciousness and the claim, as he says, that “There must be beings for us which are not yet kept in being by the centrifugal activity of consciousness” (S, 165). While there is not space for a more elaborate treatment that these fascinating and dense pages [ref. MP's essay "The Philosopher and His Shadow"] necessitate, let it suffice to say that the aims of Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of phenomenological reduction, to articulate a philosophy of ontological lateness, seem to remain essentially the same.
Merleau-Ponty’s strategy in this later text is to consider the manner in which, for Husserl, the phenomenological reduction is “rent by an inverse movement which it elicits” and that the return to consciousness is simultaneously “going outside of ourselves” (Ibid., 161). In other words, phenomenological reduction, as he says, “does not install us in a closed, transparent milieu… and it does not take us (at least not immediately) from ‘objective’ to ‘subjective,’ but… its function is rather to unveil a third dimension in which this distinction becomes problematic” (Ibid., 162). If we take the spirit of Husserl’s work seriously, especially that after Ideen II, we see that rather than unveiling a transcendental standpoint, phenomenological reduction escapes the “tête -à- tête between pure subject and pure things” by challenging the ontology of blosse Sachen, thing simply as thing, characteristic of naturalistic philosophies (Ibid., 163). Beneath the sedimented accomplishments of reflective life, which includes the ontology of blosse Sachen, lies our primordial Welthesis, our unreflective orientation in the world, the natural attitude, as Merleau-Ponty says, “prior to any thesis” (Ibid.), and the proper task of phenomenology is to “unveil this pre-theoretical layer” (Ibid., 165).21
But what, Merleau-Ponty asks, will phenomenological reduction teach us? To think through this question, we must begin by considering the theme of “pre-theoretical constitution,” what Husserl will describe as passive synthesis and what Merleau-Ponty will call, here and in Phenomenology of Perception, operative, latent or general intentionality (PhP xx, 511/S 165), the manner in which reflecting consciousness already finds itself in the midst of meanings for which it is not responsible. Speaking of these pre-givens, Merleau-Ponty will here repeat, almost verbatim, the articulation of the poles of ontological lateness in Phenomenology of Perception: “they are always ‘already constituted’ for us or… they are ‘never completely constituted’—in short… consciousness is always behind or ahead of them, never contemporaneous” (S , 165).22
In other words, phenomenological reduction, as a return to our Welthesis,
makes our condition of ontological lateness visible, and it is precisely this that indicates the truth of the reduction which is, Merleau-Ponty says in
Phenomenology of Perception, “the impossibility of a complete reduction”
(PhP, xv.). A complete reduction would entail precisely that timeliness in which consciousness could coincide with the acts and processes that constitute it. On the contrary, for a philosophy of ontological lateness, the very performance of phenomenological reduction always takes place in the context of meanings in which it is in the grip and which therefore simultaneously recede from its grasp. We could perhaps suggest, then, that the phenomenological reduction cannot be completed because it cannot, so to speak, be on-time with itself—it is rather, in virtue of its lateness, a perpetual and continual source of meditation and therefore, as Merleau-Ponty says, a “beginning” (PhP, xv/S , 161).
Part III: Ontological Lateness and Freedom
. . . ."
Actually, the above might not be clear enough without reading the rest of Part 2 of the paper leading up to it. And indeed, with a paper this difficult, I think the whole thing should be read.
"... Merleau-Ponty’s concern is to think through a philosophy that recognizes what is before and beyond the scope of constituting consciousness and the claim, as he says, that “There must be beings for us which are not yet kept in being by the centrifugal activity of consciousness” (S, 165). While there is not space for a more elaborate treatment that these fascinating and dense pages [ref. MP's essay "The Philosopher and His Shadow"] necessitate, let it suffice to say that the aims of Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of phenomenological reduction, to articulate a philosophy of ontological lateness, seem to remain essentially the same.
Merleau-Ponty’s strategy in this later text is to consider the manner in which, for Husserl, the phenomenological reduction is “rent by an inverse movement which it elicits” and that the return to consciousness is simultaneously “going outside of ourselves” (Ibid., 161). In other words, phenomenological reduction, as he says, “does not install us in a closed, transparent milieu… and it does not take us (at least not immediately) from ‘objective’ to ‘subjective,’ but… its function is rather to unveil a third dimension in which this distinction becomes problematic” (Ibid., 162). If we take the spirit of Husserl’s work seriously, especially that after Ideen II, we see that rather than unveiling a transcendental standpoint, phenomenological reduction escapes the “tête -à- tête between pure subject and pure things” by challenging the ontology of blosse Sachen, thing simply as thing, characteristic of naturalistic philosophies (Ibid., 163). Beneath the sedimented accomplishments of reflective life, which includes the ontology of blosse Sachen, lies our primordial Welthesis, our unreflective orientation in the world, the natural attitude, as Merleau-Ponty says, “prior to any thesis” (Ibid.), and the proper task of phenomenology is to “unveil this pre-theoretical layer” (Ibid., 165).21
But what, Merleau-Ponty asks, will phenomenological reduction teach us? To think through this question, we must begin by considering the theme of “pre-theoretical constitution,” what Husserl will describe as passive synthesis and what Merleau-Ponty will call, here and in Phenomenology of Perception, operative, latent or general intentionality (PhP xx, 511/S 165), the manner in which reflecting consciousness already finds itself in the midst of meanings for which it is not responsible. Speaking of these pre-givens, Merleau-Ponty will here repeat, almost verbatim, the articulation of the poles of ontological lateness in Phenomenology of Perception: “they are always ‘already constituted’ for us or… they are ‘never completely constituted’—in short… consciousness is always behind or ahead of them, never contemporaneous” (S , 165).22
In other words, phenomenological reduction, as a return to our Welthesis,
makes our condition of ontological lateness visible, and it is precisely this that indicates the truth of the reduction which is, Merleau-Ponty says in
Phenomenology of Perception, “the impossibility of a complete reduction”
(PhP, xv.). A complete reduction would entail precisely that timeliness in which consciousness could coincide with the acts and processes that constitute it. On the contrary, for a philosophy of ontological lateness, the very performance of phenomenological reduction always takes place in the context of meanings in which it is in the grip and which therefore simultaneously recede from its grasp. We could perhaps suggest, then, that the phenomenological reduction cannot be completed because it cannot, so to speak, be on-time with itself—it is rather, in virtue of its lateness, a perpetual and continual source of meditation and therefore, as Merleau-Ponty says, a “beginning” (PhP, xv/S , 161).
Part III: Ontological Lateness and Freedom
. . . ."
Actually, the above might not be clear enough without reading the rest of Part 2 of the paper leading up to it. And indeed, with a paper this difficult, I think the whole thing should be read.
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Concluding paragraphs of the Whitmore paper:
"The question that introduces Phenomenology of Perception, namely “Qu’est-ce que la phénoménologie?" already anticipates the dispossession entailed by our chiasmatic condition of ontological lateness, that our hold on the world is already held by the world and therefore that which we attempt to grasp always escapes us. In other words, as I have tried to suggest, the articulation of this philosophy of dispossession that culminates in the fragment of The Visible and the Invisible begins with Phenomenology of Perception. The philosophy of ontological lateness is not an attempt to make sense of the world but to make sense of the manner in which the sense of the world is constantly working itself out, to think through the fact that human inquiry, including the project of philosophy itself, is circumscribed by its lateness and that therefore what it seeks remains on its horizon. Merleau-Ponty gives expression to this thought in a radio broadcast from 1948 when he remarks that “Reason does not lie behind us, nor is it that where the meeting of minds takes place: rather, both stand before us waiting to be inherited. Yet we are no more able to reach them definitively than we are able to give up on them.”29
The call for a philosophy of ontological lateness, however, is not a call for skepticism, for the very epistemological terms of traditional skeptical philosophies are excluded by his account.30 Nor is it a call for nihilism, for the result of a philosophy of ontological lateness is not the claim that values and knowledge are impossible but, as he says in the same radio broadcast, “precarious” (Ibid.) A philosophy of ontological lateness, then, calls us to recognize the fragility of the human condition and our achievements and precisely for this reason is more accurately understood as a call for more thinking and more philosophy."
Keith Whitmoyer
whitk411@newschool.edu
There's an intriguing similarity between the phrase 'philosophy of dispossession' in the first paragraph and Simone Weil's concept of 'decreation'. I'm just beginning to read Weil, who was a contemporary of MP, Sartre, and Beauvoir in Paris, and I will bring some references to her work here eventually.
"The question that introduces Phenomenology of Perception, namely “Qu’est-ce que la phénoménologie?" already anticipates the dispossession entailed by our chiasmatic condition of ontological lateness, that our hold on the world is already held by the world and therefore that which we attempt to grasp always escapes us. In other words, as I have tried to suggest, the articulation of this philosophy of dispossession that culminates in the fragment of The Visible and the Invisible begins with Phenomenology of Perception. The philosophy of ontological lateness is not an attempt to make sense of the world but to make sense of the manner in which the sense of the world is constantly working itself out, to think through the fact that human inquiry, including the project of philosophy itself, is circumscribed by its lateness and that therefore what it seeks remains on its horizon. Merleau-Ponty gives expression to this thought in a radio broadcast from 1948 when he remarks that “Reason does not lie behind us, nor is it that where the meeting of minds takes place: rather, both stand before us waiting to be inherited. Yet we are no more able to reach them definitively than we are able to give up on them.”29
The call for a philosophy of ontological lateness, however, is not a call for skepticism, for the very epistemological terms of traditional skeptical philosophies are excluded by his account.30 Nor is it a call for nihilism, for the result of a philosophy of ontological lateness is not the claim that values and knowledge are impossible but, as he says in the same radio broadcast, “precarious” (Ibid.) A philosophy of ontological lateness, then, calls us to recognize the fragility of the human condition and our achievements and precisely for this reason is more accurately understood as a call for more thinking and more philosophy."
Keith Whitmoyer
whitk411@newschool.edu
There's an intriguing similarity between the phrase 'philosophy of dispossession' in the first paragraph and Simone Weil's concept of 'decreation'. I'm just beginning to read Weil, who was a contemporary of MP, Sartre, and Beauvoir in Paris, and I will bring some references to her work here eventually.
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Michael Allen
Paranormal Adept
“There must be beings for us which are not yet kept in being by the centrifugal activity of consciousness”
An interesting analogy that assumes a force acting on pre-existing concrete particulars that are not explained by the relation that is posited.
Does "ontologically late" mean that the ground of our understanding of being precedes our own questioning and understanding of being?
An interesting analogy that assumes a force acting on pre-existing concrete particulars that are not explained by the relation that is posited.
Does "ontologically late" mean that the ground of our understanding of being precedes our own questioning and understanding of being?
