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The Mental As Fundamental
The Mental As Fundamental
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The Mental as Fundamental
New Perspectives on Panpsychism
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Michael Blamauer (Ed.)
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Table of Contents
Michael Blamauer
Introduction: The Mental as Fundamental 7
1. Godehard Brüntrup
Panpsychism and Structural Realism 15
2. Pierfrancesco Basile
The Last Man Standing Argument for panpsychism: A rejoinder 35
3. David Skrbina
The Man Still Stands: Reply to Basile 53
4. Ludwig Jaskolla
“Mind Matters...” – Towards a concept
of proto-mental causation 57
5. Riccardo Manzotti
The Spread Mind: Phenomenal Process-Oriented
Vehicle Externalism 79
6. Michael Blamauer
Taking the Hard Problem of Consciousness Seriously: Dualism,
Panpsychism and the Origin of the Combination Problem 99
7. David Skrbina
Mind Space: Toward a solution to the combination problem 117
8. Philip Goff
There is no combination problem 131
9. Freya Mathews
Panpsychism as Paradigm 141
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Introduction: The Mental as
Fundamental
Michael Blamauer (Vienna)
1
See e.g. the collections of Freeman 2006 and Skrbina 2009.
2
The initial idea for this collection goes back to a workshop that took place in
May 2010 at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Vienna.
more than a special form of the physical, dualists have argued for the
opposite view. They hold that reality is not exhaustively accounted
for through purely physical descriptions in that these cannot explain
the qualitative way we experience this reality: Experience (with all
its phenomenal features) is not entailed by the physical facts about
the experienced reality. Thus, dualists commonly hold that there are
two fundamental aspects of reality, the physical and the mental, by
rejecting the possibility of reduction of either one to the other. The
most striking argument3 provided by dualists for the ontological
independence of mental properties from physical properties is their
free variability over the physical, which means – very briefly – that a
change of mental properties does not entail a change of physical
properties and vice versa.4 Yet if phenomenal facts do not consist in
physical facts, then phenomenal facts must be considered
fundamental and materialism is false – or so they argue.
Now, what is meant by fundamentality? David Chalmers provides a
definition of fundamentality in The Conscious Mind: “Fundamental
features cannot be explained in terms of more basic features, and
fundamental laws cannot be explained in terms of more basic laws;
they must simply be taken as primitive” (Chalmers 1996, 126). This
definition at first suggests an epistemological reading of the concept
of fundamentality. However, questions concerning the relationship
of mind and body and the possibility of reduction are primarily
questions of ontological dependence. Moreover, within the scope of
this discussion between reductionists and non-reductionists, the
paradigmatic interpretation of a fundamental feature strongly relates
to the definition of fundamental physical features of elementary
particles thus far discovered by physics (e.g. mass, spin, and charge).
Yet these physical features are not merely epistemologically crude –
they have ontological relevance in the first place by virtue of being
constitutive in the make-up of other physical objects. Hence,
whereas the epistemological concept of fundamentality (as I
understand it) proceeds only from the impossibility of conceptual
reduction, the ontological concept of fundamentality additionally
postulates the ontological priority, and hence constitutional
relevance, of certain properties of our world. Thus, if the mental is to
3
An excellent synopsis of several arguments for the irreducibility of
consciousness can be found in Chalmers 1996.
4
For an outline, especially of Chalmers’s version of the argument, see
Brüntrup, in this volume.
5
See also my contribution to this book.
References
Chalmers, D. J. (1996): The Conscious Mind: In Search of a
Fundamental Theory, Oxford et al.
Freeman, A. (Ed.) (2006): Consciousness and ist Place in Nature.
Does Physicalism entail Panpsychism?, Exeter u. a.
Kind, A. (2006): “Panexperientialism, Cognition and the Nature of
Experience.” In: Psyche 12 (5): 1-15.
The Problem
Structural realism is a popular view among philosophers of science.
Definitely with the late David Lewis' paper on “Ramseyan Humility”
(Lewis 2009), if not earlier, it has become widely discussed among analytic
metaphysicians as well. It promises to avoid the pitfalls of both classical
scientific realism and scientific anti-realism by restricting realism to the
structural features of the world only. In the tradition of Whiteheadian
process philosophy, any form of structural realism, however, commits the
fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Structure alone will never suffice to
ground the existence of a concrete entity. Intrinsic properties that carry the
relational structure are needed. This line of argument lends support to a
kind of panpsychism if the grounding realizers of the structural and
relational properties are conceived to be intrinisic properties analogous to
the properties of the phenomenal mind. To the structural realist, it is by no
means obvious that he is committing a fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
On the contrary, the need for unobservable realizers of the mathematical
structures described by science is often flatly denied. If – by assumption –
all there is to matter is its relational or structural properties, then the
impetus to seek an intrinsic ‘background’ that underpins them obviously
evaporates completely. For the panpsychist in the tradition of process
philosophy, it is thus a pressing task to carefully and critically scrutinize
the prospects for structural realist metaphysics. Things are complicated by
the fact that there are many forms of structural realism. In what follows
some general features of the most important subdistinctions of structural
realism will be discussed.
Here, the truth of (3) requires that both P and Q have primary and
secondary intensions that coincide. In the case of Q, this seems
unproblematic. If something feels like pain, it is pain. If something feels
like consciousness, it is consciousness. In the case of P, however, the issue
becomes much more problematic. Physical properties are functionally
defined. We can say that the primary intension of “mass” picks out
whatever plays the mass role in a given world. We can also say that the
secondary intension of “mass” is tied to the property playing that role in
our world in such a way that in a world where something else plays the
mass role, this role filler is not mass. Premise (3) can be rejected on these
grounds. But what does that mean? In that case there would be possible
worlds that verify the structural description of our world in physical terms
without being an exact duplicate of our world. The physical structure of
those other worlds would be indistinguishable from our world, but the
intrinsic natures carrying those relations would be different. The most
interesting case would be worlds verifying P&~Q.
This leads to an interesting metaphysical picture: the structural properties
of physics in our world do not necessitate the Q-properties (phenomenal
properties); the Q-properties do not supervene logically on the structural
properties. However, the structural properties of physics together with
additional intrinsic properties necessitate the emergence of phenomenal
consciousness. This metaphysical picture has been eloquently expressed by
Astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington in his work “Space, Time, and
Gravitation”: “Physics is the knowledge of structural form, and not
knowledge of content. All through the physical world runs that unknown
content, which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness” (Eddington
1920, 200). Russell's “neutral monism” was based on similar intuitions:
“As regards the world in general, both physical and mental, everything we
know of its intrinsic character is derived from the mental side, and almost
everything we know of its causal laws is derived from the physical side”
(Russell 1927, 402). The structure of Chalmers' argument thus comes
finally down to this (Chalmers 2002):
Russell's intuition was that we lack information about the intrinsic nature
of the physical world, in virtue of which (plus the relevant laws) the
emergence of conscious mind can be explained. This is, of course, just a
conjecture, but it is certainly a possibility that knowledge of the intrinsic
properties of matter would help to overcome the puzzle of emergence. In
Russell's words: “The physical world is only known as regards certain
abstract features of its space-time structure – features which, because of
their abstractness, do not suffice to show whether the world is, or is not,
different in intrinsic character from the world of mind” (Russell 1948,
240). To use Whitehead's term, the modern notion of matter presents us
with “vacuous” entities whose intrinsic nature is unknown (Whitehead
1929, 29). Inspired by Humean arguments, Peter Unger has recently
presented a visually compelling picture of this problem. Let us define two
worlds in purely structural terms, not assuming any intrinsic qualitative
properties. The first world is a classical Newtonian world of particles
moving about in empty space according to the laws of physics. Call this the
“particulate world.” In the second world there is a continuous material
plenum (a continuous field of matter) in which there are little, perfectly
empty spaces, or absolute vacua, or simply “bubbles.” Call this the
“plenumate world.” Now let us assume that the two worlds stand in an
isomorphic relation in such a way that for each particle in the particulate
world there is a corresponding bubble in the plenumate world (in the same
location, governed by the same laws). It is Unger's contention that these
two worlds are functionally equivalent (Unger 2006, 21-31). A structural
description would be unable to capture the differences between these two
worlds. The structural realist might regard it as a theoretical advantage that
his/her account abstracts away from the underlying differences and
concentrates on the isomorphic structure only. But, as this simple example
makes quite clear, the intuition that the structural description misses
something of great importance is powerful.
An alternative metaphysics would thus have to assume more than just
structure. One way of spelling this out could be a dual aspect theory: The
relational properties account for the structural form, but the absolutely
intrinsic properties account for the ultimate realizers of the relational
structure. One might even think of some kind of “hylomorphism” of the
relational and the intrinsic; both aspects together constitute a concrete
entity. Thus the relational and the intrinsic aspects of reality have basic
ontological status, without one having clear priority over the other.
Alternatively, a neutral monism can also serve as the metaphysical
framework. In this case, the basic properties of the world are neither
physical nor phenomenal; rather, the phenomenal and the physical are
constructed out of them. “From their intrinsic natures in combination, the
phenomenal is constructed; and from their extrinsic relations, the physical
is constructed” (Chalmers 1996, 156). In any case, this ontology implies
that something mental or proto-mental is a fundamental feature of the
world.
Now, if the analysis sketched above is correct, then any form of structural
realism is misguided. It cannot be a complete realistic view of the world.
The panpsychist could stop right here and consider her case closed. But
this would seem to be rushing things. After all, there is no widely accepted
solution to the hard problem of consciousness. In not providing a
satisfactory solution to the hard problem of consciousness, structural
realism stands by no means alone. One can thus reasonably ask: Can the
panpsychist offer more than just this argument from the hard problem of
consciousness? Are there internal problems of structural realism that the
panpsychist might exploit to bolster her case? The panpsychist is thus well
advised to attempt a critical analysis of the different versions of structural
realism. For this purpose, I will distinguish epistemological from
ontological structural realism. Within ontological structural realism there is
the further sub-distinction of moderate and eliminative ontological
structural realism. (Cf. Ladyman 1998)
Newman's Argument
The classic critique of epistemological structural realism is “Newman's
Argument” (Newman 1928), which was initially directed against Russell.
Newman's Argument is best understood as a reductio aimed at
epistemological structural realism, showing that it ultimately collapses into
anti-realism.
Two claims by Russel are relevant here; he argued:
1. “ … it would seem that wherever we infer from perceptions it is only
structure that we can validly infer; and structure is what can be
expressed by mathematical logic “(Russell 1927, 254)
2. “The only legitimate attitude about the physical world seems to be
one of complete agnosticism as regards all but its mathematical
properties” (Russel 1927, 270)
Newman argues that the existence of a mathematical structure is trivially
true of a set of objects. He gives the following example (Newman, 1928,
139f.):
What does it mean to say that “two systems of relations have the same
structure”? Assume, set A is a random collection of people, and R the two-
termed relation of “being acquainted”. A map of A can be made by making
a dot on a piece of paper to represent each person and then those pairs of
dots which represent acquainted persons are joined by a line. Such a map is
itself a structured system. This new system B has the same structure as A.
The structure-generating relation, S, is in this case "joined by a line". The
important aspect of this example is that it is not at all necessary for the
objects composing A and B, nor the relations R and S, to be qualitatively
similar. “In fact to discuss the structure of the system A it is only necessary
to know the incidence of R; its intrinsic qualities are irrelevant. The
existence of a structure is trivially true of a set of objects.”
According to Newman, a statement describing a certain structure with
regard to a number of objects is a trivial statement. Why is the existence of
a structure trivially true of a set of objects? Because, for Newman, a
structure is purely formal and mathematical and furthermore it is
independent of the intrinsic qualities of the objects. If only the structure is
known, then besides what is logically deducible from the properties of the
structure, it is only the number of constituting objects that can be known.
