When I came across this, I was surprised and delighted that a few others want to combine panpsychism with idealism - even more so when I found myself featured in the video! I now regret naming my paper (at 9:15) "Eliminating the Physical" - I originally wanted to cock a snook at eliminative materialists, such as the Churchlands. A far more accurate (but more boring) title would be "A panpsychic idealism - in which the universe, its laws, and its entire contents are taken as real, but in which these can be characterised in solely mentalistic terms."
Welcome back to youtube, it's good to have you here! Your writings and the footage you were featured in were very helpful for this video so thank you for your contributions. That new title you mentioned does seem to be more fitting since you do hold the physical to be real, it's just that the physical is mental in nature rather than being irreducibly physical. An idea I had is maybe the paper could be titled "Reducing the Physical" since you're reducing the physical to the mental, but I like your new title as well.
That the fundamental nature of things is mental doesn't mean that the ego is the ultimate reality. Rather that there's a mind that experiences different states, one of which is correlated to *material/physical* phenomena (which are perceived as such).
Ideas always precede the physical things. I can have an idea, without a thing but not the other way around. Therefore ideas must be more fundamental. It seems idealism can allow for the existence of ideas and things (because things are physical ideas) and give us a complete view of our reality whereas physicalism can only allow the existence of things and has to deny the existence of ideas which are clearly real lol. Physicalism can't reduce qualia because qualia is a self evident truth that is no longer reducible. I have a hard time seeing how physicalism can be justified, they're trying to put the parts before the whole from which the parts come lol.
@@isaacm4159 Of course things can precede ideas. Say there is an unknown species of rats somewhere that nobody knows of. A biologist discovers the rat species, and conceives the idea of it based on the thing itself. Thus the thing preceded the idea.
This is one of the best and most scholarly presentations in the Idealist/Panpsychist discussions anywhere on the internet. I will watch this many times to absorb all the vagaries of the ideas presented. I do have one suggestion for the author: next time please drop the background soundtrack! The music is very distracting and, at times, downright annoying.
Rewatching this video, and I have to say that it’s one of the best pieces of philosophy of mind I’ve ever come across. Superb! Or should I say, phenomenal! Great job synthesizing the viewpoints and breaking them down simply. It helped me tremendously in writing a paper on idealist panpsychism. The music wasn’t distracting at all, I don’t know what people are talking about.
I really appreciate you saying that, thank you! I'm very happy the video helped you write your paper. Fortunately, a very small amount of people complained about the music, most are cool with it.
If you would ask me what the physical or mental is supposed to be, I could only give a ostensive definition. The physical vs. mental dichotomy doesn’t strike me as one of a natural kind, instead it appears like a man made category which may tell us more about how we initially come to know something. -Even if the properties of phenomenal experience are aspects of a underlying substrate, would this really be enough to say that everything is mind or mental? -If we would live in a world, in which the content of phenomenal experience just happen to not be qualia as we know them, but physical properties as we know them, would we then have a philosophical zombie with conscious experience? -One could argue that this is already partially the case since besides qualia our experience has spatio-temporal properties. -It seems like that the conceptual distinction between what is mental or physical is not as clear as necessary for a all encompassing metaphysical theory like Idealism or Physicalism to make sense as such.
I agree neutral monism seems to go against our shared intuitions about how the mind cannot be reducible to something which is itself not-mental, or be a property, since that seems to go against mental-causation. And I get how Idealism is a simpler overall ontology, that is consistent with what we already know about dreams with only mental activity. But, how would you respond to a form of panpsychism I currently find plausible, where all there are are mental substances, some/most of these mental substances having physical properties. This at least seems consistent with our intuitions regarding mental causation, but also those regarding the physicality of the world independent of experience.
