Panpsychism is not a respectable philosophical theory, unless you want to give ether, a divine soul, idealism, and flat earth the same treatment.
> Dismissing [it] undermines any criticism that might be useful.
If that's your greatest worry...
> Dismissing [it] undermines any criticism that might be useful.
If that's your greatest worry...
I can do the same, String Theory is not respectable, it is as provable as having a soul or there is a flat earth. Does me saying this now undermine String Theory? That's just some guy on the internet that doesn't understand it. Like you don't understand Panpsychim.
> Like you don't understand Panpsychim.
It posits the existence of some force of nature to explain consciousness. It can't explain what consciousness is, it can't explain why consciousness has never been observed outside animals with a (reasonably large) brain (and even those are rare) .There's no explanation for that. If there is one, it will include something like "you need a lot of consciousness particles in a particular structure for it to emerge."
Panpsychism is based on the rejection of the possibility that physical processes can explain consciousness. Which makes it all the weirder that it needs an extra physical force to explain it.
You are stating the obvious. Its not a science but philosophy. You looking at is as if it were science explaining reality misses the point. That perspective does not apply here.
You are doing the exact same thing you are concerned about, treating a philosophy like a science. Just that you are worried about it being applied and relied on like as science while at the same time trying to verify or discredit it like a science. Your initial idea of it not being a science was quite right, you just havent applied that insight throughout your model. This includes what standards you apply and how you look at it.
Or to put it differently, Plato didnt loose anything when we figured out that matter wasnt just a combination of fire, water, earth and air. That wasnt the relevant point, it was a reference allowing you to think about something else in a specific way. Trying to look at details of that story from a scientific perspective is not much different from trying to build a physical model of the solar system from the bible.
Its just not a sensible thing to do. It corrupts your reality model and lets you do not very sensible things based on not very sensible convictions and judgements.
Unfortunately, someone posted a list of articles written on panpsychism. It's really well beyond "your" style of philosophy. And people in all kinds of branches of science (used to) apply Derrida's ideas. So when the original comment wrote "a respectable philosophical theory", I didn't take it to mean: a toy for the empircally challenged.
We shouldnt treat it as a science. Empiricism is a pointless frame here. That applies standards its not meant for.
Says who, The Science?
Is "respectable" a purely objective term, or might there be some subjectivity in play? How would one determine, with perfection?
> unless you want to give ether, a divine soul, idealism, and flat earth the same treatment.
This is the one and only possible way, is it? And you have a proof of that? If not, this is called belief, but belief without philosophy can easily appear as knowledge.
For this situation, I think an even better word than philosophical is blasphemous.
That's exactly why I included flat earth in the list. If you're going to argue like that, why is flat earth not a respectable theory? Astrology? Or that thunder is caused by Orko?
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-th...
Most fundamentally, it is a combination of set/category theory and ~linguistics, but culture and consciousness play very big roles too.
To quote Prof. Galen Strawson from one of those papers:
> "Panpsychism is a plausible theory of the fundamental nature of reality. It is fully compatible with everything in current physics, and with physicalism."
The quote from Strawson continues to assume consciousness is present in every particle in the universe. It presupposes an extraordinary force of nature, unlike any of the others, to escape a relatively small problem, and it's not based on any observation. No form of consciousness has ever been observed outside animals with a (reasonably large) brain (and even those are rare). There's no explanation for that. If there is one, it will include something like "you need a lot of consciousness particles in a particular structure for it to emerge."
Panpsychism is based on the rejection of the possibility that physical processes can explain consciousness. Which makes it all the weirder that they need an extra physical force to explain it.
A theory can be respectable, taken seriously by an academic community, without being correct. Perhaps you just used the wrong word.
Somehow, that seems to be more damning than what I called it.