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Bacon and Panpsychism...
Topic Started: Aug 30 2013, 08:56 AM (445 Views)
Da Magician
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:dali: This I wrote in another thread, in another place (secular café).

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I recently found out that Bacon's conception of physics wasn't mechanistic, but rather 'vitalistic' in a conceptual sense.

I would credit Newton with a similar conception, in the sense that his gravity was an entirely emotional thing: attraction.

No wonder the British Empiricist developed towards Idealism.

So it seems that the mechanical conception was that of the (quite irrational) rationalists, and, as would be expected, led to modern eliminative science.

The above notes suggests a topic worthy of investigation....


But perhaps it is the contrary?

:twiggy:
Edited by Da Magician, Sep 2 2013, 08:44 PM.
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Da Magician
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Pansichism

Da Magician saved this broadcast, where someone else explained his own ideas, for further research and purification....
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http://ec.libsyn.com/p/f/f/b/ffb2fd5571420b36/Galen_Strawson_on_Panpsychism.mp3?d13a76d516d9dec20c3d276ce028ed5089ab1ce3dae902ea1d01cf8f36d4ca548352&c_id=4509864
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Edited by Da Magician, Sep 2 2013, 08:22 PM.
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Da Magician
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Perhaps panpsychistic is a better description of what bacon proposed as an interpretation of the physical world.
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Perhaps; must research...
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Da Magician
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Bacon - Matter

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Bacon's theory of matter in its final version was more corpuscular than atomist (Clericuzio 2000, 78). Bacon's particles are semina rerum: they are endowed with powers, which make a variety of motions possible and allow the production of all possible forms. These spirits are constitutive for Bacon's theory of matter. As material, fine substances, composed of particles, combined from air and fire, they can, as we have seen, be either inanimate or animate. Bacon thus suggests a corpuscular and chemical chain of being: With quaternion theory we see that, in the final analysis, Bacon was not a mechanist philosopher. His theory of matter underwent an important transformation, moving in the direction of ‘forms’, which we would nowadays subsume under biology or the life sciences rather than under physics. Bacon distinguishes between non-spiritual matter and spiritual matter.

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Da Magician
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:dali: Baconian Vitalism?

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......inanimate matter - inaugurate spirits
...............vegetables - inaugurate spirits + vital spirits
....................animals - vital spirits
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the vital spirits regulate all vegetative functions of plants and animals. Organs responsible for these functions, for digestion, assimilation, etc., seem to act by perception, mere reaction to local stimuli, but these reactions are coordinated by the vital spirit. These functions flow from the spirit's airy-flamy constitution. The spirit has the softness of air to receive impressions and the vigour of fire to propagate its actions. (Rees in OFB VI, 202–3)

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Edited by Da Magician, Sep 3 2013, 02:04 AM.
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Mona
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What is this, darling? •
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Another one of your *games*..?
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I am impressed (not).
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May I *ask* - What do you *gain* from these (philosophical) games?
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You know I ask because I am your friend and want to *help* you..
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.................................... :aud: ••• • <
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Da Magician
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Mona: I don't play poker nor sports.
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As Schiller wrote: "One only plays when one is truly human; and one is truly human only when one plays."
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Capice...?
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Edited by Da Magician, Sep 3 2013, 01:27 AM.
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No Robots

This is all most worthy of reflection. I withhold judgement for the time being.
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No Robots

I have conducted a preliminary investigation into this. I googled "Bacon + panpsychism." At the top of the results was a blog post, "Materialism and panpsychism (puzzling about Bacon)", where we find the following quotation from Bacon:

IT is certaine, that all Bodies whatsoeuer, though they have no Sense, yet they have Perception: For when one Body is applied to another, there is a Kinde of Election, to embrace that which is Agreeable, and to exclude or expell that which is Ingrate: And whether the Body be Alterant, or Altered, evermore a Perception precedeth Operation: For else all Bodies would be alike One to Another. And sometimes this Perception, in some Kinde of Bodies, is farre more Subtill than the Sense; So that the Sense is but a dull Thing in Comparison of it: Wee see a Weather-Glasse, will finde the least difference of the Weather, in Heat, or Cold, when Men finde it not. And this Perception also, is sometimes at Distance, as well as upon the Touch; As when the Load-Stone draweth Iron; or Flame fireth Naphtha of Babylon, a great distance off. It is therefore a Subiect of a very Noble Enquiry, to enquire of the more Subtill Perceptions; For it is another Key to open Nature, as well as the Sense; And sometimes Better (Bacon 1627, 211-2).