I'm glad we agree on those important points. My response to that form of panpsychism you brought up would be that such a version would lapse into substance dualism, just like the version of panpsychism that holds there is only a physical substance that has mental properties. I explain this more in my video called "The Failures of Property Dualism", but to make it brief: properties are part or all of the metaphysical nature of the substance, so if there are irreducible physical properties then there would have to be an irreducible physical substance to bear those physical properties. If you are motivated to move away from substance dualism then idealism is going to be your only option in order to maintain substance monism. I would also argue that the physical is reducible to the mental so there's no reason to posit physical properties that are distinct from mental properties. Another point I would make is that although this version of panpsychism you're presenting does preserve mental causation it would make the physical epiphenomenal given causal closure and other problems regarding mind-body interaction. Overall I think embracing an idealist version of panpsychism is going to be the strongest version of panpsychism. I highly recommend checking out the work of T.L.S. Sprigge on the matter who was an idealist and a panpsychist.
Two years late, but I feel--unless I missed some further explanation other than 11:50--that the equation of Dual Aspect Monism with Dualism might miss the mark. To make an analogy from physics, there are two aspects of light shown by the double-slit experiment: the particle and the wave. The Dual Aspect position is not necessarily that there are "waves" and there are "particles" which are exclusive to each other (the dualist perspective), but that they are different expressions of the same, underlying quantum phenomenon which holds qualities of both "wave-ness" and "particle-ness", without being reducible to either. Loved the video, very informative. Let me know if my analogy is way out of whack.
I'm glad you didn't let time get in the way of leaving your comment. You're right that this video in particular doesn't include a full explanation of why dual-aspect theory is often viewed as a form of dualism. In contemporary usage, there's of course substance dualism, but there's another view which holds there is only one type substance yet there are two different kinds of properties, and this is a view we call property dualism. Dual-aspect theory is often viewed the same way, except you could call is aspect dualism. Even though there is only one substance, the fact that there is a duality of aspects, mental and a non-mental, suggests that is a dualism of sorts, though it wouldn't be a full blown substance dualism. However, in a previous video I made before this one, I argue that property dualism (and aspect dualism) actually do lapse into full blown substance dualism, and it's called "The Failures of Property Dualism": ruclips.net/video/FM-BB1WIEfA/видео.htmlfeature=shared&t=219 When it comes to the wave/particle duality, scientists and philosophers would say there is only a distinction in regards to tokens rather than types. It's not as if "waves" and "particles" form irreducible substances, properties, or aspects, of reality, they are just two distinct phenomenon in terms of tokens and that any form of monist would agree would not be two distinct phenomenon in terms of kind.
Thanks. Ive never heard of geometry dash but if they have music like this I'll check it out lol The music is some synthwave/retrowave I've come across over time, the name of the artists and songs are in the description.
Oh hey MI! It's been a while. Great to see you making videos now! It's very interesting that I recently came across this video. This is because it contains the philosopher Philip Goff and earlier today I was at my first philosophy of mind lecture which was being taught by him. In fact, he is the head of the philosophy of mind programme at my university. A few weeks from now he will be giving lectures on 'arguments against physicalism' and 'arguments in favour of panpsychism'. I'm definitely interested in attending those lectures. I actually first met him and challenged his panpsychism (with the combination problem) back at the beginning of 2020. Next term he's also doing a lecture called 'Refutations of Idealism'. I think you'd find that interesting haha. I'm very glad in this video you explained clearly how idealism and panpsychism can easily go together. Thinkers like Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Sprigge, and others have both been idealists and panpsychists.
Hey there! It has been a while, it's great to hear from you. That's so exciting that you get to not only meet with Philip Goff, but you get to learn from him directly as well. If only I could be a fly on the wall for those lectures, especially the refutations of idealism one. I actually had a very tiny back and forth with Philip Goff on twitter about this video, he was very nice about it. Here's Goff's response to my video: "Nice video. I totally agree that pure panpsychist views (only mental at base) are the default. However, I tend to distinguish 'idealism' from 'panpsychism' depending on whether physical reality is also considered fundamental (albeit fully constituted of consciousness)" end quote. It's a real honor to have him watch the video and to give some feedback. Here is my response to his response: "If the physical is irreducible then you're correct that it would not lapse into idealism, but I think it would instead lapse into dualism. If the physical is reducible, and its intrinsic nature is mental, then that's idealism" end quote. So ultimately I think Goff still lapses into either idealism or dualism, depending on whether the physical is reducible or not. I'm not alone in holding this position as well: another scholar, Ralph Weir (Ph.D. Cambridge), recently wrote a paper about this where he comes to the same conclusion as me. The paper is called: *"Can a Post-Galilean Science of Consciousness Avoid Substance Dualism?"* Thank you for the encouragement and I wish you all the best for your studies at university.
