Toward a Panpsychism

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Towards a Panpsychism:

Dennett categorizes a hierarchy of knowing by classes of creatures.

Darwinian Creatures: evolves by mutation, recombination and natural selection; a bacterium
Pavlovian Creatures: can learn simple conditioned stimuli, nervous system present; aplysia [marine snail]
Popperian Creatures: internal models of their world and can “run” the internal model so that the “hypotheses die in our stead”; vertebrates
Gregorian Creatures: utilize tools to enlarge a shared world of facts and processes. This enlarged, shared world gives us more know-how and know-that; humans

Stuart Kauffman, in recognition of the relevance this list asks an interesting question. How many of these categoried capabilities can be found much further down the ladder than suspected?

For example bacteria and amoeba, supposed “Darwinian Creatures” have a kind of Pavolian learning, despite the absence of a nervous system,

“for they have receptors that accommodate to a constant level of a given signal ligand and sense instead a change from the current level…[comparing chemical capabilities to neurological ones] As neurons are supposed to proliferate and form novel synaptic connections that survive if used and to mediate the linkage of conditioned to unconditioned stimulus, why not envision sustained complex sets of enzymes whose activities are modulated by the different carbohydrates themselves, which is a true contemporary metabolism.”

He also links the “idotype” and “anit-idotype” of immune networks as a kind of non-neurological Pavolian knowing.

As to Popperian Creatures he asks,

“Why cannot the molecular-sensing and hypothesis-testing churning concerns of the bacterium [Darwinian Creature] as it senses a paramecium churn twenty cycles before kicking in the rotary motor, or not, such that the bacterium hides under a boulder of a grain of sand until the beast passes by”, not qualify? Or, “Plants are noted to signal one another with complex secondary metabolites to characterize the particular insects infesting the glade.”

He admits to get stuck a bit at Gregorian Creatures, but suggests,

“If the conversation we recent two-legged ones are having with respect to our digging sticks and atomic bombs is impressive, so too is the chemical conversation in any full-fledged ecosystem, where we are all instrumental in the lives of on another.”

He concludes,

“I suppose I am naively driven to consider the biosphere, with its urgent diversity in which, emboldened by all our know-how, we do get on with a very rich conversation, may very early already have harbored all the levels of which Dennett speaks. We humans are just more gregarious with our vocal chords and emails.”

What Kauffman sets up is a pathway toward panpsychism, a questioning of what constitutes intentionality, and the depth at which we can gauge signal use, modeling and kinds of consciousness. By shifting these kinds of knowing away from their commonplace conceptual substrate (such and such organisms are only capable of such and such), and looking at the inter-related effects between forms, he opens the door to the conception that the entire thing knows – or at least sets the boundaries of the question, what is “knowing”, quite a bit wider than we might otherwise imagine.

Dunamis

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what happens when we kill the rest of the biosphere? Could in this case, humanity be considered a cancer? Or would you just say it would be a new form, with no judgments?

p.s. it would be a interesting basis for a ethical system.

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anv.,

what happens when we kill the rest of the biosphere? Could in this case, humanity be considered a cancer?

It would be pretty hard to “kill the rest of the biosphere” altogether - we could of course reduce its complexity rather easily -, but we could be considered in that way. But as Kauffman sees it, the universe is set up thermodynamically to create diversity and Life, so it would just do it all again, as it already surely has done elsewhere. We as well would be a “thinking cancer”, for instance in the event of a potentially biosphere-lethal asteroid collision, or two, we could act on the behalf of the biosphere in ways the biosphere would never do without producing us.

Dunamis

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Last night, I was dead tired and drifting to sleep when I had a rather strange thought.

In the Ideologies thread I asked you about whether ideologies were the superior lifeform, and you answered that it was the universe moving towards greater complexity and organization. Ideologies are emergent properties of the social human collective. Much like, a panpsychic organism is a emergent property of life processes (or once again… of the universe itself).

