Laird
Member
Early on in this interview, I started wanting to know the answer to the question, "What is Tim's ontology? Does it have a known label, or is it original? If original, how does it differ from known ontologies?"
Tim explicitly denied that he is a panpsychist and gave a hint at his actual ontology with this: "What I'm suggesting is closer to panpsychism but different: not that consciousness is all the way through, but that subjectivity is all the way through".
This confused me somewhat, because, to my mind, subjectivity implies consciousness - so how could the one be all the way through without the other? I then started wondering, given that Tim says he's trying to tread a middle ground between idealism and materialism - saying that not only is everything individuated but that everything has both a subjective and objective aspect - whether his ontology is best described as neutral monism (about which I know very little).
(And in all of this, I think that I identify somewhat with Steve, who's just posted re his confusion).
I understand if folks want to say, "Quit trying to put people in boxes", but understand me, too: I'm very happy for the box to have a knitted cover and a personally crocheted badge - a box can be as individualised as you like! I just want to know: how is your box different to the next guy's, and comparing with "standard" boxes makes that process easier.
A few other things got me curious. Tim talks about the evolution of the universe, and the emergence of consciousness, which immediately made me wonder to what extent he holds these processes to be "deterministic" (necessitated) and to which extent he holds them to be "free". In other words, I would have liked to have heard Tim hold forth on free will - whether or not he believes in it, and, if he believes in it, then how it fits with the rest of his views (e.g. is free will the driver of evolution, and if not, then how did free will "emerge"?).
I sort of know the answer to the above: Tim talks about a time before consciousness, which, I think, implies there was a time where free will was not operative - because (in my view) free will implies consciousness - and, potentially, then, that free will emerged (crazy as that seems to me). But how do we square this with his claim that everything has both a subjective and objective aspect? Of course, to answer this question, we would need Tim to explain how he differentiates subjectivity from consciousness, as he seems to do (as I noted earlier).
I think beyondmortality makes a good point that Tim effectively redefined "the soul" as "consciousness", but I'm not too fussed about that - I'm more concerned that it's hard to pin down exactly what his ideas on being (the mind/body problem) are.
There's more that I could say, but that's more than enough for one post.
Alex, you did a good job of raising interesting questions, and probing Tim's views. Thanks for sharing this discussion with us!
Tim explicitly denied that he is a panpsychist and gave a hint at his actual ontology with this: "What I'm suggesting is closer to panpsychism but different: not that consciousness is all the way through, but that subjectivity is all the way through".
This confused me somewhat, because, to my mind, subjectivity implies consciousness - so how could the one be all the way through without the other? I then started wondering, given that Tim says he's trying to tread a middle ground between idealism and materialism - saying that not only is everything individuated but that everything has both a subjective and objective aspect - whether his ontology is best described as neutral monism (about which I know very little).
(And in all of this, I think that I identify somewhat with Steve, who's just posted re his confusion).
I understand if folks want to say, "Quit trying to put people in boxes", but understand me, too: I'm very happy for the box to have a knitted cover and a personally crocheted badge - a box can be as individualised as you like! I just want to know: how is your box different to the next guy's, and comparing with "standard" boxes makes that process easier.
A few other things got me curious. Tim talks about the evolution of the universe, and the emergence of consciousness, which immediately made me wonder to what extent he holds these processes to be "deterministic" (necessitated) and to which extent he holds them to be "free". In other words, I would have liked to have heard Tim hold forth on free will - whether or not he believes in it, and, if he believes in it, then how it fits with the rest of his views (e.g. is free will the driver of evolution, and if not, then how did free will "emerge"?).
I sort of know the answer to the above: Tim talks about a time before consciousness, which, I think, implies there was a time where free will was not operative - because (in my view) free will implies consciousness - and, potentially, then, that free will emerged (crazy as that seems to me). But how do we square this with his claim that everything has both a subjective and objective aspect? Of course, to answer this question, we would need Tim to explain how he differentiates subjectivity from consciousness, as he seems to do (as I noted earlier).
I think beyondmortality makes a good point that Tim effectively redefined "the soul" as "consciousness", but I'm not too fussed about that - I'm more concerned that it's hard to pin down exactly what his ideas on being (the mind/body problem) are.
There's more that I could say, but that's more than enough for one post.
Alex, you did a good job of raising interesting questions, and probing Tim's views. Thanks for sharing this discussion with us!