I have decided to share my philosophy essays with the world, and what a better way to being than by showing the granddaddy of them all, my dissertation.. I wrote this a few months ago as part of my philosophy degree and got an A for it. It is centred around the idea that consciousness cannot be explained by science, or more accurately by science performed by human beings. Yet I strongly support the scientific method and I believe that a metaphysics of reduction must be the way things are. That is big thing must be explained by small things. Just like our bodies are explained by chemical reactions which in turn are explained by atomic structures, subatomic structures and god knows what. So I hold that the mind must be explainable in such a fashion, yet I also hold that it cannot be explained with appeal to the same stuff that explain physical things like our bodies. Thus I propose that there must be a mental side to the most fundamental level of the universe from which macro-mentality arises (that is animal minds, human minds, alien minds...).
Read the text below and find out for yourselves, I don't know how accessible it will be to non-philosophers, given that I wrote it with people that know a lot more than me in mind. Please let me know what you think. I think I may revisit the topic in a future entry with less academic restrictions, although as you will see Philosophy offers much more freedom than most students will be used to in their writing.
Does Panpsychism offer a good solution to the mind body problem?
Introduction
This dissertation is an exposition and defence of panpsychism. Given how unfriendly the view can be to newcomers I have dedicated a significant first section to giving an overview of different approaches to the mind-body problem. The purpose is to show the complications of these approaches and how they lead to considering panpsychism as a theory of the mind. The second section is dedicated to explaining panpsychism, giving a formalised argument in its support and discussing some objections to the thesis. Most of what I say about panpsychism is based on Galen Strawson’s papers Realistic Monism and Panpsychism?. The main difference between Strawson’s panpsychism and the one I defend is that he calls himself a physicalist and I support panpsychism as a property dualist, substance monist theory. Yet as Macpherson points out, Strawson’s physicalism is but a cloaked term for substance dualism[1], albeit with some complex metaphysical distinctions[2]. Getting into this debate is beyond the scope of this dissertation, so I will leave it at that. I now proceed to give a short introduction to panpsychism.
Panpsychism as I understand it is a form of what Chalmers calls naturalistic dualism[3]. The idea that consciousness cannot be explained in scientific terms and therefore it must be posited as a fundamental property of the universe alongside with physical properties. Panpsychism takes this idea to its logical extreme. If consciousness is to be a fundamental property of the universe then it must have been present all along, before we conscious creatures came along and started questioning everything. Panpsychism claims that to make sense of the idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe we must consider that the fundamental building blocks of the universe already instantiate conscious properties (In this dissertation I will use the terms consciousness, experience and experiential to mean the same thing unless otherwise noted). The main reason for this claim is that it allows for a reductive theory of consciousness in a dualist context. If consciousness is fundamental to the universe, and was present all along, then it is no longer a mystery why we are conscious; it is simply the natural evolution of our universe that has led to conscious creatures from the basic conscious properties available at the beginning. [4]
Panpsychism is often criticised for being mystical nonsense. This is because panpsychism can be interpreted in many different ways. One is that every single thing is conscious, be it alive or not. This means that rocks, anvils, hammers, etc… are conscious. Such theory is rightfully absurd; it has more in common with animism than with serious philosophy. Another interpretation of panpsychism is that everything in the universe is strictly experiential, thus making it an idealist theory. Neither of these however are the panpsychism I endorse. The panpsychism I endorse only attributes experiential properties to the fundamentals, the ultimate building blocks of the universe. It also accepts that the fundamental are also physical. Neither does it posit that these fundamentals are experiential in the exact same way that you and I are, the idea is that they instantiate properties that are of a similar nature to our experience, albeit very different. We can call this thesis realistic panpsychism[5] or naturalistic panpsychism[6], from now on when I say panpsychism I mean realistic or naturalistic panpsychism.
Prima facie panpsychism seems wildly counterintuitive, if not absurd. But panpsychism is not the first theory to consider when examining the mind body problem; it is a thesis that becomes attractive once we see the failures of more intuitive theories. We will therefore begin by looking at these intuitive theories of mind. They encompass reductive theories (physicalism) and non-reductive theories (property dualism). We will see how the shortcomings of these theories make panpsychism an attractive position. First I offer a quick overview of the mind body problem.
