1. You say that we wouldn't be able to observe stars or something like that if they were not conscious. That doesn't make seem to follow to me. It seems perfectly reasonable that an object under observation can be observed without having consciousness.
2. I really like the idea of panpsychism so I'm eager to digest what I can about it bit much of it offends against phenomenal experience, at least for me. I've read a great deal of SRL Clark's work (my favorite living philosopher) and I'm on board with the idea that other modes of existence may be so foreign to us that we wouldn't know how to describe them or even if they really were conscious in our sense of the term. However, if the Sun is conscious it does a very poor job of showing it and so do rocks and plastic bottles and containers of hydrogen peroxide. In that case it seems to become an unfalsifiable assumption that ends up being a bald assertion that I can't trust my observations (both sensible and noetic) and must instead blindly accept this fideistically. I can totally tell that plants and other eukaryotic animals and even prokaryotes have consciousness. I'm less sold on gases, liquids, and minerals I guess.
An interesting reflection and nice to see Alan Watts get a mention. I have found his early 'Myth and Ritual in Christianity' v. useful over the decades.
And of course Gurdjieff would have a lot to say about cosmic influences and intelligence.
However, I don't think the pansychist path is the only real option as you suggest:
'And so, the only option becomes some form of panpsychism, some ontology in which life and consciousness are either interchangeable with what we normally mean by matter or, better, are the foundation from which the “material” world emerges.'
There is another way which Mario Crocco develops in 'A Palindrome.' In this approach 'consciousness' is not some fungible stuff. Each psyche (both human and non-human) is unique and non-fungible.
'Because of the anomic circumstantiation of each finite existentiality, cadacualtez comes not from situational transformation: the boundary conditions of a substrate's parcel cannot establish who, instead of any other person, will find herself experiencing and semoviently inflecting them rather than another substrate parcel. Cadacualtez [each-onehood] not either comes from the prebarygenic situation, because this early cosmological stage is also nomic — notwithstanding that it innerly escapes transformative elapsing since physical causation can not yet accummulate and, so, situational transformation not yet grabs hold. What such a person is, accordingly, comes directly from the grounding level wherefrom all real situations acquired its so being. That is to say, every finite existentiality is an outwardly direct production of the unoriginated portion of the reality, namely of the portion whereby there is something rather than actual nothing and which, inwardly, had previously set such something's compossibilities (Ma'at or lógos, e. g. that the low-energy exchanges over dispersivity do segregate into interactions with such and such specific coupling constants, and that semovience is not simulable and, therefore, a nomic evolution of cosmological situations, despite producing many parcels of substrate unable to do else than generating sufferances to the finite existentialities eclosed in them, is needed to freely develop, eventually, a responsible axiologic response in a few, if any, finite co-creators:' (Mario Crocco,).
One of my main hesitancies vis-à-vis panpsychism is its seeming implications for various man-made objects and systems, such as artificial intelligence. When discussing the latest abomination cooked up by Google, David Chalmers stated that if a worm is conscious, a big fancy neural network probably is too, and maybe even moreso. And if we say it's not (and I certainly hope it's not), we have to explain why. Positing that various astromonical bodies may be conscious (even in some way very different from us) seems to make that an even trickier question.
(I'm assuming here that we do want to deny consciousness to human artifacts, which is an assumption you may not share).
I have a couple of questions:
1. You say that we wouldn't be able to observe stars or something like that if they were not conscious. That doesn't make seem to follow to me. It seems perfectly reasonable that an object under observation can be observed without having consciousness.
2. I really like the idea of panpsychism so I'm eager to digest what I can about it bit much of it offends against phenomenal experience, at least for me. I've read a great deal of SRL Clark's work (my favorite living philosopher) and I'm on board with the idea that other modes of existence may be so foreign to us that we wouldn't know how to describe them or even if they really were conscious in our sense of the term. However, if the Sun is conscious it does a very poor job of showing it and so do rocks and plastic bottles and containers of hydrogen peroxide. In that case it seems to become an unfalsifiable assumption that ends up being a bald assertion that I can't trust my observations (both sensible and noetic) and must instead blindly accept this fideistically. I can totally tell that plants and other eukaryotic animals and even prokaryotes have consciousness. I'm less sold on gases, liquids, and minerals I guess.
Anyway you can assuage my concerns? Thanks.
An interesting reflection and nice to see Alan Watts get a mention. I have found his early 'Myth and Ritual in Christianity' v. useful over the decades.
And of course Gurdjieff would have a lot to say about cosmic influences and intelligence.
However, I don't think the pansychist path is the only real option as you suggest:
'And so, the only option becomes some form of panpsychism, some ontology in which life and consciousness are either interchangeable with what we normally mean by matter or, better, are the foundation from which the “material” world emerges.'
There is another way which Mario Crocco develops in 'A Palindrome.' In this approach 'consciousness' is not some fungible stuff. Each psyche (both human and non-human) is unique and non-fungible.
'Because of the anomic circumstantiation of each finite existentiality, cadacualtez comes not from situational transformation: the boundary conditions of a substrate's parcel cannot establish who, instead of any other person, will find herself experiencing and semoviently inflecting them rather than another substrate parcel. Cadacualtez [each-onehood] not either comes from the prebarygenic situation, because this early cosmological stage is also nomic — notwithstanding that it innerly escapes transformative elapsing since physical causation can not yet accummulate and, so, situational transformation not yet grabs hold. What such a person is, accordingly, comes directly from the grounding level wherefrom all real situations acquired its so being. That is to say, every finite existentiality is an outwardly direct production of the unoriginated portion of the reality, namely of the portion whereby there is something rather than actual nothing and which, inwardly, had previously set such something's compossibilities (Ma'at or lógos, e. g. that the low-energy exchanges over dispersivity do segregate into interactions with such and such specific coupling constants, and that semovience is not simulable and, therefore, a nomic evolution of cosmological situations, despite producing many parcels of substrate unable to do else than generating sufferances to the finite existentialities eclosed in them, is needed to freely develop, eventually, a responsible axiologic response in a few, if any, finite co-creators:' (Mario Crocco,).
http://electroneubio.secyt.gov.ar/a_palindrome.htm
One of my main hesitancies vis-à-vis panpsychism is its seeming implications for various man-made objects and systems, such as artificial intelligence. When discussing the latest abomination cooked up by Google, David Chalmers stated that if a worm is conscious, a big fancy neural network probably is too, and maybe even moreso. And if we say it's not (and I certainly hope it's not), we have to explain why. Positing that various astromonical bodies may be conscious (even in some way very different from us) seems to make that an even trickier question.
(I'm assuming here that we do want to deny consciousness to human artifacts, which is an assumption you may not share).