But if all we know about the objects is their cardinality, if we do not know
any properties of the objects that ground certain relations and exclude
others, then – mathematically – any system of relations over these objects
is as good as any other; all of them are instantiated. Relations are simply
sets of ordered sequences of entities. Given the entities, all of those ordered
sequences will exist, as a matter of pure mathematics. There is only the
structural reality consisting of relations, and individual objects are points
defined by their place in the overall relational system. Another illustration
for this idea is mathematical graph theory. One could say that nature is like
a mathematical graph, in which relations obtain between point-like nodes
(Cf. Dipert 1997). There are no non-relational properties. Unless there is
something, as Newman says, “qualitative” (involving intrinsic properties)
about the relata that determines the nature of the relations, the relations, of
which the structure is supposed to be a formal abstraction, are in no way
determined. Without knowing what exactly is related, one does not know
what the nature of the relation is, except for its purely formal
characteristics.
The very idea of realism, describing nature as it exists independent of the
mind, is thus undermined. Epistemological structural realism is meant to
vindicate and not to revise the ontological commitments of scientific
realism. On this view the objective world is composed of unobservable
objects between which certain properties and relations obtain. But we can
only know the properties and relations of these properties and relations,
that is, the structure of the objective world. The problem gets even worse:
If Newman's argument is correct, we do not even know the objective
structure of the world in any realist sense of “objectivity”. Scientific
realism collapses into anti-realism. The same point can be made by
referring to Putnam's famous modeltheoretic argument (Putnam 1980). As
argued by Newman, given a number of objects, any relational structure
configuring them is already given. If we picture objects as mere nodes in a
relational graph with no intrinsic nature, then for each structure there are
many different relations between the objects that make the propositions
describing the structure true. What is the intended model of the structure?
Which one is the real relational structure of the mind-independent word?
There are too many ontological interpretations (models) of our theories.
Our scientific descriptions of the world are unable to single out the
intended model, i.e., the real world. Since science deals only with
mathematical structure, and not with real relations between objects (which
are determined by the qualitative intrinsic natures of the objects), we can
never know the one true story about the world in a metaphysical-realist
way. We have too many “truths.”
The panpsychist can thus argue that epistemological structural realism fails
in the attempt to provide a genuine alternative between classical scientific
how they move about in the chess game in relation to other pieces. A chess
game is a perfect example for a small structural world. Haugeland writes:
“No rook is a substance. ... Nothing about a rook is determinate, not even
its 'rookness,' apart from its participation in a chess game” (Haugeland
1993, 63). The situation is even more complicated. The formal definition of
a type in a chess game is circular. The nature of each type is completely
determined by the set of allowable moves it makes within the game as a
whole. The chess game as a whole, however, is defined by the
interdependent set of types that play functional roles in it. Each part of the
game presupposes the existence of the whole game, and the game
presupposes the existence of its parts. Why isn't this circularity of chess
categories vicious (Cf. Rosenberg 2004, 234)? How can chess games
actually and concretely exist? Rosenberg claims that there must be
something distinct from the formal structure that actually grounds the game
in concrete reality. In the case of a chess game we have physically distinct
objects that serve as stand-ins, or realizers, of the relevant types, thus
allowing for the existence of concrete tokens of those types. Of course,
there is much more to consider here, such as the concrete chessboard or the
physical position of the players in space. Without such “carriers” of the
formal structure, the game would remain too incomplete and abstract to
exist concretely. Rosenberg extends this thought to other, more complex,
conceptual systems such as those constructed by scientific theories which
are also merely abstract and circularly defined. Consider cellular automata
in computer science. Each cell is defined by its role in the entire system,
and the entire system is defined by the cells. Cellular automata may exist
as computational systems because there is something external to the formal
system that realizes or carries the computational system. The physical
states of the hardware are the carriers of the cellular automata. Biology, as
an abstract conceptual system, is carried by the mechanics of molecular
biochemistry, psychology by the dynamical properties of the neural system,
and economics by the needs and desires of individuals. The crucial
question is, however: What carries the most basic physical level? Physics
presents us a world of interdependently defined functional roles. Are there
any properties that can give this circularly defined conceptual system a
foothold in concrete reality? This is a puzzling question. Let us call it the
“ultimate carrier problem.” The ontological structural realist will have to
argue that there is in fact no carrier problem. However, Leibniz argued that
all extrinsic, relational properties have to be grounded in intrinsic
properties. Relations have to relate to something. This idea has strong
It is impossible that the ordinals should be, as Dedekind suggests, nothing but
the terms of such relations as constitute progressions. If they are to be anything
at all, they must be intrinsically something; they must differ from other entities
as points from instants, or colors from sounds... Dedekind does not show us
what it is that all progressions have in common, nor give any reason for
supposing it to be the ordinal numbers, except that all progressions obey the
same laws as ordinals do, which would prove equally that any assigned
progression is what all progressions have in common. … His demonstrations
nowhere – not even when he comes to cardinals – involve any property
distinguishing numbers from other progressions. (Russell 1903, 249)
mathematical structures.
We began this paper with a Chalmersian argument for the incompleteness
of physics: The functionally defined physical facts alone cannot account
for the emergence of qualitative phenomenal facts. This problem gets
aggravated if the physical facts are ultimately nothing but mathematical
facts. Some structural realists have clearly acknowledged this problem,
Dipert even hinted at panpsychism as a solution:
There might at first seem to be no place in these cold graphs for minds,
consciousness, and other mental phenomena – unless, that is, everything is
mental. Although within the dialectic of this essay it is wild and possibly
irresponsible speculation, we should perhaps consider seriously the possibility
that something like the pan-psychism of Spinoza, Leibniz, or Peirce is true, and
that vertices are pure feelings (Peircean 'firstnesses'), constituting a distinct
thought or object only when connected to other such entities. (Dipert 1997, 358)
Conclusion
We have come full circle. We started with the hard problem of
consciousness and returned to it at the end. As it turns out, the hard
problem of consciousness is the major stumbling block for any ontological
structural realism. The panpsychist claims to have a better answer to the
hard problem of consciousness because no miraculously strong emergence
is required. Epistemological structural realism is another matter, however.
Since it is silent on the intrinsic properties of matter, it is compatible with a
panpsychist metaphysics. Indeed, someone who endorses structural realism
for epistemological reasons only, can have “secret” panpsychistic
inclinations at a metaphysical level. As was shown, Kant is certainly a case
in point.
We have argued that moderate ontological structural realism provides no
conceptual means to account for the individuation of objects without
intrinsic properties. Also, if relations and objects are interdependent and
circularly defined, a grounding problem for the circular structures arises.
For those reasons, moderate ontological structural realism seems to be a
conceptually unstable theory.
Eliminative ontological structural realism is conceptually more coherent.
But it has problems of its own, the most important one being the collapse
of the distinction between the physical and the mathematical. The
Pythagorean metaphysics implied in this account is the source of a plethora
of metaphysical problems, not the least of them being the emergence of
consciousness.
Thus, the panpsychist can endorse epistemological structural realism as an
epistemological interpretation of the scientific endeavor. For the reasons
given above, the panpsychist will reject structuralist metaphysics in both
forms: moderate and eliminative.
References
Chalmers, D. (1996): The Conscious Mind. In Search of a Fundamental
Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chalmers, D. (2002): 'Consciousness and its Place in Nature' in: Chalmers,
D. (ed.), Philosophy of Mind, New York: Oxford University Press, 247-
272.
Chalmers, D. (2010): 'The Two-Dimensional Argument Against
Materialism' in: Chalmers, D. (ed.), The Character of Consciousness,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 141-191.
Dipert, R. (1997): 'The mathematical structure of the world: the world as
graph' in: Journal of Philosophy 94 (1997), 329-358.
Eddington, A.S. (1920): Space, Time and Gravitation, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Eddington, A. S. (1928): The nature of the physical world. New York:
MacMillan.
Esfeld, M. (2008): Naturphilosophie als Metaphysik der Natur. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp.
Haugeland, J. (1993): 'Pattern and Being' in: Dahlboom, B. (ed.), Dennett
and His Critics, Cambridge: Blackwell, 53-69.
Hume, D. (1739): A Treatise of Human Nature. New Edition. London:
1886.
James, W (1890): The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1, New York: Henry
Holt. Reprinted New York 1950: Dover Publications.
Ladyman, J. (1998): 'What is structural realism?' in: Studies in History and
Philosophy of Science, 29 (1998), 409-424.
Ladyman, J. (2009): 'Structural Realism”, in: Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structural-realism/).
Ladyman, J. and Ross, D. (2007): Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics
Naturalised, Oxford 2007: Oxford University Press.
1. Introduction
In Panpsychism in the West, David Skrbina mentions, approvingly, an
argument by process philosopher David Ray Griffin:
3. Mental unity
But does that mean that panpsychism is the most viable alternative?
Serious difficulties arise as soon as one asks how the mind/body relation
should be modelled. The panpsychist can opt either for an identity or for a
dualist theory of the mind-brain relationship. We will deal with the former
option in this section, while discussing the latter in the next. Before doing
this, however, another question needs to be addressed: how are the
substances (i.e. fundamental beings) that populate a panpsychist universe
to be conceived? Specifically, should they (1) be endowed with both
physical (i.e. non-experiential) and mental (i.e. experiential) features or
should they (2) be conceived as being purely mental (i.e. experiential)? (In
what follows, I will assume a pluralistic ontology, sidestepping the
question as to the viability of Spinozistic monism for the sake of
argumentative convenience; but Spinoza might have been right after all
and we could all be aspects of a single, unified Reality; as a matter of fact,
it is not even clear that pluralism and monism exhaust all possible options;
as John Leslie (2001) has argued, there could be a plurality of universes,
each of which of a Spinozistic type.)
Note that the question is not what is more expedient to hold, but what is
consistent with the panpsychist’s appeal to the Last Man Standing
Argument. Skrbina recognizes that Cartesian dualism rather than
materialism or panpsychism expresses the “common intuitive feeling.”
(Skrbina 2005, 13) Nevertheless, he rejects dualism on the conventional
ground that two radically different substances could not interact; and since
no dualist has yet been capable of explaining how this is possible, Skrbina
concludes that “interactionist dualism is... currently held more as a matter
of faith than of philosophical reasoning.” (Skrbina 2005, 13) At the same
time, Skrbina is not willing to endorse the idealist view that all there is to
the basic constituents of reality is experience. Hence, he stresses the point
that metaphysical idealism (or, as it is perhaps better called, “mentalism,”
since it is the view that all ultimate realities have a mind-like nature rather
than the view that they are all ideas) is not to be straightforwardly
identified with panpsychism; the latter is the genus of which the former is
the species. (Skrbina 2005, 10) But is the panpsychist in a position to reject
idealism? The first of the two options identified above, the conception of
the ultimately real as a psycho-physical unity, faces the same difficulty of
Cartesian dualism. This now reappears in a mutated form: how could a
single thing possess both a physical and a mental side? What would hold
these two heterogeneous aspects or properties within the unity of the thing?
If the aim is to achieve a view that could enable us to think of experience
as a wholly natural phenomenon, then it seems contra-productive to posit
duality in the ultimate constituents of nature. Hence, a consistent form of
panpsychism will have to reject a dual-aspect theory and settle for the
second option identified above, which is a form of metaphysical idealism.
This view stands in need of further clarification. One possibility is to hold
that the ultimate mental items are independent existing, individual
experiences of the like of Hume’s substantial impressions or Clifford’s bits
of “mind-dust.” Nagel envisions a theory of this kind when he speculates
that “the components out of which a point of view is constructed would not
themselves have to have points of view.” (Nagel 1979, 194) As it has been
argued by William James and more recently by Galen Strawson, however,
it is unintelligible that an experience could exist independently of a self.
In other words, when we begin to scrutinize our experience and discern the
taste of lemon from the taste of sugar, we have not provided an analysis of
our mental state; rather, when we perceive the two flavours as distinct we
have moved into a novel mental state. A person’s total mental state at any
one moment (his momentary self) is the concrete reality; the isolated,
independent perception one encounters in philosophical books is a fiction.