I
The mind-body problem
Our mind is the most familiar thing we have. In fact it is more accurate to say that we are minds rather than we have minds. It is surprising then that it is very difficult to define. We can agree that through the mind we are aware of the world around us, perhaps awareness is a good starting point. By awareness we may mean the ability to assess, navigate and interact with an environment. Yet this narrow definition won’t do. Think about those rovers (robots) space agencies send to planets like Mars to explore on our behalf. Given our definition they are aware, they can after all assess, navigate and interact with their environment; that is very much their purpose. If a rover encounters a rock in its path he will “see” it, presumably through some optic camera or some laser system. He will assess the rock by scanning it, and depending on the rock he may drive around it or take a sample and analyse it. Yet there is a fundamental difference between our awareness and the rover’s awareness. The rover is programmed to behave in such a way and his awareness can be fully explained by the physical function and mechanisms of his circuits and hardware. We could argue that in our case the same happens, we are programmed by our genes to act and we have circuits and hardware in the form of neurons, a brain, eyes, etc… Even if this is the case there is something about our awareness that is unlike the rover’s. Our awareness is accompanied by experience. When we encounter a rock we actually see it, we see its shape and its colour against a background of land and sky, the rover doesn’t actually see anything (or so we think!). The rover is but a machine that receives “visual” input in the sense that depending on the pattern of the light waves received by its optic. No experience is involved, it doesn’t see a shape or a colour but we do.
Experience is an essential aspect of the mind. Remove it and you have a machine, add it to a machine and you have an artificial intelligence that deserves the same treatment as any living creature. Yet experience too is hard to define, the easiest way is to appeal to the most obvious aspect of experience; sense perception. When light reaches our retinas we see shapes and colours, these visions take the form of 3D representations in front of our eyes. We also experience sounds, smells and so on. All these experiences are subjective, they happen to a subject (e.g. us) and are reported in a first person language; we say things like “I see blue” or “I fell pain”. This seems to be the fundamental nature of experience; if there is no subject of experience there is no experience at all. The problem arises when we try to find an explanation of the origins of experience and how they fit in the universe. We will now look into the physicalist approach to the explanation of experience. The physicalist method is to find a reductive explanation, to explain experience in simpler terms. The core idea is that experience must be explainable by the sciences.
The Reductive Approach to Experience
The principle behind a reductive explanation is that an ideal universe must be ultimately reducible to fundamental entities. These fundamental entities may be strings, quarks, or something entirely different, from now on we will refer to them as fundamentals. If the universe is to make sense all the complexity we observe in it; stars, planets, nebulas, mountains, rivers, trees, life… must all be explained by the properties of the fundamentals, nothing else should be required. It shouldn’t be the case that in between the fundamentals and the emergence of life we need to posit a new property or entity that is responsible for life but that was not present at the very beginning of things. In this way if God exists he would only have had to create the fundamentals, all else would follow without need of his intervention. He could just sit back and watch the show. This principle is defined by Coleman as smallism “the view that all facts are determined by the facts about the smallest things [the fundamentals]”[7]. It is clear why we would want to abide by smallism; such a universe would be in perfect synch with Ockham’s razor; the principle that our metaphysics should explain the universe with reference to the least possible entities. Smallism also is one of the core principles behind the scientific method.
The goal then, is to find an explanation as to how everything we observe can be reduced to the properties of the fundamentals. We observe everything through our experience, it therefore follows that experience should be at the top of the list. It looks as though this is feasible when we consider that in science biological properties are ultimately reducible to chemical properties, which in turn are reducible to the properties of atoms and the atoms to quantum mechanics. The scientific process of reduction is not complete because the sciences themselves are not complete. A clear example can be found in physics, as mentioned the atom is (reductively) explained by quantum mechanics, yet there is something about the atomic level that stubbornly resists explanation at the quantum level, gravity. Physicists however refuse to give up; they don’t presume that gravity simply popped into existence at the atomic level. This is why one of the main goals of physics today is to find a theory that marries gravity and quantum mechanics. Physicalist philosophers of mind mirror this attitude. Positing that experience simply popped into existence once brains got large enough does not satisfy them, neither does talk about souls. They want a reductive explanation following the scientific model.
We can summarise the physicalist claim as follows. All that exists is physical; where by physical we mean those properties of the universe studied by the sciences. And every fact about the universe is determined by the fundamentals and their properties (smallism). Therefore experience ought to be reductively explained in purely physical (scientific) terms. What this comes to mean is that the problem of experience is a problem to be solved by neuroscience.
