Comments by "Monty Cantsin" (@MontyCantsin5) on "What is Panpsychism? | Rupert Sheldrake, Donald Hoffman, Phillip Goff, James Ladyman" video.

That's a strawman of materialism (not that anyone really uses that term anymore in philosophy; physicalism being more accurate) if ever I've seen one. No physicist seriously believes in a billiard ball model of fundamental particles. And calling science a religion only serves to highlight just how clueless you are about the state of contemporary physics in light of quantum mechanics.
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The most coherent and convincing argument by far. The less said about Sheldrake the better.
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That's far too strong a claim about the view(s) adopted my most panpsychists. It's unclear what they even mean by everything having some sort of awareness, or proto-consciousness (how this background level of consciousness could even be detected by science is dubious to say the least given their own arguments against the limits of the discipline; that we cannot know anything about the intrinsic properties of matter using current physics) and I can't think of any that endorse a view that states that electrons and other fundamental particles actually have the mental capacity sufficient to experience pain.
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It would be laughable if it wasn't so sad. Yet his brand of pseudoscience seems to appeal to a whole host of new age believers; no surprise there.
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@otakurocklee : Compared to your initial comment that stated that a panpsychist world view is 'truly horrific' due to implied suffering (had your dismay been directed at the metaphysics of the idea then I might have been inclined to agree), I don't think your follow up that there is 'far more suffering' in a panpsychist conception of reality holds any truth either. Have you read anything by a proponent of the view that equates the proto-awareness of say, an electron, with pain? It seems that in order for animals to experience pain or suffering they need to possess a sensory nervous system which is simply not present in subatomic particles. You might be interested in this interview with Galen Strawson in which he outlines the kind of awareness that particles might have according to his philosophical position: 48:35: /watch?v=1ydqAhPNuyY
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@otakurocklee : Regarding your first point, I'm not so sure about macroscopic systems. One of the oddities that I've found with the panpsychist conception of reality is that its proponents (let's take Strawson as an example again) think that the individual constituent parts (at the micro-level) of rocks are 'aware' in some sort of very weak sense (the energy of an electron 'buzzing' away to itself), yet the rock is not aware even though it consists of vast numbers of electrons. It seems to me that panpsychism is simply against strong emergentism (put enough neurons together and bang, we have a technicolour lightshow inside our head that we call consciousness). There's also the argument that panpsychism is the most parsimonious, elegant, philosophical approach to consciousness which I have to admit is one appealing aspect of the idea. I agree with your criticism about what exactly does panpsychism solve, however. What accounts for qualia arsing in complex systems like the human body which is neither as small as a rock, or as vast as the cosmos? Strawson says that the stuff that evolution has to work with is already conscious but when it's put together in a certain way we get complex consciousness. Seems close to emergentism to me although I must be missing something. I also remain unconvinced as I simply don't see how panpsychism can be tested empirically
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