So as is my style of mashing things together, what I came to think of is a analogy where:

the universe is a physical substrate
the panpsychic organism is the consciousness of the biosphere
ideology is the identity of the pansychic organism

And here it is important that it is not necessarily giving too much credit to humanity, or too large of a role, since our ideologies can only come about as part of the larger system - and are in fact both directly and indirectly influenced. But it would be much like, we are the strongest expression of identity. I suppose there could be some parallel drawn to not all parts of consciousness expressing identity, but certainly being a key influencing factor.

Anyway, I figured this would be something fun to think about ;]

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Hi anvildoc

It is quite interesting to think about.

As far as the universe being a substrate, this reminds me of the Ouroboros who symbolizes the universe eating itself. The universe than supplies the substrate for this process.

crystalinks.com/ouroboros.html

Is the panpsychic organism or this living machine conscious? I would say no but it depends on how you define consciousness. The living machine may be the creation of conscious intent but that is not to say it is conscious itself.

Ideology is the natural result of man’s lack of consciousness.

Actually I believe it is the opposite.

The idea here is the same. The outside doesn’t match the inside and exists within us a potential. In the case of the lily it does making it superior to Solomon. It has its identity yet in our case where the outside and inside are divided, we lack objective identity and become instead cultural identities.

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Anv.

the universe is a physical substrate
the panpsychic organism is the consciousness of the biosphere
ideology is the identity of the pansychic organism

I don’t imagine that it breaks down that cleanly, but certainly it is an interesting way to think about it. Kauffman’s point is that there is a whole lot of communication - chemical, molecular - going on all over the place, the complexity of which perhaps even pales our communications, but I do like your ‘identity’ metaphor in the ideological-linguistic organizations of human minds and cultures, in that these are a bit reflexive upon the entire process. :slight_smile:

Dunamis

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the chemical and molecular certainly pales our communications.

and to take the

  further also implies the thing-in-itself(chemicals,molecules etc.) can communicate to the self(consciousness), and bring forth an [b]understanding[/b]  of the thing-in-itself. as i've said all along because we are "OF" the universe. not seperate or outside the universe. which also implies that the knowledge gained by Humans is not misguided nor to be taken as a "nontruth" or as so many have implied that " our knowledge is only from our perspective". but in actual fact, it seems that what is gained as knowledge by us Humans can fundamentally be universal after all.
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as i’ve said all along because we are “OF” the universe. not seperate or outside the universe. which also implies that the knowledge gained by Humans is not misguided nor to be taken as a “nontruth” or as so many have implied that " our knowledge is only from our perspective". but in actual fact, it seems that what is gained as knowledge by us Humans can fundamentally be universal after all.

More nonsense. Whatever.

Dunamis

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and of course adds proof to my absolute seperation of object from subject as well.

universe is the substrate then… life

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And the substrate of the essence is the absolute of Mind, minus Time, but divided by times, given the molecular differential, all brought under the auspices of the One, a One which is simplicity when viewed properly under Truth, when nontruth embraces the indivisible Transcendent. All of which is proven.

Dunamis

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if you think so Dunamis.

but for the record i disagree.

i’ll leave it too you to continue the discussion.

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Oh, I thought I had grasped the core of your brilliant position…I’ll just keep on trying to make nonsense until I get it just right. :slight_smile:

Dunamis

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if you keep making non-sense you'll never get to my brilliant and the absolute and unquestionable truth of my postion!!! :wink:
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You’re close, Dunamis. But consider instead simplicity viewed properly, not under Truth, but within truth, or Truth (divided by the molecular differential, or else 7, whichever is greater), and then brought forward to the one (or One), that being the One Truth, not so much embracing the indivisible Transcendent as perhaps giving him a hearty handshake, or maybe a high five.

That’s the way I’m seeing it, anyhow.

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Jerry,

“divided by the molecular differential, or else 7, whichever is greater”

Ahh yes, the sacred heptagonic limit as revealed by the Ancients, how could I have forgotten it? I believe you must be right!!!

Dunamis