Chalmers and the Problems of Reductive Physicalism
There have been many worthy attempts at a reductive explanation of the mind. But I side with Chalmers on this matter; there cannot be a scientific explanation of experience. Chalmers says that because science works by detailing the “performance and functions” of the mechanism it tries to reductively explain it cannot possibly explain experience[8]. Neuroscience can explain perception in scientific terms by detailing how the eye works, how the neurons in the visual cortex process information and how it all gives rise to behaviour. But here neuroscience has explained perception in the same way we could explain robot perception (remember our rover example above). From such an explanation we could no more suppose that experience should arise than we could suppose that Mars rovers and other robots are conscious. Experience cannot be explained in functional terms because its nature is not functional (although it could have functional aspects, lest we become epiphenomenalists) its nature is subjective. Science has never had to explain anything whose nature is subjective, therefore it is not equipped to deal with consciousness. Science cannot find a solution to the mind body problem[9]. Even if it happened to be the case that neuroscientists eventually gave us a full account of the functional workings of the brain, and even if through this account they could predict what any given person was going to do in the next fifty years, there would be no reason to infer from that that experience accompanied all those functions., yet we know it does.
To press further on this issue I bring up Chalmers example about problem of life. Not only because it further illustrates his position but because it is often brought up as analogous to the mind-body problem. In the 19th century many people thought that life could not be reductively explained by science, they therefore posited that some sort of vital spirit had to exist in order for life to arise. Many physicalists claim that just as the problem of life was explained by science so will the mind-body problem. Yet as Chalmers points out both problems are actually quite different. This is because the sceptics about life-reductionism did not necessarily think that life was an ineffable property, but because they doubted that physical inert matter could carry about the functions and performances organic systems display. Once it was demonstrated that this was actually possible (following the discovery of DNA) all these doubts faded away. Life, or at least life without consciousness (Life* as Strawson calls it[10]) is in fact a matter of functions; therefore it is within the scope of science[11]. Like Strawson I think that we will not have fully explained life until we have explained consciousness, but this is another matter.
Chalmers’s argument strikes a tough blow at reductive physicalism, and some physicalists seem to agree with him because it has led them to claim that experience cannot exist.[12] Instead they hold that we are not all that different from the Mars rover. We are not really conscious we are aware. The mind is a (huge) functional system programmed by our genes and executed by our brains. The fact that we think are conscious is some sort of illusion. This view is attractive because if it were true it would in principle be possible to have a complete theory of everything based on reduction. Experience however cannot be eliminated, as Chalmers says it is not an explanatory posit, it’s a known fact that has to be accounted for[13]. Experience is not something we assume must exist because it explains a further fact; it is something we know is true about ourselves. Imagine that a child sees the Mars rover, observing its behaviour he concludes that it moves and scans things because it is conscious and has volition. Years later he reads about robots and informatics, finally understanding the mechanisms by which the rover moved and scanned things. He realises that it was not conscious after all. In this case the consciousness of the rover was posited because it explained its behaviour, yet after further enquiry the boy understood that the behaviour was explain by something else. Thus his eliminativism about the rover’s consciousness is justified. In our case it is our consciousness we are assessing through consciousness itself, so it cannot be the case that it does not exist. It would be as though we all of a sudden concluded that we were dead.
It looks as though explaining experience scientifically is problematic, if not impossible. This suggests that a reductive approach may not the way to solve the mind-body problem. We will now see what a non-reductive approach has to offer. We continue to follow Chalmers for the time being, a notorious proponent of non-reduction about experience.
The non-reductive approach, naturalistic dualism
Experience resists reductive explanation because of the inability of science to deal with it. Perhaps this resistance mirrors the way the universe actually is. Consciousness, as Chalmers suggests, could be a fundamental property of the universe[14]. What this means is that the universe is dualist by nature. This does not necessarily entail that there are souls or immaterial substances independent from the physical stuff in the world yet mysteriously correlated and causally linked to it. What Chalmers proposes is different, altogether more realistic. He says that just like science posits phenomena that are considered fundamental and irreducible, we should posit that consciousness too is fundamental and irreducible. He supports this by claiming that electromagnetism and space-time are such phenomena[15], I will add that the fundamentals themselves are posited without need of an explanation. Often such claims are supported by other claims of emergence. Chalmers calls his thesis naturalistic dualism; essentially it is a form substance monism and property dualism. What this means is that there is one kind of fundamental stuff in the universe; the fundamentals, and sometimes the entities formed by the fundamentals happen to display experiential properties. It then follows that we should demand an explanation of how this could be possible. Chalmers suggests that the experiential properties of biological organism like animals and humans must emerge from the physical properties of said organism[16]. To understand what this means let’s look at Strawson’s account of emergence with reference to water and liquidity.