Strawson’s route to the conclusion that experience is impossible without
subjectivity is more straightforward. In his lights, it is a conceptual truth
that an experience entails a corresponding experiencing subject and cannot
therefore exist without a feeler of some sort or another: “An experience is
impossible without an experiencer. Many... have made this point, and
many have taken it to be too obvious to mention... there can’t be
experience without a subject of experience, because (this is the whole
argument) experience is necessarily experience-for: it is necessarily
experience for someone or something.” (Strawson 2009, 271) Taking these
points by James and Strawson together, we obtain a “logico-
phenomenological” argument that is difficult to resist. If so, the conclusion
to be drawn is that all the basic constituents of reality must possess the
status of subjects. This means that the most viable form of panpsychism is
a form of Leibnizian monadism. (Another question I sidestep in what
follows concerns the ontology of the self; the contention that selves are
4. Leibnizian interactionism
If one rejects the identity theory, then the alternative model is a (non-
cartesian) dualist theory in which the mind and the brain are numerically
distinct, yet both intrinsically experiential. This is to revive Leibniz’s idea
of a dominant monad. In a forgotten but once very influential book entitled
Microcosmus, Hermann Lotze rejects the identity theory on the ground that
it leads to the composition problem. This he regards as posing a problem as
serious as that of explaining the emergence of mind out of insentient
matter:
The image which we have now to form of the living form and its mental life is
that of an association of many beings. The governing soul, placed at a favoured
point of the organism, collects the numberless impressions conveyed to it by a
host of comrades essentially similar but lower in rank from the inferior
significance of their nature. (Lotze 1885, 367)
indeed, how many of us truly think that our rulers are better than
ourselves? (Tarde 1893/2009, 61)
The naiveté of this doctrine is compensated by its advantages. First, on this
doctrine the composition problem does not arise; secondly, one great
obstacle to understanding mind-body interaction, the heterogeneity of the
interacting substances, is removed; lastly, because it assumes a numerical
distinction between the mind and the body, the theory does justice to our
intuitive feeling that we are not our body yet we are somehow blended
with it. This is the feeling so well expressed by Descartes in his Sixth
Meditation: “Nature also teaches me, by these sensations of pain, hunger,
thirst and so on, that I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is
present in a ship, but that I am very closely joined and, as it were,
intermingled with it, so that I and the body form a unit.” (Descartes
1641/1986, 56) The theory of the dominant monad as distinct from the
monads in the body yet collecting their experiences does full justice to this
feeling that “I and the body form a unit,” since the life of the mind is now
literally nourished by the neuronal experiences that flow into it. However,
the theory reopens the Leibnizian problem of monadic interaction. How
does the dominant monad “collect” the “numberless impressions conveyed
to it” by his comrades? It doesn’t seem obvious that panpsychist
mind/mind interaction is any bit more intelligible than Cartesian
mind/body interaction.
Do we have any understanding of how two selves could causally interact?
One philosopher who has tried to answer this question is Alfred North
Whitehead. There are good reasons for focusing on his philosophy, for his
is probably the most articulated version of panpsychism ever produced.
Whitehead’s metaphysics is a relational monadology, one in which the
basic constituents of reality are endowed with a capacity for causally
affecting one another. Whitehead breaks with the classical tradition in
philosophy and conceives of his physical ultimates as momentary
occasions of experience (actual occasions) instead of as permanent,
enduring substances. Such units are organized into series. Within each
series, each occasion inherits (prehends) some of the ingredients of
previous occasions. Through their prehensive activity, occasions come to
be linked in such a way as to form diachronically unified streams of
experience. Such streams interact in several ways and form complexes
(societies) of different kinds. The large variety of natural beings that exist
at different levels of reality—i.e. such things as electrons, molecules, cells,
crystals, plants, human beings—are all explained in terms of the way
past experience is retained, what changes is not the experience itself but
that experience’s experiential mode. And this involves a distinction
between the experience per se (the item transferred from one occasion to
the next) and its ways of appearing (the experience immediately enjoyed as
against the experience as a vanishing echo from the past). Is this notion of
an experience remaining (numerically) self-identical while changing its
experiential mode an intelligible one? This is doubtful. As James points out
in a number of places, the being of an experience is wholly exhausted by
its appearance (see for example James 1909, 198-199). This seems entirely
correct: taken naively, in his primary, pre-philosophical meaning, a word
such as “pain” surely refers to our felt experience, and not to any
modification in our bodies, which we would rather view as the cause or
source of the pain. But if this notion of experience as being nothing over
and above its immediate felt quality is correct, then the experience
immediately enjoyed and the experience retained must be numerically
different; surely, the retained experiences come with a different qualitative
feel than those which are enjoyed for the very first time.
These strike me as powerful objections against Whitehead’s account of
monadic interaction. What about the ultimate experiential nature of his
monads, the actual occasion? What other features do they have, other than
an ability to relate to past moments of mentality? A Whiteheadian
philosopher such as Griffin acknowledges that it would be a mistake to
posit in all occasions the complexity we find in a human mind. As a matter
of fact, one reason why Griffin terms his position “panexperientialism”
instead of “panpsychism” (or “psychicalism,” as Hartshorne has it) is
precisely that the term “psyche” inevitably suggests “a higher form of
experience than would be appropriate for the most elementary units of
nature.” (Griffin 1997, 78) This is reasonable, but problematic. Like most
panpsychists, Griffin emphasizes that the only “aspect of the world we
know from within, by identity” is our own conscious experience (1997,
90). If this is so, then the question is, once again, how to decide which
features of our conscious experience can be generalized to all occasions in
nature. In Whitehead’s theory, each actual occasion is endowed with a
“physical pole,” i.e. a capacity for grasping aspects of other actualities, as
well as with a “mental pole,” i.e. with a capacity for grasping universal
forms or abstract concepts. But the ascription to all actual occasions of a
mental pole seems at odd with the requirement that experiences occurring
at the lower levels of reality—“micro-experiences” if one wants—be
significantly different from the experiences of human beings. Once they
5. Conclusion
In section 3 I have reformulated the standard objection based upon the
composition problem, so as to strengthen the point that panpsychism has its
own version of the problem of emergence. In section 4, I have examined
what has a fair claim to be regarded as the more articulated version of
panpsychism ever produced, i.e. Whitehead’s panpexperientialism, and
explained my scepticism concerning the capacity of that philosophy to
account for mind-body interactions. Thus, it might seem at this point that
panpsychism is not in any better shape than materialist physicalism. The
following question could therefore be raised: on a monistic view of reality
as being made up of a single kind of ultimate stuff, the only alternatives are
materialist physicalism-cum-brute emergence and panpsychism; but since
both face serious difficulties, why not retreat to old fashioned Cartesian
dualism? After all, even a committed pansychist such as Skrbina admits
that this is the view that better captures our ordinary, pre-philosophical
grasp of the mind-body relation. One of the few contemporary dualists,
Geoffrey Madell, has recently argued that dualism rather than panpsychism
should be regarded as the Last Man Standing:
...I am often tempted to echo Churchill, when he claimed that democracy is the
worst imaginable form of government apart from all the others, and say the
same of substance dualism. Reflecting on it, I am sometimes inclined to think
that it, like democracy, is the worst possible solution to a problem, in this case
the mind-body problem, but reflection on other suggested solutions to this
problem, including that of panpsychism, leads me to think that the problems
with it may after all be less daunting than those which bedevil all other
positions. (Madell 2007, 51)
emergence. How could substance dualism be reconciled with the view that
human mentality is an evolutionary product? Apparently, the dualist must
here choose either the irrationality that comes with the notion of brute
emergence or postulate some kind of divine intervention. Here is Madell’s
solution:
Madell does not elaborate on this issue, so it is unclear what his solution
eventually amounts to. But the general idea is clear enough: the emergence
of mind in the course of evolution would not appear irrational if we could
come to see it as part of a larger teleological, purposive scheme. This
response exploits the fact already noticed in section 2 that the irrationality
of the notion of brute emergence stems from a violation of the principle of
sufficient reason, and not of the principle of non-contradiction. From a
purely dialectical standpoint, Madell’s response is therefore wholly
adequate. Nonetheless, this solution is not very attractive: do we have any
independent reason for believing in such “deep necessity or purpose” apart
from our incapacity to understand how the sentient could be generated
from the non-sentient? If not, then such an attempt to rationalize
emergence might begin to look like trying to distil knowledge out of
ignorance.
Trying to develop Madell’s suggestion would lead us once again well
beyond the relatively safe precincts of professionalized philosophy of mind
into the more adventurous regions of general speculative metaphysics.
However, these reflections also lead us back to the question with which
this paper began. Is panpsychism the Last Man Standing? As it has been
argued, the doctrine needs to overcome some significant hurdles before
this claim can be vindicated, and we are yet far from seeing how that could
actually be done. Hence, and although I do think that panpsychism
deserves a fair hearing, I am led to conclude that its advocates cannot
afford to take slightly Nagel’s remark that “panpsychism should be added
to the current list of mutually incompatible and hopelessly unacceptable
References
Basile, P. (2011): Materialism vs. Panexperientialist Physicalism: Where
Do We Stand?, in: Process Studies, forthcoming.
Basile, P. (2010): It Must Be True – But How Can It Be? Some Remarks
on Panpsychism and Mental Composition, in: Basile, P./ Kiverstein,
J./Phemister, P. (eds.), The Metaphysics of Consciousness, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 92-113.
Basile, P. (2009a): Leibniz, Whitehead and the Metaphysics of Causation,
Basingstoke-New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Basile, P. (2009b): Back to Whitehead? Galen Strawson and the
Rediscovery of Panpsychism, in: Skrbina, D. (ed.), Mind that Abides,
Amsterdam: Benjamins Publishing, 179-199.
Basile, P. (2003): Self and World. The Radical Empiricism of Hume,
Bradley and James, in: Bradley Studies 9.2, 93-100.
Chalmers, D. (1996): The Conscious Mind. Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press.
Descartes, R. (1841/1986): Meditations on First Philosophy, translated by
J. Cottingham, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ewing, A. C. (1934): Idealism: A Critical Survey, London: Methuen & Co.
Goff, P. (2009b): Can the Panpsychist get Around the Combination
Problem?, in: Skrbina, D. (ed.), Mind that Abides, Amsterdam: Benjamins
Publishing, 129-36.
Griffin, D. R. (1997): Unsnarling the World Knot: Consciousness,
Freedom and the Mind-Body Problem, Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Hosinsky, T. E. (1993): Stubborn Fact and Creative Advance: an
Introduction to the Metaphysics of A. N. Whitehead, New York: Rowman
& Littlefield.
James, W. (1890/1950): The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, New York:
Dover.
1
I wish to thank Michael Blamauer for the invitation to attend the Vienna workshop
on panpsychism. I am indebted to David Skrbina, Riccardo Manzotti and all other
participants for helpful comments and discussions. In this paper, I have made
occasional use of ideas already presented in Basile 2009a, 2009b, 2010 and 2011.
In his third section Basile comes down hard on the dual-aspect variant of
monism, arguing that even here a kind interaction problem reigns, one
hardly better than the Cartesian case. But the problem is not so severe
with dual-aspectism precisely because it is a form of monism. The
interaction problem is at its ugliest with substances; aspects, or
dimensions, or perspectives on a unitary reality simply do not interact in
the way that substances must. And I would further argue that it is more
intuitive that we have dual aspects within ourselves than that we have
dual substances. The substances are one possible interpretation of our
firsthand experience of the aspects—but only one, and a very
problematic one at that. I continue to believe that dual-aspect monism is
a most promising way forward.
Two final points bear mention: Near the end of section three, Basile
states that “no panpsychist has yet been capable of providing an
explanation of how human mentality is generated from the several
mentalities in the neurons”—in other words, no one has yet solved the
combination problem. True enough. This is an important area of
research for all those who wish to defend panpsychism. I myself have
put forth some tentative ideas along this line, in my chapter “Minds,
objects, and relations”, in Mind That Abides. I think that a ‘dynamic
systems’ approach is very promising, and that we should view the lesser
minds in our bodies as operating in a sub-space of the larger mental
space that corresponds with our bodies. Theoretical physics works very
well with such a concept: parts of objects change dynamically in a ‘state
space’ that is a portion of, but of lesser dimension, than the state space of
the whole object. In a similar way, the ‘mind space’ of our atoms, cells,
or organs can coexist quite nicely within the larger mental space of our
brain or (better still) entire body. But this is just the beginnings of a
possible solution.
