>To clarify the nuance: only things that actually happened are experienced.

Then how do we explain the double slit experiment, where we experience observing the interference pattern as if what might have occurred--but we understand not to have occurred--causes the observed experience as if it had happened?

Further, when we observe which slit the particle does travel through, then the interference pattern disappears--hence, the measurement problem of quantum mechanics.

The implication being, observation causes change in the observed.

It's something like General Relativity, where mass bends space-time: observation shapes the observed because they are linked across some (meta)physical substrate--call it The Universe, The Quantum Potential, The Collective Soul, God... whatever metaphor works for you, it is mind itself.

Except, on the quantum level we abandon many of our physical and metaphysical presumptions and assumptions about causation itself.

We can no longer maintain that our experiences are limited to what actually happened, even within the rigorously empirical realm of science, never mind the less abstract realm of metaphysics upon which science must build.

>Objectivity definitely cannot follow from only one person's collection and mental comparison of their own subjective perspectives. And, indeed, we cannot prima facie reject any perception as experience, at all. But to say that the existence of objective perceptions and experiences and also their distinction from private delusions of having experienced things which never happened is 'tentative' leaves only two comprehensible positions: solipsism or insanity.

If we rely on other minds to establish objectivity, but we cannot ourselves establish the objectivity of our own experience of other minds, then objectivity is tentative.

My own sanity is not something I'm prepared to argue--nor is anyone. Sanity is a subjective designation of (limited use, but great misuse) made, as with that of objectivity, tentatively within a collection of perspectives.

>All conjectures are by definition tentative (presumptuous), this can be (logically) assumed. Based on that, logic (computational cognition) becomes, from that point on, useless, as it relies on further assumptions which are also tentative since they are conjectures which follow from more fundamental assumptions, each becoming more tentative from the previous.

But here we contemplate objectivity itself, not just any conjecture.

If objectivity merely exists as conjecture within the collection of perspectives we attribute to other minds, which we must experience from within our own subjective perspective, that is not reason to deny the status of experience to those perspectives which might disagree with such conjecture, because the perspective happened regardless of purportedly external stimulus.

The external stimulus is the unnecessary bit--unless we presupposed it.

>just because all conjectures are tentative does not mean that they are all equally tentative. So simply observing my conjecture is tentative neither requires it be unreliable nor suggests that it is untrue.

Hallucinations are experiences, even if they are not shared. Our task is to place those experiences along with our other experiences within our metaphysical framework to constantly puzzle out how they ALL fit together, with some given more weight than others depending on the context considered.

But if we reject as experiences the perspectives that fail to conform to our tentative notions of objectivity, then we will fail to recognize experiences that falsify our existing paradigm.

>Solipsism (indistinguishable except by abstract declaration from 'the brain in a jar conundrum') is undefeatable because it is unfalsifiable.

Metaphysics, however, is not bound by falsifiability--we should not abstract from questions just because we cannot test them with this specific method, which defines and therefore limits science, not metaphysics.

That's what "meta" means: left-over. Here, we examine what science cannot, so we can ground our science and other understanding on pillars of well-examined doubt, beyond other limited methods.

>Only if you first postulate, not just without evidence but contrary to all available evidence (and there is, despite denials by solipsists/idealists/panpsychists, a LOT of evidence) that your consciousness is independent of the body from which it emerges. Otherwise, postulating the existence of things which lack consciousness isn't necessary, one can directly observe an unlimited number of them.

We only have the experience of consciously experiencing something else "losing" consciousness, as we experience ourselves gaining and losing consciousness.

Just because our own consciousness and that we recognize in others ebbs and flows and changes mode, does not suppose that consciousness itself is absent anywhere.

Again, we cannot have an experience of lacking consciousness. That is beyond falsifiable. It is inconceivable.

>Disappointing as it must be, your philosophical perspective is only coherent if it is solipsistic. Otherwise, it is simply an incoherent hypothesis which fails to be rigorously philosophical. Or perhaps it is merely insanity. Do you actually believe paperclips are conscious? Are the pixels on the screen you are looking at conscious? Are the letters those pixels form conscious? Are the photons emitted by those pixels to present those letters to your eyes conscious? Are your eyes conscious independently of your own consciousness? (You may recognize this as the "combination problem", perhaps in inverse form, which everyone but panpsychists recognizes wrecks panpsychism.)

The combination problem, insofar as it is a problem, is largely a problem of combination itself, not just within interpretations of panpsychism. William James originally suggested there are no composite objects whatsoever. Is that the position that you take?

The problem arises from the illusion of fragmentation itself.

Where do the foothills end and the mountain begin? Nowhere. Mountains and foothills are metaphors we use to represent topographical relationships by postulating objects that are a function of our own perspective rather than some objective demarcation.

We choose ontological metaphors that fit our own perspective and the functional context at hand, much as we might choose to distinguish our current self from past selves, even though there is no clear demarcation of one self from the next, and in other ways we understand all our selves to be one person.

When we further remove the subject itself--because we can doubt the doubter but not the doubt--then we no longer have the subject-summing problem.

Much like the horizon is an artifact of our perspective--there is no such demarcation of the ground and sky, except as a function of our metaphors for the same--the subject is an artifact of our perspective.

Therefore, cosmopanpsychism does not suffer the combination problem.

When we choose to look for particles, then we see particles. When we choose to look for waves, then we see waves.

From our mundane perspective, we are discreet indivisible individuals, but when we look closer we see ourselves as constituted of many parts, and even particles, which observed in certain contexts display behaviour that we can recognize as consciousness--hence why we say electrons want to remain in stable orbits, even if the electron itself might otherwise be described as a probability matrix rather than a single object in space-time.

We fail to understand a certain mode of consciousness as consciousness the way we fail to see beyond the horizon. But if we travel beyond this horizon, we will not fall out of existence or discover a lack of consciousness--rather, we will discover new territory, new consciousness.

When I first learned about panpsychism, it was but a tiny paragraph in the textbook--barely a footnote. We were encouraged to discard the theory as nonsense, just as you have.

Over time, however, our tentative models of objectivity have given way, reluctantly, to this increasingly powerful paradigm.

The orthodoxy called Copernicus and Galileo insane, because they could not make sense of their paradigm shifting models.

Likewise, even Einstein rejected quantum mechanics, because, "God does not play dice with the universe." Rather, Einstein said, "I believe in Spinoza's God."

Turns out, based on our current understanding of quantum mechanics, that Spinoza's God plays dice with the universe.

Calling me insane is an ad hominem attack, which only betrays a lack of argument on your part.

As yet, we cannot decidedly doubt panpsychism--perhaps because it is an accurate model of the cosmos--and so mindless matter is not necessary. Your failure to take seriously this possibility only renders your metaphysics less serious for being unduly limited.

The hard problem of consciousness only arises when we try to explain the existence of mindless matter, which we can never experience.

Panpsychism avoids this problem by not postulating this unnecessary mindless matter.

If the strongest argument against panpsychism is that we cannot disprove it, then this seems like a good reason to at least include this metaphysical paradigm as one lens (of many) through which to examine our cosmos.