FromThe Pinnochio Theory blog:
Arguments for panpsychism come in many forms, and its adherents
often contradict one another. But if there is a central strain to
contemporary panpsychist argumentation, it is this. If we reject
radical mind/body dualism, and accept materialism, physicalism, or any
other form of monism, then we must face the question of \emph{how to
explain} the indubitable existence of mind or mentality. I am using
“monism” here in its widest possible sense; I define it to include, not
just scientific physicalism (the doctrine that the world is composed
entirely of mass-energy, or that it is reducible to the subatomic
particles described by contemporary physics), but also any form of what
might be called “immanentism” (the doctrine that the world is composed
of something like Spinoza’s unique substance, or of Bergson’s multiple
durations, or of “experience” as it is understood in William James’
“radical empiricism”, or indeed as pure multiplicity, or as an open
collection of independent objects a la Graham Harman). In other words,
any philosophy that rejects supernaturalism or mind/body dualism as a
way to explain the existence of mentality, must find some naturalistic,
or at least immanent, way to do so.
I am trying to give as broad as possibile a definition of “mind” or
“mentality” as well. This may be defined as consisting in cognition,
and cognitive operations, of some sort; and, I would argue, in
affectivity as well. But above all mentality consists in phenomenal
experience, or of what analytic philosophers call “qualia”: my
sensation of the redness or hardness of some particular object, or of
pain or delight, or simply of being present in the world. Phenomenal
experience is often conflated with consciousness, or the state of
intentionality, being-aware-of; I have reservations about this
identification, which I will get to later, but the rough equation may
be accepted for the moment.
Understood in any of these ways, mentality would seem to be an
irreducible aspect of our own existence, at the very least — leaving
open the question of what other beings might have it. The question
nagging at philosophers is how to explain the seeming indubitability,
or incorrigibility of phenomenal experience. (”Incorrigibility” is what
Descartes bases his entire philosophy upon. Everything that I think may
be false or mistaken; but the fact that I am thinking cannot be
mistaken). Cartesian dualism is the great classical solution to this
dilemma, of course. Descartes has been (rightly) criticized for
hundreds of years for reifying the act or fact of thinking into the the
form of the “I” as a thing-that-thinks, and for separating the
thinking-mind from any notions of body, matter, or extension. But this
doesn’t negate the urgency of his initial observation.
Few of us are willing today to take Descartes’ dualist route,
however. So the question becomes: how do we explain qualia, or
phenomenal experience, or consciousness, or “inner” experience, on a
materialist or monist basis? Modern thinkers have tended to favor
either eliminativism or emergentism. Eliminativism is a reductionist
thesis; it argues that qualia, consciousness, intentionality, and
phenomenal experience are merely illusions, or linguistic
misunderstandings, which disappear once we understand how neurological
mechanisms operate on the physical level (one can find different
versions of this position in Daniel Dennett, in Thomas Metzinger, and
in the Churchlands). . . .
. . .Panpsychist thinkers propose, against the eliminativists, that
mentality is real. Against the emergentists, they propose that
mentality doesn’t just come into being out of nothing; it is always
already there, no matter where you look. Mind, in some form or other,
exists all the way down. Panpsychists argue that mentality, or
experience, is itself a basic attribute of matter (of subatomic
particles, of quanta of mass-energy, of actual occasions, of minimal
differences, etc.). In other words, mentality is not separate from
physicality, but coextensive with it. One might think of this,
classicaly, in Spinozian terms (matter and mind are two attributes of
the same unique substance) or in Leibnizian ones (every monad is at
once material and mental, since it is both a particle of the world and
a perspective upon the world). But Galen Strawson, David Skrbina, and
others have reconceptualized these arguments in terms that are grounded
in contemporary physics. As Strawson puts it, the “ultimates” out of
which the universe is composed “are intrinsically experience-involving…
All physical stuff is energy, in one form or another; and all energy, I
trow, is an experience-involving phenomenon.”
This line of argument intersects in interesting ways with the
arguments of the Speculative Realists. For it implies that mentality
must be seen as intrinsic to the universe itself — rather than just
being a feature of the way that “we” (human beings, rational minds,
subjects) approach it. To restrict mentality just to human beings (and
perhaps also to some other species of “higher” animals) is an
unjustified prejudice, an instance of the “correlationism” denounced by
Meillassoux, or the human-centeredness questioned by Harman. (This also
accords with Whitehead’s frequent point that the duality of subject and
object is a situational and always changing one. Every entity is a
“subject” in some conditions or some relations, and an “object” in
others).