Water has the property of being liquid, yet we know that water is but a collection of H2O molecules, none of which are liquid. Liquidity then is an emergent property of H2O that is only instantiated when you have many H2O molecules. This is not all there is to emergence however; we need to know how it is that liquidity emerges, that is the whole point of the concept. What happens is that H2O molecules at certain temperatures have weak bonds, so that molecules don’t stick to one another but they slip off instead. When you have billions of H2O molecules slipping off one another you get liquidity. All the facts about liquidity are explained by the properties of H2O molecules (and the environment), therefore we can say that liquidity is an emergent property of H2O molecules.[17]
This is a case of what Chalmers and Strawson call weak emergence. Indeed weak emergence is a case of reduction, saying that liquidity emerges from the properties of H20 is the same as saying that liquidity is reducible to the properties of H20 molecules. For Chalmers experience is a case, perhaps the only one, of strong emergence.
Strong emergence however doesn’t look all that helpful. It is in fact not very clear how if differs from magic[18]. According to strong emergence experience can arise from lower level physical phenomena without actually being explained by those phenomena. It is as though God created the physical fundamentals and then intervened once again to create experience when life (weakly) emerged (provided God exists that is). Strong emergence is more of a mystery than an answer. To Chalmers credit he understands this, which is why he proposes that we should develop new fundamental laws that can account for experience. He therefore sees strong emergence as a form of epistemological problem to be solved. It is here that we turn to Panpsychism; with panpsychism we can maintain both dualism and smallism (reduction).
II
Panpsychism revisited
Panpsychism accepts that experience cannot be reduced to scientifically acceptable terms (i.e. Physical terms). It must therefore be a fundamental property that is beyond the realm of science. Yet it also accepts that smallism must be true. Experience is both fundamental and reducible, it cannot be reducible to physics, but it can be reducible to even more fundamental experience. In other words, God did not intervene for a second time in the emergence of experience; experience emerged with life, or at least sufficiently complex life, because God had already introduced something like experience in the fundamentals that compose the universe. Experience according to panpsychism is truly fundamental, present from the very beginning of the universe and instantiated by the fundamentals. Thus panpsychism is a non-reductive theory is the sense that it accepts that experience is not reducible to non-experiential phenomena, it is therefore a dualist. In fact it’s a property dualist, substance monist theory, because it attributes experience to the fundamentals, which are also physical, not to an immaterial soul. Panpsychism is also reductive because it holds that experience as we know it is reducible to lower level experience; the experience of the fundamentals.
Non-panpsychist property dualism supposes that in the beginning there was one kind of stuff in the universe, physical stuff with physical properties. Until eventually life emerged, still physical, and at some point, presumably with the emergence of nervous systems, there appeared an altogether new property of that stuff that was radically different from all that had existed before, and utterly unexplainable by it. Panpsychism tries to make sense of this story; in the beginning there was one kind of stuff in the universe, physical and experiential. When life and nervous systems emerged so did experience. The former emerged from the physical properties, the latter from the experiential. All metaphysical theories posit that physical matter brutally exists; no explanation is required because none can be given. Property or naturalistic dualism further posits that experience brutally exists, all panpsychism does is posit that both brutally came into existence at the same time and in the same things, the fundamentals. Thus it makes sense that experience of the kind we have happened to arise when life, nervous systems and brains developed.[19]
Attributing experiential properties to the fundamentals does not necessarily mean that quarks[20] see the world around them and will themselves to move and assemble into more and more complex systems. It does not mean that they are aware of existing and wonder how it all came to be. It does not mean that they are conscious like we are conscious. What it means is that our experience is to theirs what our brains and bodies are to atoms and quarks. We can thus distinguish between micro-experience (quark experience) and macro-experience (human and other animal experience)[21]. It may not be easy to imagine what quark experience is like, but so long as we assume that it will be very primitive and basic panpsychism seems a less counterintuitive view.