Our first understanding of being, of our own being and that of the world in which we find ourselves immersed and existing, is pre-reflective, 'pre-thetic' in the term the phenomenologists use. That means it also arises prelinguistically, before we develop languages with which to dispose of things in and aspects of the 'world' categorically. Reflective consciousness develops out of the lived experiential grounds laid down in prereflective consciousness, in the evolution of our and other species and in the lived experiences of each new child born. So it's not just a matter of conscious, minded, beings having arrived late on the scene of the evolution of the world's physical being; it's a matter of our knowing ourselves and understanding our situatedness even prior to reflection, as existing temporally, and temporarily, in a world that exceeds us on every side and which we can never contain or exhaust in our ideas about it. And because we are of this world, born and evolved out of it as well as existing within it, much of what we know subconsciously and liminally is unsayable in analytical terms. We find some of these aspects of being expressed in music and painting and other art forms, primordially in our species' evolution, and continuing into our time to say for us that which cannot be captured categorically or objectively.
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Discovered tonight in my list of books purchased for reading in amazon's Kindle Cloud reader and I think highly relevant to the ontological questions we've been pursuing in this current part of the thread:
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_...,+The+Universe+of+Things&tag=genesteinbergina
Now that I know I have it I'm going to read it. Hope one or another of posters in this group will be interested in doing so as well.
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_...,+The+Universe+of+Things&tag=genesteinbergina
Now that I know I have it I'm going to read it. Hope one or another of posters in this group will be interested in doing so as well.
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from the most recent issue of the journal Biology and Philosophy:
Alex Rosenberg, "Can we make sense of subjective experience in metabolically situated cognitive processes?"
Can we make sense of subjective experience in metabolically situated cognitive processes?
The full table of contents:
Recent trends in evolutionary ethics: greenbeards!
Joseph Heath & Catherine Rioux
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Biodiversity is a chimera, and chimeras aren’t real
Carlos Santana
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Amorphic kinds: Cluster’s last stand?
Neil E. Williams
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Can we make sense of subjective experience in metabolically situated cognitive processes?
Alex Rosenberg
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Review Essay
Making microbes matter: essay review of Maureen A. O’Malley’s Philosophy of Microbiology
Gregory J. Morgan, James Romph, Joshua L. Ross, Elizabeth Steward & Claire Szipszky
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Why a convincing argument for causalism cannot entirely eschew population-level properties: discussion of Otsuka
Brian McLoone
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
A Cladist is a systematist who seeks a natural classification: some comments on Quinn (2017)
David M. Williams & Malte C. Ebach
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Fifty shades of cladism
Andrew V. Z. Brower
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Cultural evolution and the social sciences: a case of unification?
Catherine Driscoll
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
The fine structure of ‘homology’
Aaron Novick
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Meet the new mammoth, same as the old? Resurrecting the Mammuthus primigenius
Monika Piotrowska
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
A pragmatic approach to the possibility of de-extinction
Matthew H. Slater & Hayley Clatterbuck
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
The case for multiple realization in biology
Wei Fang
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
The generality of Constructive Neutral Evolution
T. D. P. Brunet & W. Ford Doolittle
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Editorial
Biology and Philosophy’s transition to continuous publication
Michael Weisberg
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Alex Rosenberg, "Can we make sense of subjective experience in metabolically situated cognitive processes?"
Can we make sense of subjective experience in metabolically situated cognitive processes?
The full table of contents:
Recent trends in evolutionary ethics: greenbeards!
Joseph Heath & Catherine Rioux
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Biodiversity is a chimera, and chimeras aren’t real
Carlos Santana
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Amorphic kinds: Cluster’s last stand?
Neil E. Williams
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Can we make sense of subjective experience in metabolically situated cognitive processes?
Alex Rosenberg
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Review Essay
Making microbes matter: essay review of Maureen A. O’Malley’s Philosophy of Microbiology
Gregory J. Morgan, James Romph, Joshua L. Ross, Elizabeth Steward & Claire Szipszky
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Why a convincing argument for causalism cannot entirely eschew population-level properties: discussion of Otsuka
Brian McLoone
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
A Cladist is a systematist who seeks a natural classification: some comments on Quinn (2017)
David M. Williams & Malte C. Ebach
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Fifty shades of cladism
Andrew V. Z. Brower
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Cultural evolution and the social sciences: a case of unification?
Catherine Driscoll
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
The fine structure of ‘homology’
Aaron Novick
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Meet the new mammoth, same as the old? Resurrecting the Mammuthus primigenius
Monika Piotrowska
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
A pragmatic approach to the possibility of de-extinction
Matthew H. Slater & Hayley Clatterbuck
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
The case for multiple realization in biology
Wei Fang
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
The generality of Constructive Neutral Evolution
T. D. P. Brunet & W. Ford Doolittle
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Editorial
Biology and Philosophy’s transition to continuous publication
Michael Weisberg
» Abstract » Full text HTML » Full text PDF
Turning to language . . .
Biology & Philosophy
April 2018, 33:9 | Cite as
"Self domestication and the evolution of language" -- Open Access, link below
Extract: ". . . This, then, is what we mean when we say that cultural evolution presents as a kind of ‘informational regularity’. The very process of transmission, whether implemented in simulations or in human participants, promotes the structuring of the transmitted system and serves to amplify any biases for structure that may be present in learners. Initially random systems of signals, then, become structured simply by virtue of being culturally transmitted, without any need for a concomitant change in the learners who use the system. It is [in] this sense that structure is provided ‘for free’ to biological evolution. In short, structured systems survive because they are easier to learn. However, as experimental work has shown, the kind of structure that results from cultural transmission is not necessarily the kind of structure we see in language. Recall, for example, how under certain circumstances the transmitted system can become systematically underspecified. The compositional structure we see in language is, then, a result of this process of cultural transmission occurring in a context where the learners use the system to communicate. Compositional structure is what results when a pressure for communicative utility is added to a process, cultural transmission, that is itself already structure-creating in nature. This renders an account of language structure rooted in biological evolution unnecessary. Instead, we argue that we should look to biological evolution to provide an account of how this cultural process became possible in the first place. . . ."
Self domestication and the evolution of language
Biology & Philosophy
April 2018, 33:9 | Cite as
"Self domestication and the evolution of language" -- Open Access, link below
- James Thomas
- Simon Kirby
Extract: ". . . This, then, is what we mean when we say that cultural evolution presents as a kind of ‘informational regularity’. The very process of transmission, whether implemented in simulations or in human participants, promotes the structuring of the transmitted system and serves to amplify any biases for structure that may be present in learners. Initially random systems of signals, then, become structured simply by virtue of being culturally transmitted, without any need for a concomitant change in the learners who use the system. It is [in] this sense that structure is provided ‘for free’ to biological evolution. In short, structured systems survive because they are easier to learn. However, as experimental work has shown, the kind of structure that results from cultural transmission is not necessarily the kind of structure we see in language. Recall, for example, how under certain circumstances the transmitted system can become systematically underspecified. The compositional structure we see in language is, then, a result of this process of cultural transmission occurring in a context where the learners use the system to communicate. Compositional structure is what results when a pressure for communicative utility is added to a process, cultural transmission, that is itself already structure-creating in nature. This renders an account of language structure rooted in biological evolution unnecessary. Instead, we argue that we should look to biological evolution to provide an account of how this cultural process became possible in the first place. . . ."
Self domestication and the evolution of language
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
This paper comes from Chalmers' website. He addresses the form of (Realist) Idealism that I have been exploring. Below I'll post some extracts mainly focused on problems with the approach and my responses to them. (My comments will be in brackets and blue.)
Idealism and the Mind-Body Problem
"When I was in graduate school, I recall hearing “One starts as a materialist, then one becomes a dualist, then a panpsychist, and one ends up as an idealist” ...
Idealist views like these are naturally understood as a sort of realism about the physical world, rather than a sort of anti-realism. The physical world really exists out there, independently of our observations; it just has a surprising nature. Indeed, views of this sort are highly congenial to epistemological structural realism, which says roughly that science reveals the structure of the physical world but not its intrinsic nature. So we can think of them as versions of realist idealism. Realist idealism may sound like an oxymoron, but this is only because we tend to associate idealism with the narrow anti-realist variety and ignore the broad variety. Correspondingly, the widespread view that idealism has been refuted or defeated is best understood as a view about anti-realist idealism.5 Certainly the most familiar objections to idealism are largely objections to anti-realist idealism. Realist idealism has not been subject to the same sort of searching assessment as anti-realist idealism. ...
From certain angles realist idealism can even be seen as a sort of naturalistic view (naturalistic idealism, perhaps?), on which idealism is put forward as a sort of scientific hypothesis to explain our experiences. ...
I will argue that all of these views face significant challenges, but that micro-idealism and especially cosmic idealism have some promise as an approach to these issues. ...
[Cosmic idealism, as Chalmers refers to it, is the approach that I have been exploring in the past year or two.]
Cosmic idealism is the thesis that all concrete facts are grounded in facts about the mental states of a single cosmic entity, such as the universe as a whole or perhaps a god ...
The sort of cosmopsychism that satisfies these constraints is constitutive Russellian cosmopsychism. To understand this view, start with a basic “priority monist” view (Schaffer 2010) on which the universe as a whole is fundamental, and on which it has fundamental cosmophysical properties: perhaps distributional properties concerning the distribution of matter in spacetime, perhaps wave function properties, or perhaps something else. Russellian cosmopsychism (in its experience-involving version) says that cosmoexperiential properties realize cosmophysical properties, by having their structure and playing their causal roles. In effect, cosmoexperiential properties are the causal basis of cosmophysical dispositions. Constitutive cosmopsychism holds that these cosmoexperiential properties collectively constitute (or ground) the macroexperiences of macrosubjects such as ourselves. In effect, constitutive Russellian cosmopsychism is a view on which the world as a whole consists in the interplay of complex physics-structured experiential states in the mind of a cosmic subject. Russellian cosmopsychism gives cosmic experiences the structure and the causal role of physical states, while constitutive cosmopsychism allows macroexperiences to inherit a causal role from cosmic experiences. Cosmic idealism is certainly a form of constitutive cosmopsychism: if all facts are grounded in truths about mental states of the cosmic subject, then facts about macroexperiences are so grounded. Cosmic idealism does not entail Russellian cosmopsychism, but the most natural realist version of cosmic idealism is Russellian: the Russellian strategy seems by far the best way for cosmic mental states to ground states of the physical world. What are the cosmic experiences like? We need not take a stand here. To start with analogs of familiar human experiences, the basic cosmic experiences might be perceptual: perhaps the cosmos undergoes a series of quasi-visual experiences roughly mirroring the evolution of the universe. They might be cognitive: perhaps the cosmos has a stream of conscious thought that mirrors the universe’s physical dynamics. They might be imaginative: perhaps the cosmos is in effect imagining states with the structure of the universe. Or perhaps most likely, these states may be quite unlike any human experience, with a distinctive phenomenology of their own that realizes the universe-level structure and dynamics of physics.