Finally, Basile concludes that panpsychism’s standing is scarcely better
than even Cartesian dualism. Citing both our pre-philosophical intuition
and a recent statement by Madell, he suggests that it is not unreasonable
to argue that dualism, not panpsychism, is the LMS. Of the notorious
interaction problem, Basile and Madell opine that substance interaction
is, like brute emergence, not theoretically impossible. But of course the
Cartesian form of dualism has both problems: interaction, and
emergence in humans alone. It has both the substance dualism and a
kind of phylogenic dualism between humans and all other beings. (It is
a kind of ‘double dualism,’ as I tell my students.) But there is an
obvious, if partial, solution here: eliminate the emergence, and allow all
beings a dual substance of mind and matter—in other words, a
panpsychist dualism. Now there’s an interesting position! I think that
could make for some very interesting speculation.
So is panpsychism ‘terminally unacceptable,’ to take Basile’s
pessimistic inference? I think not, if only because of its meta-theoretic
status. Panpsychism is simply a universal application of a given theory
of mind. The argument for universalism is quite strong, given the grave
weaknesses in mental emergence. Apart from this, any ‘panpsychist’
theory of mind is only as strong or as weak as the underlying theory
itself, whether monist or dualist, idealist or materialist, and so on.
Critics of panpsychism: bear this in mind!
that the set of entities described by physics (or the world of physics) is a
subset of the physical world as defined above. Wether the world of physics
is a proper subset of the physical world is left open at this point.
(e) I want to mention at least two philosophers that have influenced my
account of the physical world: David Hume argues in his Treatise on
Human Nature that our theories about the nature of the world are
essentially dependent upon the structure of experience. He mentions that to
first approximation different experiences are on par – this would imply that
there is no reason to consider the existence of bodies as better substantiated
than the existence of the mind (cf. Hume Treatise, 5). A similar account has
been put forth by Bertrand Russell in his Our Knowledge of the External
World. Russell considers experiences to be the ontologically most basic
entities, and argues that external to the framework of experiences no
substantiated knowledge about the world can be stated. Both approaches
are structurally extremely similar to the account given above in 1.2.
Negating thesis [3] does not seem to be a very promising road to go, if one
wants to ensure the causal relevance of the mental. This means that thesis
[2] and [1] or [1*] remain. In the following considerations, I am going to
Negating [1]: The second, classical way of trying to secure the causal
relevance of the mental, is to insist that the physical world is not causally
another physical event – the changed trajectory of another – via some kind
of efficient causation.
Now, I argued that this approach leads either to causal epiphenomenalism
or to causal elimination. And again this fact is intimately tied the the
principle PEC (sketched above): If one complete causal explanation of a
certain kind (like in physics) is at hand, then providing another causal
explanation of the same kind seems to
be senseless. To me two different approaches to this problem seem to be
promising: On the one hand, you could just accept that the causal
significance of the mental is to be reduced to the physical. On the other
hand, you could try to find a 'natural place' for the mental within the causal
framework of the world that is not conflicting with the causal talk of the
physical. I am going to opt for the second approach – putting forth the
following inquiry of philosophical theory formation:
During the last years, philosophers as well as physicists have opted for
similar interpretations. Mentioning only two eminent examples: Henry
Stapp in his 2009 'Quantum Interactive Dualism' as well as Gregg
Rosenberg in his 2004 'A Place for Consciousness' chapter 9.3. I want to
carry on this train of thought:
One can easily see that there is a conceptual conflict between proposition 1
and 5. I argue that the claim for causal closure of the physical is indeed
stronger than what can be deduced from theoretical physics, because I
showed earlier that our most basic physical theories do not necessarily
entail strict causal laws. I want to defend the thesis that there is good
reason to believe one is not only able to negate [1*], but that [1*] does not
even follow from physics.
Let's take a look at this analysis from a different angle: Are these results
surprising for physicist? I don't think so. Most physicists are well aware
that the set of differential equations they employ to describe the world is
nothing more than a functional representation – yet a very precise one –
describing the physical world incompletely. And this is also precisely the
way, I understand the second intuitive definition from chapter 1: The
domain of the non-supernatural experiences is greater than the domain that
is completely described by physics.
I need to mention one important aspect of this thesis: Contrary to other for
example interactionistic dualism, my approach does not imply that the
'other forms' of causality are not physical in the sense that they are not part
of the natural world. My thesis postulates merely (i) that the complete
causal framework of the world is not entirely described by physics and (ii)
that other causal contributions do not conflict with the causal story told by
physics. Within this context, I consider my approach to be naturalism at its
best. In the course of the following considerations, I am going to present a
first positive characterization:
If you were to analyze this decision, probably the first thing you would
remark is that this decision is already a decision within a very specific
context: Now, this very decision provides a formal limitation of its
environment – ideally causing that the person will get coffee with her pie.
Besides this rather vague substantial criterion, some essential
characteristics of mental causation are: (1) Mental causation is always
localized exactly in spatio-temporal terms. This means that cause and
effect can be modeled (structurally) by some tensor consisting of three
spatial coordinates and one temporal coordinate. (2) Mental causation sets
formal limitations – cause and effect are (strictly speaking) synchronous.
This kind of synchronous 'top-down-causation' is the most important line
of demarcation between physical and mental causation.
Within the following considerations, I am going to provide a systematic
sketch of one positive of proto-mental causation.
Rephrasing Thomas Nagel, one could argue that intrinsic natures of events
are essentially 'views from somewhere'. Described in structural terms, this
intrinsic nature is best understood as a quale. These qualia are individual –
entailing that they are not multiple realizable. Nevertheless, I take qualia to
be able to stand in various similarity-relations to other qualia: For example,
the qualia of two different electrons Qe,1 and Qe,2 are much more similar to
each other than to the quale of a proton Qp – this observation about greater
or smaller similarity rests upon the fact that electrons (compared to
protons) behave very similar in physical terms. To give a full review of
definition 4.1, we need to clarify two subsequent concepts.
Proto-Representation: The theory of perspectives as qualia told us
something about the exterior characteristics of the mental-experiential –
nevertheless, I need to give an account of the interior substantial structure
of the mental-experiential in order to make my account of
panexperientialism intelligible. (1) One of the central (inner)
characteristics of a protoperspective is that it represents its environment.
Implying that it is essential for a perspective to have some (maybe crude)
idea of the circumstances it is situated in. These circumstances can be
specified via two features: (1-a) The past of the state (complete or partial)
is present within the state in terms of fixed, causal relations the state bears
to its predecessors as well as the past environment of the predecessor-
states. (1-b) Giving an account of the representation of the state's future is
more complicate: We need to discern certain equivalence-relation. For the
present, I am referring to the theory of abstraction by Bob Hale and Crispin
Wright (an extensive summary can be found in Hale/Wright 2009). They
argue that we are able to pick out and define abstract entities by providing
equivalence-relations – for example Hume's famous definition:
On the one hand, these results are not exceedingly surprising, because if
you consider the mental as a fundamental aspect of every state of reality, it
makes sense to consider these aspects to be causally relevant. But on the
other hand, there are some rather severe misconceptions luring in the
background of 4.2:
Query (1) – Isn't it weird that protomental causation does not make
any difference in the causal framework of physics? No, on the
contrary within he context of a panexperiential ontology this is
among the results you would expect. Among my central points was
that the protomental is similar to the human mental, nevertheless I
argued that it is much simpler in structural terms. One would expect
that a protomental event has only a very limited scope of action in
terms of its rather simple proto-representation and proto-
intentionality – furthermore, this scope of action is so exceedingly
small that it diminishes in the differential equations of physics.
Query (2) – Why is there no 'mentality operator' within the
differential equations to render the laws of physics a complete
description of the world? Well, this is a hard question that is
intimately tied to the concept of a law of nature. In my opinion, laws
of nature are theoretical generalizations mapping our best
systematizations of the empirical facts (basically, this is very similar
to David Lewis' proposal from 1994). Nevertheless, I am going to
extend Lewis' thesis by advancing Nancy Cartwright's claim that
even at the very basis of physics there are no laws of nature in terms
of universally valid links (cf. Cartwright 1983). At the end of day, I
am going to opt for the following, substantial thesis: Structural
features that are interpreted as laws of nature within the context of
physics, are nothing more than the abstracted protomental-behaviour
patterns of micro-events behaving extremely predicable due to lack
of complexity.
This definition contains two assumptions: Firstly, it is implied that E's past
(i.e. Et-1 … Et-n) remains existent in some substantial way, because they
need to contribute to specific way the event E experiences its environment.
Loosely, I am going to address this assumption as some kind of past-
eternalism. Nevertheless, I want to point out that past-eternalism does not
imply that the past events are equally existent compared to the actual now.
Furthermore, I think that there is no reason to believe past-eternalism
entails either an a-theory or a b-theory of time. Via the means that have
been sketched above, the micro-event generates qualitative representations
as well as the representation of a future. This representation of the future
seems to imply that the future is itself is taken to be non-existent, otherwise
E would be able to just perceive its future directly. This is why, I am
calling this position future-presentism.
To illustrate my approach, I am going to make use of rather
anthropomorphic examples in the following considerations. Nevertheless, I
take it as a matter of fact that some non-anthropomorphic reformulation
within the framework of proto-concepts is possible. This is why, I am
arguing that these examples should be understood in purely illustrative
terms:
The central feature of this process consists in the insight that we need to
discard the concept of a purely formal description of the protomental
aspect of causation: A purely formal constraint is not able to bring about
anything – the constraints need activity. With this in mind, I am going to
discard the concept of a complete internal description of protomental
causation. The initial- and the successor-event are bound together in such a
way that the initial-event is the first event of the past of the successor-
event. The hierarchy establishes the overall structure of the successor-
event, nevertheless the development of the events in Et's environment
could alter the realization of the hierarchy. And this is why, I am going
leave open wether a complete realization is achieved or only a partial one.
Within the framework of these three (or rather four) processes, one is able
to describe protomental causation in following way:
References
Aristoteles: De Generatione Animalium, translated into English by Arthur
Platt unter the editorship of J.A. Smith and W.D. Ross, Oxford: 1949.
Brüntrup, G. (1994): Mentale Verursachung – eine Theorie aus der
Perspektive des semantischen Anti-Realismus, Stuttgart.
Brüntrup, G. (1995): Mentale Verursachung und metaphysischer Realismus.
in: Theologie und Philosophie (70), p.203-223.
Brüntrup, G. (2008): Das Leib-Seele-Problem – eine Einführung, Stuttgart.
neurons. In turn the action potential travels down an axon headed toward
the junction between this neuron and another called a synapse. The
presynaptic ending contains synaptic vesicles that contain transmitter
chemicals. When an action potential reaches the presynaptic ending it
causes some of these vesicles to bond to the presynaptic membrane and to
spew its transmitter chemical into the synaptic cleft. It migrates across the
cleft and is received by the postsynaptic receptors. In this way, synapsis
after synapsis, cell after cell, axon after axon, the sunlight triggered a chain
of neural activities whose result is, among other things, the subject having
an experience of a red apple. This is very well known. What it is usually
forgotten is that we have a physical chain of events and that we keep
considering only the last part. The situation can be represented as follow
E1 → E2 → E3 → …→ EN-1 → EN
When the process is complete, the subject reports a phenomenal experience
of red. Now, what is the relevant part of the chain of events as to the
occurrence of phenomenal experience? We can be a little more precise and
assign to each step a more or less defined role - something like the
following
Esurface → Ephotons → Elens → Ereceptors → Erodopsin → EopticalNerve → Egeniculate →
→ EV1 → EV2-N → Einferotemporal
Of course this is still a simplification of the actual complexity involved in
such a process (many steps were omitted). And yet, for the sake of the
argument, we can further simplify it as follows (Pextended)
Eexternal word → Ereceptors → Enerves → Eearly cortical areas → Efinal cortical areas
Of course leaving to the reader to define precisely what are the final and
early cortical areas. An interesting fact is that, although it is possible that
such chain, especially in the final steps, is made of feed-forward as well as
feedback connections between neurons, from a temporal point of view is
nevertheless a feed-forward chain. Regard the complete perceptual chain of
events, neuroscientists usually focus their attention on the final part of it
(Pinner).