It seems you may be on to something here. This would clarify the conflict in the English soul between idealism and empiricism. Very promising.
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No Robots

One of the themes is that the doctrine that "all things have mind or a mind-like quality" is pervasive in the history of human thought. The list of figures to whom Skrbina attributes the doctrine is impressive. Some are notable philosophers of the ancient period: Thales, Anaximenes, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno of Citium, and Cicero. One of Skrbina's aims is to argue that panpsychism is not just a hiccup in the history of philosophy. In ancient Greece and Rome panpsychism was the predominant view, Skrbina argues, and was defended by thinkers that we have otherwise taken very seriously. After a hiatus that is traceable to the dominance of Christianity, panpsychism becomes pervasive again in the early modern period. A number of lesser known figures embrace a version of the view, but also Bacon, Spinoza, Newton, and Leibniz. Hobbes appears to be committed to panpsychism, argues Skrbina, even if he does not follow his own argumentation to its panpsychist implications. Locke does not endorse panpsychism, but he allows that it is an intelligible view and a contender.--Review of Panpsychism in the West by David Skrbina.
Edited by No Robots, Sep 5 2013, 04:05 PM.
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Da Magician
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No Robots
 
It seems you may be on to something here.


Yes... it so seems...

Glad to see you are on board... as it is perhaps our most mutual interest... the spirituality of matter....

:happy:

Will return later to analyze the quotes.
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Edited by Da Magician, Sep 5 2013, 05:37 PM.
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Imperatrix
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Title has been changed to match the theme of the thread.
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Da Magician
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Quote:
 
IT is certaine, that all Bodies whatsoeuer, though they have no Sense, yet they have Perception:

This seems quite a precedent of Berkeleyan thought: Objects are perceptions...
Edited by Da Magician, Sep 6 2013, 06:26 PM.
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Da Magician
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Quote:
 
After a hiatus that is traceable to the dominance of Christianity, panpsychism becomes pervasive again in the early modern period. A number of lesser known figures embrace a version of the view, but also Bacon, Spinoza, Newton, and Leibniz.


I would observe that the claim of such a 'hiatus' is not sustainable by the fact of 'Hermetic Science', that is 'Alchemy', which undersood matter as a spiritual substance, and whose chemical exercises have been identified as the 'Yoga' of Western-Catholic "Medieval" Culture (which continued until and reached its apogee in the 17th century - remember Newton was al Alchemist...). It is the enlightenment which brought the present 'hiatus', not Christianity.

Now, the important thin is, that this invalidates the notion that Western Science was built upon atheistic physicalism - such becomes a purely contemporary interpretation.

The 'Work' now becomes evidencing this falsehood and restoring 'Scientific -Philosophical Thought' to its original and - Logical - 'Vitalist-Panpsychist' conception.
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:che:
Edited by Da Magician, Sep 6 2013, 06:34 PM.
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Mona
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Darlings, I am *impressed*:
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This *discussion* has certainly *evolved* towards something - substantial - •
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I will do some research to *add* to the *content*.
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For I am *most*interested*
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Da Magician
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HYPERTEXTUM
 
ryan
 

I think this would imply a type of "soft" panpsychism. An electron is... just like a human is... The only difference to me is that humans have so many more types of experiences than a single electron does. An electron seems to only ever feels a pull, push, get pushed or get pulled. A human feels and causes more complex changes in matter because there is so much more happening in an entire body. I also think that every time an electron changes its state, it feels a quantum of consciousness but with no reflection on it. A human has trillions of quantum consciousnesses and trillions more simultaneously happening every second so our consciousness is more complex, rich and smooth than an electron's is.

But that is just my uneducated guess.
This is likewise my inclination; but I take it as a plausible model, deriving from the epistemological fact that reality is knowable only as mental content, not as an ontological position.

Amplifying upon the bold: A human would have so much more experiences because it is a compendium of a multiplicity of atoms of different types organized in complex manners. This is a much more robust explication for consciousness than the present dualistic physicalist model: Human consciousness arises from the inherent mind of its parts.


http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?p=7545576#post7545576
Edited by Da Magician, Sep 9 2013, 11:56 AM.
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