Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery. It’s Matter. New York Times 2016 (original) (raw)
What does “physical” mean? A prolegomenon to panpsychism [revised]
Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, 2021
[1] What does the word ‘physical’ mean in its most general theoretical philosophical use? It’s used in many different ways, and it’s hard to imagine that philosophers could reach agreement on a best use. [2] Should we tie the meaning of ‘physical’ closely to physics? To do so (in a non-circular way) is to run the risk of ruling out the possibility that there might be two different universes that were ‘formally’ or structurally identical or homomorphic although substantially different—made of different stuff. [3] Perhaps that is not in the end a real possibility. Even so, it seems that we shouldn’t define ‘physical’ in a way that rules it out a priori. [4] If so, it may be that the word ‘physical’ is best used to denote a certain fundamental structure-transcendent stuff-nature—call it P—that allows the possibility that a universe with stuff nature Q structurally identical to a physical universe isn’t physical. [5] Can we suppose ourselves to know something about the ultimate intrinsic nature of P, if physicalism is true? I argue that we can. [6] Can we draw any further metaphysical conclusions from this knowledge? I argue that we can. We can show that panpsychism in some form constitutes the most plausible theory of the ultimate nature of P.
Physicalist panpsychism 2017 draft
panpsychism is fully compatible with everything in current physics, and with physicalism, and is a plausible theory of the fundamental nature of reality. It is an error to think that being physical excludes being mental or experiential. Consider three views: [1] materialism or physicalism is true, [2] consciousness is real, [3] there is no ‘radical emergence’. Anyone who endorses [1]-[3] should at least endorse micropsychism or psychism, the view that [4] mind or consciousness is a fundamental feature of concrete reality, already present in the most basic forms of concrete reality. Given the interconvertibility (fungibility) of all forms of physical stuff, panpsychism is the most plausible form of psychism.
Strawson_A_hundred_years_of_consciousness.pdf
Estudios de Filosofía No 59, 2019
Abstract. There occurred in the twentieth century the most remarkable episode in the history of human thought. A number of thinkers denied the existence of something we know with certainty to exist: consciousness, conscious experience. Others held back from the Denial, as we may call it, but claimed that it might be true—a claim no less remarkable than the Denial. This paper documents some aspects of this episode, with particular reference to two things. First, the development of two views which are forms of the Denial —philosophical behaviourism, and functionalism considered as a doctrine in the philosophy of mind— from a view that does not in any way involve the Denial: psychological methodological behaviourism. Second, the rise of a way of understanding naturalism —materialist or physicalist naturalism— that wrongly takes naturalism to entail the Denial. Resumen. Uno de los episodios más notables en la historia del pensamiento humano ocurrió en el siglo XX. Varios pensadores negaron la existencia de algo que sabemos con certeza que existe: la conciencia o la experiencia consciente. Otros, aunque se contuvieron de llegar al punto de la Negación —como podemos llamarlo—, afirmaron que podría ser cierta —una tesis no menos notable que la Negación. Este texto documenta algunos aspectos de este episodio, con particular referencia a dos cosas. En primer lugar, el desarrollo de dos puntos de vista que son formas de la Negación— el conductismo filosófico y el funcionalismo en la filosofía de la mente— a partir de una perspectiva que no implica de ninguna manera la Negación: el conductismo psicológico metodológico. En segundo lugar, el surgimiento de una forma de entender el naturalismo —el naturalismo materialista o fisicalista— que interpreta erróneamente que el naturalismo implica la Negación.
A hundred years of consciousness Isaiah Berlin Lecture, Wolfson College, Oxford, May 25, 2017
Estudios de Filosofía, 2019
There occurred in the twentieth century the most remarkable episode in the history of human thought. A number of thinkers denied the existence of something we know with certainty to exist: consciousness, conscious experience. Others held back from the Denial, as I call it, but claimed that it might be true—a claim no less remarkable than the Denial. I want to document some aspects of this episode, with particular reference to the rise of philosophical behaviourism, and the transformation of materialism from a consciousness affirming-view into a consciousness-denying view.