Enerves → Eearly cortical areas → Efinal cortical areas
They tried to find some good reasons to justify the appearance of
phenomenal experience of this physical chain of events. Famously and
mistakenly, during XIX century, Johannes Muller tried to assign
phenomenal quality to undetermined specific energies located in the
afferent peripheral nerves (Muller 1840). The failure to find anything in
peripheral nerves led scientists to consider only the inner portion of the
chain:
Eearly cortical areas → Efinal cortical areas
Afterwards, other authors tried to locate consciousness in the early cortical
areas. Recently many authors discredited this idea. For instance, V1 is now
believed to not contribute directly to conscious experience (Crick and
Koch 1995). The ablation of many early areas does not always lead to the
disappearance of the corresponding mental content. As a result, many
authors are now trying to identify an even smaller and inner portion of the
original chain (Zeki and Bartels 1999; Kreiman, Koch et al. 2000; Zeki
2001; Rees, Kreiman et al. 2002; Koch 2004). They focus on Pcortical
Efinal cortical areas
However this choice, which I have to stress once again it is based the
undemonstrated assumption that consciousness has to be produced inside
the nervous system – is plagued by the above mentioned faults. Apart from
the fact that the properties of anything located in Efinal cortical areas are
completely different from our conscious experience – a fact that I will
consider at greater length below – there is one more dilemma to be solved.
If our experience of the red comes out of a certain neural activity by itself,
we are faced with two options: either certain neural patterns are by their
very nature phenomenal (and there is no evidence for this so far) or certain
neural patterns becomes phenomenal due to their relation with something
else. The second option blatantly contradicts the assumed sufficiency of
neural activity. Let me spend some more words on this last issue. Let us
suppose that I want to defend a position like the following. A neural
pattern N, by itself, is not phenomenal. Yet when it has some relation R
with something else, it is phenomenal. Now, the relation could be anything
you like. For instance, it could be the fact that N takes place inside a
human skull, or it could be the fact that N was caused by an external red
apple, or it could be the fact that N is the result of
filogenesis/ontogenesis/epigenesis. These are very interesting facts about
N, but facts that do not change what N is, when N takes place. So if N is
the same in all these situations, it cannot have different properties (at least
physical properties). Thus, either N is different or N is the same and then it
cannot be the fact that N has some relation that assign to N different
physical properties. To claim that N becomes different leads to absurdity
since by definition it hasn’t changed by being in some kind of external
relation.
In sum, neither we can say that neural activity is identical with phenomenal
experience since nor we can say that a certain neural activity is
phenomenal depending on its past history. It would violate a simple
physical principle according to which two physically identical systems
must have the same physical properties.
almost no one ventured to consider the possibility that the mind could be
physically larger than the body, especially as to phenomenal experience.
It seems that it is very hard to question the widespread consensus as to
whether the core physical substratum of the conscious mind is internal to
the body. For instance, Jaegwon Kim proclaims that “if you are a
physicalist of any stripe, as most of us are, you would likely believe in the
local supervenience of qualia” (Kim 1995, p. 159), that is the mind must
somehow depend on what take place inside the body. He must believe that
the notion is so self evident that does not need any explicit explanation.
Yet, a physicalist could appeal to physical phenomena external to the body
and thus be a physicalist and not accept the local supervenience of qualia.
Yet, there have been many counterexamples to this kind of premise in
other areas.
For instance, take flight. Is flight only a biological phenomenon since birds
and insects perform it? Yes and no. Of course, the biological machinery –
made of wings, feathers and membrane – is necessary in order to take
advantage of the atmosphere. Yet animals would not fly if there the
atmosphere were not dense enough. It would not make sense to deny that
flight is not physical because it extends in time and space beyond the
confines of the muscles and the wings of the flying animal. Yet, no one
would deny that muscles and feathers are very useful, either. Yet, muscles
and feathers are neither necessary nor sufficient. For one, a helicopter flies
without any feather or muscles. Flight is a physical phenomenon that
extends beyond the boundaries of pure biological machinery Isn’t
consciousness akin to flight in this respect?
Here I would like to contradict explicitly the apparently widespread
conviction that if consciousness is a real physical phenomenon, it has to
reside inside the nervous system. This is a non sequitur both from a logical
and an empirical perspective. First, because it could be a physical system
not constrained into such confines. Secondly, because all the empirical
evidence does not show that the brain is sufficient, but rather that the brain
is necessary. Therefore, I suggest considering seriously whether there are
any scientific and empirical reasons to reject phenomenal externalism.
This hypothesis has several consequences in the way in which we conceive
and single out the physical boundary of the subject. Usually we take the
subject to be made of a body and, possibly, by a mind. The mind has been
forcefully located either in the brain or inside the body by many recent
authors. In the lack of any empirical confirmation, we consider here the
possibility that the mind is actually physically larger than the body.
Thus, at every instant, for a given subject, we should consider two physical
bundles. The first bundle is roughly defined by the skin (although such
boundaries are much fuzzier than it could seem at first sight). To avoid any
ambiguity, we could call this bundle the traditional body.
At each instant there is another set of physical processes. This set is
identical with the subject consciousness. These processes, not differently
from any other physical process and not differently from the more
orthodox neural processes, are extended in time and space. Therefore, they
began earlier than the instant in which we consider the subject traditional
body. How much time before? There is no common span. They have
different temporal duration depending on their causal structure. All
together they form a bundle of processes, larger than the traditional body,
that we could call the extended body. According to the position presented
in this paper, the extended body is identical with the subject consciousness.
It comprehends all those events – either near or far, either in time or in
space – constituting the phenomenal experience of the subject.
In short, although with respect to the traditional view (according to which
the mind, whatever it is, has to be carried along comfortably inside the
head), the position presented here is classifiable as a kind of externalism,
from a more liberal perspective, it is a better form of internalism. In fact,
both the structure and the content of the experience remain inside the
extended body. However, here, the boundaries of the subject are extended
beyond those of the body, thereby permitting to the perceived world to be
internal to the mind, without requiring an incorporeal mind.
argument, if there is any, is more or less the following. While Pcortical takes
place among cortical neurons, there is a discontinuity once you step out of
the brain. Alternatively, a neuroscientist could accept all kind of neurons
and the discontinuity is at the receptor. Besides, at the receptor there is
another kind of discontinuity, psychologically very demanding: the
discontinuity between organic material belonging to one organism and
other material (either inorganic or organic of some other organism). After
all the psychological need for a material uniformity is the what pushed
Camillo Golgi in believing that neurons were interconnected by means of
sharing the same intracellular fluid (eventually Ramón y Cajal showed that
neurons are, in fact, separate cells).
Yet this is a very weak argumentation. A physical process does not depend
on the tassonomic uniformity of its constituents but rather on the causal
transmission of a certain amount of energy (Reichenbach 1956; Salmon
1980/1993; Dowe 1999; Dowe 2000). As a trivial example, consider a
mechanical wave passing through various medium before dissolving into
thermal noise. It could pass through concrete, steel, air and remain the
same physical process. After all, isn’t the same thing that occurs in neural
processes? As every schoolboy knows, neurons are separate and
autonomous cells. They communicate by spreading chemicals between
synapses. What takes place inside the axon is very different from what
happens between neurons. What matters is the propagations of a signal and
not the material used for its propagation.
Once more, since neuroscientists accept to consider Pcortical although is
mediated by discontinuous materials, there is no reason they should reject
Pextended for the same fact.
special dream that we take as the real world (Edelman 1989; Revonsuo
1995; Lehar 2003; Metzinger 2003).
However fascinating this idea could be, there are no final evidence as to its
soundness. First, we are not sure what a dream is. And, above all, there is
no proof that a neural tissue could be sufficient to host the occurrence of a
dream without being part of an extended network of physical processes.
The confusion is here due to the fact that it is taken for granted that a
dreaming brain is physically separate from the environment. Is it
completely correct? Is the brain ever disconnected from the external
world? I have argued elsewhere that it is not the case, due to very basic
physical considerations (Author in press). Consider a simpler physical
system: a bottle of water. You rotate the bottle of water. As a result, the
liquid inside will keep moving for a while. Suppose that, after a powerful
rotation, you close the bottle inside a box. Is the bottle disconnected from
the environment? Yes and no. Of course, the bottle is disconnected from
what is taking place in her surrounding after the inboxing. However, are
the events inside the bottle (the rotation of the liquid) autonomously
produced by the bottle? Of course not. From the point of view of the
physical processes involved, what is going on inside the bottle is causally
continuous with external events occurred a few moments ago.
Similarly, the brains of real subjects reporting having dreams are never
disconnected by their past environment. Even if they are sleeping in a
hermetically closed room, their brain is still the result of many past events
that are causally continuous with the dream-correlated neural activity.
Instead of considering normal perception as a special case of dream,
dreams could be seen as a delayed and disordered case of perception.
Another fact that could support this view is provided by the sever
limitation of dreamed mental content during dream. As far as we know,
dreams are made of phenomenal building blocks that are always the result
of direct contact with the corresponding physical phenomenon in the
external world. In dreams as well as in other cases of mental imagery, the
brain seems incapable of autonomously producing new phenomenal
content but only to recombine them. Systematic studies of dream content
showed a remarkable lack of novelty in dream with respect to real life
(Domhoff and Schneider 2008). The overall finding of several studies is
that "dreaming consciousness" is "a remarkably faithful replica of waking
life" (Snyder 1970, p. 133). Not only in dreams it seems that there are no
complete novel mental content, but even their combination is seldom really
unusual, a condition referred to as bizarreness of dream, i.e. any events
If this were confirmed for every sensor modality, it would support the fact
that mental content is not generated inside the brain, but rather is the result
of physical continuity with external phenomena. A possibility offered by
phenomenal externalism is that the difference between unconscious
processes and conscious processes (either direct perception or dreaming or
whatever) lies in the existence of a physically causally continuity with real
events in the environment, no matter how long and complex.
In short, instead of being a counterexample of phenomenal externalism,
dreams could offer a convincing test bed for phenomenal externalism. On
the other hand, also in normal perception we are not in contact with the
instantaneous environment, which is the environment taking place at the
exact time of our neural activity, but rather with a temporally proximal
environment. In dreams, due to the relative physical and functional
isolation from such temporally proximal isolation, there could space left
for a temporally more extended spatial continuity with the environment.
7. Conclusion
The spread mind theory tries to outline a radical ontological twist. The
spread mind suggests that most of current problems in dealing with
phenomenal experience are due to a series of unwarranted ontological
premises. The most obnoxious of them is probably the assumption that
phenomenal experience stems out of neural processes alone.
As it has been argued by other authors, there is not a magic threshold
dividing what takes place inside our nervous system and what takes place
outside. Indeed there is a continuous flow of causal processes seamlessly
going from the environment to the brain and backward.
After all, neural activities are instantiated by series of action potentials
distribute in time and in space. They are processes spanning a spatio-
temporal region. Once we accept a neural process as something that is not
located at a precise point in time and space, there ought not be any
difficulty in accepting other kinds of physical processes.
References
Adams, D. and K. Aizawa, (2008): The Bounds of Cognition, Singapore:
Blackwell Publishing.
Bennett, M. R. and P. M. S. Hacker, (2003): Philosophical Foundations of
Neuroscience, Malden (Mass): Blackwell.
Burge, T., (1979): "Individualism and the Mental" in: French, Uehling and
Wettstein, Eds, Midwest Studies in Philosophy IV, Minneapolis,
University of Minnesota Press: 73-121.
Byrne, A. and M. Tye, (2006): "Qualia ain't in the Head" in: Noûs 40(2):
241-255.
Crick, F. and C. Koch, (1995): "Are we aware of neural activity in primary
visual cortex?" in: Nature 375: 121-123.