There has been a lot of talk about micro-experience, but I haven’t said much about panpsychism and experience as we know it (macro experience). One possible account of macro-experience is similar to the type-identity theory. Take a particular case of experience, say pain, in this view pain actually is a brain state (C-fibre stimulation, to follow the tradition). This of course is usually a physicalist theory, physicalism takes the claim to mean that there is nothing over and above C-fibre stimulation, the identity is meant to go downwards, thus trying to eliminate the experience of pain. The panpsychist identity theory however states that the identity goes both ways, it holds that pains are c-fibre stimulations and that the experience of pain is very much a part of the stimulation. In this way our minds are our brains, but the statement says less about minds than it does about brains because brains are ultimately composed of fundamentals, which are experiential themselves. The idea is that the micro-experience of the fundamentals formed into more and more elaborate unified consciousness of macro-experience, presumably through a process analogous and synchronous to the physical emergence of life and evolution by the means of natural selection.
An ‘Intrinsic Nature’ Argument for Panpsychism
If we can get over the shock of thinking about conscious quarks panpsychism offers an attractive metaphysics that accounts for both the physical and the experiential by maintaining the simplicity of smallism. Many however cannot get past the initial shock because, well, because it’s just so counterintuitive. From what we know of the fundamental level of the universe, from physics, nothing even remotely suggests that there could be consciousness there. But we actually don’t know all that much about the fundamental level of the universe. Think about the most advanced laboratory in the world, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where they study the fundamental level of the universe. They smash particles and observe the consequences. But they don’t actually see anything; instead they look at data readings and make inferences based on the numbers. This is just like Eddington said decades ago:
Our knowledge of the objects treated in physics consists solely of readings and pointers [on instrumental dials - like the LHC computers] […] what knowledge have we of the nature of the atoms [or quarks] that renders it all incongruous that they should constitute a thinking object?[22]
The answer is none; we have no knowledge in which to base the intuition against panpsychism. There is no reason to presume that the atoms and the quarks are exhausted by what physics tells us about them. This is the assumption physicalists make about the entire universe and it is quite unfounded. Panpsychism suggests that these properties science discovers through readings and pointers could be attached to a background of (micro) experience. And it makes sense to suggests this, given that our equivalent “readings and pointers” happen to be attached to a background of experience. Eddington says it best: “It seems rather silly to prefer to attach it to […] a ‘concrete’ nature inconsistent with thought (experience), and then to wonder where the thought comes from”[23]. Thus we have no reason to suppose that the universe is experiential at the fundamental level, and positing that they are can go a long way into solving the mind body problem.
This line of reasoning can be turned into an argument for panpsychism; its name is the intrinsic nature argument. Intrinsic nature could mean a lot of things, for this dissertation I take it to mean properties not discoverable by science. This is my version of the argument:
(i) Smallism is true. The universe is reducible to the properties of the fundamentals.
(ii) What physics tells us about the fundamental level of the universe does not necessarily exhaust what exists at the fundamental level of the universe. It tells us nothing about its intrinsic nature.
(iii) Our intrinsic nature is experience and it is unaccounted for.
(iv) If the intrinsic nature of the fundamental is experience, then we can reductively account for our experience (macro-experience) from fundamental experience (micro-experience).
(v) Given (i), if positing micro-experience reductively explains macro-experience, and no other form of reductive explanation can be given for macro-experience then we should posit micro-experience.
(vi) No other form of reductive explanation can be given for macro-experience.
(vii) Therefore we should posit micro-experience. (i.e. we should be Panpsychists)
This is a powerful argument for Panpsychism. Let’s take a closer look at the justification for each premise. The support for smallism (i) comes from Ockham as we saw above. (ii) Is an insight by Eddington. Physicalists would deny it, but there is no reason to do so. (iii) Means that that we have experience and it’s unaccounted for by science, no more no less. Its support has already been discusses above, appealing to Chalmer’s argument. (iv) Is an assumption that is challenged by Goff; we will soon look into his objection. (v) Is a consequence of smallism; if we accept that the nature of the universe is reduction then it follows that we should reductively explain everything. The reasons for believing (vi) we have already discussed above; physicalism cannot account for experience and non-reductive property dualism does not abide by smallism in the first place.