Mind and Being: The Primacy of Panpsychism 2016
[1] Stoff ist Kraft (≈ being is energy). [2] Wesen ist Werden (≈ being is becoming). [3] Sein ist Sosein (≈ being is qualit(ativit)y. [4] Ansichsein ist Fürsichsein (≈ being is mind). [1]–[3] are plausible metaphysical principles, and there are also good reasons for favouring [4], i.e. panpsychism or panexperientialism, above all other positive substantive proposals about the fundamental nature of concrete reality. More strongly: unprejudiced consideration of what we know about concrete reality obliges us to favour panpsychism over all other substantive theories. This is not simply because panpsychism is the most ontologically parsimonious view—given that the existence of conscious experience is certain, and that panpsychism doesn’t posit the existence of any kind of stuff other than conscious experience. A question arises as to why metaphysicians have posited the existence of something for which there is no evidence: non-experiential concrete reality—especially since physics is completely silent on the question of the intrinsic non-structural nature of reality.
Many current formulations of naturalism are profoundly anti-naturalistic. This is because they still favour some sort of reductive approach to experience (= consciousness, conscious experience). The bedrock of any remotely realistic naturalism, hence any serious or real naturalism, is outright non-reductive realism about experience. This is because the existence of experience is a certainly known natural fact (it’s the most certainly known general natural fact). (2) By ‘realism about experience’ I mean real realism about experience. What is real realism about experience? Real realists about experience take experience to be essentially what they took it to be before they did any philosophy, e.g. when they were 6 years old. (3) Physicalism is the view that concrete reality is entirely physical in nature. I take physicalism to be part of naturalism. So I take it that experience is entirely physical. (4) Physicalist naturalism rules out anything incompatible with the truths of physics, obviously enough. But there’s a crucial respect in which physics only gives structural information about the nature of concrete reality, and has nothing to say about the intrinsic nature of the concrete reality in so far as its intrinsic nature is more than its structure. (5) It follows that physicalist naturalism can’t rule out panpsychism or panexperientialism, which is the simplest theory of the nature of reality. (6) There is no evidence for the existence of any non-experiential reality. So truly hard-nosed physicalism has no reason to posit its existence, although it must admit the existence of the certainly known natural fact of experience.
The Knowledge Argument ed. S. Coleman, 2019
The debate about Mary and the Black and White Room is a merry-go-round. It rotates round a mistake shared on both sides. The mistake is to adopt the position I call physics-alism—to think that physics can give an exhaustive characterization of the nature of the physical. It’s this that makes it seem to some philosophers that Mary raises a difficult and perhaps insoluble problem for physicalism.
in The Return of Consciousness, ed. K. Almqvist and A. Haag (Stockholm: Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation), pp. 89–103. It is a myth that there was a radical resurgence of discussion of the issue of conciousness in philosophy in the 1990s. False views of the course of the history of philosophy don't require the passage of time. Repeats and extends discussion in G. Strawson 'The consciousness myth'
Times Literary Supplement, 2015
It's a myth that there was a dramatic resurgence of interest in the topic of consciousness in philosophy, in the mid-1990s, after long neglect. I consider some of the history of the philosophical discussion of the 'matter-consciousness' problem.
Chomsky and his Critics ed. Anthony and Hornstein, 2003
(1) Materialists hold that every real, concrete phenomenon in the universe is a wholly physical phenomenon. (2) Consciousness ('what-it's-likeness', etc.) is the most certainly existing real, concrete phenomenon there is. It follows that (3) all serious materialists must grant that consciousness is a wholly physical phenomenon. ‘How can consciousness possibly be physical, given what we know about the physical?’ To ask this question is already to have gone wrong. We have no good reason (as Priestley, Eddington, Russell and others observe) to think that we know anything about the physical that gives us any reason to find any problem in the idea that consciousness is wholly physical.
One Experiment to Start Them All: The Missing Foundation of Consciousness Science
Are there scientifically-reliable experiments about conscious experience? It *seems* obvious we can reliably report e.g. our visual experience. But standard physics says that brain-dynamics, not experience itself, drives report. After discussing numerous attempts to make this observation consistent with reliable collection of data about experience, I argue that what's really needed for reliability is for our Universe to be consistent with a certain kind of non-standard physics. An experiment to identify the science-of-consciousness-relevant physical-basis-of-reality is identified.
