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Contemporary Philosophy
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Mind That Abides: Panpsychism in the new millennium by
David Skrbina (Advances in Consciousness Research: John Benjamns
Publishing Company) Panpsychism is the view that all things, living
and nonliving, possess some mind like quality. It stands in sharp
contrast to the traditional notion of mind as the property of humans
and (perhaps) a few select ‘higher animals’. Though surprising at
first glance, panpsychism has a long and noble history in both
Western and Eastern thought. Overlooked by analytical, materialist
philosophy for most of the 20th century, it is now
experiencing a renaissance of sorts in several areas of inquiry. A
number of recent books - including Skrbina’s
Panpsychism in the West (2005: MIT) and
Strawson et al’s
Consciousness and its Place in Nature (2006:
Imprint Academic) - have established panpsychism as respectable and
viable. Mind That Abides builds on these works. It takes
panpsychism to be a plausible theory of mind and then moves forward
to work out the philosophical, psychological and ethical
implications. With 17 contributors from a variety of fields, this
book promises to mark a wholesale change in our philosophical
outlook.
In the Diamond Sutra it is written: "Mind that abides nowhere
must come forth." Mind indeed seems to abide nowhere, yet it does
undeniably come forth.' Mind is real enough for each of us, yet it
seems to dwell nowhere in the physical world. We are tempted to say
that mind 'resides in the brain; but when we ask how and why it
resides there, and when we look for specific processes or structures
that might give rise to specific mental qualities, we are at a loss.
We think it resides in the 'higher animals,' but we are less certain
here than with ourselves. We have convinced ourselves that it is
absent in the lesser forms of life, and in the nonliving, but cannot
know this for certain, and we are unable to explain when, and why,
it allegedly drops from existence. To judge from the failures of
philosophy of mind and cognitive science of the past years to locate
the 'seat of consciousness' or the correlates of mind, one could
almost be excused for believing that mind abides nowhere — indeed,
nowhere at all.
The moral of the sutra, I think, is this: Mind comes forth
even from those places where it seems to abide not. In the least
likely of places, in the most inanimate and the least organic — even
there, mind comes forth. So in a sense we end up with the
paradoxical conclusion: Mind, perhaps, abides everywhere. This in
fact was the intuition of the great Eastern philosophies, as it has
been for many of the deepest thinkers in the Western tradition.
Nearly 2,500 years ago Empedocles promised that by holding such a
view before oneself, and contemplating it "with good will and
unclouded attention," that it would yield great things. I intend to
take him at his word.
If we allow the possibility that this may be a panpsychic
cosmos in which we dwell, a variety of new approaches to age-old
questions of mind and consciousness open up to us. If mind is
universal, it clearly must have general qualities or characteristics
that are extrapolations from those with which we are intimately
familiar. More precisely, our experience of mind must be a refined
or specialized instance of some universal phenomena. Hence we may
do well to deemphasize the quest for the specifically human
embodiment of mind, and look instead to more fundamental features of
existence. We might try to discern and articulate those aspects of
our own minds that may be candidates for universal mental
properties. At the very least, we will no longer be brought to a
screeching halt when some tentative theory of mind suggests that it
may
At the outset I want to dispel three common misconceptions.
First, panpsychism is not idealism. The fact that all things have
mind, or instantiate mind, or embody mental states, is not the same
as saying that things are mind, or that mind is the ultimate
reality, or that the physical is reducible to the mental. Certainly
one can be both a panpsychist and an idealist — names like
Schopenhauer, Royce, and Bradley come to mind — but there is no
necessary connection. In fact the vast majority of panpsychists were
not (and are not) idealists.
Second, panpsychism is not dualism. Dualism holds that there
exist two fundamental substances, typically matter and mind; it
tells us nothing about how widespread such mind must be. As with
idealism, it clearly is possible to be a panpsychist dualist —one
need only argue that all objects possess, or interact with, a
corresponding immaterial mind or psyche. Such a position, however,
is rare within philosophical circles; nearly all panpsychists are
nondualist.
Third, panpsychism is not supernaturalism.
The reference to 'psyche' should not lead the reader to think that
we are contemplating immortal souls or spirits in all things. Even
less should it suggest a commitment to a theological position of any
sort. Panpsychism resides quite happily in a naturalistic, monistic,
and even physicalist cosmos.
Today, most philosophers of mind have migrated to monistic
worldviews. Consequently, both 'mind' and 'body' are nothing more
than different manifestations or modifications of the same unitary
substance. Hence the relation between mind and brain (or body, or
matter) must be one of fundamentally like entities. This minimizes
problems of causality, but it also entails that the one reality
must, in some essential way, be either mind-like itself, or must
possess an innate power to produce mind. The former is explicit
panpsychism. Mind could be a fundamental attribute of reality, along
the lines of mass, charge, spin, and quanta. Or perhaps the one
monistic reality is at once physical and mental — a kind of radical
identity theory. But even in the latter case, it is hard to see how
a single underlying reality could have such power without exhibiting
some mental qualities in its own right; this would yield a kind of
implicit or `proto' panpsychism.
But anti-panpsychist monists have an alternative — they can
claim that mind `emerges' from an utterly non-mental substrate.
Putting it simply: At some point in the past there was no mind, and
today there is, therefore mind must have emerged from no-mind. This
is the standard view. It is widely held, but rarely defended. And
for good reason — it is deeply problematic.
If true, we should be able to say, very roughly, when mind
emerged, where it emerged, and why it emerged. The evolutionary
emergence of mind on the Earth, some millions (or billions?) of
years ago would have been a monumental event in our history, and
the emergentist should be able to give us some very general idea of
when, and in which organism(s), this feature first came to be; this
is the historical aspect of the issue. Secondly, considering the
range of organisms that exist on the planet today, the emergentist
should be able to give us a compelling explanation of which entities
possess mind, and which don't. This is the phylogenic question:
where should we draw the line between enminded and unminded beings?