@@MonisticIdealism Well, I could always let you in on the arguments that will be discussed during it and whether you think it stands up to scrutiny haha. And wow that’s cool how he was willing to watch your video and respond to you! And I do agree with you this seems to be a major problem for the type of panpsychism which is advocated for by the likes of Philip Goff. It would appear not to be an interaction problem necessarily of substances (like traditional substance dualism) but rather of properties. I personally find panpsychism very fascinating but I definitely don’t think its an all-encompassing ontological theory of mind. As you pointed out its more of a bonus to another theory in order to help further encapsulate the world - a cherry on top, so to speak. Cheers mate. I hope it all goes well. Are there any major academic sources you can possibly point me to when it comes to philosophy of mind in general?
@@CosmicFaust If you let me in on those arguments I would really appreciate that. I thought it was cool of Goff to do that too. I tagged a bunch of other panpsychist philosophers when I posted it on twitter: Yujin Nagasawa, Hedda Hassel Mørch, Galen Strawson, Gregory Miller, and Peter Sjöstedt-H. Hopefully they've watched it and if they have any rebuttals I wish I could hear them. So far Mørch, Miller, and Sjöstedt-H gave that post a like so at least I know those panpsychists are aware of this video. I agree with what you said about the interaction problem: even if the panpsychist doesn't lapse into a version of substance dualism (which I think they do if they hold both the mental and physical to be irreducible) they will still have this problem of how the physical properties interact with the mental properties. This is a problem I go over in my other video called "The Failure of Property Dualism". Panpsychism is definitely fascinating, particularly cosmopsychism. I'm looking forward to reading more work from those guys. Philosophy of Mind by Jaegwon Kim is considered the classic comprehensive survey of the subject. Another book I'd recommend, which just came out a few weeks ago, is called: "The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism". Whether you're into idealism or non-physicalism in general, it's an outstanding reference source and the first major collection of its kind. Cheers!
Most idealists believe other minds exist, so they are not solipsists. Many are also what's known as "objective idealists", so they also believe in an objective reality, they just think the objective world is mental in essence: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_idealism
Good question. I still have more to learn about it, but from what I've learned so far it seems to be a form of idealism so it seems consistent with a view like my own. Jacob Power is a hylomorphist and he made a video about this called *"Hylomorphism, Idealism, and the Primacy of Existence"*
I'm a "both" neutral monist (dual-aspect monist). I'm not sure I follow calling it a form of dualism. Could you explain why the both view collapses into dualism? Maybe you could say that of Spinoza's parallelism, but I don't think the both neutral monist has to follow his particular conceptualization of the matter. In fact my motivations for both neutral monism come from a thorough going belief in nondualism and a commitment to the elimination of the subject-object distinction.
Sure. Neutral monism (both view) and dual-aspect theory are often contrasted. The both view holds a neutral entity is _both_ mental and physical in its intrinsic nature, while the dual-aspect theorist holds there is one substance that has two irreducible aspects which are mental and physical, and this is often viewed as a form of dualism (akin to how property dualism is a form of dualism, even though it _tries_ to be monistic about substance). It's interesting that you bring up Spinoza because William James was explicit in distinguishing neutral monism from the dual-aspect theory of Spinoza, but anyway: I noted in the video that properties or aspects are part or all of the metaphysical nature of a substance, which means there would have to be a mental substance to bear the mental properties, and if there are irreducible physical or neutral properties then there would have to be a physical or neutral substance to bear those properties as well. Susan Schneider's paper "Non-Reductive Physicalism and the Mind Problem" goes into more details if you'd like. She argues against the possibility of hybrid substances and notes how paradoxical it is to say it's still one substance even though the physical and mental are substantial: Substances of a certain kind bear properties of a certain kind (e.g. mental substance has mental property), this is a defining feature of a substance. If you're saying there's also irreducible physical aspects or properties then that would mean the mental would have to bear those aspects or properties since it's one with the substance, and this conflicts with how we conceive of substance and properties and even aspects. Another side point I'd like to bring up to you is one reason why some people hold to a dual-aspect theory is because they hold the physical and mental to be irreducible, but as I said in the video it seems the physical _is_ reducible while the mental is irreducible. If that's the case then why not hold reality has only one aspect, the mental? Why hold the physical to be an irreducible aspect?
