[FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[glen]

Despite the ambiguity both Nick and DaveW rely on when they use the word "dualism", the "psyche" in panpsychism need not be dualist. Experience monism is a kind of panpsychism. When I asserted that there is something that it is like to be dirt, I'm not implying there is a difference between "psyche" and ... matter or whatever else there may be. I'm asserting that whatever it is to be dirt is the *same* as whatever it is to be human.

By even using the phrases "mental stuff" or "mental life", *you* are implicitly asserting there are 2 things: mental and non-mental. There is no such difference, in my opinion. Now, while I am often a moron, I don't deny that people *think* there's a difference. E.g. when you finally get that snap of understanding while running, or taking a shower or whatever, about some concept you've been working on, it *feels* like pure mentation. The shift just feels cognitive, not bodily. But I would maintain my stance that this is an abstraction, a sloughing off of the bodily details. (The illusion is a byproduct of focus and attention, which are mechanical implementations of abstraction.) My stance is that, however cognitive such things feel, they aren't. You wouldn't, *could not*, have arrived at that state without your body, or if you had a different body.

Yes, as long as your body is *similar* to others' bodies, you could arrive at a *similar* understanding, but not the same.

On 2/18/23 05:29, Eric Charles wrote:
> On 2/16/23 23:35, ⛧ glen wrote:
>> I don't know what you mean by "mental stuff", of course.
> 
> Well... In this context, I mean whatever the "psyche" part of panpsychism entails.
> 
> Given that I don't believe in disembodied minds, I'm with you 100% on everything you do being "body stuff". Which, presumably, leads to the empirical question of what types of bodies do "psyche", and where those types of bodies can be found.
> 
> You say further that: 'No. Neither the dirt nor I do "mental stuff"'.
> 
> Well, now we have something to actually talk about then! Dave West, unsurprisingly, stepped in strongly on the side of dirt having psyche in at least a rudimentary form, I presume he would assert that you (Glen) do mental stuff too. Dave also asserts that his belief in panpsychism /does/ affect how he lives in the world. Exactly to the extent that his way of living in the world is made different by the belief, panpsychism /_is_/ more than just something he says.
> 
> Steve's discussion about what it would feel like to be the bit of dirt trampled beneath a particular foot is a bit of a tangent - potentially interesting in its own right. His discussion of when he, personally, starts to attribute identity - and potentially psyche - to clumps of inanimate stuff seems directly on topic, especially as he too has listed some ways his behaviors change when he becomes engaged in those habits.
> 
> 

-- 
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