{"id":29195,"date":"2020-06-27T13:47:55","date_gmt":"2020-06-27T18:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=29195"},"modified":"2020-06-27T13:49:12","modified_gmt":"2020-06-27T18:49:12","slug":"word-of-the-day-571","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/06\/27\/word-of-the-day-571\/","title":{"rendered":"Word Of The Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Panpsychism<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ask \u201cis the universe conscious?\u201d, as we do on this week\u2019s cover, and the brain-jerk answer is \u201cno\u201d. Consciousness is a case of the haves and have nots. Humans clearly have it; a rock, a star or other agglomeration of physical matter, such as the wider cosmos, doesn\u2019t. The venerable philosophical idea of universal sentience, or \u201cpanpsychism\u201d, says otherwise when it comes to inanimate things, but it seems to have no more place in modern science than a belief in fairies at the end of the garden.<\/p>\n<p>However, an enquiring mind does well to leave its intuitions at the door. How certain arrangements of matter such as the neuronal circuits in our brains give rise to felt experience, while others don\u2019t, is a \u201chard problem\u201d. It is difficult to set boundaries on consciousness when we don\u2019t really know what it is. Does an octopus have it? A tree? A bacterium? A sentient robot? <em>[&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg24632803-800-pondering-the-big-question-of-consciousness-is-a-welcome-distraction\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pondering the big question of consciousness is a welcome distraction<\/a>,&#8221; Leader, <\/em><strong>NewScientist<\/strong><em> (2 May 2020)]<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And, yes, I just discovered this is the second time Panpsychism is the Word Of The Day.<\/p>\n<p>I like it. I&#8217;m keeping it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Panpsychism: Ask \u201cis the universe conscious?\u201d, as we do on this week\u2019s cover, and the brain-jerk answer is \u201cno\u201d. Consciousness is a case of the haves and have nots. Humans clearly have it; a rock, a star or other agglomeration of physical matter, such as the wider cosmos, doesn\u2019t. The \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/06\/27\/word-of-the-day-571\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29195"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29198,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29195\/revisions\/29198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}