[FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[glen]

But the bot *does* have a body. It just doesn't take the same form as a human body.

I disagree re: panpsychism revolving around "interest" or "intention" ... or even "acting". It's more about accumulation and the tendency of cumulative objects to accumulate (and differentiate). Perhaps negentropy is a closer concept than "interest" or "intention". And, although I disagree that experience monism is more primitive than panpsychism, I agree that these forms of panpsychism require mechanisms for composition (against which James is famous) and other structure.

I don't think I'll be able to attend Thursday until/unless I lose my revenue-generating gig. We have a standing meeting every other Thursday at 9am PST and many other sporadic meetings across Thursday mornings. Thursday seems to be a "nothing else happens that day" day. Meetings are universally bad. But they are a sign you're not totally irrelevant. 8^D Now, Wednesday? Yeah, I could probably do many Wednesdays.

On 2/20/23 08:44, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> Glen,
> 
> Thank you for writing.  I would take the minimum conditions of pan psychism to be that every object (i.e., every thing to which a noun may be applied) has interests and acts in accordance with those interests.  From the point of view of the "experience monist" (wtf) , panpsychism is an empirical assertion that needs to be explored in the usual way: by diligent observation and careful delineation of terms.
> 
> "Experience Monism" is itself a much more primitive position, so primitive that my former student, now mentor, Eric Charles doubts that it is worth asserting.  It asserts only that experience is all we have and that, to the extent that we talk of events beyond experience, we are, in fact, talking about structures in experience.  Thus, when we assert that something is real or true, we are obligated to describe the properties of that experience, the experience of realness or truthity.
> 
> Is it true that dirt has interests and acts in accordance with them?  Maybe.  We'ld have to see. If not, though, there are many quasi telic process in nature that raise that sort of question.  My favorite is the manner in which an icy puddle defends 32 degrees as its temperature.  Does a n icy puddle have an interest in remaining close to 32 degrees?
> 
> It would be great if you could "stop by" some Thursday morning   I miss your regular input. Much tho it drives me nuts.
> 
> By the way, there was a podcast called Hard Fork, I believe, in which a techy type interacts with the new chatbot thingy, and ends up being stalked by it, the bot declaring and persuing his enternal love.  Now, a lot of audiobits are spilled on explaining how the bot could have managed such a conversation without any body considering the possibility that the techy's probing triggered the intervention of some human, and that that human was teasing the living shit out of the techy.  A reverse Turing Test?
> 
> Nick
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Monday, February 20, 2023 8:46 AM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Nick's Categories
> 
> 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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