Crick, F. and C. Koch, (1998): "Constraints on cortical and thalamic
projections: the no-strong-loops hypothesis" in: Nature 391(15): 245-250.
Dehaene, S., J.-P. Changeux, et al., (2006): "Conscious, preconscious, and
subliminal processing: A testable taxonomy" in: Trends in Cognitive
Sciences 10: 204-211.
1. What physics say about nature is true. (Physical properties are taken
as fundamental properties of reality.)
2. Consciousness is a fundamental and irreducible fact of reality.
(Phenomenal properties are taken as fundamental properties of
reality.)
3. Our universe consists only of one kind of stuff. This stuff has two
fundamental kinds of properties: physical properties and mental
properties.
4. These properties correspond to a set of fundamental laws that
correlate the two kinds of basic properties with each other.
These four assumptions form the pillars of a position that David Chalmers
calls “naturalistic dualism” (which is in fact a variety of non-reductive
materialism) (Cf. Chalmers 1996, 123ff.). Naturalistic dualism takes
consciousness seriously yet at the same time accepts the physical facts of
physical science as fundamental facts of reality. However, these
assumptions seem to imply a further assumption due to the relationship
between (1), (2) and (3), namely:
6
Galen Strawson has also recently put this idea forward. Cf. Strawson (2009, 63ff.).
7
A comprehensive overview of the problems of panpsychism can be found in Seager
(1999, 216-252) and Seager / Allen-Hermanson (2005).
Real physicalists must accept that at least some ultimates are intrinsically
experience-involving. They must at least embrace micropsychism. Given that
everything concrete is physical, and that everything physical is constituted out
of physical ultimates, and that experience is part of concrete reality, it seems the
only reasonable position, more than just an ‘inference to the best explanation’.
(Strawson 2006, 25)
Now, it follows that the concept of property dualism and its subsequent
development as micropsychism are obviously the origin of the combination
problem. This diagnosis is based on two strong reasons:
Let me begin with the first candidate: substance dualism.11 In the following
discussion of this doctrine my major focus is on its relevance to the
combination problem. I will not discuss the typical problems related to this
view.12 In his book on Cartesian dualism, John Foster presents the five
basic claims of substance dualism. It is astonishing that they are in most
respects similar to the basic claims of panpsychism. He lists them as
follows (Foster 1991, 1):
Of course, one can easily see that it is claim (5) that is essential to the idea
of substance dualism. Contrary to panpsychism and even to property
dualism, substance dualism views the mental and the physical as possibly
existing independently of one another. Every single mind is something that
exists merely through and by itself, without further dependence on a
physical body consisting of physical ultimates. Foster points out that
substance dualism views the mind as being (i) conceptually fundamental,
as well as (ii) metaphysically fundamental. According to (i), “No mental
statement is amenable to a non-mentalistic analysis”; and according to (ii),
“No mental fact is non-mentally constituted” (Foster 1991, 8). And the
same holds true for the physical realm. So again, contrary to property
dualism, which faces the problem of emergence when attempting to make
intelligible the occurrence of mental properties at a certain level of
functional or physical complexity, substance dualism avoids it by simply
holding that the mind is neither an emergent phenomenon, nor identical
with physical processes (neither token- nor type-identical), since “facts or
states of affairs, cannot be identical if their ontological ingredients are
different” (Foster 1991, 9).
In Descartes’ view, the mind is simple and essentially indivisible. He takes
it to be a substance in the classical Aristotelian sense of having
11
In my discussion of substance dualism I primarily follow Forster (1991), Crane
(2003), Zimmermann (2006) and Robinson (2007).
12
Which are in fact the interaction problem and the pairing problem. For a
comprehensive and detailed discussion of the different problems of substance dualism
cf. Zimmermann (2006), Robinson (2007) and Lycan (2009).
A position different to, and even more radical than, substance dualism
would be one that denies the aforementioned metaphysical separation by
(either entirely or merely partially) absorbing the physical realm into the
fundamental dynamics of the mind. As a consequence, the physical realm
would no longer be fundamental in the same sense as the realm of the
mind, but rather be taken as derivative of fundamental mental processes or
objects. Nowadays, such a position would be labeled classically idealistic.
Most of these positions could also be interpreted as panpsychistic insofar
as they consider the mental to be something fundamental and ubiquitous in
their overall philosophical systems (e.g. those of Leibniz, Berkeley or the
13
Crane (2003), referencing Peter Simons (1998), indicates that the concept of
substance has little relevance in current ontological discussions since it is challenged
by other ontological categories like events, particulars, etc.
• (H) All facts about states and objects of reality are facts about
experiential or mental states or about relations between or within
experiential or mental states.
5. Conclusion
Wild and airy indeed! But why so? Mind-Stuff was a worse hypothesis,
because, when you tried to express all its consequences, it became
unintelligible. The ordinary uncritical Atomism is a worse hypothesis, because
we never get from it the least notion of how this eternally existent matter may
16
It must be mentioned that the former, epistemologically-driven, critical
transcendentalism of Kant was transformed into a rather strong ontological idealism by
the German Idealists, especially by Fichte and Schelling, as a result of the alleged
unintelligibility of things-in-themselves.
look and feel when nobody sees or feels it. The mystical “one substance with
two faces” is worse, because that is no hypothesis, only a heap of words.
(Royce 1882, 40)
References
Blamauer, M. (2006): Subjektivität und ihr Platz in der Natur, Stuttgart:
Kohlhammer.
Chalmers, D. J. (1995): “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.” In:
Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (3), pp. 200-219
Chalmers, D. J. (1996): The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental
Theory, Oxford et al.
Chalmers, D. J. (2002): “Consciousness and its Place in Nature.” In: Idem
(Ed.), Philosophy of Mind. Classical and Contemporary Readings, Oxford
et al.
17
I thank Pierfrancesco Basile, Wolfgang Fasching, and Georg Schiemer for helpful
comments on former drafts of this paper. The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) financed
this study in the context of the research project “Taking the Hard Problem of
Consciousness Seriously – Naturalistic Dualism and the Consequence of
Panpsychism”.
1
No one in the past century, at least, has been willing to defend any form of
pluralism, and thus I leave that option aside.
2
This obviously flies in the face of conventional materialism, in which the physical
is the ultimate reality and the mental is derivative, or emergent—as I will explain
below.
3
Of course, there could be (many) other, equally-fundamental aspects of the one
monistic reality, or even infinitely many—as Spinoza presumed. I hold this as an
open conjecture, but one which does not substantially affect the argument to follow.
indeterminate; in other words, the line can’t be drawn because it’s not
there. Once we break out of the human sphere, the ball is rolling and it
is very hard to stop. (Perhaps we can sympathize with the nice, clean
distinctions of Descartes’ day…)
Given these problems with emergentism, a panpsychist dual-aspectism is
certainly a viable option. And if emergence is found to be
fundamentally incoherent, then dual-aspectism becomes a clear favorite.
Under this presumption, the one monistic reality is intrinsically
experiential, and thus panpsychism obtains. I will take this to be the
case.
***
4
See World as Will and Idea, section 20, for an especially vivid description.
5
Process philosophers take issue with this, holding to a much more restrictive form
of panpsychism (‘panexperientialism’) that excludes aggregates and artificial
composite structures. For a further discussion of the problems with this view, see
my (2008).
***
In order to get a better handle on this issue, it’s probably best to take a
quick look at how it was addressed by our predecessors. The earliest
discussion of the topic occurs in Leibniz, in his first elaboration of the
idea of the ‘dominant monad’ (1686).7 Certain objects, he said, have “a
thoroughly indivisible and naturally indestructible being”; it is these
things that possess a single, higher-order, dominant monad, which
functions as the ‘soul’ (or in certain cases, mind) of the thing. (We
recall that every individual monad was, for Leibniz, formed on the
model of the soul.) But exactly how this process of domination or
unification occurs, he does not say. Nor does he offer any criterion by
which to evaluate degree of divisibility or destructibility.
In the mid-18th century, Kant briefly addressed Leibniz and the
combination problem in a footnote of his early work Traume der
Geisterseher (Dreams of a Spirit-Seer; 1766). He is discussing the
concept of an ‘inner reason’ for the efficient causality found in matter,
when he adds this comment:
Leibniz says that this inner reason...is the power of conception [i.e.
intelligence], and later philosophers received this undeveloped thought with
6
Including by myself: see my book Panpsychism in the West (2005: 264).
7
Though the term ‘monad’ would not appear until 1698, in the work On Nature
Itself. But the basic concept was already present in Leibniz’s letter of 1686.
laughter. But they would have done better if they had first considered
whether a substance of the nature of a simple particle of matter is possible
without any inner state. [If so, they would have to] think out another
possible inner state than that of conceptions... Everybody recognizes [that]
even if a power of obscure conceptions is conceded to...matter, it does not
follow thence that matter itself possesses power of conception, because many
substances of that kind, united into a whole, can yet never form a thinking
unit. (p. 54)
Where the elemental units are supposed to be feelings, the case is in no wise
altered. Take a hundred of them, shuffle them and pack them as close
together as you can (whatever that might mean); still each remains the same
feeling it always was, shut in its own skin, windowless, ignorant of what the
other feelings are and mean. There would be a hundred-and-first feeling
there, if, when a group or series of such feeling were set up, a consciousness
belonging to the group as such should emerge. And this 101st feeling would
be a totally new fact… (1890/1918: 160)
***
So, how can we move ahead on this ‘problem’ that is, after all, a call for
details? Consider again the physical realm. All the complexity of the
physical world, and the macro-scale objects that populate it, derive (as
far as we know) from a small number of very simple particles: quarks,
leptons (i.e. electrons), and a handful of force particles (photons, gluons,
and other bosons), together with the laws of physics. That the
complexity of the human brain, for example, can arise from the motions
and interactions of a vast number of a few types of simple subatomic
particles, is astounding.
In effect, size matters. Size brings hierarchical complexity, which
induces greater variation. Size allows simple ultimates to jointly create
intricate patterns of behavior in space and in time. With a large number
of constituent parts, an object can assume a large number of different
states and conditions, which vastly outnumber the limited states of its
elements. In essence, each ultimate, and each level of structural
hierarchy, expands the realm of possible states of the whole.
Two factors, then, are critical: large numbers of particles, and a
sophisticated hierarchy of structural complexity. Fewer particles, or
lesser complexity, would yield a vastly simpler object—that is, an object
with a much smaller universe of possible states. Conversely, the more
particles and the richer the hierarchical complexity, the larger the space
of possible states. This ‘space of possible states,’ sometimes called a
configuration space, embodies the physical complexity of the object.
Among macro-scale objects, living organisms exhibit a particularly wide
range of possible states and behaviors. Compared to nonliving objects
of similar mass (i.e. of similar number of elementary particles), they
8
For other contemporary discussions of the combination problem, see for example:
Seager (1995), Skrbina (2005), Coleman (2006), Goff (2006, 2009), Basile (2008,
2009), and Harman (2009).
have a more complex and more dynamic internal structure, and thus a
much larger configuration space. Compare a human being and a large
rock. Each may possess, say, 80 kg worth of particles, but the state
space of the human far exceeds that of the rock. In each case, though,
such a space exists, and it arises from a few types of very simple
particles.
I would further suggest that each of these two driving factors—number
of ultimates, and degree of structural complexity—opens up two primary
‘axes’ in configuration space. An object’s space has a width given by
the number of ultimates in it, and a depth given by the degree of
structural complexity. The volume of the total space is, then, ‘width x
depth.’ An 80 kg person and an 80 kg rock both have equal state space
width, but the human has a vastly greater depth (due the complexity of a
living being), and thus a much greater overall space of possible states.
The mental life of a rock is wide but not deep. An amoeba, by contrast,
is deep but (relatively) narrow.
Notions like configuration space, or state space, are accepted and widely
used today, at least within the physical sciences. They have proven
extremely useful in depicting the behavior of complex objects in a
conceptually simple manner. I believe that we need something similar in
the psychological sciences, i.e. in the philosophical study of mind and
consciousness.
