gwax's rumblings

I was read­ing Dinosaur Comics, as it is con­sis­tently one of the best comics on the Internet, and T-Rex was explain­ing panpsy­chism. Upon read­ing the first panel (included on the right for copy­right vio­la­tion pur­poses), I found myself think­ing that panpsy­chism sounded an awful lot like my per­sonal phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse. Poking around wikipedia a bit more, as one is oft want to do, I came across a few other philo­soph­i­cal ideas. I don’t quite accept panpsy­chism, pre­fer­ring the very sim­i­lar hylopathism.

I feel safe describ­ing my per­sonal phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse as hylopathism with weak emer­gence and an accep­tance of the pathetic fal­lacy. Putting this in sim­pler terms, I believe that every­thing in the uni­verse, from the small­est sub­atomic par­ti­cle to the largest galaxy, is sen­tient, aware of and expe­ri­enc­ing exis­tence in its own way (hylopathism). All sen­tience and aware­ness within so-called higher beings emerges from and may be reduced to the con­stituent sen­tience of lower beings (weak emer­gence). I not only accept but revel in the attri­bu­tion of human char­ac­ter­is­tics and emo­tions onto the inan­i­mate; a small part of me is sad­dened when a rock is split in two because the atoms on the new sur­faces have had their friends torn from them (pathetic fallacy).

I feel that the exten­sion of hylopathism with weak emer­gence is much the same as strong panpsy­chism. The sin­gle mind that unites all things is sim­ply an emer­gent entity com­posed of its sub-entities. To get exis­ten­tial for just a moment, we are all, one and the same within the all-being but, at the same, each our sep­a­rate indi­vid­ual selves; our liver is at once the same entity as our heart and at the same a totally sep­a­rate entity. Have you ever con­sid­ered the sen­tient nature of your liver? How about the sen­tient nature of one of your brain cells? How about the sen­tient nature of one of the hydro­gen ions released into your stom­ach acid? Hydrogen ions are very lonely crea­tures, a sin­gle pro­ton try­ing as hard as it can to find a friend to share elec­trons with (lone­li­ness is the pathetic fal­lacy sneak­ing in).

There you have it, I believe in hylopathism with weak emergence.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 14th, 2007 at 4:36 am and is filed under inanity, musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.