Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder wrote a critique of panpsychism that’s become widely-cited in The Panpsychism Wars. Hossenfelder argues that physics has ruled out panpsychism. Panpsychists simply haven’t attempted to reconcile the massive conflict with the evidence. However, her arguments are deeply flawed, and one doesn’t need to affirm panpsychism to notice.

Sabine Hossenfelder “Electrons Don’t Think”

Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com

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“Why do the Deniers ignore a long line of distinguished materialist predecessors and ally themselves with Descartes, their sworn enemy, in holding that experience can’t possibly be physical—thereby obliging themselves to endorse the Denial? The answer appears to be that they share with Descartes one very large assumption: that we know enough about the physical to be certain that experience can’t be physical.”

- Galen Strawson

“What a physiologist sees when he examines a brain is in the physiologist, not in the brain he is examining.”

- Bertrand Russell

“[M]aterialism ... is the philosophy of the subject who forgets himself in his calculation.”

– Schopenhauer

Is panpsychism the modern élan vital? Though many opponents of panpsychism have drawn the comparison, élan vital is a terrible analogy for consciousness and panpsychism. I’ve noticed that vitalism comes up frequently in discussions about consciousness. I think the lazy analogy that’s often drawn between the panpsychist and vitalist projects needs to be examined.

Thomas Nagel - What is it like to be a bat? [PDF]

Hylozoism [Wikipedia]

David Chalmers on the vitalism analogy: https://twitter.com/mrstevetweedale/status/1320866551583494144?s=21 

Transcripts at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com

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I’m joined by Aaron Rabinowitz of Embrace the Void and Philosophers in Space to discuss his view of consciousness and its place in nature. And to avenge all those who have suffered under his ETV Lightning Rounds, he’s also subjected to his own Realist / Antirealist Lightning Round.

Our first discussion on The Right to Reason Podcast: https://therighttoreason.podbean.com/e/panpsychism-debate/

You can listen to Aaron on Embrace the Void here and Philosophers in Space here

I didn’t do justice to Hunter Ash’s argument for panpsychism we mentioned early on, so here’s a brief explanation of the argument from the SEP:

“More recently, Goff (2013) has argued that consciousness is not vague, and that this leads to a sorites-style argument for panpsychism. Very roughly if consciousness does not admit of borderline cases, then we will have to suppose that some utterly precise micro-level change—down to an exact arrangement of particles—marked the first appearance of consciousness (or the change from non-conscious to conscious embryo/foetus), and it is going to seem arbitrary that it was that utterly precise change that was responsible for this significant change in nature.”

And here’s Aaron’s conversation with Hunter

Follow Aaron on Twitter @ETVpod and Emerson @waldenpod

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We answer one of the more common challenges issued to panpsychists: some variation of “Show me the evidence.” We discuss whether panpsychism can be tested, our theory of mind module, emergence, Descartes's conception of matter, Occam’s Razor, and the fact that consciousness is always inferred, never observed.

“We can but infer sentience rather than verify it, and people will differ in their guessed inferences: some might stop sentience at the lobster limit, others might stop at the beetle border – but why stop at all? If one demands a stop, the determining criterion must be established.”

- Peter Sjöstedt-H

“How do the combined material objects that make up a human body change from a state of being non-conscious to a state of being conscious? There are three possible answers: i) They don’t. Human beings are not conscious. ii) A miracle happens. A conscious state ‘emerges’ from non-conscious matter. iii) They don’t. Consciousness already exists within the matter our brains are made from.”

- Tim Bollands

Can Panpsychism be tested? - Philip Goff [Conscience and Consciousness]

Emerson Green and Aaron Rabinowitz debate panpsychism on The Right to Reason podcast: https://player.fm/series/the-right-to-reason-2362355/panpsychism-debate

New music used with permission from ichika nito

ichika Nito’s YouTube channel

Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com

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Happy Darwin Day! We discuss geneticist Dimitri Belyaev’s efforts to domesticate the Russian silver fox, and how his experiments shed light on the domestication of grey wolves.