[Although I think Chalmers handles this well here, this issue comes up again later. What are cosmic experiences like? Perhaps they may be unlike human experiences. Perhaps? May? Do we think the experiences of a bat are anything like human experiences? There is no perhaps nor may. If states of the universe are indeed experiential states, we can rest assured they are nothing like experiental states of humans.
On this view, physics-structured states of the universe just are experiental states; therefore, there is an isomorphism between physics-structured states and experiential states; therefore, the experiential states of humans and the universe will be as similar and as different as their physical structure. (I personally find this to be quite intuitive.)]
What about the more general challenges for micro-idealism: holism and the combination problem? Holism is of course no problem for cosmic idealism, and it serves as one of the major motivators for moving from micro-idealism to cosmic idealism in the first place. Independently of idealism: if there are no fundamental physical micro-entities, this motivates a move to holistic physical entities such as the universe as a whole with holistic physical properties. In an idealist context, we need only combine this independently motivated move with the claim that these holistic physical properties are realized by mental properties. An analog of the combination problem, by contrast, is a significant issue for cosmic idealism and for related versions of cosmopsychism. This is the problem of how cosmic experiences can constitute the ordinary macroexperiences of subjects like us. In earlier work I called this the “decomposition problem”. Albahari (this volume) objects that this label makes it sound like the universe is decomposing, and recommends “decombination problem” instead. However, this awkward neologism is also somewhat misleading in suggesting that the universal mind must be a combination of the macrominds. Instead, I will use the simple label of the “constitution problem” for the issue of how the cosmic mind constitutes macro minds. As a bonus, this label can be used to cover the analogous combination problem for micropsychism (how do micro minds constitute a macromind?), bringing out that there is a unified problem for both views. As with the original combination problem, the constitution problem for cosmopsychism and cosmic idealism has at least three subproblems. The subject constitution problem is that of how a cosmic subject can constitute macrosubjects. The quality constitution problem is that of how cosmic experiential qualities can constitute macroqualities. The structure constitution problem is that of how cosmic experiential structure can constitute macroexperiential structure. All of these problems are serious. The quality and structure constitution problems are very closely related to the corresponding combination problems for panpsychism, and the range of options is similar (the main options discussed by Chalmers 2017 all apply here, with the same strengths and weaknesses), so I will set them aside here. The subject constitution problem is perhaps more distinctive in the cosmic case, and I will focus on it.
The subject constitution problem for cosmic idealism is that of how a cosmic subject can constitute macrosubjects such as ordinary human conscious subjects. It is at least not easy to see how this can happen, and there are arguments that it is impossible.
[This never ceases to confound me. If @smcder can shed any light on this, please do. Many philosophers of mind (including @Pharoah) seem to agrue that Subjects are fundamental. If this is the case, we should be discussing the Mind Body Subject problem, not just the Mind Body problem.]
A final strategy is to deflate subjects of experience or to eliminate them entirely. Views like this are familiar in the Buddhist tradition, which denies the existence of the self and is often understood to deny the existence of subjects as well (at least in ultimate reality). On views of this sort, there are experiences but no subjects that have them; or at least, any bearers of the experiences are very much unlike the primitive persisting entities that we have in mind when we think of subjects. This non-subject-involving view is often combined with a sort of idealism on which conventional reality is grounded in conventional appearances, and in which all this is grounded in cosmic experience at the ultimate level. This picture at least tends to suggest a view on which macroexperience is grounded in non-subject-involving cosmic experience in ultimate reality.
On a non-subject-involving cosmic idealist view, there is cosmic experience but no cosmic subject. It might then be argued that with no subjects there is no subject constitution problem to solve. Of course this does not eliminate the problem entirely. Presumably experiences still come bundled into relatively unified groups (corresponding to what we thought of as subjects), and we still need to know how a cosmic bundle of experiences could constitute a macro bundle of the sort I seem to have. This problem is by no means straightforward (on the face of it one could run a conceivability argument against it analogous to the one for subjects), but perhaps the problems for it are at least more tractable than the corresponding problems for non-subject-involving views. One cost is then to make sense of experiences without subjects of experience. I am not sure I can do this, but many theorists have at least tried, and again the view is certainly worth taking seriously.
[This is the approach I favor--a deflationary subject approach--regardless of the combination problem. I do not think "subjects" are fundamental. And this is actually a very important element of this approach which Chalmers fails to address, which I will at the end.
How could experiences come to be macro bundled? While this question is not completely answered of course, the response seems quite straighforward enough for me: organisms/brains persisting in time and space. If experiences, roughly speaking, are isomorphic to the physical structure of the universe, then we would expect to find physical structures that could constitute the macro "bundle" of experiences of our minds. Uh, I submit that human bodies/brains constiute the macro bundle that I seem to have...?
Regarding experiences without subjects of experience: I understand this is radical, but I don't find this hard to grok. I poor analogy is the tree falling in the forest. If no one (a subject) is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If an experience exists in the universe and there is no subject to experience it, is it still an experience?
Remember, the phenomenology of an experience is roughly isomorphic to its physical structure; thus the phenomenology of states of the entire universe need not be ANYTHING like the phenomenology of states of individual humans. That is, what it is like to be a bowl of water need be nothing like what it is like to be a human eating a banana. Or perhaps: if a state of the brain does not "enter" conscious awareness, does it make a sound? For instance, what if you're engrossed ina book and someone calls your name and you don't "hear" them, even though your nervous system absolutely responds physically?
What is the difference between a brain state registering someone calling our name that "enters" consciousness and one that doesn't "enter" consciousness? We have an "experience" with and without a subject of experience. This is very important and something that Chalmers does not address. I'll post a paper that does address this issue.*]
A related issue specific to cosmic idealism is the austerity problem. The issue here is that the cosmic mind in the present picture (whether relational or nonrelational) looks extremely austere, and very much unlike a mind as we normally think of it. Its basic experiential structure and dynamics is very much the structure and dynamics of physics. There seems to be little or no rationality in this structure. There seems to be very little thinking, valuing, or reasoning. It is not really clear why, if there is to be a cosmic mind, it should be as austere as this. The cosmic idealist faces a choice point here. On the first option, the cosmic mind has experiences that are wholly isomorphic to the structure of physics. This is the option taken by pure Russellian cosmopsychism, where the cosmic subject has mental states with structure and dynamics that realize physical dynamics, and has no more mental states and no more structure and dynamics than this. This option faces the austerity problem.
[Again, phenomenology = structure. The mind of the universe and the mind of an individual human will be as similar and as different as the structure of the universe as a whole and the structure of an indivual human. As they have differences in their physical structure we should expect their phenomenology to be vastly different as well.
Just because the mind of the universe on this view would be quite alien from a human mind is not grounds to dismiss the argument. That's like saying because the physical structure of the universe is different from the physical structure of a human, they both can't be physical.]
I conclude that there is significant motivation for cosmic idealism. It shares the general motivations for panpsychism, which are strong, and has some extra motivation in addition. Compared to micro-idealism, it deals much better with the problems of spacetime and of holism, and it at least has some extra promise in dealing with the problem of causation and the all-important constitution problem. Compared to non-idealist forms of panpsychism and panprotopsychism, it has some advantages in simplicity and comprehensibility, while it has both benefits and costs with respect to the constitution problem. I do not know that the constitution problem can be solved, but there are at least avenues worth exploring. Overall, I think cosmic idealism is the most promising version of idealism, and is about as promising as any version of panpsychism. It should be on the list of the handful of promising approaches to the mind–body problem.
[That's pretty much as ringing of an endorsement as one can get. However, I strongly disagree that the combination/constitution problem is insurmountable for holistic realist cosmic idealism. Chalmers does't address the problems he sees as he refers to his paper on the combination problem--he thinks those problem apply to holistic realist cosmic idealism, I don't however. I'll explain why I don't think it's a problem in the future as it seems to be--in Chalmers thinking--the biggest challenge for this approach, relative to all the other problems that is, haha.]
I do not claim that idealism is plausible. No position on the mind–body problem is plausible. Materialism: implausible. Dualism: implausible. Idealism: implausible. Neutral monism: implausible. None of the above: implausible. But the probabilities of all of these views get a boost from the fact that one of the views must be true. Idealism is not significantly less plausible than its main competitors. So even though idealism is implausible, there is a non-negligible probability that it is true.
* http://axc.ulb.be/uploads/2016/01/14-casys11.pdf
"Abstract: Here, I explore the idea that consciousness is something that the brain learns to do rather than an intrinsic property of certain neural states and not others. Starting from the idea that neural activity is inherently unconscious, the question thus becomes: How does the brain learn to be conscious? I suggest that consciousness arises as a result of the brain's continuous attempts at predicting not only the consequences of its actions on the world and on other agents, but also the consequences of activity in one cerebral region on activity in other regions. By this account, the brain continuously and unconsciously learns to redescribe its own activity to itself, so developing systems of metarepresentations that characterize and qualify the target first-order representations."
Why are some brain states "conscious" and other brain states non-conscious? Or, framed in the context of holistic realist cosmic idealism, if all states of the universe are conscious states, why are some of our brain states part of subjectve experience and some not? (This is the issue that Chalmers fails to address.) The above paper answers this problem, I believe. Note: the paper is not written in the context of holistic realist cosmic idealism, but plain old materialism. However, we know materialism can't answer the MBP, but the above paper combined with holistic realist cosmic idealism works.
Edit: I understand the above may be confusing. On a materialisy view, the question is: why are some brain states conscious and some brain states non-conscious? We know there is no materialist answer to this question. On the idealist view, the question is flipped: if all states are conscious states, why do some brain states seem to be non-conscious?
This is where the issue of subjects and subjective experience become so important!
On an idealist view, there is a difference between phenomenal consciousness and subjective experience. I've re-written the above abstract in the context of realist idealism:
"Abstract: Here, I explore the idea thatconsciousness subjective experience is something that the brain learns to do rather than an intrinsic property of certain neural states and not others. Starting from the idea that neural activity is inherently unconscious non-subjective, the question thus becomes: How does the brain learn to be conscious subjectively experiential? I suggest that consciousness subjective experience arises as a result of the brain's continuous attempts at predicting not only the consequences of its actions on the world and on other agents, but also the consequences of activity in one cerebral region on activity in other regions. By this account, the brain continuously and unconsciously non-subjectively learns to redescribe its own activity to itself, so developing systems of metarepresentations that characterize and qualify the target first-order representations."