Finally there is what I call the onto-genic question: when, for
example, in the development of the human fetus does mind appear? The
emergentist must hold that the fertilized egg has no mind, and that
the newborn baby does — so, when in the course of those nine months
did mind magically appear? To claim that it gradually ramps-up will
not do; the emergentist is committed to an absolute jump at some
point in the fetus' development, from zero mind to mind. Truly a
magic event. As it happens, emergentist philosophers are utterly at
a loss when it comes to these very basic and very important
questions. Lacking rational justification, emergence is accepted
simply as a matter of faith.
Some are prepared to go further and claim that this alleged
brute emergence of mind — mind from mindless matter — is not only
problematic, it is incomprehensible. This fact was recognized
already by Epicurus, who argued that human will could not emerge
from deterministic atoms, and therefore that atoms themselves
possessed a small degree of will (hence, panpsychism). Telesio,
Patrizi, Gilbert, Campanella, Fechner, Paulsen, Clifford, Strong,
Teilhard, and Wright all used versions of the same argument on
behalf of panpsychism.
More recently Galen Strawson has reiterated this point in a
most forceful way. The notion that mental experience can emerge from
a wholly non-mental, non-experiential substrate is, he says,
nonsense: "I think it is very, very hard to understand what it is
supposed to involve. I think that it is incoherent, in fact..."
(2006:12). Emergence works for almost everything in this world —
liquidity, life, Homo sapiens —because the relevant properties
already exist in matter. Emergence can, and does, happen all the
time; but "it can't be brute." Under the standard physicalist view,
there are no relevant properties in matter that would allow mind to
emerge.' In fact precisely the opposite: matter is explicitly devoid
of mind and experience, we are told. Hence the emergence of true
mind becomes an inexplicable miracle. Rather than accept miracles,
we might be better served by dropping the crude physicalism and
looking for panpsychist alternatives.
For many philosophers, both past and present, both East and
West, panpsychism thus stands as the more viable option. But this is
not enough. Panpsychism simply claims that the components of the
world have some inherent experiential or mind-like qualities. This
is a long way from an understanding of the human mind, let alone
mind as a universal property. Hence the central aim of this book: to
move ahead on the subject of panpsychism, to take it seriously, and
to try to flesh out more complete theories of mind. Such a step, by
experts from various fields, is unprecedented. It is long overdue.
The advent of this renaissance and re-emergence of panpsychism
as a serious field of study calls for a broad-based approach. The
contributors to this volume cut across a wide range of disciplines,
and address the topic from a diversity of backgrounds. Panpsychism
has vast implications for many areas of thought, and thus it is
precisely such a diversity of ideas that we need at this moment.
Following a concise historical overview of panpsychism, Part
One examines analytical and scientific approaches to the topic. It
begins with Strawson's soon-to-be classic, "Realistic monism," a
piece gratefully reprinted from the Journal of Consciousness
Studies.' This is followed by an excerpt on his ‘sesmet' theory of
subjective experience. After Strawson we have a number of new
arguments and analyses of panpsychism —from quantum theory,
neurobiology, analytical philosophy, and quasi-idealism.
Part Two incorporates four essays that specifically focus on
the process philosophical approach. Whitehead, Russell, Hartshorne,
and Griffin, among other process thinkers, have been the dominant
carriers of the panpsychist tradition in the past century,`and this
line of thinking is as lively and productive as ever.
Part Three encompasses a range of more purely metaphysical
approaches to panpsychism. It covers phenomenological concepts,
eco-philosophy, Eastern philosophy, and classical dual-aspect
theories.
It is our hope that this collection of ideas and theories will
launch panpsychism into the third millennium with vigor and promise,
as befitting such a venerable conception of mind. For this
momentous rededication, I think we could have had no better
collection of contributors than those that follow.
Table of contents: Contributors
Acknowledgements &
dedication Introduction 1. Panpsychism in history: An overview By
David Skrbina Part I. Analysis and science 2. Realistic monism:
Why physicalism entails panpsychism, and on the Sesmet theory of
subjectivity By Galen Strawson 3. Halting the descent into
panpsychism: A quantum
thermofield theoretical perspective Gordon G. Globus
4. Mind under matter By Sam Coleman
5. The conscious connection: A psycho-physical bridge
between brain and pan-experiential quantum geometry By Stuart R. Hameroff and Jon Powell
6. Can the panpsychist get around the combination
problem? By Phil Goff
7. Universal correlates of consciousness Stephen Deiss
8. Panpsychism, the Big-Bang-Argument, and the dignity of life
By Patrick Spät Part II. Process philosophy
9. Back to Whitehead? Galen Strawson and the rediscovery of
panpsychism By Pierfrancesco Basile
10. Does process externalism support panpsychism? The
relational nature of the physical world as a foundation for the
conscious mind By Riccardo Manzotti
11. The dynamics of possession: An introduction to the
sociology of Gabriel Tarde By Didier Debaise 12. Finite
eventism Carey R. Carlson Part III. Metaphysics and mind 13.
Zero-person and the psyche by Graham Harman 14. "All things
think:" Panpsychism and the metaphysics of nature By
Iain Hamilton Grant 15. 'Something there?' James and Fechner
meet in a Pluralistic Universe By
Katrin Solhdju 16. Panpsychic presuppositions of Samkhya
metaphysics By
Jaison A. Manjaly 17.
The awareness of rock: East-Asian understandings and implications
By Graham Parkes 18.
Why has the West failed to embrace panpsychism? By Freya Mathews
19. Minds, objects, and
relations: Toward a dual-aspect ontology by David Skrbina
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