In his paper Experiences don’t Sum Goff claims that it is unintelligible to say that micro-experience as posited by panpsychism can give rise to macro-experience as we know it[24]. Thus he attacks premise (iv) of the argument. It is a crucial premise, panpsychism lives or dies by it. He follow William James as he wonders to how billions upon billions of individual micro-experiences can give rise to a unified macro-experience, both in the sense of individual macro-experiences, like the experience of pain you and I may feel, and in the sense of a unified consciousness. He starts by pointing out that in order to be so sure that experience is irreducible to the physical, which is what panpsychism claims, one must hold that there is full transparency in one’s experience. That is to say, we must be utterly aware of how our experience is if we can so certainly claim that it is irreducible in this fashion. But billions upon billions of micro-experiences compose our experience according to the theory, it therefore follows that what we should be so transparently aware of is not one single unified experience but a chaotic cumulous of fundamental experiences. The fact that we have a unified experience suggests that macro-experience is strongly emergent from micro-experience, and this is exactly what panpsychism wants to avoid, given its commitment to smallism.
While they are right in saying that experience must be transparent in order for us to grasp its nature and be sure that it cannot reduce to the functional explanations of science, it is not necessary for this transparency to be absolute. After all claiming that one knows everything about his experience is a self-defeating move, we all know about unconscious beliefs and desires. It is sufficient for experience to be partially transparent to us to understand its nature.
But this is not a fully satisfying answer; something has to be said on how many micro-experiences could give rise to macro-experiences. Goff follows William James in thinking that if you put a hundred experiences in a sack and you mix them up, you still have a hundred separate experiences. As a naturalistic panpsychist I would agree with this. This is just what happens when you get inert entities like rock and planets, they after all quite arbitrary objects. I would say that a rock, because it is composed of fundamentals, has in fact a myriad of unconnected micro-experiences, a rock is not that different from a lump of clay or plasticine that I can put together. As for macro-experience however, we know that it is a property of living organism that have evolved throughout billions of years, it seems likely that just has their physical properties evolved and emerged from the fundamental physical properties, so did the experiential properties. I think that we can make sense of two micro-experiences becoming one, especially when we that an analogous phenomena is constantly occurring in the physical realm. Think about atomic fusion, in stars hydrogen atoms fuse with one another forming helium atoms, micro-experiences could go through something similar, but instead of necessitating a hot furnace like a star they fuse through something like the electricity of the neurons. Furthermore we, living creatures, are composed of fundamentals. Our physical properties are fully determined by them, yet our bodies are unified wholes. So one may say to Goff and James, why should we suppose that when putting a bunch of atoms together we should get something that is more than just a bunch of atoms behaving independently? The answer is that there are laws of physics, chemistry and biology based from fundamental laws that show how it happens. Similarly we could have laws of experience. The problem however is that we may never come to know of them, because experience is naturally subjective and we can never study it beyond our own. If such laws exist, even if we can never come to understand them, it would mean that macro-experience is weakly emergent from micro-experience.
Here Goff could say that yes, physical matter does behave in a way that manages to built unified wholes, yet the atoms still retain some of their individuality, they are not obliterated in the process of giving rise to higher level entities. If we took a powerful enough microscope and look into a cell we could presumably see the atoms existing independently. He would claim that experience is not like that, in macro-experience the micro experience is fully replaced. There are two replies I can think of here. The first one consists in attributing more experiential power to the fundamentals. We could presumably map all our experiences in categories and subcategories. For example pain, we have mild pains, sharp pains, head pains, and pains of varying degrees for every inch of surface in our body, not to mention internal pain. This makes for a huge amount of potential pains that our brain is disposed to experience. If we attribute extended experiential power to the fundamentals we could hold that each of these single pains is ‘felt’ by an individual fundamental. This does not necessarily mean that fundamentals in the void of space are in constant states of pain or excitement. Positing that they have the potential to feel either of these when involved in a complex functional system like a nervous system is enough. This however is quite an unlikely scenario.
