Ho reader,
My last post was showing of my keen interest in a couple of ideas.
First, the idea of panpsychism, an understanding of the mind as an effect latent in all matter, at some fundamental level. In configurations of sufficient complexity, this innate potential (given evolution and plenty of time to develop) gives to an otherwise physically quantifiable universe, the ostensibly non-physical nature of intentionality, feeling, and perception.
Secondly, that apart from a good argument concerning why we should be good to one another (panpsychism, in my opinion being a great one), that it feels good to be at peace with others, and not only does it feel right, but when we cheat or hurt another who we know did not deserve it, if any one of us confronts this fact with honesty, we will know the act to be wrong. I am here saying there is something there… something that gives good deeds their beauty.
With regard to panpsychism, it is clear that one would worry about doing good and not doing bad if such an idea were true. For, if the being which I posses is a natural phenomenon of the one material that I and all other life is comprised, then hurting another human is to hurt what I am essentially, beneath the particulars of this short human existence. Moreover, if one can conceive of it with regard to another human… humans of course being animals, then we must attribute this to all animals, and to lesser degrees for animals of relatively simple configurations lower on an ontological continuum like viruses or onion cells.
Observation of this would foster a different world, one where putting an animal in a cage to be deprived of its right to free existence, humiliated, and killed would be not permissible by anyone who dared conceive of the idea that animals are animals, and that we live not by the grace of god, but by the natural flowering of an ornate system as inexplicable as it is magnificent. I here refer to the cosmos, the totality of all stuff and apparent and immutable laws.
But as I said above, though I like panpsychism and its convincing reason for a life of good, I also like the idea of human goodness and the flourishing of life beyond any sound argument or good reason supporting it.
So, in effect the last post was the stain of sentiment which marked my hands after a night of thinking of arguments no different from that panpsychism, and the moral implications thereof. Though the argument, thorough as it was, was said not to posses sufficiently obvious axioms. And, as the failure of the piles is the failure of the structure, the argument could not hold its own cantankerous premises, much less the conclusions.
No, I cannot say with certainty what it is that gives validity to imperatives of peace among all life… but I still felt strongly that this is important.
It has not yet been offered on this publication any substance of the aforementioned argument, but I hope that I have made more clear my intentions as a thinker, my objectives, and, well, my reckless honesty with regard to this subject.
Here are some interesting videos and articles on panpsychism.
Godehard Brüntrup: What is Panpsychism?
William Seager: How strong are the arguments for panpsychism?
41 video playlist on panpsychism and emergence
William Seager: How Close Is Panpsychism to the Science of Physics?
A Neuroscientist’s Radical Theory of How Networks Become Conscious
– J
a testament of sentience 