(Brian Tomasik’s view superficially sounds a lot like what Ben Weinstein-Raun is criticizing in his second paragraph, so I thought I’d add here the comment I wrote in response to Ben’s post:
> Panhousism isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s not actually very enlightening. It doesn’t explain how the houseyness of a tree is increased when you rearrange the tree to be a log cabin. In fact it might naively want to deny that the total houseyness is increased.
I really don’t see how that is what panhousism would say, at least what I have in mind when I think of panhousism (which is analogous to what I have in mind when I think of (type-A materialist[1]) panpsychism). If all that panhousism means is that (1) “house” is a cluster in thingspace and (2) nothing is infinitely far away from the centroid of the “house” cluster, then it seems very obvious to me that the distance of a tree from the “house” centroid decreases if you rearrange the tree into a log cabin. As an example, focus on the “suitability to protect humans from rain” dimension in thingspace. It’s very clear to me that turning a tree into a log cabin moves it closer to the “house” cluster in that dimension. And the same principle applies to all other dimensions. So I don’t see your point here.
I’m not sure if I should quote Ben’s reply to me, since his post is not public, but he pretty much said that his original post was not addressing type-A physicalist panpsychism, although he finds this view unuseful for other reasons.
Thanks for sharing. :) Yeah, it seems like most people have in mind type-F monism when they refer to panpsychism, since that’s the kind of panpsychism that’s growing in popularity in philosophy in recent years. I agree with Rob’s reasons for rejecting that view.
(Brian Tomasik’s view superficially sounds a lot like what Ben Weinstein-Raun is criticizing in his second paragraph, so I thought I’d add here the comment I wrote in response to Ben’s post:
I’m not sure if I should quote Ben’s reply to me, since his post is not public, but he pretty much said that his original post was not addressing type-A physicalist panpsychism, although he finds this view unuseful for other reasons.
)
Thanks for sharing. :) Yeah, it seems like most people have in mind type-F monism when they refer to panpsychism, since that’s the kind of panpsychism that’s growing in popularity in philosophy in recent years. I agree with Rob’s reasons for rejecting that view.