@Max Good. A comment that's actually challenging to some extent, rather than all this boring butt-kissage.🤣 I miss the days of ol from 2009! RUclips is so lame now.
@@MonisticIdealism Yeah I somehow became accustomed to calling myself a dual-aspect monist. Since I want to separate myself from Spinoza here, let's just say I'm a Both Neutral Monist (BNM). The kind of aspectualism I want to appeal to is of an entirely softer kind. So I guess you could say that, to the extent there can be said to be mental and physical aspects, they both reduce to a neutrality that is both simultaneously mental and physical. That being said, a question I have is: In what sense does Schneider think a hybrid account is not possible? I do think the fundamental BNM substance is a "hybrid" not in the Spinozan sense of having distinct irreducible mental and physical aspects, but in the sense that the physical and mental are actually the same/complementary and define each other simultaneously. Just as you can't have a concept of 'right' without simultaneously defining what is 'left,' you can't have the mental without the physical, or physical without the mental. So I agree the physical is reducible, but I would also say the mental is reducible,- at least to the extent that the mental is necessarily co-defined by the physical. That we separate them out (as in dualism) or privilege one reducible aspect as dominant over the other (as you might say of the mental over the physical) is an illusion of abstraction. Would you say a hybrid account of this type is intelligible? Or is the idea of a simultaneously mental and physical substance contradictory in your view?
@@Dhorpatan I miss the old days too. Part of me thinks that we were in a golden age of RUclips philosophy late 2000s - early 10s. I especially miss watching people like KnownNoMore, ThePolyMath, Ander Smith, derezzed83, and others duking it out in brutal response videos. There are a few good philosophy people I like to watch now.
@@maxmax9050 I recommend reading her paper to get a better idea of what she's saying, but if I'm understanding Schneider correctly, I think it has to do with what I said earlier about how certain substances are supposed to bear properties or aspects of a certain type. So a mental substance doesn't bear a physical property or aspect, nor does a physical substance bear a mental property or aspect. But if this one substance is technically mental then that mental substance bears physical properties or aspects, and likewise a physical substance bears mental properties or aspects. This seems to conflict with how we view substances so there would have to be a physical substance and a mental substance to bear the different properties or aspects, which would just be substance dualism. In light of issues like this I lean towards hybrid accounts to be unintelligible, and still seems to be some kind of dualism just like property dualism, and therefore encounters the same sort of problems. Can you elaborate a bit more as to what you mean about the mental being reducible?
When I came across this, I was surprised and delighted that a few others want to combine panpsychism with idealism - even more so when I found myself featured in the video!
I now regret naming my paper (at 9:15) "Eliminating the Physical" - I originally wanted to cock a snook at eliminative materialists, such as the Churchlands. A far more accurate (but more boring) title would be "A panpsychic idealism - in which the universe, its laws, and its entire contents are taken as real, but in which these can be characterised in solely mentalistic terms."
Welcome back to youtube, it's good to have you here! Your writings and the footage you were featured in were very helpful for this video so thank you for your contributions. That new title you mentioned does seem to be more fitting since you do hold the physical to be real, it's just that the physical is mental in nature rather than being irreducibly physical. An idea I had is maybe the paper could be titled "Reducing the Physical" since you're reducing the physical to the mental, but I like your new title as well.
