It is perfectly possible that David Chalmers was being ironic when he said: I do not think it is strictly accurate to say that rocks (for example) have experiences. He might have used the technical term panprotopsychism which in its own way moves us no further forward. We are in effect spinning our wheels. Or are we? Is Chalmers going the transcendental route or offering a theory of how things must fundamentally be for things to appear as they do. Putting the argument in the manner of the philosopher on the next bar stool – We all got here from rocks and gas. The disjunction between mind and matter cannot be transcended, extended/non-extended, blah waffle blah. The human mind that emerged or evolved must have been somehow there in a prototypical way.
There is the problem of radical analogy, when we talk up to God and down to rocks. The mind of God and the mind of rocks. Staying with the mind of rocks for now, a concept that can connect human minds and rocks is that of information. Different forms of matter impinge on and change each other. They inform each other. There is a rhythmic consistency of interaction or nature. At what point can information become information for itself or memory? Squirrels remember where they put their nuts, dogs remember where they buried bones and I can’t remember where I left my keys. This can’t or the framing of a proposition and then negating it, is particular to the human mind, in the waking state that is. In dream we have to change the drama in order to negate. Suddenly a situation doesn’t exist and we emerge into one that expresses its negation. This may be the sort of consciousness that preceded our present state of evolution. Could certain forms of psychosis be a reversion?
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