[RobertRies]

> Okay well that's silly and I've not met even one panpsychist who believes this "comparable to human conscious experience" portion

You, yourself, and Philip Goff and others talk about how "we might want to treat trees differently" suggesting (correct me if I'm misunderstanding you) that cutting a tree might "hurt" the tree, or cause "pain" to the tree, which is exactly what I mean by "comparable to human conscious experience."

> This isn't true. You can literally cut a brain in half and you appear to get two separate consciousnesses in one skull.

What you're saying doesn't address what I'm saying. I did not say that, exhaustively, all changes to the brain disrupt everything. Rather, I will clarify that there exist a subset of extremely small disruptions you can make to the brain that "turn the lights off" of consciousness in humans. Among them are a fairly tiny dose of anesthetic, or not breathing for about 5 minutes.

> Sure... so why are you spending so much breath attacking the obviously weak form of the argument?

Because I'm replying to a comment that suggests we might treat trees differently (if Panpsychicism were true). I would consider a statement like that to be the first category of panpsychist.

> ... but that doesn't make the endeavor meaningless.

I didn't say the endeavor is meaningless. I'm a strong proponent of prodding anything we can about consciousness, or anything in our universe for that matter. What's "too early for my tastes" is to believe the Panpsychist hypothesis is currently the best explanation.

[llamaimperative]

Okay then, what’s a better explanation?

[RobertRies]

Emergent property of a sophisticated brain (with it's own weaknesses).

But even if I didn't have a more compelling explanation, that doesn't mean I can't be highly critical of, or reach a conclusion that panpsychicism is highly unlikely to be approaching a good explanation.

[mistermann]

> it presupposes that the configuration of the brain, and inputs isn't fundamentally the constituents of consciousness.

For clarity: are all the things you've said above your opinion, or are you presenting then as facts (which was my interpretation)?

[llamaimperative]

Sure! Now define “brain”

[RobertRies]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain

But also, see the rest of my comment. The onus is not on me to arrive with a better explanation just because there's a bad explanation on the table.

If I come home and find a cookie on my counter, and someone said "I think that a space alien teleported the cookie there" and I said "I think that's unlikely to be the correct explanation." And then that person asked "Well, what's a better explanation?" and I said "Maybe someone broke into my apartment, felt guilty, and left a cookie there." and then grilled me on that counter-explanation.

[llamaimperative]

Well I agree with that, I only asked what the better explanation is because you said it’s “not currently the best explanation.”

So far I don’t think you’ve shared a better one, and I don’t think you think you have either.

[RobertRies]

I genuinely think emergent property of sophisticated brain is much closer to the correct explanation than panpsychism in terms of usefulness, predictive power, etc., and likelihood of getting closer to a satisfying answer. On the other hand, I'm not prepared to defend every aspect of that hypothesis. I am, however, prepared to criticize panpsychism.