Physicalist: BuT hOw does BrAiN dAmAge cHanGe ChAnGe the CharActer? ScIenCe will eXplain the MagiC one Day.
That the fundamental nature of things is mental doesn't mean that the ego is the ultimate reality. Rather that there's a mind that experiences different states, one of which is correlated to *material/physical* phenomena (which are perceived as such).
Ideas always precede the physical things. I can have an idea, without a thing but not the other way around. Therefore ideas must be more fundamental. It seems idealism can allow for the existence of ideas and things (because things are physical ideas) and give us a complete view of our reality whereas physicalism can only allow the existence of things and has to deny the existence of ideas which are clearly real lol. Physicalism can't reduce qualia because qualia is a self evident truth that is no longer reducible. I have a hard time seeing how physicalism can be justified, they're trying to put the parts before the whole from which the parts come lol.
@@isaacm4159 What exactly is an idea? And how do you get that a thing cannot be without an idea of it?
@@isaacm4159
Of course things can precede ideas. Say there is an unknown species of rats somewhere that nobody knows of. A biologist discovers the rat species, and conceives the idea of it based on the thing itself. Thus the thing preceded the idea.
@polybian_bicycle True, it's just a chicken/egg conundrum.
This is one of the best and most scholarly presentations in the Idealist/Panpsychist discussions anywhere on the internet. I will watch this many times to absorb all the vagaries of the ideas presented. I do have one suggestion for the author: next time please drop the background soundtrack! The music is very distracting and, at times, downright annoying.
Rewatching this video, and I have to say that it’s one of the best pieces of philosophy of mind I’ve ever come across. Superb! Or should I say, phenomenal! Great job synthesizing the viewpoints and breaking them down simply. It helped me tremendously in writing a paper on idealist panpsychism. The music wasn’t distracting at all, I don’t know what people are talking about.
I really appreciate you saying that, thank you! I'm very happy the video helped you write your paper. Fortunately, a very small amount of people complained about the music, most are cool with it.
If you would ask me what the physical or mental is supposed to be, I could only give a ostensive definition.
The physical vs. mental dichotomy doesn’t strike me as one of a natural kind, instead it appears like a man made category which may tell us more about how we initially come to know something.
-Even if the properties of phenomenal experience are aspects of a underlying substrate, would this really be enough to say that everything is mind or mental?
-If we would live in a world, in which the content of phenomenal experience just happen to not be qualia as we know them, but physical properties as we know them, would we then have a philosophical zombie with conscious experience?
-One could argue that this is already partially the case since besides qualia our experience has spatio-temporal properties.
-It seems like that the conceptual distinction between what is mental or physical is not as clear as necessary for a all encompassing metaphysical theory like Idealism or Physicalism to make sense as such.
I agree neutral monism seems to go against our shared intuitions about how the mind cannot be reducible to something which is itself not-mental, or be a property, since that seems to go against mental-causation. And I get how Idealism is a simpler overall ontology, that is consistent with what we already know about dreams with only mental activity.
But, how would you respond to a form of panpsychism I currently find plausible, where all there are are mental substances, some/most of these mental substances having physical properties. This at least seems consistent with our intuitions regarding mental causation, but also those regarding the physicality of the world independent of experience.
I'm glad we agree on those important points. My response to that form of panpsychism you brought up would be that such a version would lapse into substance dualism, just like the version of panpsychism that holds there is only a physical substance that has mental properties. I explain this more in my video called "The Failures of Property Dualism", but to make it brief: properties are part or all of the metaphysical nature of the substance, so if there are irreducible physical properties then there would have to be an irreducible physical substance to bear those physical properties. If you are motivated to move away from substance dualism then idealism is going to be your only option in order to maintain substance monism. I would also argue that the physical is reducible to the mental so there's no reason to posit physical properties that are distinct from mental properties. Another point I would make is that although this version of panpsychism you're presenting does preserve mental causation it would make the physical epiphenomenal given causal closure and other problems regarding mind-body interaction. Overall I think embracing an idealist version of panpsychism is going to be the strongest version of panpsychism. I highly recommend checking out the work of T.L.S. Sprigge on the matter who was an idealist and a panpsychist.