Belyaev's Foxes [Scientific American]

Rats and Foxes [NYT]

The Greatest Show On Earth - Richard Dawkins [Amazon]

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Intro music [YouTube]

Outro music - Ichika Nito [YouTube]

Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com

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I am not an antinatalist. It would seem, however, that the idea has been growing in popularity. I hold that 'the asymmetry problem' is a decisive blow to strong antinatalism. I also reject weak antinatalism on epistemological grounds. Environmental antinatalism, arguably the most popular form, can also be rejected since it is not the best solution to the environmental challenges that we face. We also discuss several more issues related to antinatalism, like existentialism, panpsychism, memetics, True Detective, The Walking Dead, suicide, and climate change.

Transcript

David Benatar - We Are Creatures That Should Not Exist [The Critique]

Rust Cohle - clip from True Detective [YouTube]

CosmicSkeptic on Antinatalism [YouTube]

Al-Ma'arri, one of the first antinatalists [Existential Comics]

Procreation - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP]

r/antinatalism [reddit]

First Reformed (film recommendation) [Amazon]

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. . . . This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.”

Bertrand Russell

“[Having children] contributes to problems. It also contributes to progress. If we want to have works of art, for example, or scientific understanding, or technological solutions to the problems around us, they’re going to come from people. If you don’t have the people, you don’t have the contributions.”

Noam Chomsky

This episode is a work of fiction. The PDF is available here: Work and Its Own, or In Defense of Those Who Take Really Long Bathroom Breaks

I try to answer the question, "What's the value of philosophy?" This is a sequel to episode one of this podcast, Is philosophy dead?

Bertrand Russell - The Value of Philosophy [pdf]

David Egan on Philosophy [Aeon]

The Panpsycast is a great philosophy podcast, as is Stephen West’s Philosophize This!

Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com

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Is ideology a bad thing? Should we strive to free ourselves from ideology? I think there is a lot of confusion around the concept, and that the word has wrongly fallen into disrepute. Ideology is frequently conflated with dogma, closed-mindedness, and irrational certainty. Ideology, however, is merely a “a system of ideas and ideals,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s a set of descriptive and normative beliefs. Everyone has an ideology, and we would all do well to admit as much and stop using it as a dirty word.

Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com

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The conclusion of our series on panpsychism, the view that the what-it-is-like-ness of conscious experience is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world.

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Galen Strawson 

The Wright Show [YouTube]

Philosophy Bites [YouTube]

The Panpsycast Interview [Panpsycast]

Things That Bother Me [Amazon]

Thomas Nagel

What is it like to be a bat? [PDF]

Panpsychism [PDF]

Mind and Cosmos [Amazon]

Very Bad Wizards - Thomas Nagel’s Philosophy of Mind [Fireside]

Hedda Hassel Mørch

The Panpsycast Interview [Panpsycast]

Panpsychism and Causation: A New Argument and a Solution to the Combination Problem [PDF]

The Fusion View and IIT [YouTube]

Is IIT Compatible with Russellian panpsychism? [MindsOnline]

Philip Goff 

On Panpsychism [Youtube] 

A Post-Galilean Paradigm - Podcast and Transcript [Edge]

Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness [Amazon]

Unbelievable - Does consciousness point to God? [YouTube]

Sean Carroll and Philip Goff [YouTube]

Philip Goff on Galileo’s Error [Panpsycast]

Panpsychism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP]

Annaka Harris 

Conscious - Making Sense Podcast [YouTube]

Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind [Amazon]

William Seagar

Panpsychism vs. Strong Emergence [YouTube]

Bertrand Russell 

The Analysis of Matter [PhilPapers]

Russellian Monism [SEP]

Counter Apologetics

CA13 Prayer Studies

CA27 Argument from Consciousness

CA29 Science vs. the Soul

CA58 NDEs pt. II

CA66 Atheism, Materialism, and Consciousness

If you’ve never contemplated the philosophy of mind, here are several entry-level episodes that can help put all this into context: https://thepanpsycast.com/episodes-by-category (scroll to ‘Philosophy of Mind’ category)