As I've suggested before, I think autopoeises is a wonderful model for how a non-subjective albeit experiential medium can take on a (physical) structure constituting subjectivity.
That is, while we can't see how phenomenal consciousness can emerge from (phsyical) structure, it's easier to see how, given phenomenal consciousness, subjectivity can emerge from (physical) structure.
Idealism and the Mind-Body Problem
"When I was in graduate school, I recall hearing “One starts as a materialist, then one becomes a dualist, then a panpsychist, and one ends up as an idealist” ...
Idealist views like these are naturally understood as a sort of realism about the physical world, rather than a sort of anti-realism. The physical world really exists out there, independently of our observations; it just has a surprising nature. Indeed, views of this sort are highly congenial to epistemological structural realism, which says roughly that science reveals the structure of the physical world but not its intrinsic nature. So we can think of them as versions of realist idealism. Realist idealism may sound like an oxymoron, but this is only because we tend to associate idealism with the narrow anti-realist variety and ignore the broad variety. Correspondingly, the widespread view that idealism has been refuted or defeated is best understood as a view about anti-realist idealism.5 Certainly the most familiar objections to idealism are largely objections to anti-realist idealism. Realist idealism has not been subject to the same sort of searching assessment as anti-realist idealism. ...
From certain angles realist idealism can even be seen as a sort of naturalistic view (naturalistic idealism, perhaps?), on which idealism is put forward as a sort of scientific hypothesis to explain our experiences. ...
I will argue that all of these views face significant challenges, but that micro-idealism and especially cosmic idealism have some promise as an approach to these issues. ...
[Cosmic idealism, as Chalmers refers to it, is the approach that I have been exploring in the past year or two.]
Cosmic idealism is the thesis that all concrete facts are grounded in facts about the mental states of a single cosmic entity, such as the universe as a whole or perhaps a god ...
The sort of cosmopsychism that satisfies these constraints is constitutive Russellian cosmopsychism. To understand this view, start with a basic “priority monist” view (Schaffer 2010) on which the universe as a whole is fundamental, and on which it has fundamental cosmophysical properties: perhaps distributional properties concerning the distribution of matter in spacetime, perhaps wave function properties, or perhaps something else. Russellian cosmopsychism (in its experience-involving version) says that cosmoexperiential properties realize cosmophysical properties, by having their structure and playing their causal roles. In effect, cosmoexperiential properties are the causal basis of cosmophysical dispositions. Constitutive cosmopsychism holds that these cosmoexperiential properties collectively constitute (or ground) the macroexperiences of macrosubjects such as ourselves. In effect, constitutive Russellian cosmopsychism is a view on which the world as a whole consists in the interplay of complex physics-structured experiential states in the mind of a cosmic subject. Russellian cosmopsychism gives cosmic experiences the structure and the causal role of physical states, while constitutive cosmopsychism allows macroexperiences to inherit a causal role from cosmic experiences. Cosmic idealism is certainly a form of constitutive cosmopsychism: if all facts are grounded in truths about mental states of the cosmic subject, then facts about macroexperiences are so grounded. Cosmic idealism does not entail Russellian cosmopsychism, but the most natural realist version of cosmic idealism is Russellian: the Russellian strategy seems by far the best way for cosmic mental states to ground states of the physical world. What are the cosmic experiences like? We need not take a stand here. To start with analogs of familiar human experiences, the basic cosmic experiences might be perceptual: perhaps the cosmos undergoes a series of quasi-visual experiences roughly mirroring the evolution of the universe. They might be cognitive: perhaps the cosmos has a stream of conscious thought that mirrors the universe’s physical dynamics. They might be imaginative: perhaps the cosmos is in effect imagining states with the structure of the universe. Or perhaps most likely, these states may be quite unlike any human experience, with a distinctive phenomenology of their own that realizes the universe-level structure and dynamics of physics.
[Although I think Chalmers handles this well here, this issue comes up again later. What are cosmic experiences like? Perhaps they may be unlike human experiences. Perhaps? May? Do we think the experiences of a bat are anything like human experiences? There is no perhaps nor may. If states of the universe are indeed experiential states, we can rest assured they are nothing like experiental states of humans.
On this view, physics-structured states of the universe just are experiental states; therefore, there is an isomorphism between physics-structured states and experiential states; therefore, the experiential states of humans and the universe will be as similar and as different as their physical structure. (I personally find this to be quite intuitive.)]
What about the more general challenges for micro-idealism: holism and the combination problem? Holism is of course no problem for cosmic idealism, and it serves as one of the major motivators for moving from micro-idealism to cosmic idealism in the first place. Independently of idealism: if there are no fundamental physical micro-entities, this motivates a move to holistic physical entities such as the universe as a whole with holistic physical properties. In an idealist context, we need only combine this independently motivated move with the claim that these holistic physical properties are realized by mental properties. An analog of the combination problem, by contrast, is a significant issue for cosmic idealism and for related versions of cosmopsychism. This is the problem of how cosmic experiences can constitute the ordinary macroexperiences of subjects like us. In earlier work I called this the “decomposition problem”. Albahari (this volume) objects that this label makes it sound like the universe is decomposing, and recommends “decombination problem” instead. However, this awkward neologism is also somewhat misleading in suggesting that the universal mind must be a combination of the macrominds. Instead, I will use the simple label of the “constitution problem” for the issue of how the cosmic mind constitutes macro minds. As a bonus, this label can be used to cover the analogous combination problem for micropsychism (how do micro minds constitute a macromind?), bringing out that there is a unified problem for both views. As with the original combination problem, the constitution problem for cosmopsychism and cosmic idealism has at least three subproblems. The subject constitution problem is that of how a cosmic subject can constitute macrosubjects. The quality constitution problem is that of how cosmic experiential qualities can constitute macroqualities. The structure constitution problem is that of how cosmic experiential structure can constitute macroexperiential structure. All of these problems are serious. The quality and structure constitution problems are very closely related to the corresponding combination problems for panpsychism, and the range of options is similar (the main options discussed by Chalmers 2017 all apply here, with the same strengths and weaknesses), so I will set them aside here. The subject constitution problem is perhaps more distinctive in the cosmic case, and I will focus on it.
The subject constitution problem for cosmic idealism is that of how a cosmic subject can constitute macrosubjects such as ordinary human conscious subjects. It is at least not easy to see how this can happen, and there are arguments that it is impossible.
[This never ceases to confound me. If @smcder can shed any light on this, please do. Many philosophers of mind (including @Pharoah) seem to agrue that Subjects are fundamental. If this is the case, we should be discussing the Mind Body Subject problem, not just the Mind Body problem.]
A final strategy is to deflate subjects of experience or to eliminate them entirely. Views like this are familiar in the Buddhist tradition, which denies the existence of the self and is often understood to deny the existence of subjects as well (at least in ultimate reality). On views of this sort, there are experiences but no subjects that have them; or at least, any bearers of the experiences are very much unlike the primitive persisting entities that we have in mind when we think of subjects. This non-subject-involving view is often combined with a sort of idealism on which conventional reality is grounded in conventional appearances, and in which all this is grounded in cosmic experience at the ultimate level. This picture at least tends to suggest a view on which macroexperience is grounded in non-subject-involving cosmic experience in ultimate reality.
On a non-subject-involving cosmic idealist view, there is cosmic experience but no cosmic subject. It might then be argued that with no subjects there is no subject constitution problem to solve. Of course this does not eliminate the problem entirely. Presumably experiences still come bundled into relatively unified groups (corresponding to what we thought of as subjects), and we still need to know how a cosmic bundle of experiences could constitute a macro bundle of the sort I seem to have. This problem is by no means straightforward (on the face of it one could run a conceivability argument against it analogous to the one for subjects), but perhaps the problems for it are at least more tractable than the corresponding problems for non-subject-involving views. One cost is then to make sense of experiences without subjects of experience. I am not sure I can do this, but many theorists have at least tried, and again the view is certainly worth taking seriously.
[This is the approach I favor--a deflationary subject approach--regardless of the combination problem. I do not think "subjects" are fundamental. And this is actually a very important element of this approach which Chalmers fails to address, which I will at the end.
How could experiences come to be macro bundled? While this question is not completely answered of course, the response seems quite straighforward enough for me: organisms/brains persisting in time and space. If experiences, roughly speaking, are isomorphic to the physical structure of the universe, then we would expect to find physical structures that could constitute the macro "bundle" of experiences of our minds. Uh, I submit that human bodies/brains constiute the macro bundle that I seem to have...?
Regarding experiences without subjects of experience: I understand this is radical, but I don't find this hard to grok. I poor analogy is the tree falling in the forest. If no one (a subject) is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If an experience exists in the universe and there is no subject to experience it, is it still an experience?
Remember, the phenomenology of an experience is roughly isomorphic to its physical structure; thus the phenomenology of states of the entire universe need not be ANYTHING like the phenomenology of states of individual humans. That is, what it is like to be a bowl of water need be nothing like what it is like to be a human eating a banana. Or perhaps: if a state of the brain does not "enter" conscious awareness, does it make a sound? For instance, what if you're engrossed ina book and someone calls your name and you don't "hear" them, even though your nervous system absolutely responds physically?
What is the difference between a brain state registering someone calling our name that "enters" consciousness and one that doesn't "enter" consciousness? We have an "experience" with and without a subject of experience. This is very important and something that Chalmers does not address. I'll post a paper that does address this issue.*]
A related issue specific to cosmic idealism is the austerity problem. The issue here is that the cosmic mind in the present picture (whether relational or nonrelational) looks extremely austere, and very much unlike a mind as we normally think of it. Its basic experiential structure and dynamics is very much the structure and dynamics of physics. There seems to be little or no rationality in this structure. There seems to be very little thinking, valuing, or reasoning. It is not really clear why, if there is to be a cosmic mind, it should be as austere as this. The cosmic idealist faces a choice point here. On the first option, the cosmic mind has experiences that are wholly isomorphic to the structure of physics. This is the option taken by pure Russellian cosmopsychism, where the cosmic subject has mental states with structure and dynamics that realize physical dynamics, and has no more mental states and no more structure and dynamics than this. This option faces the austerity problem.
[Again, phenomenology = structure. The mind of the universe and the mind of an individual human will be as similar and as different as the structure of the universe as a whole and the structure of an indivual human. As they have differences in their physical structure we should expect their phenomenology to be vastly different as well.
Just because the mind of the universe on this view would be quite alien from a human mind is not grounds to dismiss the argument. That's like saying because the physical structure of the universe is different from the physical structure of a human, they both can't be physical.]
