Talk:Panpsychism

message: I think that an enormous list of supporters and opponents of panpsychism is not a good thing for this article: it is already most of the length of the article, the opponents section is much less thorough than the supporters section, there is no criteria in sight for how long the lists could grow, and the reader will get little from such long lists.
Furthermore, I dispute that David Chalmers, C. S. Peirce and Thomas Nagel are panpsychists.
I've deleted the lists and pasted them below.  I think the idea of a "Thinkers on panpsychism" is a good one, but it needs to be an annotated list to be valuable to this entry.
*Gee, I think the list of famous historical (and contemporary) supporters and opponents of panpsychism is fascinating to someone like myself (who didn't know until recently that panpsychism -- which I have believed in for some years was an accepted concept with a word for it!).   To say it is already "most of the length of the article" is nonsense, unless you're counting vertical height.  Usually when people discuss the "length of an article" they are talking about a concept more like the number of words, not vertical height.  If this is such a problem, the names could be formatted horizontally instead of vertically.  (But it's not a problem, so please leave the list vertical!)
*Sure, annotation would add to the value of the list of names.  But I cannot see why "it needs to be annotated" to be valuable to this entry.  Learning about any doctrine or belief is enhanced when one learns who the supporters of that doctrine or belief have been.
*I definitely vote for restoring the names back into the article.Daqu 18:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Supporters and opponents of panpsychism

message: *Anaxagoras
*Thales
*Plotinus
*Henri Bergson
*David Bohm
*Giordano Bruno
*Fritjof Capra
*David Chalmers
*William Kingdon Clifford
*Freeman Dyson
*Gustav Fechner
*David Ray Griffin
*Ernst Haeckel
*Charles Hartshorne
*Gerardus Heymans
*William James
*A. Kozlov
*Gottfried Leibniz
*Rudolf Hermann Lotze
*William Lycan  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qphilo (talk • contribs) 06:21, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Supporters of panpsychism 

message: I think it should be discussed somewhere in the article that most of the thinkers who discuss panpsychism are only making an epistemological claim that we can't know panpsychism is false.  (And any argument against it would seem to be an argument from ignorance: I know these things have mental properties.  I don't know if those things have mental properties.  Therefore, they don't (or probably don't).)  Some of these people also suggest that panpsychism accords with their intuitions.  Hardly anyone actively argues for it as a metaphysical view. KSchutte 17:48, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Epistemology 

message: The first paragraph, in defining panpsychism informally, makes a point of distinguishing consciousness from sentience (where it mentions that some forms of panpsychism involve the belief that the universe is sentient, but not necessarily conscious).   
The problem here is that, though the word "sentience" is not particularly ambiguous, the word "consciousness" is used in a wide variety of different ways -- and one of those ways is pretty much synonymous with "sentience".   
I propose that that either the use of the word "consciousness" be avoided, or that the intended meaning of the word "consciousness" be made much more precise -- even in this informal definition in the first paragraph.  (Unfortunately, I am not the right person to do this, because I know very little about panpsychism.   But I do know when the meaning of a passage is unclear.)Daqu 15:21, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Consciousness and sentience

message: I feel surprised there is no mention in this article of the implications of panpsychism for free will.
For starters, this is a very good paper by Peter Ells (who is also, incidently, a wikipedian, though inactive) on a theory of naturalistic, libertarian free-will based on panpsychism. I would request people here to have a look at it and consider updating the article accordingly. Thanks. Amit@Talk 13:05, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Free will 

message: Notice the fourth paragraph of the section headed "In relation to other metaphysical positions" contradicts itself quite blatantly when discussing whether "weak" emergence is compatible or necessary for panpsychism:
"No form of panpsychism attributes full, human-style consciousness to the fundamental constituents of the universe therefore all version need a certain amount of emergence — that is, weak emergence, in which more sophisticated versions of basic properties emerge at a higher level. No version of panpsychism requires strong emergence ... Thus, 'weak emergence' would be incompatible with any non-physicalism, such as psychism (including panpsychism); whereas 'strong emergence' would support non-physicalism, such as psychism (including panpsychism)."
Per the article and as a panpsychist myself, the first assertion that panpsychism only requires weak emergence is the correct position; requiring strong emergence would be incompatible with panpsychism.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Perthro (talk • contribs) 15:48, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  In relation to other metaphysical positions 

message: Another criticism is that we have a detailed understanding of how cognition — thought, memory, etc — work in terms of the functioning and structure of the brain. If the matter that the brain is made of already has cognitive abilities simply by virtue of being matter, then cognition is somehow being done twice over.
:This is news to me.  Just looking at the article on memory, I see the following: "Overall, the physiological mechanisms behind memory are poorly understood.[7]"  Perhaps this paragraph should be removed? Viriditas (talk) 09:43, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Detailed understanding? 