@@MonisticIdealism Thanks for the thoughtful response!
@@quad9363 You're welcome, I hope it helped. Thank you for your thoughtful comment too. You're always free to share your thoughts on my channel.
Two years late, but I feel--unless I missed some further explanation other than 11:50--that the equation of Dual Aspect Monism with Dualism might miss the mark.
To make an analogy from physics, there are two aspects of light shown by the double-slit experiment: the particle and the wave.
The Dual Aspect position is not necessarily that there are "waves" and there are "particles" which are exclusive to each other (the dualist perspective), but that they are different expressions of the same, underlying quantum phenomenon which holds qualities of both "wave-ness" and "particle-ness", without being reducible to either.
Loved the video, very informative. Let me know if my analogy is way out of whack.
I'm glad you didn't let time get in the way of leaving your comment. You're right that this video in particular doesn't include a full explanation of why dual-aspect theory is often viewed as a form of dualism. In contemporary usage, there's of course substance dualism, but there's another view which holds there is only one type substance yet there are two different kinds of properties, and this is a view we call property dualism. Dual-aspect theory is often viewed the same way, except you could call is aspect dualism. Even though there is only one substance, the fact that there is a duality of aspects, mental and a non-mental, suggests that is a dualism of sorts, though it wouldn't be a full blown substance dualism. However, in a previous video I made before this one, I argue that property dualism (and aspect dualism) actually do lapse into full blown substance dualism, and it's called "The Failures of Property Dualism": ruclips.net/video/FM-BB1WIEfA/видео.htmlfeature=shared&t=219
When it comes to the wave/particle duality, scientists and philosophers would say there is only a distinction in regards to tokens rather than types. It's not as if "waves" and "particles" form irreducible substances, properties, or aspects, of reality, they are just two distinct phenomenon in terms of tokens and that any form of monist would agree would not be two distinct phenomenon in terms of kind.
Lol is the music from geometry dash? Cool video btw
Thanks. Ive never heard of geometry dash but if they have music like this I'll check it out lol The music is some synthwave/retrowave I've come across over time, the name of the artists and songs are in the description.
Oh hey MI! It's been a while. Great to see you making videos now! It's very interesting that I recently came across this video. This is because it contains the philosopher Philip Goff and earlier today I was at my first philosophy of mind lecture which was being taught by him. In fact, he is the head of the philosophy of mind programme at my university. A few weeks from now he will be giving lectures on 'arguments against physicalism' and 'arguments in favour of panpsychism'. I'm definitely interested in attending those lectures. I actually first met him and challenged his panpsychism (with the combination problem) back at the beginning of 2020. Next term he's also doing a lecture called 'Refutations of Idealism'. I think you'd find that interesting haha.
I'm very glad in this video you explained clearly how idealism and panpsychism can easily go together. Thinkers like Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Sprigge, and others have both been idealists and panpsychists.
Hey there! It has been a while, it's great to hear from you. That's so exciting that you get to not only meet with Philip Goff, but you get to learn from him directly as well. If only I could be a fly on the wall for those lectures, especially the refutations of idealism one. I actually had a very tiny back and forth with Philip Goff on twitter about this video, he was very nice about it. Here's Goff's response to my video:
"Nice video. I totally agree that pure panpsychist views (only mental at base) are the default. However, I tend to distinguish 'idealism' from 'panpsychism' depending on whether physical reality is also considered fundamental (albeit fully constituted of consciousness)" end quote.
It's a real honor to have him watch the video and to give some feedback. Here is my response to his response:
"If the physical is irreducible then you're correct that it would not lapse into idealism, but I think it would instead lapse into dualism. If the physical is reducible, and its intrinsic nature is mental, then that's idealism" end quote.