The second response is to press on with was said above. Goff and James are simply saying that how micro-experience leads to macro-experience is unintelligible to us. Making an analogy to the physical properties of the fundamentals helps us begin to imagine how it could work, but we can’t expect the analogy to give us a matching account of experiential laws. We have already established that the purpose of positing micro-experience is to have something at the fundamental level of a similar nature to our experience so we can reductively explain it. The fact that we cannot imagine how this would happen does not mean that it cannot happen. This reply may seem to be an admission of defeat, because a physicalist could tell us the exact same about reducing experience to non-experience. Yet it is not the case, with our experience we have a limited albeit transparent understanding that it is something radically different to the properties of the universe posited by science. Therefore it is sensible to say that experience must be accounted for by something else. This is not the case here; Goff points out an epistemological unintelligibility not an ontological one. The problem of reducing experience to physics is ontological; the problem of reducing experience to experience is epistemological.
Panpsychism can solve the mind body problem. But the solution may not be as satisfying as one would like. This is because of it is very speculative and radical in its claims. We can criticise the theory on these grounds, yet it can also be one of its benefits. More conservative theories struggle to account for experience appealing to the entities and properties we know about, so perhaps appealing to those we don’t know about is the right move. Panpsychism gives an account of experience that, paradoxically, both notices the limitations of science but offers a theory that is elegantly reductive. The panpsychist admires the explanation of the physical world given by the sciences, yet acknowledges that they won’t be able to do the same for consciousness; he therefore mirrors the reductive methods of science and applies it to experience. The conclusion is radical; the most fundamental entities of the universe are physical of course, but they are also experiential.
Conclusion
In this dissertation we have looked at the mind body problem, we have then considered what the standard reductive approach has to offer and concluded, with Chalmer’s help, that because it places so much faith in science it cannot account for experience, which resists functional explanation. From this we have looked at the concept of strong emergence, which is more, a statement of our ignorance rather than a solution to the mind-body problem. Then we have moved on to panpsychism, and attempt to reductively explain experience without the limitations of science but following its model. Although a counterintuitive theory, we have seen that there is actually no good reason to reject it. Panpsychism does offer a good solution to the mind-body problem.
- Chalmers D.J. Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness 1995 found at: http://consc.net/papers/facing.pdf
- Chalmers D.J. Strong and Weak Emergence in, 2006 found at: http://consc.net/papers/emergence.pdf
- Coleman S. Being Realistic in (Freeman A., ed) Consciousness and its Place in Nature: Does physicalism entail Panpsychism?, 2006
- Eddington A. The Nature of the Physical World. New York: Macmillan 1928
- Goff P. Experiences Don’t Sum in (Freeman A., ed) Consciousness and its Place in Nature: Does physicalism entail Panpsychism?, 2006
- Macpherson F. Property Dualism and the Merits of Solutions to the Mind-Body Problem in (Freeman A., ed) Consciousness and its Place in Nature: Does physicalism entail Panpsychism?, 2006
- Skrbina D. Realistic Panpsychism in (Freeman A., ed) Consciousness and its Place in Nature: Does physicalism entail Panpsychism?, 2006
- Strawson G. Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism in (Freeman A., ed) Consciousness and its Place in Nature: Does physicalism entail Panpsychism?, 2006
- Strawson G. Panpsychism? Reply to Commentators with a celebration of Descartes in (Freeman A., ed) Consciousness and its Place in Nature: Does physicalism entail Panpsychism?, 2006
[1] Macpherson, Property Dualism and the Merits of Solutions to the Mind body Problem (2006)
[2] Strawson, Panpsychism? (2006)
[3] Chalmers, Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995) p15
[4] Strawson, Realistic Monism (2006)
[5] I take the name Realistic Panpsychism from Skrbina, Realistic Panpsychism (2006)
[6] Strawson uses the term Naturalistic panpsychism in his article Panpsychism? (2006).
[7] Coleman, Being Realistic (2006) p40
[8] Chalmers, Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995) p5
[9] Chalmers, Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995) p5-6
[10] Strawson, Realistic Monism (2006) p20
[11] Chalmers, Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995) p5
[12] Chalmers, Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995) p13
[13] Chalmers, Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995) p13
[14] Chalmers, Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995) p14
[15] Chalmers, Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995) p14
[16] Chalmers, Strong and Weak Emergence (2006) p3-4
[17] Strawson, Realistic Monism (2006) p13
[18] Strawson, Realistic Monism (2006) p13
[19] Strawson has this view. Strawson, Panpsychism? (2006) p 267
[20] For some examples I will just assume that quarks are the fundamental building blocks of the universe.
[21] Both terms I take from Strawson, Realistic Monism (2006) p27
[22] Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1928) p258
[23] Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1928) p258 (parenthesis added by me)