I conclude that there is significant motivation for cosmic idealism. It shares the general motivations for panpsychism, which are strong, and has some extra motivation in addition. Compared to micro-idealism, it deals much better with the problems of spacetime and of holism, and it at least has some extra promise in dealing with the problem of causation and the all-important constitution problem. Compared to non-idealist forms of panpsychism and panprotopsychism, it has some advantages in simplicity and comprehensibility, while it has both benefits and costs with respect to the constitution problem. I do not know that the constitution problem can be solved, but there are at least avenues worth exploring. Overall, I think cosmic idealism is the most promising version of idealism, and is about as promising as any version of panpsychism. It should be on the list of the handful of promising approaches to the mind–body problem.
[That's pretty much as ringing of an endorsement as one can get. However, I strongly disagree that the combination/constitution problem is insurmountable for holistic realist cosmic idealism. Chalmers does't address the problems he sees as he refers to his paper on the combination problem--he thinks those problem apply to holistic realist cosmic idealism, I don't however. I'll explain why I don't think it's a problem in the future as it seems to be--in Chalmers thinking--the biggest challenge for this approach, relative to all the other problems that is, haha.]
I do not claim that idealism is plausible. No position on the mind–body problem is plausible. Materialism: implausible. Dualism: implausible. Idealism: implausible. Neutral monism: implausible. None of the above: implausible. But the probabilities of all of these views get a boost from the fact that one of the views must be true. Idealism is not significantly less plausible than its main competitors. So even though idealism is implausible, there is a non-negligible probability that it is true.
* http://axc.ulb.be/uploads/2016/01/14-casys11.pdf
"Abstract: Here, I explore the idea that consciousness is something that the brain learns to do rather than an intrinsic property of certain neural states and not others. Starting from the idea that neural activity is inherently unconscious, the question thus becomes: How does the brain learn to be conscious? I suggest that consciousness arises as a result of the brain's continuous attempts at predicting not only the consequences of its actions on the world and on other agents, but also the consequences of activity in one cerebral region on activity in other regions. By this account, the brain continuously and unconsciously learns to redescribe its own activity to itself, so developing systems of metarepresentations that characterize and qualify the target first-order representations."
Why are some brain states "conscious" and other brain states non-conscious? Or, framed in the context of holistic realist cosmic idealism, if all states of the universe are conscious states, why are some of our brain states part of subjectve experience and some not? (This is the issue that Chalmers fails to address.) The above paper answers this problem, I believe. Note: the paper is not written in the context of holistic realist cosmic idealism, but plain old materialism. However, we know materialism can't answer the MBP, but the above paper combined with holistic realist cosmic idealism works.
Edit: I understand the above may be confusing. On a materialisy view, the question is: why are some brain states conscious and some brain states non-conscious? We know there is no materialist answer to this question. On the idealist view, the question is flipped: if all states are conscious states, why do some brain states seem to be non-conscious?
This is where the issue of subjects and subjective experience become so important!
On an idealist view, there is a difference between phenomenal consciousness and subjective experience. I've re-written the above abstract in the context of realist idealism:
"Abstract: Here, I explore the idea that
As I've suggested before, I think autopoeises is a wonderful model for how a non-subjective albeit experiential medium can take on a (physical) structure constituting subjectivity.
That is, while we can't see how phenomenal consciousness can emerge from (phsyical) structure, it's easier to see how, given phenomenal consciousness, subjectivity can emerge from (physical) structure.
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Soupie, I also want to quote your own following paragraph:
It looks like you are preparing a long paper of your own at this point, and I look forward to reading it. I need to read the whole of the Chalmers paper before I can respond further to your post. I mentioned your post in an email to Steve @smcder and I hope he'll be joining us so we can discuss the interesting ideas Chalmers takes up in this paper and your intention to go beyond them.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
I think these are @Soupie's comments ...
[Although I think Chalmers handles this well here, this issue comes up again later. What are cosmic experiences like? Perhaps they may be unlike human experiences. Perhaps? May? Do we think the experiences of a bat are anything like human experiences? There is no perhaps nor may. If states of the universe are indeed experiential states, we can rest assured they are nothing like experiental states of humans.
On this view, physics-structured states of the universe just are experiental states; therefore, there is an isomorphism between physics-structured states and experiential states; therefore, the experiential states of humans and the universe will be as similar and as different as their physical structure. (I personally find this to be quite intuitive.)]
smcder
Yes, we think the experiences of a bat are like those of a human ... that's pretty important to WILTBAB. Nagel chose bats because we can readily think they have experiences (unlike say an amoeba, which takes more imagination) but they are pretty different from us .... on the cosmic level, at the very least if the cosmic subject has experiences then, like our experiences, they are at least experience-like ...
@Soupie says:
"There is no perhaps nor may. If states of the universe are indeed experiential states, we can rest assured they are nothing like experiental states of humans.
On this view, physics-structured states of the universe just are experiental states; therefore, there is an isomorphism between physics-structured states and experiential states; therefore, the experiential states of humans and the universe will be as similar and as different as their physical structure. (I personally find this to be quite intuitive.)]"
smcder this seems contradictory to "nothing like experiential states of humans":
"the experiential states of humans and the universe will be as similar and as different as their physical structure."? If they are as similar (and different) as their physical structures, then they cannot be "nothing like experiential states of humans ... "
and if a cosmic subject constitutes macro subjects like ordinary human consciousness ... ?
chalmers
What about the more general challenges for micro-idealism: holism and the combination problem? Holism is of course no problem for cosmic idealism, and it serves as one of the major motivators for moving from micro-idealism to cosmic idealism in the first place. Independently of idealism: if there are no fundamental physical micro-entities, this motivates a move to holistic physical entities such as the universe as a whole with holistic physical properties. In an idealist context, we need only combine this independently motivated move with the claim that these holistic physical properties are realized by mental properties. An analog of the combination problem, by contrast, is a significant issue for cosmic idealism and for related versions of cosmopsychism. This is the problem of how cosmic experiences can constitute the ordinary macroexperiences of subjects like us. In earlier work I called this the “decomposition problem”. Albahari (this volume) objects that this label makes it sound like the universe is decomposing, and recommends “decombination problem” instead. However, this awkward neologism is also somewhat misleading in suggesting that the universal mind must be a combination of the macrominds. Instead, I will use the simple label of the “constitution problem” for the issue of how the cosmic mind constitutes macro minds. As a bonus, this label can be used to cover the analogous combination problem for micropsychism (how do micro minds constitute a macromind?), bringing out that there is a unified problem for both views. As with the original combination problem, the constitution problem for cosmopsychism and cosmic idealism has at least three subproblems. The subject constitution problem is that of how a cosmic subject can constitute macrosubjects. The quality constitution problem is that of how cosmic experiential qualities can constitute macroqualities. The structure constitution problem is that of how cosmic experiential structure can constitute macroexperiential structure. All of these problems are serious. The quality and structure constitution problems are very closely related to the corresponding combination problems for panpsychism, and the range of options is similar (the main options discussed by Chalmers 2017 all apply here, with the same strengths and weaknesses), so I will set them aside here. The subject constitution problem is perhaps more distinctive in the cosmic case, and I will focus on it.
The subject constitution problem for cosmic idealism is that of how a cosmic subject can constitute macrosubjects such as ordinary human conscious subjects. It is at least not easy to see how this can happen, and there are arguments that it is impossible.
[This never ceases to confound me. If @smcder can shed any light on this, please do. Many philosophers of mind (including @Pharoah) seem to agrue that Subjects are fundamental. If this is the case, we should be discussing the Mind Body Subject problem, not just the Mind Body problem.]
smcder
I dunno - if ordinary human conscious subjects are constituted of cosmic subjectivity ... we can analogize from what we know of our subjectivity or we need to use a different word (than subject) for either us or for the cosmic case ... it seems like we do constitute subjects smaller than our overall sense of subject or self - "thin subjects" certainly we are larger than our momentary subjective experiences? As Chalmers notes "it is AT LEAST not easy" ... ;-)
back to Chalmers, I think
A final strategy is to deflate subjects of experience or to eliminate them entirely. Views like this are familiar in the Buddhist tradition, which denies the existence of the self and is often understood to deny the existence of subjects as well (at least in ultimate reality). On views of this sort, there are experiences but no subjects that have them; or at least, any bearers of the experiences are very much unlike the primitive persisting entities that we have in mind when we think of subjects. This non-subject-involving view is often combined with a sort of idealism on which conventional reality is grounded in conventional appearances, and in which all this is grounded in cosmic experience at the ultimate level. This picture at least tends to suggest a view on which macroexperience is grounded in non-subject-involving cosmic experience in ultimate reality.
On a non-subject-involving cosmic idealist view, there is cosmic experience but no cosmic subject. It might then be argued that with no subjects there is no subject constitution problem to solve. Of course this does not eliminate the problem entirely. Presumably experiences still come bundled into relatively unified groups (corresponding to what we thought of as subjects), and we still need to know how a cosmic bundle of experiences could constitute a macro bundle of the sort I seem to have. This problem is by no means straightforward (on the face of it one could run a conceivability argument against it analogous to the one for subjects), but perhaps the problems for it are at least more tractable than the corresponding problems for non-subject-involving views. One cost is then to make sense of experiences without subjects of experience. I am not sure I can do this, but many theorists have at least tried, and again the view is certainly worth taking seriously.
[This is the approach I favor--a deflationary subject approach--regardless of the combination problem. I do not think "subjects" are fundamental. And this is actually a very important element of this approach which Chalmers fails to address, which I will at the end.
How could experiences come to be macro bundled? While this question is not completely answered of course, the response seems quite straighforward enough for me: organisms/brains persisting in time and space. If experiences, roughly speaking, are isomorphic to the physical structure of the universe, then we would expect to find physical structures that could constitute the macro "bundle" of experiences of our minds. Uh, I submit that human bodies/brains constiute the macro bundle that I seem to have...? smcder (you just reinvented the subject!)
There is no perhaps nor may. If states of the universe are indeed experiential states, we can rest assured they are nothing like experiental states of humans.
On this view, physics-structured states of the universe just are experiental states; therefore, there is an isomorphism between physics-structured states and experiential states; therefore, the experiential states of humans and the universe will be as similar and as different as their physical structure. (I personally find this to be quite intuitive.)]