So ultimately I think Goff still lapses into either idealism or dualism, depending on whether the physical is reducible or not. I'm not alone in holding this position as well: another scholar, Ralph Weir (Ph.D. Cambridge), recently wrote a paper about this where he comes to the same conclusion as me. The paper is called: *"Can a Post-Galilean Science of Consciousness Avoid Substance Dualism?"*
Thank you for the encouragement and I wish you all the best for your studies at university.
@@MonisticIdealism Well, I could always let you in on the arguments that will be discussed during it and whether you think it stands up to scrutiny haha. And wow that’s cool how he was willing to watch your video and respond to you! And I do agree with you this seems to be a major problem for the type of panpsychism which is advocated for by the likes of Philip Goff. It would appear not to be an interaction problem necessarily of substances (like traditional substance dualism) but rather of properties.
I personally find panpsychism very fascinating but I definitely don’t think its an all-encompassing ontological theory of mind. As you pointed out its more of a bonus to another theory in order to help further encapsulate the world - a cherry on top, so to speak.
Cheers mate. I hope it all goes well. Are there any major academic sources you can possibly point me to when it comes to philosophy of mind in general?
@@CosmicFaust If you let me in on those arguments I would really appreciate that. I thought it was cool of Goff to do that too. I tagged a bunch of other panpsychist philosophers when I posted it on twitter: Yujin Nagasawa, Hedda Hassel Mørch, Galen Strawson, Gregory Miller, and Peter Sjöstedt-H. Hopefully they've watched it and if they have any rebuttals I wish I could hear them. So far Mørch, Miller, and Sjöstedt-H gave that post a like so at least I know those panpsychists are aware of this video. I agree with what you said about the interaction problem: even if the panpsychist doesn't lapse into a version of substance dualism (which I think they do if they hold both the mental and physical to be irreducible) they will still have this problem of how the physical properties interact with the mental properties. This is a problem I go over in my other video called "The Failure of Property Dualism". Panpsychism is definitely fascinating, particularly cosmopsychism. I'm looking forward to reading more work from those guys.
Philosophy of Mind by Jaegwon Kim is considered the classic comprehensive survey of the subject. Another book I'd recommend, which just came out a few weeks ago, is called: "The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism". Whether you're into idealism or non-physicalism in general, it's an outstanding reference source and the first major collection of its kind. Cheers!
My main concern with idealism is that it seems to lead to solipsism.
Most idealists believe other minds exist, so they are not solipsists. Many are also what's known as "objective idealists", so they also believe in an objective reality, they just think the objective world is mental in essence: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_idealism
Thanks
The music
What are your thoughts on hylopmorphism?
Good question. I still have more to learn about it, but from what I've learned so far it seems to be a form of idealism so it seems consistent with a view like my own. Jacob Power is a hylomorphist and he made a video about this called *"Hylomorphism, Idealism, and the Primacy of Existence"*
@@MonisticIdealism Lmao, I will not be surprised if one day you will call everything a form of idealism.
I'm a "both" neutral monist (dual-aspect monist). I'm not sure I follow calling it a form of dualism. Could you explain why the both view collapses into dualism? Maybe you could say that of Spinoza's parallelism, but I don't think the both neutral monist has to follow his particular conceptualization of the matter. In fact my motivations for both neutral monism come from a thorough going belief in nondualism and a commitment to the elimination of the subject-object distinction.
Sure. Neutral monism (both view) and dual-aspect theory are often contrasted. The both view holds a neutral entity is _both_ mental and physical in its intrinsic nature, while the dual-aspect theorist holds there is one substance that has two irreducible aspects which are mental and physical, and this is often viewed as a form of dualism (akin to how property dualism is a form of dualism, even though it _tries_ to be monistic about substance). It's interesting that you bring up Spinoza because William James was explicit in distinguishing neutral monism from the dual-aspect theory of Spinoza, but anyway: I noted in the video that properties or aspects are part or all of the metaphysical nature of a substance, which means there would have to be a mental substance to bear the mental properties, and if there are irreducible physical or neutral properties then there would have to be a physical or neutral substance to bear those properties as well. Susan Schneider's paper "Non-Reductive Physicalism and the Mind Problem" goes into more details if you'd like. She argues against the possibility of hybrid substances and notes how paradoxical it is to say it's still one substance even though the physical and mental are substantial: Substances of a certain kind bear properties of a certain kind (e.g. mental substance has mental property), this is a defining feature of a substance. If you're saying there's also irreducible physical aspects or properties then that would mean the mental would have to bear those aspects or properties since it's one with the substance, and this conflicts with how we conceive of substance and properties and even aspects. Another side point I'd like to bring up to you is one reason why some people hold to a dual-aspect theory is because they hold the physical and mental to be irreducible, but as I said in the video it seems the physical _is_ reducible while the mental is irreducible. If that's the case then why not hold reality has only one aspect, the mental? Why hold the physical to be an irreducible aspect?