Consider the following: If experience is a core property of matter, along
with such things as mass, charge, spin, and so forth, and if the physical
characteristics yield a large and complex spatio-temporal configuration
space, then an analogous effect should occur with experience. That is,
an object should exist both in a physical configuration space, and
simultaneously in an ‘experiential space’—a mind space, if you will.
Just as simple physical ultimates can yield an extraordinarily complex
configuration space, so too may we conjecture that a large number of
experiential ultimates, combined in a complex mental hierarchy of
experiential structures-within-structures, can yield a complex mental
space. The experiential ultimates, each very simple but large in number,
open up a large and complex mind space for the collective whole.
An image that comes to mind is a camping tent. The tent is held up by
many individual ropes, each of which, by itself, can do little to open up a
space within. But each rope, staked in a different direction, opens up
another ‘dimension’ of space inside the tent. Many simple ropes, united
together but pulling in different directions, collectively open up a large
9
Elsewhere (2009) I have employed the terminology of dynamical systems theory,
and argued that the mind is best viewed as a strange attractor pattern in state space.
References
Basile, P. (2008): “Is mental composition impossible in principle?” In:
Chromatikon IV.
Basile, P. (2009): “Back to Whitehead?” In: Mind That Abides (D.
Skrbina, ed.). Benjamins.
Coleman, S. (2006): “Being realistic.” In: Journal of Consciousness
Studies, 13(10-11).
Diderot, D. (1769/1937): “D’Alembert’s Dream.” In: Diderot:
Interpreter of Nature. Lawrence and Wishart.
Goff, P. (2006): “Experiences don’t sum.” In: Journal of Consciousness
Studies, 13(10-11).
Goff, P. (2009): “Can the panpsychist get around the combination
problem?” In: Mind That Abides (D. Skrbina, ed.). Benjamins.
Griffin, D. (2009): “Windows on nonhuman minds.” In: Process
Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuroscience, and
Philosophy of Mind. (Weber and Weekes, eds.). SUNY Press.
Harman, G. (2009): “Zero-person and the psyche.“ In: Mind That
Abides (D. Skrbina, ed.). Benjamins.
James, W. (1890): Principles of Psychology. Dover.
James, W. (1909/1996): A Pluralistic Universe. University of Nebraska
Press.
Kant, I. (1766/1900): Dreams of a Spirit-Seer. Macmillan.
Leibniz, G. (1686/1989): Letter to Arnaud. In: Philosophical Essays
(Ariew and Garber, eds.). Hackett.
Leibniz, G. (1704/1996): New Essays on Human Understanding.
Cambridge University Press.
Nagel, T. (1974): “What is it like to be a bat?” In: Philosophical
Review, 83(4).
Nietzsche, F. (1886): Beyond Good and Evil. Penguin.
Perry, R. (1935): Thought and Character of William James. Little,
Brown.
Schopenhauer, A. (1819/1995) World as Will and Idea. J. M. Dent.
Seager, W. (1995): “Panpsychism, information, and consciousness.” In:
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3).
Skrbina, D. (2005): Panpsychism in the West. MIT Press.
Skrbina, D. (2008): “On the problem of the aggregate.” In:
Chromatikon IV.
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aspect ontology.” In: Mind That Abides (D. Skrbina, ed.). Benjamins.
something like the way the physicalist takes all conscious subjects to be
metaphysically lightweight.
In contrast, we can define 'emergentist panpsychists' as panpychists who
believe that both conscious ultimates and macro-level conscious subjects
are metaphysically heavyweight: 'Bill is feeling anxious' is made true by
some single subject of experience instantiating the phenomenal quality of
feeling anxious (and not by any more fundamental state of affairs). Taking
macro-level conscious subjects to be heavyweight does imply substance
dualism; it is coherent to suppose that certain physical objects, wholly
composed of physical parts, such as brains or central nervous systems, are
metaphysically heavyweight. If a brain is metaphysically heavyweight,
then, although it is wholly composed of physical parts, it is utterly
irreducible to those parts; we can call such a composite physical object an
'emergent whole'. Emergenist panpsychists identify the subject of Bill's
experience with some emergent whole in the physical world.1
An emergent whole is irreducible to its parts in the sense that truths about
its existence and nature are not made true by facts about its parts. Contrast
again with Bill's party. Truths about the existence and nature of Bill's
party, truths such as 'There is a party at Bill's tonight' or 'Bill's party was
wild!', are made true by entities at a more fundamental level, i.e. people
(having a good time). Emergent wholes are not like that: truths about their
nature and existence, such as 'Bill thinks therefore he is', or 'Bill is feeling
anxious', are made true by facts about the emergent whole itself and its
qualities, and not by facts about its parts.
The physicalist and the reductive panpsychist think that all macro-level
entities are reducible to micro-level facts, in the same way that Bill's party
is reducible to facts about partiers. In contrast, the emergentist panpsychist
holds that macro-level conscious subjects are emergent wholes.
2
Can't physicalists identify phenomenal properties with physical properties, e.g. pain
with c-fibres firing? Of course they can, but on my understanding of physicalism, the
physicalist is obliged to take such higher-level physical properties to be lightweight;
only the properties of fundamental physics, e.g. mass and charge, are metaphysically
heavyweight.
macro-level conscious subjects like Bill and Ben also share phenomenal
qualities.3 It seems to me unintelligible that the sharing of determinates of
some determinable X can, in one instance, constitute genuine resemblance,
whilst in another instance fail to constitute genuine resemblance, for
example, it is not intelligible to suppose that two spherical things
genuinely resemble in so far as they are spherical, whereas two cuboid
things do not genuinely resemble in so far as they are cuboid.
We have then an argument from the basic commitment of panpsychism to
panpsychist emergentism:
3
Bill and Ben might be organisms or might be brains of organisms depending on what
we identify macro-level subjects of experience with.
Take a hundred of them [feelings], shuffle them and pack them as close
together as you can (whatever that may mean); still each remains the same
feelings it always was, shut in its own skin, windowless, ignorant of what the
other feelings are and mean. There would be a hundred-and-first-feeling there,
if, when a group or series of such feelings where set up, a consciousness
belonging to the group as such should emerge. And this 101st feeling would be
a totally new fact; the 100 feelings might, by a curious physical law, be a signal
for its creation, when they came together; but they would have no substantial
identity with it, not it with them, and one could never deduce the one from the
others, nor (in any intelligible sense) say that they evolved it. (James 1983, 162)
What does James mean when he says that the 101st feeling would not have
a 'substantial identity' with the 100 feelings, that it would not have
'evolved' from them? I suggest that we can capture the spirit of what James
meant in terms of the framework developed above. I interpret James as
claiming that the relationship between the 101st feeling and the 100
feelings is not like the relationship between Bill's party and his guests.
Once you shuffle round Bill's guests in a certain way – give them drinks,
pump up the music, encourage them to engage in inane party banter –
you've thereby got a party. The fact the guests are arranged in this way,
and the fact that there is a party, are not metaphysically distinct states of
affairs. The fact that the guests are so arranged makes it true that there is a
party.
On my interpretation of James, he is struggling to make sense of an
analogous relationship between the hundred feelings and the hundred-and-
first-feeling. James can't see how the fact that there are a hundred feelings
arranged in a certain way could make it true that there is a hundred-and-
first-feeling. These seem to be metaphysically distinct states of affairs,
even if, as a matter of brute fact, one emerges from the other, perhaps on
account of some 'curious physical law'.
In other words, what James is struggling to find intelligible is panpsychist
reductionism, the view that truths about the existence and nature of high-
level conscious subjects are made true by truths about lower-level subjects.
He has no concerns about the intelligibility of panpsychist emergentism,
the view that facts about the existence and nature of high-level conscious
subjects, as a matter of brute fact or natural law, arise from facts about the
existence and nature of micro-level conscious subjects. The combination
problem, at least as understood by James so interpreted, is a problem only
for panpsychists reductionists, not for panpsychists emergentists. If I am
right that all panpsychists ought to be emergentists in any case, it follows
that panpsychists have nothing to worry about as regards the combination
problem.
4
See van Inwagan 1990.
5
So I disagree with Descartes that we can know that the mind is indivisible. When I
introspect, the subject of my experience does not present itself as a thing with parts.
However, I see no way of ruling out the possibility that, when introspecting, I am
conceiving of the subject of my experience in terms of only part of its nature. Perhaps
What about common sense? I think it's pretty clear what answer common
7
See for example, Dummett 1978: 260, Fine 1975, Russell 1923.
8
Horgan and Potrč 2008, Ch. 2.
9
It is worth noting that the phenomenon that philosophers call 'vagueness' is very
different from the kind of indeterminacy postulated by standard interpretations of
quantum physics.
Conclusion
Panpsychists should be emergentists, from which it follows that (i) they
should stop worrying about the combination problem, (ii) they should be
universalists about phenomenal composition.11
References
Fine, K. (1975): 'Vagueness, truth and logic', Synthese, 30: 265-300.
Horgan, T. and Potrč, M. 2008. Austere Realism, Cambridge, MA.,
London: MIT.
Lewis, D. (1986): On the Plurality of Worlds, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
James, W. (1983): The Principles of Psychology, Cambridge, MA.,
London: Harvard University Press.
Russell, B. (1923): 'Vagueness', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 84-
92, reprinted in Keefe, R. and Smith, P. 1996. (Eds.) Vagueness: A Reader,
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 61-8.
Strawson, G. (2009): Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics,
Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Van Inwagan, P. (1990): Material Beings. Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press.
10
My argument for universalism about phenomenal composition is very similar to
David Lewis's argument for universalism about composition (Lewis 1986: 212-13).
11
I am very grateful to all the participants at the 'The Mental as Fundamental'
conference in Vienna for helpful comments.
1. Problem of Realism
I would like to start with the problem of realism, though I don’t need to
spend too much time on this as it was anticipated by both Schopenhauer
and Bertrand Russell, and has been reviewed in contemporary discussions.
(Skrbina 2009)
The problem may be set out as follows: the language of physics affords us
no way of intrinsically characterizing the difference between a real
physical entity and a merely apparent (perhaps illusory) one. Take the
property of solidity, for instance. It is common sense to suppose that a
body is real if it is solid, but solidity cannot be characterized in intrinsic
terms: there is nothing we can identify in a solid body itself that renders it
solid. Solidity is rather defined extrinsically in terms of impenetrability: a
body is solid if it can keep other bodies out. But as an account of the real-
ness of a body, of its actually occupying space as opposed to merely
1
See Mathews 1991 and 2003 in particular.
2
See Mathews 2003, chapter 2.
biosphere. Indeed, it may be argued that the cosmos itself satisfies these
criteria, since it is necessarily self-actualizing and self-regulating, and its
self-structuring follows the relational dynamics of systems. (The details of
this argument can be found in Mathews 1991.)
Overlaying systems theory on geometrodynamics then, we arrive at a
universe which is One, substantivally speaking, but which also self-
differentiates, selectively, into a relative Many, the Many being those
“interference patterns” which correspond to self-realizing systems, or
selves. The systems criterion, set in a geometrodynamic framework, thus
renders inanimate matter mere backdrop to the true individuals, the selves,
in this scheme of things. Rocks and clods of clay and grains of sand are,
from this point of view, not really things in their own right, but rather
knotty bits of the matrix or plenum. Matter is thus properly described in
mass terms: earth, rock, sand, water, sky, air, etc. The only genuine
individuals that populate this world are selves.
Having briefly reviewed this cosmology under its physical aspect, let us
now consider it under its subjectival – which is to say its explicitly
panpsychist – aspect. We can see that, even described in physical terms,
this cosmology, consisting of a One which self-differentiates into a Many,
points towards panpsychism, inasmuch as the One is already described as a
self-realizing system, and hence as imbued with the mind-like property of
conativity. But it is under the duress afforded by the Argument from
Realism that we are really driven to interpret this view in panpsychist
terms.
Considering the present cosmology under its subjectival aspect then, what
presents is an extension, a field, which, while it appears to observers
(observers embedded within the field itself) as a geometrically dynamic
space, is experienced from within as a field of subjectivity, a great,
internally differentiated field of impulse, of intrinsic activity, of felt
expansions, swellings, dwindlings, contractions, surges, urges and so forth.