Regarding experiences without subjects of experience: I understand this is radical, but I don't find this hard to grok. I poor analogy is the tree falling in the forest. If no one (a subject) is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If an experience exists in the universe and there is no subject to experience it, is it still an experience?
smcder yes, It causes waves in the air around it ... that's what sound is ... if you are asking if no one is around to hear it, will it be heard? the answer is no. if there is no subject, there is no experience - not without redefining both words because they are defined in terms of one another ... Chalmers is pointing to this problem here:
". Presumably experiences still come bundled into relatively unified groups (corresponding to what we thought of as subjects), and we still need to know how a cosmic bundle of experiences could constitute a macro bundle of the sort I seem to have. This problem is by no means straightforward (on the face of it one could run a conceivability argument against it analogous to the one for subjects), but perhaps the problems for it are at least more tractable than the corresponding problems for non-subject-involving views. One cost is then to make sense of experiences without subjects of experience. I am not sure I can do this, but many theorists have at least tried, and again the view is certainly worth taking seriously."
Strawson answers the question of whether there can be an experience without a subject of experience more bluntly: "!@^&%!@#%^$ NO!!!"
soupie
Remember, the phenomenology of an experience is roughly isomorphic to its physical structure;
smcder ... do you have something to back this up somewhere? it would be different if you said "IF the phenomenology of an experiense is ... THEN" ...
soupie
thus the phenomenology of states of the entire universe need not be ANYTHING like the phenomenology of states of individual humans. That is, what it is like to be a bowl of water need be nothing like what it is like to be a human eating a banana.
smcder what is "roughly isomorphic?" one thing we can look at in the brain is the complexity .... things like stars do have a complex structure, but we are able to define complexity in a way that is meaningful to say that brains are more complicated than ... as far as we know, anything else in the universe, so one possibility is that, considering how much more complex a brain is than anything else - that being a bowl of water, being a star, etc ... being the whole universe even (because except for the dense complexity of brains which so far seem to be few and far between and themselves aren't interconnected ... things are relatively uncomplex) is much more like being anything else than being a brain ... and maybe if only one or the other has the advantage of being able to imagine or appreciate how different being a bowl of water is from being a brain is ... that advantage, as far as we know now, lies entirely with the brain, not the bowl of water. And what could make a lot of sense is that being a bowl of water (or a bat) is roughly isomorphic to what you would imagine it to be ... or what is an imagination for?
soupie
Or perhaps: if a state of the brain does not "enter" conscious awareness, does it make a sound? For instance, what if you're engrossed ina book and someone calls your name and you don't "hear" them, even though your nervous system absolutely responds physically?
What is the difference between a brain state registering someone calling our name that "enters" consciousness and one that doesn't "enter" consciousness? We have an "experience" with and without a subject of experience. This is very important and something that Chalmers does not address. I'll post a paper that does address this issue.*]
smcder ... if you have to ask what is the difference in whether or not something enters consciousness?? (you acknowledge this with "experience") Sure you could say "conscious experience" but do we say "wow, what an incredible unconscious experience I just had! lets do it again!" ;-) or ask any sane person if they would trade out their boring everyday conscious experiences for thrilling but unconscious ones ... and be sure to point out to them to rest assured they will have the "experience" either way ...
My brain went to Disneyland and all I got was this stupid "experience".
the brian (or Brian's brain) may be altered as a result, the persons behavior, etc ... but here again I suggest using a different word from "experience" - how would you know that it had not entered consciousness vs was not heard? Could you point to a bit of the brain that registered it - we might could do that, but the person might go back and think about it and go "yeah, I did hear that, I was just so focused at the time" so did they hear it - or did they go back and pull up that experience? or did they have that experience of hearing it at the time later and if so, isn't that an experience of recalling rather than what the experience would have been at the time? We can distinguish the two I argue and as evidence I think I would not want all of my experiences to be of this recollected type as they have a different quality from immediate experience.
Chalmers
A related issue specific to cosmic idealism is the austerity problem. The issue here is that the cosmic mind in the present picture (whether relational or nonrelational) looks extremely austere, and very much unlike a mind as we normally think of it. Its basic experiential structure and dynamics is very much the structure and dynamics of physics. There seems to be little or no rationality in this structure. There seems to be very little thinking, valuing, or reasoning. It is not really clear why, if there is to be a cosmic mind, it should be as austere as this. The cosmic idealist faces a choice point here. On the first option, the cosmic mind has experiences that are wholly isomorphic to the structure of physics. This is the option taken by pure Russellian cosmopsychism, where the cosmic subject has mental states with structure and dynamics that realize physical dynamics, and has no more mental states and no more structure and dynamics than this. This option faces the austerity problem.
[Again, phenomenology = structure. The mind of the universe and the mind of an individual human will be as similar and as different as the structure of the universe as a whole and the structure of an indivual human. As they have differences in their physical structure we should expect their phenomenology to be vastly different as well.
Just because the mind of the universe on this view would be quite alien from a human mind is not grounds to dismiss the argument. That's like saying because the physical structure of the universe is different from the physical structure of a human, they both can't be physical.]
I conclude that there is significant motivation for cosmic idealism. It shares the general motivations for panpsychism, which are strong, and has some extra motivation in addition. Compared to micro-idealism, it deals much better with the problems of spacetime and of holism, and it at least has some extra promise in dealing with the problem of causation and the all-important constitution problem. Compared to non-idealist forms of panpsychism and panprotopsychism, it has some advantages in simplicity and comprehensibility, while it has both benefits and costs with respect to the constitution problem. I do not know that the constitution problem can be solved, but there are at least avenues worth exploring. Overall, I think cosmic idealism is the most promising version of idealism, and is about as promising as any version of panpsychism. It should be on the list of the handful of promising approaches to the mind–body problem.
[That's pretty much as ringing of an endorsement as one can get. However, I strongly disagree that the combination/constitution problem is insurmountable for holistic realist cosmic idealism. Chalmers does't address the problems he sees as he refers to his paper on the combination problem--he thinks those problem apply to holistic realist cosmic idealism, I don't however. I'll explain why I don't think it's a problem in the future as it seems to be--in Chalmers thinking--the biggest challenge for this approach, relative to all the other problems that is, haha.]
I do not claim that idealism is plausible. No position on the mind–body problem is plausible. Materialism: implausible. Dualism: implausible. Idealism: implausible. Neutral monism: implausible. None of the above: implausible. But the probabilities of all of these views get a boost from the fact that one of the views must be true. Idealism is not significantly less plausible than its main competitors. So even though idealism is implausible, there is a non-negligible probability that it is true.
* http://axc.ulb.be/uploads/2016/01/14-casys11.pdf
"Abstract: Here, I explore the idea that consciousness is something that the brain learns to do rather than an intrinsic property of certain neural states and not others. Starting from the idea that neural activity is inherently unconscious, the question thus becomes: How does the brain learn to be conscious? I suggest that consciousness arises as a result of the brain's continuous attempts at predicting not only the consequences of its actions on the world and on other agents, but also the consequences of activity in one cerebral region on activity in other regions. By this account, the brain continuously and unconsciously learns to redescribe its own activity to itself, so developing systems of metarepresentations that characterize and qualify the target first-order representations."
Why are some brain states "conscious" and other brain states non-conscious? Or, framed in the context of holistic realist cosmic idealism, if all states of the universe are conscious states, why are some of our brain states part of subjectve experience and some not? (This is the issue that Chalmers fails to address.) The above paper answers this problem, I believe. Note: the paper is not written in the context of holistic realist cosmic idealism, but plain old materialism. However, we know materialism can't answer the MBP, but the above paper combined with holistic realist cosmic idealism works.
Edit: I understand the above may be confusing. On a materialisy view, the question is: why are some brain states conscious and some brain states non-conscious? We know there is no materialist answer to this question. On the idealist view, the question is flipped: if all states are conscious states, why do some brain states seem to be non-conscious?
This is where the issue of subjects and subjective experience become so important!
On an idealist view, there is a difference between phenomenal consciousness and subjective experience. I've re-written the above abstract in the context of realist idealism:
"Abstract: Here, I explore the idea thatconsciousness subjective experience is something that the brain learns to do rather than an intrinsic property of certain neural states and not others. Starting from the idea that neural activity is inherently unconscious non-subjective, the question thus becomes: How does the brain learn to be conscious subjectively experiential? I suggest that consciousness subjective experience arises as a result of the brain's continuous attempts at predicting not only the consequences of its actions on the world and on other agents, but also the consequences of activity in one cerebral region on activity in other regions. By this account, the brain continuously and unconsciously non-subjectively learns to redescribe its own activity to itself, so developing systems of metarepresentations that characterize and qualify the target first-order representations."
As I've suggested before, I think autopoeises is a wonderful model for how a non-subjective albeit experiential medium can take on a (physical) structure constituting subjectivity.
That is, while we can't see how phenomenal consciousness can emerge from (phsyical) structure, it's easier to see how, given phenomenal consciousness, subjectivity can emerge from (physical) structure.
smcder
If you are given "phenomenal consciousness" (or do you mean given the fundamental or primary nature of consciousness?) and if you are allowed to have things like "non-subjective albeit experiential mediums" then I say yes it IS easier! (but not really because you have the hard problem of physics instead of the hard problem of mind) And, for my part, I am determined to have my free will and I leave you in the company of the Queen:
"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Alice in Wonderland.
...
Overall, too many words ... but a good effort, if mathematics doesn't work out, I suggest Dr. Chalmers consider philosophy as a career.
B-
[Although I think Chalmers handles this well here, this issue comes up again later. What are cosmic experiences like? Perhaps they may be unlike human experiences. Perhaps? May? Do we think the experiences of a bat are anything like human experiences? There is no perhaps nor may. If states of the universe are indeed experiential states, we can rest assured they are nothing like experiental states of humans.
On this view, physics-structured states of the universe just are experiental states; therefore, there is an isomorphism between physics-structured states and experiential states; therefore, the experiential states of humans and the universe will be as similar and as different as their physical structure. (I personally find this to be quite intuitive.)]
smcder
Yes, we think the experiences of a bat are like those of a human ... that's pretty important to WILTBAB. Nagel chose bats because we can readily think they have experiences (unlike say an amoeba, which takes more imagination) but they are pretty different from us .... on the cosmic level, at the very least if the cosmic subject has experiences then, like our experiences, they are at least experience-like ...
@Soupie says:
"There is no perhaps nor may. If states of the universe are indeed experiential states, we can rest assured they are nothing like experiental states of humans.
