Panpsychism Makes a Comeback; denied (General)

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 20, 2016, 15:55 (2984 days ago) @ David Turell

A philosophers take on panpsychism and why he does not accept it as he discusses its relationship to the hard problem of consciousness: - https://aeon.co/ideas/why-panpsychism-fails-to-solve-the-mystery-of-consciousness?utm_s... - "Is consciousness everywhere? Is it a basic feature of the Universe, at the very heart of the tiniest subatomic particles? Such an idea - panpsychism as it is known - might sound like New Age mysticism, but some hard-nosed analytic philosophers have suggested it might be how things are, and it's now a hot topic in philosophy of mind. - "Panpsychism's popularity stems from the fact that it promises to solve two deep problems simultaneously. The first is the famous ‘hard problem' of consciousness. How does the brain produce conscious experience? How can neurons firing give rise to experiences of colour, sound, taste, pain and so on? In principle, scientists could map my brain processes in complete detail but, it seems, they could never detect my experiences themselves. Somehow, it seems, brain processes acquire a subjective aspect, which is invisible to science. - "The second problem concerns an apparent gap in our scientific picture of the world. Physics aims to describe the fundamental constituents of the Universe - the basic subatomic particles from which everything is made, together with the laws that govern them. Yet physics seems to leave out something very important from its picture of the basic particles. It tells us, for example, that an electron has a certain mass, charge and spin. But this is a description of how an electron is disposed to behave: to have mass is to resist acceleration, to have charge is to respond in a certain way to electromagnetic fields, and so on. Physics doesn't say what an electron, or any other basic particle, is like in itself, intrinsically. - *** - " Perhaps phenomenal properties, are the fundamental intrinsic properties of matter we're looking for, and each subatomic particle is a tiny conscious subject. This solves the hard problem: brain and consciousness emerge together when billions of basic particles are assembled in the right way. The brain arises from the particles' dispositions to interact and combine, and consciousness arises from what the particles are like in themselves. They are two sides of the same coin - or, rather, since on this view consciousness is the fundamental reality underlying physical reality, brains are manifestations of consciousness. As it holds that there is a single reality underlying both mind and matter, panpsychism is a form of monism. - *** - "There are problems for panpsychism, perhaps the most important being the combination problem. Panpsychists hold that consciousness emerges from the combination of billions of subatomic consciousnesses, just as the brain emerges from the organisation of billions of subatomic particles. But how do these tiny consciousnesses combine? We understand how particles combine to make atoms, molecules and larger structures, but what parallel story can we tell on the phenomenal side? How do the micro-experiences of billions of subatomic particles in my brain combine to form the twinge of pain I'm feeling in my knee? - ***
"A related problem concerns conscious subjects. It's plausible to think that there can't be conscious experience without a subject who has the experience. I assume that we and many other animals are conscious subjects, and panpsychists claim that subatomic particles are too. But is that it? Are there any intermediate-level conscious subjects (molecules, crystals, plants?), formed like us from combinations of micro-subjects? It's hard to see why subjecthood should be restricted to just subatomic particles and higher animals, but equally hard to think of any non-arbitrary way of extending the category. - *** - "I remain unpersuaded, ... Even if we accept that basic physical entities must have some categorical nature (and it might be that we don't; perhaps at bottom reality is just dispositions), consciousness is an unlikely candidate for this fundamental property. For, so far as our evidence goes, it is a highly localised phenomenon that is specific not only to brains but to particular states of brains . It appears to be a specific state of certain highly complex information-processing systems, not a basic feature of the Universe. - *** - "Panpsychism offers no distinctive predictions or explanations. It finds a place for consciousness in the physical world, but that place is a sort of limbo. Consciousness is indeed a hard nut to crack, but I think we should exhaust the other options before we take a metaphysical sledgehammer to it. - *** - "Rather than thinking that this [consciousness]is a fundamental property of all matter, I think that it is an illusion. As well as senses for representing the external world, we have a sort of inner sense, which represents aspects of our own brain activity......It is a powerful impression, but just an impression. Consciousness, in that sense, is not everywhere but nowhere. Perhaps this seems as strange a view as panpsychism. But thinking about consciousness can lead one to embrace strange views." - Comment: I find this a rather narrow discussion, which leaves out evidence of species consciousness, NDE research and quantum delayed choice evidence.