Impulses within this field follow certain patterns: they gather and unfold,
constellate and dissipate, in objectively patterned ways, just as our own
subjective impulses do. This “lawlikeness” of motion – of impulse – in the
primal field may be read as correlative with physics. To read subjectival
process this way, as that which is manifested externally in the lawlikeness
of physics, is not to deny the characteristic freedom or spontaneity of
subjectivity: the characteristic patterns of subjectival movement may be
acknowledged without this implying that subjectival processes are strictly
predetermined. An analogy might be helpful here. Consider the movement
5
In order to ascertain that a given process is periodic, a significant degree of order
must already obtain in the universe. Different kinds of ostensibly periodic processes
need to be measured against one another, and a certain amount of physical theory
capable of predicting periodicity in the processes in question must be at least
tentatively formulable.
eventuate, then the universe might pass into a further phase of temporal
indeterminacy.6
The “first three minutes” hypothesis then – which is to say, the hypothesis
that posits an originary moment for the universe – seems inconsistent with
physicists’ own account of evolutionary cosmology. The hypothesis of
self-creation however - which, as we have seen, entails a panpsychist view
of the universe – enables us to make sense of evolutionary cosmology
without falling into the originary anomaly. The self-created universe
emerges into metrical time from a pre-metric and hence temporally
indeterminate past. In this sense such a universe is “outside” time, yet
temporality can emerge within it. Perhaps this is not so different from the
temporal experience of an ordinary self. There is a temporal indeterminacy
about our own experience of origin. In our early life we lack any sense of
the metric of time – our infancy is our “dreaming”, an ocean of temporal
non-differentiation, from the depths of which a definite temporal axis
eventually defines itself. There is no originary moment, only this ocean of
flux out of which temporal order emerges. This is admittedly only an
analogy, but perhaps it provides some intuitive support for the panpsychist
hypothesis of a universe which is both timeless, because self-created, but
also generative of time.
References
Clifford, W.K. (1973): “On the Space Theory of Matter.” In: Proceedings
of Cambridge Philosophical Society 2, 157. Reprinted in Kilmister, C.W.
(ed), General Theory of Relativity, Pergamon Press: Oxford.
Mathews, F. (1991): The Ecological Self. Routledge: London.
Mathews, F. (2003): For Love of Matter: a Contemporary Panpsychism.
SUNY Press: Albany.
Plumwood, V. (1993): Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge:
London and New York.
6
This paragraph parallels very closely a passage in Mathews 2003, p. 53.
In this article, we will discuss the question how many connections a thing
in existence has to other things. Here, the term 'thing' is understood in a
very wide sense to cover all kinds of concrete entities, be it material atoms
or human souls. The discussion takes the form of a dialog between the two
authors of this article, hopefully capturing the essence of the problem in a
lively and entertaining way, but still providing solid theoretical arguments
that are central for metaphysical investigations. As the argument
progresses, 'experience' of another thing will take the center stage as a
model for connection, and thus a strong panpsychist tendency is
introduced.
In the dialog, 'B' will argue that every individual is connected to all other
individuals. He finds support for this in Aristotle, Leibniz and Whitehead.
'M' will try to argue that every individual is only connected to some and
definitely not all other individuals. He backs up his thesis with Gregg
Rosenberg's theory of natural individuals.
M: Alright. There are also nutritive and perceptual souls for Aristotle, but
in this case he really thinks of a mental or intellectual soul. A mental entity
may be related to every other entity. Yes, maybe that is what he means
here.
B: I think that from what we just said it follows that I am right now
connected to the Big Bang (which happened some more than 13 billion
years ago) and to the Alpha Centauri System (which is a little more than
four light-years away), although I was not five minutes ago, simply
“This interconnection, or this adapting of all created things to each one, and of
each one to all the others.” (Monadology, §56)
“But in simple substances this influence of one monad over another is only
ideal, and it can have its effect only through the intervention of God; in the
sense that in God's ideas one monad requires of God, and with reason, that he
takes account for it when he organizes the others at the beginning of things.”
(Mondaology, §51)
M: I like Leibniz and especially his Monadology, thanks for focusing on it.
Leibniz really thinks that not only humans as mental entities, but also all
monads are connected to all other monads in an ideal way. That includes
animal souls and simple monads. At least some of them do not have sense
organs. I agree with Leibniz that experience is not always sense
experience.
But it is also implied that the ideal connection of monads is not only
thinking; Leibniz calls it perceiving. It will be non-sensory perceiving in
some cases, but why is it forbidden to think that it is also sensory
experience in some cases?
B: It is true that Leibniz talks about perceptions. But I am fairly sure that
he does not take that to mean something perceived with the sensory organs,
because that would imply a direct physical interaction between monads and
he explicitly denies that. Therefore I consider it certain that also for
Leibniz, a connection via a sensory organ is not a real connection at all.
"No external causes could ever have an influence on its [the monads]
interior" ” (Mondaology, §11).
M: Assuming that you are right with your rather wild statement about the
status of sensory experience, the only real connection left is non-sensory
B: Well, I think that for Leibniz the perceptions still represent the whole
monadic world correctly, because god made sure of that at the beginning of
things, thus providing some kind of ideal, god-given connection. However,
I agree that Leibniz' conception leaves very little space for an autonomous
connections between a subject and the world, and that having a theory that
includes such autonomous connections would be desirable.
You are right that the best candidate for such a direct, non-sensory
connection is causation. However, I think that talking about causation will
immediately allow me to drive my point home that everything is connected
to everything, because this is just how the interaction laws of physics
behave.
M: I know that the field of the some fundamental forces of physics, e.g.
gravitation, is considered to be holistic. I also interpret physics as causal
and not just as regular. Perhaps it is also the right position that everything
is physically responsible for everything. But there is more to causation than
the fundamental forces of physics.
To get a grip on causality it is not useful to focus on the holistic causal
responsibility but on the significance that one particle or field has to
another.
This happens all the time in everyday physics, where you disregard the
wider environment. I would propose to give an ontological foundation to
that with a theory of causal significance. Gregg Rosenberg did this in his
'A Place for Consciousness' (2004). A further advantage of this theory is
that it is possible to interpret quantum entanglement as a causal
phenomenon.
But now, I would like to modify the Whiteheadian theory to include a more
fundamental restriction of connection. In this modified theory, the
connection is still based on causality.
M: Let's again begin with Aristotle and his statement: “The soul is in a way
all existing things”. I’d like to translate this statement in a more modern
language. I'm not really interested in souls, especially not in souls
separable from the body, but in natural individuals which I conceive in a
panexperiential way as entities with both a physical and an experiential
aspect. I'd like to reject “all existing things” in Aristotle's thesis and restrict
my claim to “some existing things”. But I'd like to insist that there is a
strong connection between the basic entity or the natural individual and the
other existing things, in the best way there may be a kind of identity as
Aristotle says. The connection should not only mean that two things are in
the same world or that a mental thing can think about all other entities. The
intensive connection I am thinking of has to be a kind of basic causal,
bodily, experiencing or inner connection, perhaps akin to identity. So my
thesis is “Each natural individual is connected in an intensive way with
some but not all existing things.”
My question is now: What makes the scope of an entity (especially a
panpsychistic entity) restricted? There are two types of restriction.
Half-hearted restriction means that primarily an entity is connected to
everything but in a second step this holistic connection is restricted. A
fundamental restriction does not share the holistic claim. We talked about
three variants of the half-hearted restriction. Leibniz' holistic approach has
the problem to individuate the different monads. Therefore, he ascribes to
monads an individual point of view and a more or less distinct perception
of other monads. A less distinct perception may be less relevant for the
activity of a monad. Physics works in a pragmatic similar way. The
fundamental forces may interrelate all entities, but only some entities are
relevant to others, e.g. because the rest are so far away that their impact can
be neglected. The third variant discussed is Whitehead's. He restricts, as we
e contributes causally to B
M: You are right, that's a real problem. To get a hint of a solution look at a
further feature of Rosenberg's theory, the hierarchy of natural individuals.
A receptive binding does not only provide a form for the causal and
experiential connections of the individuals that are its members. It is also
the specific characteristic of a natural individual of a higher level. This
higher level individual will also interact with other individuals of the same
higher level and experience the impacts it gets from them. This is provided
by a further form or receptive binding that does not work on the
individuals of the lower level but on the individuals of the higher level.
Corresponding to this receptive binding there is a further individual on the
next higher level, etc.
Shared form of
a higher level
A C E
B
D
This hierarchy is possible because the lower level individuals are not
determined independently of their context. The end of this hierarchy is
reached if the highest level individual is totally determined. This causal
and experiential mesh corresponds to the hierarchy of the sciences. It is a
scientific fact that on all levels other causal powers and other environments
are relevant. I presuppose the hierarchical causal mesh is the fundamental
order of the world but cannot really specify it more as through the hint to
the hierarchy of sciences at the moment.
The opposite thesis to this experiential mesh, a panpsychism with holistic
experience, always seemed, at least to me, to be a strange position. The
probability of panpsychism is much better if there is at least a model for
restricting the scope of experience. This corresponds to the intuition of a
restricted scope of sense experience in everyday life.
L (from the audience): Matthias, your restriction seems to be an
extrapolation from phenomenology to ontology. Is this restriction only
according to phenomenology? It seems to me somewhat anthropocentric.
M: I can admit that there are some holistic relations of all natural
individuals, e.g. in the potentiality of thought. But this normally does not
concern causality and experience.
There is a special Rosenbergian case that is a nearly holistic story. There
may be only one level of individuals that are connected together with only
one form or receptive binding determining them all. But even this nearly
holistic scenario implies no holistic experience of any of its individuals.
The high-level-individual that connects all the others and corresponds to
the world as a whole is not experienced. This happens simply because
individuals in the Rosenbergian theory can only experience individuals of
the same level connected by a higher-level-individual. (An indicator for
this is that in the human case it is a phenomenological impossibility to
experience a whole of which oneself is part in a way that is both an inner
and an outer experience. To experience the whole means either an outer
experience of all the other entities or an inner experience of unity. It is
doubtful whether the whole nature is an entity at all.)
I would also think that the world is not simple like this. If there is a more
complex structure of the Rosenbergian causal mesh, not every individual
has causal contact to all individuals of the same level in the sense of
suffering effective causal constraint. Additionally, no natural individual
has experiential access to individuals of other levels. Hence, effective
causal constraint is not considered to be a transitive relation.
The receptive binding itself could also be described as exhibiting some
causal constraint on its members. But in Rosenberg's theory this
constraining effect has not to be carried by a phenomenal property of the
receptive binding relation. Its effective aspects are totally carried by
effective properties of the individuals of the same level. In Rosenberg's
model no individual can effectively constrain an individual of another
level. If one were to assume such a constraint, one would end up with an
interactionalism of levels. One had to accept some similar problems as the
substance dualist has when he accepts an interaction of body and mind.
Therefore, according to Rosenberg, no individual can experience
something on a level different from itself.
G: You've argued that the restriction to one's own body would end in
solipsism. But with Rosenberg's theory, don't you also have a kind of
solipsistic concept of phenomenal properties? Don't you make it
impossible in principle that an individual has a grasp on the whole
References
Aristotle (350 B.C.): De Anima, in The works of Aristotle, translated by
J.A. Smith. Oxford: Claredon Press 1931.
Leibniz, G. W. (1714): Monadology, in G. W. Leibniz, Philosophical Texts,
translated and edited by R.S. Woolhouse and R. Francks. New York:
Oxford University Press 1998.
Rosenberg, G. (2004): A Place for Consciousness: Probing the Deep
Structure of the Natural World, Oxford University Press.
Whitehead, A.N. (1929): Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, ed.
of D. R. Griffin & D. W. Sherburne, 1978, New York: Free Press.
1
Thanks to Christina Schneider and the audience of the Vienna Conference “The
Mental as Fundamental” for valuable comments on a draft of this paper, especially
Ludwig Jaskolla and Godehard Brüntrup.