[FRIAM] Nick's Categories

[Eric Charles]

" "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. "

:- P
What I doubt is that it is relevant to most activities, including most
discussions. It is a perfectly good bit of philosophy, that is worth
asserting when relevant. For example, it isn't relevant to the activity of
grocery shopping, ringing up the cash register, or bagging the goods.
"Would you like a plastic bag for that?"
"Ma'am, I know nothing of the world beyond my experience. As such, it is
unclear how we would know if plastic bags were real, or if the nickle you
are about to charge me for one even exists, or if your experience of 'a
plastic bag' matches my own in any way! However, if you are asking if I
would like my future experience of carrying things to the car to feature
the experience of a plastic bag to assist me, then..... yes please.... just
one."

What about in the context of scientific activity? However relevant
discussion of Experience Monism is to the bench chemist, or professional
astronomer, it is equally relevant to the work-a-day psychologist. That
isn't to say it is irrelevant to any of those people, only to say that it
is unfair to try to uniquely burden the scientific psychologist with its
baggage in any manner you wouldn't burden a scientist in any other
discipline. Thus, whenever the topic is brought up in an effort to knee-cap
the psychologist, it is fair to whether under metaphorically equivalent
conditions one would similarly try to knee-cap the chemist.

Just as their might be some situations in which you might find it
fascinating to discuss with an astronomer what they experience as "a
planet" (I see you Pluto, you have nothing to be ashamed of), and it might
be interesting to ask a chemist what they experience "sodium" as, one might
ask a research psychologist what they experience as "memory" or
"conformity" or "aggression". In all those cases we might be interested in
how the experiences of that particular professional differ from our own,
and how they differ from the experiences of other lay people we are
familiar with.

When faced with someone promoting dualistic thinking (of the classic,
mind-body dualism variety) how does Experience Monism play in? It *should*
play in just as above, into a discussion of what *that person* experiences
as mental and what they experience as matter. Could that, in turn, be part
of a larger discussion that does or does not converge our experiences?
Sure. And that's happening a bit in this thread. But the Experience Monist
has no business trying to dictate to people, in the course of such a
discussion, that the distinction they experience is not real or is in some
other way invalid. Their experience *is *exactly what it is, and the
Experience Monist is obligated to accept it as such.

I *did *ask with incredulity, probably a bit more than I should have,
whether Glen experienced dirt as engaging in psyche-type *activity*,
because I doubted that he did so. I wouldn't have been at all incredulous
with Dave about the same topic, because I wouldn't be at all surprised to
learn that he had panpsychic leanings.

<echarles at american.edu>


On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 11:44 AM <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.
>
> >
>
> >
>
>
>
> --
>
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
>
>
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