[FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[Prof David West]

I am hearing echoes of Rubert Sheldrake in your last sentence

davew


On Mon, Feb 20, 2023, at 8:46 AM, glen wrote:
> 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.
>> 
>> 
>
> -- 
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>
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