In philosophy of mind, panpsychism is the view that mind or a mind-like aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. It has taken on a wide variety of forms. Contemporary academic proponents hold that sentience or subjective experience is ubiquitous, while distancing these qualities from complex human mental attributes; they ascribe a primitive form of mentality to entities at the fundamental level of physics but do not ascribe it to most aggregates, such as rocks or buildings.
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The panpsychist doctrine has recently seen a resurgence in the philosophy of mind, set into motion by Thomas Nagel’s 1979 article “Panpsychism” and further spurred by Galen Strawson’s 2006 article “Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism.” Its prominent proponents in the United States include Christian de Quincey, Leopold Stubenberg, David Ray Griffin, and David Skrbina. In the United Kingdom the case for panpsychism has been made in recent decades by Galen Strawson, Gregg Rosenberg, Timothy Sprigge, and Philip Goff. The British philosopher David Papineau, while distancing himself from orthodox panpsychists, has written that his view is “not unlike panpsychism” in that he rejects a line in nature between “events lit up by phenomenology [and] those that are mere darkness.” The Canadian philosopher William Seager has also defended panpsychism.
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The integrated information theory of consciousness (IIT), proposed by the neuroscientist and psychiatrist Giulio Tononi in 2004 and since adopted by other neuroscientists such as Christof Koch, postulates that consciousness is widespread and can be found even in some simple systems. However, it does not hold that all systems are conscious, leading Tononi and Koch to state that IIT incorporates some elements of panpsychism but not others. Koch has referred to IIT as a “scientifically refined version” of panpsychism.
Tag: Consciousness
Derek Pereboom on Consciousness and Materialism
Derek Pereboom gives a short explanation of the debate over materialism and its implications for consciousness. Personally, I’ve never been able to take seriously the argument that consciousness is in any way non-material. The main argument against this view seems to be that the way we experience consciousness seems to argue against it being entirely material, but if there’s one thing we should have learned with the past few hundred years is that our introspective intuitions often map poorly to how the world actually works.
Are We Out Of Our Minds (Or Our Minds Out of Us?)
Probably not many people’s idea of good relaxing reading, but Jerry Fodor takes on the Extended Mind Thesis in a review of Andy Clark’s Supersizing the Mind.
To oversimplify it a bit, the extended mind thesis claims that technology literally extends our minds outside of our bodies such as, for example, when we’re using a smart phone. Quoting Fodor quoting David Chalmers’ foreword to Supersizing the Mind,
I bought an iPhone. The iPhone has already taken over some of the central functions of my brain . . . The iPhone is part of my mind alrady . . . [Clark’s] marvellous book . . . defends the thesis that, in at least some of these cases the world is not serving as a mere instrument for the mind. Rather, the relevant parts of the world may have become parts of my mind. My iPhone is not my tool, or at least it is not wholly my tool. Parts of it have become parts of me . . . When parts of the environment are coupled to the brain in the right way, they become parts of the mind.
I won’t go into more detail as Fodor does an excellent job of explaining the thesis and some criticisms of it, except to note that along with technology other people would seem to also be part of the extended mind imagined by Clark and Chalmers.
For example, there is a whole class of things that rather than my smart phone I consult my wife about. Restaurant food, for example. My wife can remember exactly what I want to eat at many food establishments, whereas I don’t consider it worth my time to commit this to memory and so will interrogate the waiters about this and that food choice.
Frequently, it is just easier for me to turn to my wife and ask her what I should order since she is able to much more quickly access what it is I would like at a given place than I would. Under Clark and Chalmers formulation it would seem my wife is part of my extended mind. I haven’t read enough to know what their view on other people as part of the extended mind is, but it certainly would be an odd result if they affirm this.