On this view, physics-structured states of the universe just are experiental states; therefore, there is an isomorphism between physics-structured states and experiential states; therefore, the experiential states of humans and the universe will be as similar and as different as their physical structure. (I personally find this to be quite intuitive.)]"
smcder this seems contradictory to "nothing like experiential states of humans":
"the experiential states of humans and the universe will be as similar and as different as their physical structure."? If they are as similar (and different) as their physical structures, then they cannot be "nothing like experiential states of humans ... "
and if a cosmic subject constitutes macro subjects like ordinary human consciousness ... ?
chalmers
What about the more general challenges for micro-idealism: holism and the combination problem? Holism is of course no problem for cosmic idealism, and it serves as one of the major motivators for moving from micro-idealism to cosmic idealism in the first place. Independently of idealism: if there are no fundamental physical micro-entities, this motivates a move to holistic physical entities such as the universe as a whole with holistic physical properties. In an idealist context, we need only combine this independently motivated move with the claim that these holistic physical properties are realized by mental properties. An analog of the combination problem, by contrast, is a significant issue for cosmic idealism and for related versions of cosmopsychism. This is the problem of how cosmic experiences can constitute the ordinary macroexperiences of subjects like us. In earlier work I called this the “decomposition problem”. Albahari (this volume) objects that this label makes it sound like the universe is decomposing, and recommends “decombination problem” instead. However, this awkward neologism is also somewhat misleading in suggesting that the universal mind must be a combination of the macrominds. Instead, I will use the simple label of the “constitution problem” for the issue of how the cosmic mind constitutes macro minds. As a bonus, this label can be used to cover the analogous combination problem for micropsychism (how do micro minds constitute a macromind?), bringing out that there is a unified problem for both views. As with the original combination problem, the constitution problem for cosmopsychism and cosmic idealism has at least three subproblems. The subject constitution problem is that of how a cosmic subject can constitute macrosubjects. The quality constitution problem is that of how cosmic experiential qualities can constitute macroqualities. The structure constitution problem is that of how cosmic experiential structure can constitute macroexperiential structure. All of these problems are serious. The quality and structure constitution problems are very closely related to the corresponding combination problems for panpsychism, and the range of options is similar (the main options discussed by Chalmers 2017 all apply here, with the same strengths and weaknesses), so I will set them aside here. The subject constitution problem is perhaps more distinctive in the cosmic case, and I will focus on it.
The subject constitution problem for cosmic idealism is that of how a cosmic subject can constitute macrosubjects such as ordinary human conscious subjects. It is at least not easy to see how this can happen, and there are arguments that it is impossible.
[This never ceases to confound me. If @smcder can shed any light on this, please do. Many philosophers of mind (including @Pharoah) seem to agrue that Subjects are fundamental. If this is the case, we should be discussing the Mind Body Subject problem, not just the Mind Body problem.]
smcder
I dunno - if ordinary human conscious subjects are constituted of cosmic subjectivity ... we can analogize from what we know of our subjectivity or we need to use a different word (than subject) for either us or for the cosmic case ... it seems like we do constitute subjects smaller than our overall sense of subject or self - "thin subjects" certainly we are larger than our momentary subjective experiences? As Chalmers notes "it is AT LEAST not easy" ... ;-)
back to Chalmers, I think
A final strategy is to deflate subjects of experience or to eliminate them entirely. Views like this are familiar in the Buddhist tradition, which denies the existence of the self and is often understood to deny the existence of subjects as well (at least in ultimate reality). On views of this sort, there are experiences but no subjects that have them; or at least, any bearers of the experiences are very much unlike the primitive persisting entities that we have in mind when we think of subjects. This non-subject-involving view is often combined with a sort of idealism on which conventional reality is grounded in conventional appearances, and in which all this is grounded in cosmic experience at the ultimate level. This picture at least tends to suggest a view on which macroexperience is grounded in non-subject-involving cosmic experience in ultimate reality.
On a non-subject-involving cosmic idealist view, there is cosmic experience but no cosmic subject. It might then be argued that with no subjects there is no subject constitution problem to solve. Of course this does not eliminate the problem entirely. Presumably experiences still come bundled into relatively unified groups (corresponding to what we thought of as subjects), and we still need to know how a cosmic bundle of experiences could constitute a macro bundle of the sort I seem to have. This problem is by no means straightforward (on the face of it one could run a conceivability argument against it analogous to the one for subjects), but perhaps the problems for it are at least more tractable than the corresponding problems for non-subject-involving views. One cost is then to make sense of experiences without subjects of experience. I am not sure I can do this, but many theorists have at least tried, and again the view is certainly worth taking seriously.
[This is the approach I favor--a deflationary subject approach--regardless of the combination problem. I do not think "subjects" are fundamental. And this is actually a very important element of this approach which Chalmers fails to address, which I will at the end.
How could experiences come to be macro bundled? While this question is not completely answered of course, the response seems quite straighforward enough for me: organisms/brains persisting in time and space. If experiences, roughly speaking, are isomorphic to the physical structure of the universe, then we would expect to find physical structures that could constitute the macro "bundle" of experiences of our minds. Uh, I submit that human bodies/brains constiute the macro bundle that I seem to have...? smcder (you just reinvented the subject!)
There is no perhaps nor may. If states of the universe are indeed experiential states, we can rest assured they are nothing like experiental states of humans.
On this view, physics-structured states of the universe just are experiental states; therefore, there is an isomorphism between physics-structured states and experiential states; therefore, the experiential states of humans and the universe will be as similar and as different as their physical structure. (I personally find this to be quite intuitive.)]
Regarding experiences without subjects of experience: I understand this is radical, but I don't find this hard to grok. I poor analogy is the tree falling in the forest. If no one (a subject) is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If an experience exists in the universe and there is no subject to experience it, is it still an experience?
smcder yes, It causes waves in the air around it ... that's what sound is ... if you are asking if no one is around to hear it, will it be heard? the answer is no. if there is no subject, there is no experience - not without redefining both words because they are defined in terms of one another ... Chalmers is pointing to this problem here:
". Presumably experiences still come bundled into relatively unified groups (corresponding to what we thought of as subjects), and we still need to know how a cosmic bundle of experiences could constitute a macro bundle of the sort I seem to have. This problem is by no means straightforward (on the face of it one could run a conceivability argument against it analogous to the one for subjects), but perhaps the problems for it are at least more tractable than the corresponding problems for non-subject-involving views. One cost is then to make sense of experiences without subjects of experience. I am not sure I can do this, but many theorists have at least tried, and again the view is certainly worth taking seriously."
Strawson answers the question of whether there can be an experience without a subject of experience more bluntly: "!@^&%!@#%^$ NO!!!"
soupie
Remember, the phenomenology of an experience is roughly isomorphic to its physical structure;
smcder ... do you have something to back this up somewhere? it would be different if you said "IF the phenomenology of an experiense is ... THEN" ...
soupie
thus the phenomenology of states of the entire universe need not be ANYTHING like the phenomenology of states of individual humans. That is, what it is like to be a bowl of water need be nothing like what it is like to be a human eating a banana.
smcder what is "roughly isomorphic?" one thing we can look at in the brain is the complexity .... things like stars do have a complex structure, but we are able to define complexity in a way that is meaningful to say that brains are more complicated than ... as far as we know, anything else in the universe, so one possibility is that, considering how much more complex a brain is than anything else - that being a bowl of water, being a star, etc ... being the whole universe even (because except for the dense complexity of brains which so far seem to be few and far between and themselves aren't interconnected ... things are relatively uncomplex) is much more like being anything else than being a brain ... and maybe if only one or the other has the advantage of being able to imagine or appreciate how different being a bowl of water is from being a brain is ... that advantage, as far as we know now, lies entirely with the brain, not the bowl of water. And what could make a lot of sense is that being a bowl of water (or a bat) is roughly isomorphic to what you would imagine it to be ... or what is an imagination for?
soupie
Or perhaps: if a state of the brain does not "enter" conscious awareness, does it make a sound? For instance, what if you're engrossed ina book and someone calls your name and you don't "hear" them, even though your nervous system absolutely responds physically?
What is the difference between a brain state registering someone calling our name that "enters" consciousness and one that doesn't "enter" consciousness? We have an "experience" with and without a subject of experience. This is very important and something that Chalmers does not address. I'll post a paper that does address this issue.*]
smcder ... if you have to ask what is the difference in whether or not something enters consciousness?? (you acknowledge this with "experience") Sure you could say "conscious experience" but do we say "wow, what an incredible unconscious experience I just had! lets do it again!" ;-) or ask any sane person if they would trade out their boring everyday conscious experiences for thrilling but unconscious ones ... and be sure to point out to them to rest assured they will have the "experience" either way ...
My brain went to Disneyland and all I got was this stupid "experience".
the brian (or Brian's brain) may be altered as a result, the persons behavior, etc ... but here again I suggest using a different word from "experience" - how would you know that it had not entered consciousness vs was not heard? Could you point to a bit of the brain that registered it - we might could do that, but the person might go back and think about it and go "yeah, I did hear that, I was just so focused at the time" so did they hear it - or did they go back and pull up that experience? or did they have that experience of hearing it at the time later and if so, isn't that an experience of recalling rather than what the experience would have been at the time? We can distinguish the two I argue and as evidence I think I would not want all of my experiences to be of this recollected type as they have a different quality from immediate experience.
Chalmers
A related issue specific to cosmic idealism is the austerity problem. The issue here is that the cosmic mind in the present picture (whether relational or nonrelational) looks extremely austere, and very much unlike a mind as we normally think of it. Its basic experiential structure and dynamics is very much the structure and dynamics of physics. There seems to be little or no rationality in this structure. There seems to be very little thinking, valuing, or reasoning. It is not really clear why, if there is to be a cosmic mind, it should be as austere as this. The cosmic idealist faces a choice point here. On the first option, the cosmic mind has experiences that are wholly isomorphic to the structure of physics. This is the option taken by pure Russellian cosmopsychism, where the cosmic subject has mental states with structure and dynamics that realize physical dynamics, and has no more mental states and no more structure and dynamics than this. This option faces the austerity problem.
[Again, phenomenology = structure. The mind of the universe and the mind of an individual human will be as similar and as different as the structure of the universe as a whole and the structure of an indivual human. As they have differences in their physical structure we should expect their phenomenology to be vastly different as well.
Just because the mind of the universe on this view would be quite alien from a human mind is not grounds to dismiss the argument. That's like saying because the physical structure of the universe is different from the physical structure of a human, they both can't be physical.]
I conclude that there is significant motivation for cosmic idealism. It shares the general motivations for panpsychism, which are strong, and has some extra motivation in addition. Compared to micro-idealism, it deals much better with the problems of spacetime and of holism, and it at least has some extra promise in dealing with the problem of causation and the all-important constitution problem. Compared to non-idealist forms of panpsychism and panprotopsychism, it has some advantages in simplicity and comprehensibility, while it has both benefits and costs with respect to the constitution problem. I do not know that the constitution problem can be solved, but there are at least avenues worth exploring. Overall, I think cosmic idealism is the most promising version of idealism, and is about as promising as any version of panpsychism. It should be on the list of the handful of promising approaches to the mind–body problem.