@Max
Good. A comment that's actually challenging to some extent, rather than all this boring butt-kissage.🤣 I miss the days of ol from 2009! RUclips is so lame now.
@@MonisticIdealism Yeah I somehow became accustomed to calling myself a dual-aspect monist. Since I want to separate myself from Spinoza here, let's just say I'm a Both Neutral Monist (BNM). The kind of aspectualism I want to appeal to is of an entirely softer kind. So I guess you could say that, to the extent there can be said to be mental and physical aspects, they both reduce to a neutrality that is both simultaneously mental and physical.
That being said, a question I have is: In what sense does Schneider think a hybrid account is not possible? I do think the fundamental BNM substance is a "hybrid" not in the Spinozan sense of having distinct irreducible mental and physical aspects, but in the sense that the physical and mental are actually the same/complementary and define each other simultaneously. Just as you can't have a concept of 'right' without simultaneously defining what is 'left,' you can't have the mental without the physical, or physical without the mental. So I agree the physical is reducible, but I would also say the mental is reducible,- at least to the extent that the mental is necessarily co-defined by the physical. That we separate them out (as in dualism) or privilege one reducible aspect as dominant over the other (as you might say of the mental over the physical) is an illusion of abstraction.
Would you say a hybrid account of this type is intelligible? Or is the idea of a simultaneously mental and physical substance contradictory in your view?
@@Dhorpatan I miss the old days too. Part of me thinks that we were in a golden age of RUclips philosophy late 2000s - early 10s. I especially miss watching people like KnownNoMore, ThePolyMath, Ander Smith, derezzed83, and others duking it out in brutal response videos. There are a few good philosophy people I like to watch now.
@@maxmax9050 I recommend reading her paper to get a better idea of what she's saying, but if I'm understanding Schneider correctly, I think it has to do with what I said earlier about how certain substances are supposed to bear properties or aspects of a certain type. So a mental substance doesn't bear a physical property or aspect, nor does a physical substance bear a mental property or aspect. But if this one substance is technically mental then that mental substance bears physical properties or aspects, and likewise a physical substance bears mental properties or aspects. This seems to conflict with how we view substances so there would have to be a physical substance and a mental substance to bear the different properties or aspects, which would just be substance dualism. In light of issues like this I lean towards hybrid accounts to be unintelligible, and still seems to be some kind of dualism just like property dualism, and therefore encounters the same sort of problems. Can you elaborate a bit more as to what you mean about the mental being reducible?
Your Discord invite on your About page has expired. It won't let me join.
Here you go: discord.gg/v9Rwesen
@@MonisticIdealism can you invite me too
@@rayanibnyusuf5394 Yeah, here's the invite: discord.gg/dCxAkaBJ
i would love to join if possible
@@masonleesummerhill This new invite should work, feel free to join: discord.gg/TgZNPYR9
meow
I like your video! Thanks. I think it would be better without music though.
Nah, his choices are good.
3:06 what is "quitiddism" anyone?
A typo lol
@@MonisticIdealism Aha, aw I was getting excited then!
I rise in support of Process Dual aspect neutral monism, or Process Dualism as superior to Idealism.
Neutral Monism posits no particular properties, thus neither mental or physical!
The music is super distraction. A good video all the same