message: I've put a "dubious" tag on the following quote from the article: "Another criticism is that we have a detailed understanding of how cognition — thought, memory, etc — work in terms of the functioning and structure of the brain."
Aside the fact that this assertion is unsourced (as an existing "citation needed" tag already indicates), as someone who has studied neuroscience I can say unequivocally that this statement is false.  The first thing any neuroscience professor tells an ambitious student is "at the end of the day we really have no clue how the brain works".  We can probe and prod the brain to say "hey, this part lights up on the screen when we show this sort of image to the subject"; we can dissect individual neurons to determine what conditions cause them to fire; we can model them on computers as neural networks and perform interesting "brain-like" tasks such as associative memory and "learning".  But this is all a far cry from "a detailed understanding of how cognition - thought, memory, etc - work in terms of the functioning and structure of the brain." Mbarbier (talk) 17:24, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Ha, I should have just looked at the section right above this one. Mbarbier (talk) 17:25, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious 

message: Hello, i am very educated on pansychism. For the pansychism article i am going to be updating it in a few weeks. I will add alot of information to the article including a section on the history of panpsychism. I find the current article very slim in content, really it does not have enough information on it!! I hope to change that. 86.10.119.131 (talk) 17:13, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update on the article 

message: This is a much better definition of panpsychism rather than what is currently on the article:
panpsychism:
In philosophy (also called pampsychism), the theory that all matter, or all nature, is itself psychical, or has a psychical aspect; that atoms and molecules, as well as plants and animals, have a rudimentary life of sensation, feeling, and impulse that bears the same relation to their movements just as the psychical life of human beings does to their objective activities. 
Perhaps this definition should be added?
86.10.119.131 (talk) 13:33, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Better definition

message: I've toned the last section down a bit,  but it still seems POVish. Sheer ignorance prevents me doing more.1Z (talk) 13:24, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Dzogchen

message: Spinoza didn't introduce neutral monism, he introduced dual aspect theory. They are different, principally in that in neutral monism the mental and physical are both separable and reducible to the underlying neutral substrate. So the sentence "varieties of monism that don't presuppose (like materialism and idealism do) that mind and matter are fundamentally separable. An example is neutral monism" is wrong.Aarghdvaark (talk) 14:24, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutral Monism 

message: ..have been sideline in the current version of the article, although it is the only page
dealing with them on WP and they are immportant in contemporary philosophy. Gregg Rosenberg needs to be mentioned vis a vis intrinsic properties. 1Z (talk) 17:10, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Panexperientialism and Panprotexperientialism 

message: ..is much too long. Most of the links are already mentioned in the article. 1Z (talk) 17:10, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  The See Also section 

message: Please discuss why Fideler's book Restoring the Soul of the World belongs in Further Reading in this article on panpsychism. It is not the subject of the book. Thus its relevance must be argued for, and why it is more relevant than other books that are about panpsychism. Dazedbythebell (talk) 11:46, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: As there has been no discussion I am removing the book from Further Reading for the second time. Note that creating new user names to appear to avert edit warring is not a good strategy. Dazedbythebell (talk) 18:07, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Further Reading Addition 

message: New book: The Assemblage Brain: Sense Making in Neuroculture by Tony D. Sampson, 2017, University of Minnesota Press. Per Chronicle of Higher Education, "Draws on Deleuze and Guattari to defend a vision of the brain that emerges from the non-locationist tradition of panpsychism." Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 16:12, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  New book: ''The Assemblage Brain: Sense Making in Neuroculture'' 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Why is that so? Panpsychism is a theory about consciousness that doesn't necessitate any particular view on the existence or non-existence of a deity (or deities). It seems that it has been confused with pantheism, which is a different view altogether. Could someone explain? Thank you! NinoK21 (talk) 18:03, 23 Oct 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: This sounds like a question for the people who run that template more than for here. I'll post there directing them to it. --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:32, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Panpsychism is a part of the series on God? 

message: In the “arguments for panpsychism” section it mentions that quantum physics has been used to justify panpsychism but doesn’t elaborate further. Does anyone know enough about quantum theory to elaborate on what those arguments are? A.gee.dizzle (talk) 10:40, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't have the background myself, unfortunately (which is why I left it as is after removing unsourced material). My understanding is that there is some diversity in the arguments made, so for example Whitehead and Bohm use different arguments, which will make it more complicated. Hopefully another editor can weigh in. I also think there needs to be some criticism cited there as this is far from mainstream in physics. Gazelle55 (talk) 20:48, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

text: The usual use of quantum physics for such purposes is to say "quantum!" and rely on everybody being impressed and not asking any further. Of course there is no valid connection, just the idea that the two things are probably connected because they are both difficult to understand. It's a bluff. --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:33, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quantum physics 