[That's pretty much as ringing of an endorsement as one can get. However, I strongly disagree that the combination/constitution problem is insurmountable for holistic realist cosmic idealism. Chalmers does't address the problems he sees as he refers to his paper on the combination problem--he thinks those problem apply to holistic realist cosmic idealism, I don't however. I'll explain why I don't think it's a problem in the future as it seems to be--in Chalmers thinking--the biggest challenge for this approach, relative to all the other problems that is, haha.]
I do not claim that idealism is plausible. No position on the mind–body problem is plausible. Materialism: implausible. Dualism: implausible. Idealism: implausible. Neutral monism: implausible. None of the above: implausible. But the probabilities of all of these views get a boost from the fact that one of the views must be true. Idealism is not significantly less plausible than its main competitors. So even though idealism is implausible, there is a non-negligible probability that it is true.
* http://axc.ulb.be/uploads/2016/01/14-casys11.pdf
"Abstract: Here, I explore the idea that consciousness is something that the brain learns to do rather than an intrinsic property of certain neural states and not others. Starting from the idea that neural activity is inherently unconscious, the question thus becomes: How does the brain learn to be conscious? I suggest that consciousness arises as a result of the brain's continuous attempts at predicting not only the consequences of its actions on the world and on other agents, but also the consequences of activity in one cerebral region on activity in other regions. By this account, the brain continuously and unconsciously learns to redescribe its own activity to itself, so developing systems of metarepresentations that characterize and qualify the target first-order representations."
Why are some brain states "conscious" and other brain states non-conscious? Or, framed in the context of holistic realist cosmic idealism, if all states of the universe are conscious states, why are some of our brain states part of subjectve experience and some not? (This is the issue that Chalmers fails to address.) The above paper answers this problem, I believe. Note: the paper is not written in the context of holistic realist cosmic idealism, but plain old materialism. However, we know materialism can't answer the MBP, but the above paper combined with holistic realist cosmic idealism works.
Edit: I understand the above may be confusing. On a materialisy view, the question is: why are some brain states conscious and some brain states non-conscious? We know there is no materialist answer to this question. On the idealist view, the question is flipped: if all states are conscious states, why do some brain states seem to be non-conscious?
This is where the issue of subjects and subjective experience become so important!
On an idealist view, there is a difference between phenomenal consciousness and subjective experience. I've re-written the above abstract in the context of realist idealism:
"Abstract: Here, I explore the idea that
As I've suggested before, I think autopoeises is a wonderful model for how a non-subjective albeit experiential medium can take on a (physical) structure constituting subjectivity.
That is, while we can't see how phenomenal consciousness can emerge from (phsyical) structure, it's easier to see how, given phenomenal consciousness, subjectivity can emerge from (physical) structure.
smcder
If you are given "phenomenal consciousness" (or do you mean given the fundamental or primary nature of consciousness?) and if you are allowed to have things like "non-subjective albeit experiential mediums" then I say yes it IS easier! (but not really because you have the hard problem of physics instead of the hard problem of mind) And, for my part, I am determined to have my free will and I leave you in the company of the Queen:
"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Alice in Wonderland.
...
Overall, too many words ... but a good effort, if mathematics doesn't work out, I suggest Dr. Chalmers consider philosophy as a career.
B-
Last edited:
extract from the Chalmers paper, pg. 11:
"A second relevant view is Giulio Tononi’s integrated information theory of consciousness. Tononi makes the idealist-sounding claim that only consciousness has intrinsic existence, and he also says that consciousness is present only in causal systems with a positive amount of integrated information, which entails that conscious systems must be macrosubjects at least in the sense of having two or more components. If we understand this view as a version of macro-idealism, the obvious question concerns the status of single-component systems and perhaps other unconscious system: they are needed to explain the dynamics of the universe, but they do not truly exist? Here the macro-idealist reading of Tononi’s view seems to suffer from problems analogous to those of phenomenalism. With only macro-conscious states, too much about the world is unexplained; once we grant reality to the non-conscious states that help explain things, the view looks much less like idealism.12"
I think the paper linked below would be helpful here in distinguishing between phenomenalism and phenomenology, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere except behind a paywall:
Phenomenology and Phenomenalism: Ernst Mach and the Genesis of Husserl’s phenomenology
"A second relevant view is Giulio Tononi’s integrated information theory of consciousness. Tononi makes the idealist-sounding claim that only consciousness has intrinsic existence, and he also says that consciousness is present only in causal systems with a positive amount of integrated information, which entails that conscious systems must be macrosubjects at least in the sense of having two or more components. If we understand this view as a version of macro-idealism, the obvious question concerns the status of single-component systems and perhaps other unconscious system
I think the paper linked below would be helpful here in distinguishing between phenomenalism and phenomenology, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere except behind a paywall:
Phenomenology and Phenomenalism: Ernst Mach and the Genesis of Husserl’s phenomenology
smcder
Paranormal Adept
On this view, physics-structured states of the universe just are experiental states; therefore, there is an isomorphism between physics-structured states and experiential states; therefore, the experiential states of humans and the universe will be as similar and as different as their physical structure. (I personally find this to be quite intuitive.)]
This is confusing because, again, humans have a densely interconnected brain made up of complex neurons, whereas the universe ... except for wherever brains may be found ... does not, so the universe might have decidedly impoverished states of experience in comparison to a human ... but we could of course be missing a lot of stuff ... but there is a more fundamental confusion, I think, just from the beginning to the end of the sentence above ...
"physics-structured states of the universe just are experiental states"
but
"experiential states of humans and the universe will be as similar and as different as their physical structure"
I don't know that it follows that there exists an isomorphism ... we could say that physics-structured states just are experiential states ... and so, like thoughts, are all pretty much alike ... so a galaxy and a brain are both experiential states one as rich or poor as the other ... or there being no way to tell ... or it depends on how the universe thinks about them - just as a thought about my grandmother may be more or less profound than the fundamental theorem of calculus or simply be incomparable ... one is rich in one way, the other in another ... and this gets into feelings and meaning and is that part of consciousness and so part of the universal subject?
... so the beginning of the sentence seems to put experience as primary and the end seems to say it depends on the physical structure - if we claim idealism, my basic, naive question is why can't things then just be what the universe thinks them to be? (how would you know, I guess? They are! (Does the universe have Free Will?) but that's a bigger problem itself I may come back to) ... I mean why do we have the physics we have or will the universe come to some realization and stop thinking things as they are ... and at any moment! HOLD ON!!!! or ... stop thinking ... and then what? I don't see where Idealism doesn't need some defense from this ... so if there is a hard, physical reality with such and such basic particles and physical constants - then that is real and we have to deal with it ... but if consciousness is primary, why does there seem to be this physical reality ... (again, on the physicalist view, you have recourse to stone-kicking but the Idealist has recourse to ... what?)
Russell I think says the matter is what we know so little of and only second hand, mostly mathematically, we have very little to say about it - the mental part is known directly, immediately and fully and that makes sense ... Strawson with Russell says this is real materialism, nothing more, nothing less.
We will now sing hymn #27 "Oh universe, don't stop thinking about us!" (arrangement by Fleetwood Mac)
smcder
Paranormal Adept
Yes, please to the granting of reality to the non-conscious states that help us explain things...
smcder
Paranormal Adept
Chalmers
A final strategy is to deflate subjects of experience or to eliminate them entirely. Views like this are familiar in the Buddhist tradition, which denies the existence of the self and is often understood to deny the existence of subjects as well (at least in ultimate reality). On views of this sort, there are experiences but no subjects that have them; or at least, any bearers of the experiences are very much unlike the primitive persisting entities that we have in mind when we think of subjects. This non-subject-involving view is often combined with a sort of idealism on which conventional reality is grounded in conventional appearances, and in which all this is grounded in cosmic experience at the ultimate level. This picture at least tends to suggest a view on which macroexperience is grounded in non-subject-involving cosmic experience in ultimate reality.
I'm not sure about this bit ... denying the existence of subjects in ultimate reality - may be, but there is ultimate reality and conventional reality and subjects do exist in conventional reality ... so that goes to what is ultimate and conventional reality and I'm not sure that's the same as what we might mean which is ultimate reality is what is "really" true ... this is better I think:
On views of this sort, there are experiences but no subjects that have them; or at least, any bearers of the experiences are very much unlike the primitive persisting entities that we have in mind when we think of subjects. This non-subject-involving view is often combined with a sort of idealism on which conventional reality is grounded in conventional appearances, and in which all this is grounded in cosmic experience at the ultimate level. This picture at least tends to suggest a view on which macroexperience is grounded in non-subject-involving cosmic experience in ultimate reality.
So to me that doesn't get rid of subjects ...
And I think of the idea of Dependent Origination - and the idea of the self being a composite thing - so that experience and subject are intermeshed ... so the "ultimate reality" of experiences on this view may be as ethereal as the "ultimate reality" of the subjects who have them ... so experiences hanging around completely unfettered by subjectivity ... I'm not sure about in Buddhism, maybe someone knows better?
A final strategy is to deflate subjects of experience or to eliminate them entirely. Views like this are familiar in the Buddhist tradition, which denies the existence of the self and is often understood to deny the existence of subjects as well (at least in ultimate reality). On views of this sort, there are experiences but no subjects that have them; or at least, any bearers of the experiences are very much unlike the primitive persisting entities that we have in mind when we think of subjects. This non-subject-involving view is often combined with a sort of idealism on which conventional reality is grounded in conventional appearances, and in which all this is grounded in cosmic experience at the ultimate level. This picture at least tends to suggest a view on which macroexperience is grounded in non-subject-involving cosmic experience in ultimate reality.
I'm not sure about this bit ... denying the existence of subjects in ultimate reality - may be, but there is ultimate reality and conventional reality and subjects do exist in conventional reality ... so that goes to what is ultimate and conventional reality and I'm not sure that's the same as what we might mean which is ultimate reality is what is "really" true ... this is better I think:
On views of this sort, there are experiences but no subjects that have them; or at least, any bearers of the experiences are very much unlike the primitive persisting entities that we have in mind when we think of subjects. This non-subject-involving view is often combined with a sort of idealism on which conventional reality is grounded in conventional appearances, and in which all this is grounded in cosmic experience at the ultimate level. This picture at least tends to suggest a view on which macroexperience is grounded in non-subject-involving cosmic experience in ultimate reality.
So to me that doesn't get rid of subjects ...
And I think of the idea of Dependent Origination - and the idea of the self being a composite thing - so that experience and subject are intermeshed ... so the "ultimate reality" of experiences on this view may be as ethereal as the "ultimate reality" of the subjects who have them ... so experiences hanging around completely unfettered by subjectivity ... I'm not sure about in Buddhism, maybe someone knows better?
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