Realistic monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism + Appendix 2006
Consciousness and its Place in Nature edited by Anthony Freeman (Thorverton: Imprint Academic), 2006
(1) A materialist holds that every concrete phenomenon is wholly physical or material. (2) A realistic materialist is a full-fledged realist about consciousness. So (3) a realistic materialist must hold that consciousness is a wholly physical phenomenon, and that at least some arrangements of matter are conscious or constitute consciousness. What follows? I assume in a standard way that (4) all matter is made of the same stuff (leptons and quarks, or strings, or…) and I take it to follow that (5) all matter can be arranged in a consciousness-constituting way. I then argue that (6) for certain things A, you cannot get A from non-A and that (7) consciousness is one of those things. Coupled with (1)-(5), (6) and (7) entail that no matter can be wholly non-conscious in its ‘intrinsic’ or ‘ultimate’ nature. If so, any realistic—any truly serious—materialist must be a panpsychist. key words materialism, physicalism, consciousness, mind-body problem, panpsychism, Eddington, emergence, matter, monism, microexperientiality, panexperientialism
There is no thing such as Mind/Consciousness
ABSTRACT The introduction presents merely roughly (as they undergo change all the time) the contemporary, insular, Anglo-Phone speculations (supposedly by means of the discourse of philosophy and the socio-cultural practice of philosophizing) about notions of consciousness and mind. These, almost epistemological solipsistic, self-centered and anthropo-centered, restricted speculations about the notions of mind and consciousness are made by means of cognitively biased metaphysical, ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions and selective interpretations of the nature and the doing of philosophy. Individuals or groups of them uttering those speculations form part of the professional academe and subscribe to the principles, attitudes, values and norms of a particular school, movement and community of Western academic philosophers. The next sections situate the individuals who utter these pronouncements and/ or argue for them by reasoning, logic and argumentation in the wider context of the multiverse, the universe, planet earth and our species as merely one type of contingent, living organism inhabiting and restricted to a certain eon, era, period, epoch, civilization, historical period and culture (or time and place) of this planet. In spite of this absolute restriction by place and time individuals try to depict from this restricted point of view an all-inclusive, god-like explanation of the nature, origin, meaning and functioning of every thing. I suggest that because of conceptual misuse mental objects such as the mind and consciousness are imagined and thought to exist. Such misleading notions lead to the creation of unnecessary ‘philosophical’ problems such as the mind-body problem and notions about things such as ‘qualia’. It is advisable to restrict any experiments to an investigation of particular senses and ‘acts’ of cognition and identify the areas in the body and brain that play a part in them - and to leave such research to experts of the specialized cognitive and neuroscientific fields and related disciplines, instead of trying to speculate about them or by the use of thought experiments, imaginary cases and simulations, fictional accounts and reasoning or arguments.
Consideration of a weakness in Nagel's argument for panpsychism, as highlighted by Rosenthal, points us in the direction of a modified argument for a nearby position. On panqualityism the basic building blocks of the physical world are qualitative without being yet phenomenally qualitative (i.e. intrinsically conscious). Panqualityism is developed and propounded as a promising form of physicalism. On this basis an objectivising account is given of consciousness and subjectivity.
Chapter 1: A Universe of Composite Subjectivity
[Preprint: Final text available from Oxford University Press] This is a preprint of the first chapter of my book 'Combining Minds'. It introduces the topic of the book—composite subjectivity—and explains why it matters. This involves clarifying how the key term “combination” is used and how the key ideas like “composition” and “consciousness” are understood, as well as reviewing the various reasons why philosophers have tended to deny or neglect the possibility of composite subjectivity, and the implications they have drawn from doing so. I explain the significance of mental combination for panpsychism’s combination problem, for collective consciousness, and for a variety of other issues in the philosophy of mind, and sketches out the book’s plan of attack.