Panpsychism – Page 2 – Sentience Research

Panpsychism

Panpsychism is the view that consciousness, mind, or soul (psyche) is a universal and primordial feature of all things.

“Anything can be seen as conscious to at least an extremely limited degree” –Brian Tomasik

“Panpsychism is the doctrine that the world’s fundamental physical stuff also has primitive experiential properties. Unlike the physicalistic idealism explored here, panpsychism doesn’t claim that the world’s fundamental physical stuff is experiential. Panpsychism is best treated as a form of property-dualism.” –David Pearce

Is sentience evolutionarily useful or physically inevitable?

published on January 24, 2020 | updated on May 4, 2020 | No comment yet

It is very intuitive to believe that sentience motivates us to make (better) decisions (“better”, from an evolutionary point of view).

But we can also consider that it is possible that we are sentient robots, but without will, that we simply do what we have been programmed for, even though we have the feeling that we make free decisions, so that sentience really does not play any role in the evolution in form of motivation.

If there is no will, then the apparent motivation produced by sentience would also be an illusion. Sentience would be a byproduct of certain physical conditions, or something ubiquitous (Panpsychism). Sentience would appear to be evolutionarily useful, and yet what would be evolutionarily useful would be such physical conditions.

What is paneudaimonia?

published on January 13, 2020 | updated on January 21, 2020 | No comment yet

This paneudaimonia looks like the opposite of panpsychism.

“Paneudaimonia is the idea that the whole universe is absolute pleasure, except in the domain of what we know as sentient beings, in which all experiences imply different types of suffering.

Paneudaimonia is the idea that identity, and / or the “I” and / or consciousness are generated and / or are linked to suffering or pain. That is to say, that the self-consciousness is always painful. But the non-conscious experience (the not self-consciousness) is always pleasurable.

According to the idea “Paneudaimonia”, every time we experience something positive or pleasant, it is because we are losing self or identity; and when we experience the self or the identity, we experience it in a painful way.”

Consciousness and the binding-problem

published on January 3, 2020 | updated on January 21, 2020 | No comment yet

While panpsychism sounds crazy, it is actually a highly viable theory of consciousness, as long as it is distinguished from animism: the view that everything is alive and therefore possesses agency, intentionality, thoughts, emotions, etc. Elementary particles almost certainly are not endowed any of these attributes, but according to (my take on) panpsychism, they have a very fundamental kind of consciousness, perhaps something akin to the feeling of presence or “being there.” —Kenneth Shinozuka

Is sentience evolutionarily useful or physically inevitable?

What is paneudaimonia?

Consciousness and the binding-problem

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