message: Dear ,
You point to MOS:SEEALSO, which says "As a general rule, the "See also" section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body". But it also says that "Whether a link belongs in the "See also" section is ultimately a matter of editorial judgment and common sense". It seems to me that in many cases, these two recommendations are in conflict. But let's look at the case at hand:
(A) Do you agree that Philosophy of mind, Anima mundi, and Microcosm-macrocosm analogy are, among all Wikipedia articles, some of the most closely related to Panpsychism?
(B) Do you agree that a significant amount of readers will, when they reach the end of the article, be looking for another article to read, and take a look at the 'see also' section for pointers?
(C) Do you agree that some of those readers who reach the end of the article will not have clicked the three links mentioned above, and not have all of them clearly in mind anymore when looking at the 'see also' section for another article to read?
(Cbis) Do you agree that some other readers who reach the end of the article will not have read all of it, and may, e.g., have skipped the first half of the article (in which the three links mentioned above appear)?
(D) If you agree with all of the above, how does it make sense to you to point these readers who reached the end of the article to articles like Mythopoeic thought or Transpersonal psychology, but not to Philosophy of mind et al.? Both Mythopoeic thought and Transpersonal psychology are marginally related, and as such probably do deserve their place in the 'see also' section, but why only point readers looking for more information to the less relevant articles?
In what is probably the most recent RfC on the subject, those who defended the guideline you quote wrote the following:
The guideline says "As a general rule", so if a link is particularly important and helpful to the reader, it can be repeated in See also. But if this [sc. this guideline] is removed entirely, people will add whatever links they want to draw attention to.
The point of the guideline is to make sure the See also section doesn't get too long, so we're supposed to use it sparingly. If something really is an excellent link to repeat, then you can do it. Note that editors may differ in their interpretion of "excellent", of course. We used to have an editor who would go around removing See alsos, no matter how helpful. He would either incorporate them into the text or remove them. That was a nuisance, but I've not seen anyone do that in a systematic way for years.
The way I see it, the links in the article body are most often associated with some sort of context or description. The links in the "See also" section are most often not. [...] So, the rule prevents the section from becoming a list of indiscriminate items.
Even if this rule is lifted, I will continue removing those "See also" links that I had removed in the past, only this time I will cite WP:REPEATLINK. And there is a reason to it too: I have never removed a link from "See also" whose existence improved the article despite this "rule". MOS is a guideline and I treat it that way.
[...] If the restriction is lifted, then I don't see a natural limitation. In a biographical article that describes a person's associations with many other people over decades, all of them wikilinked, what would keep others from thinking "Hey, he worked with X, we should suggest to readers that they also see X", with the "see also" section ultimately containing dozens of links and thereby rendering the section fairly useless as a means of focus on especially related topics.
It seems to me that those who (successfully) defended the guideline primarily see it as a way to avoid editorial discussions on what to include or exclude from a 'see also' section. Moreover, some of them do not even intend to follow it when it is not in line with their editorial view, but want to keep it only because they like to use it when it is in line with their editorial view. But, as I see it, this rationale is in deep conflict with the spirit of Wikipedia, which favors discussion over the bureaucratic application of rules.
But perhaps their views are not relevant. I wonder, what is your rationale for removing the links from the 'see also' section? Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 10:59, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: If you feel that this article requires special consideration, then do as you wish. Editor2020 (talk) 17:51, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for your magnanimity! Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 23:03, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  See also: allow or disallow links already cited in the article 

message: Most of this page - especially the history - is about idealism. You could argue that it’s referring to cosmopanpsychism, but panpsychism typically refers to constituent panpsychism. Very few (if any) of the people listed in the history would see subatomic particles as having their own subjective experience in the way most panpsychists do. Instead they would see physical properties as a representation of mental processes or forms (right back to Plato and his analogy of the cave), which is idealism rather than panpsychism. Whitehead and Russell perhaps don’t fit neatly into either, but in general the article reflects poor understanding of the difference of the metaphysical differences between the two. 
To explain the key difference, idealism sees phenomenal consciousness as the irreducible substance of the universe, whereas panpsychism sees consciousness as a fundamental property of matter. Cosmopanpsychism is in effect equivalent to idealism, but to take this to suggest that panpsychism is the same as idealism (as - in effect - this article does) will just confuse people. Simonadams (talk) 10:39, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, , it seems to me that the relationship between the two is not well defined. There is a subsection in this article on the relationship to idealism, and I discovered when writing it that different sources carve up the intellectual territory differently between the two terms. If you have more sources that discuss the relationship between the two, absolutely please add them to that section. As far as historical figures, since they didn't use either term for themselves in many cases, we have to stick with how reliable sources describe them. If reliable sources say they are not panpsychists, but rather idealists, feel free to be bold and correct the article. I do think some writers have wound up on this page who probably don't belong here but I haven't gotten around to fixing that. Gazelle55 (talk) 03:41, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

text: , yeah you're right that having consciousness as an extra to matter (like Chalmers and maybe Goff) is much different from consciousness being the most fundamental (like Kastrup, say). If we can find sources to make the contrast clearer that would be good cause I see your point that conflating them isn't ideal (apologies for the pun lol). I think maybe this is what Meixner is getting at when he distinguishes between dualistic panpsychism and idealistic panpsychism... but so far I think he is cited only briefly. Also, I agree the objective idealism page is pretty bad now but I do think it's valuable to have as a contrast to Berkeley's subjective idealism. If you ever do have time to make a more detailed proposal for what to do with it please tag me as I'm interested to help! Gazelle55 (talk) 19:57, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Very confused page 

message: Section 2.6 of this article should mention Philip Goff, who has defended a panpsychist Weltanschauung in his book "Galileo's Error". YTKJ (talk) 20:49, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Philip Goff