Galen Strawson on Panpsychism

Is there something that it is like to be an electron? That sounds implausible. Yet Galen Strawson believes this is the best explanation of how things are.

Specifically, Galen offers his view on physicalistic panpsychism (though there are non-physicalistic panpsychisms as well). He argues something like this, it seems to me:

First, Galen assumes (very plausibly) that experiential phenomena are real phenomena, opposed to illusory. Now:

1. If radical emergentism is true, then experiential phenomena emerges from wholly and utterly non-experiential phenomena.
2. But experiential phenomena cannot emerge from wholly and utterly non-experiential pheneomena.
3. So radical emergentism is false. [1, 2]
4. If radical emergentism is false, then experiential phenomena must already exist in some sense and to some extent as a feature of physical stuff to give rise to experiential phenomena in an intelligible way.
5. So experiential phenomena must already exist in some sense and to some extent as a feature of physical stuff to give rise to experiential phenomena in an intelligible way. [3, 4]

In other words, consciousness has been a feature of the universe since the Big Bang.

[sgt]

I think panpsychism genuinely solves the mind/body problem. It may or may not be true but it is, I think, the only explanation that is at least metaphysically possible. We now have an answer to the mind body problem that is at least possible. I think we should build on panpsychism because it's the only foundation we have for now. I think the theory of panpsychism is seriously underrated as a theory.

[otakurocklee]

I liked this very much. But there's still a problem... the binding problem.... how do these tiny experiential bits bundle up to one subject of experience? This is still magical... just like the magic of strong emergence.

I think dualism is the only option that makes sense. It does not have to be a religious dualism.

[nerad]

What if the lower you go down in consciousness, the more all knowing it becomes? Like a single atom could know it's exact place and its connection to the universe. But that is literally all it knows. It's single simple experience is all knowing, while more evolved beings have many complex experiences, but we are far from all knowing...

[Ansatz]

The paper linked in the description gives some really strange details of how this is supposed to work. In the whole paper he never presents any argument that's better than "I don't see how this could be." He goes to great length to try to establish that experience cannot be an emergent property of a combination of non-experiential stuff without using arguments, but the fact that he never proves anything really only draws attention to the fact that he has no idea whether experience can come from non-experiential stuff and the whole paper is guesswork.

The strangest thing of all is in the end when he says, "We know, though, that different arrangements of a few types of fundamental ultimates give rise to entities (everything in the universe) whose non-experiential properties seem remarkably different from the non-experiential properties of those fundamental ultimates, and we have no good reason not to expect the same to hold true on the experiential side."

In other words, after supposing the idea that particles may have experiences, he acknowledges that the form of those experiences could easily be nothing like the experiences that we have. He's saying that the experiences of electrons probably aren't experiences as we know experiences, which means the whole paper comes to nothing.

One shocking highlight that I like is when he demands that we reject the possibility of brute emergence, such as experience emerging for no reason when certain particles come together. This is in contrast to particles having certain properties that would make it possible for someone who knows about those properties to justify a prediction that experience would emerge if the particles were put together in a certain way. I see no reason why combinations of particles having experience for no reason is any stranger than individual particles having experience for no reason, but Strawson hates that idea and goes on a rant about it for three paragraphs.

He says that the people who take brute emergence seriously are self-deluded fools and then goes into an appeal to consequences fallacy where he complains that brute emergence being possible would make us unable to understand the world. He even says that brute emergence would be both a miracle and not a miracle for reasons he doesn't clearly explain. I would expect that showing that brute emergence leads to a contradiction would be his top priority if he were really able to do that, but instead he glosses over that part to move on to insulting people who disagree with him.

[tahwsisiht]

One way of looking at consciousness is that all material has it in them. Isn't it easier to look at it: the non material creates our experience of material world? Much like the way holographic universe is imagined.
For me, it is easier to imagine to have consciousness that the material world emerges from.

[RSEFX]

Maybe tables aren't the best item to toss into the "what about this?" consciousness arguments, in that so many of them are made of wood, a living---or once upon a time living---material... Maybe there's a residue of that life left within its fibers. Anyway, just a thought.

[RSEFX]

Is it not possible that someday scientists may find a way of fusing the brain tissue of two human beings together in such a way that a kind of direct "telepathy" could result in s shared experience of memories and senses, to finally discover whether "red" is basically the same thing to two different minds? (or is it that, if telepathy was possible---the literal ability of one mind to read the thoughts of another by whatever means---the thoughts would be automatically "translated " and "read" by the receiving mind in a changed manner, meaning the receiving brain would always and only see the "red" of another mind in same way its own mind sees (experiences) "red"?

[jimmyfaulkner]

Are their any good arguments in favour of monism and holism when it comes to metaphysics/ontology? To put it another way, is the cosmos one substance? You seem to be assuming these positions when it comes to your defence of Spinoza’s views and that is why I am interested in whether their are any actual arguments in favour of those positions, whether it is positive or negative.

[hn]

Why can't the colours I 'see' when I think of a 'red apple' emerge from the activity of the units within my brain? The problem Strawson is referring to is surely my inability to "communicate" my subjective experience ( even to myself, if I tried to paint the imagined image ). I don't understand the need to for some spooky -ism that infers some unmeasurable quality in the physical units in my brain.

[naturalisted]

Panpsychism, like the idea of a supernatural soul, is debunked by the fact that we can go unconscious with anesthesia and other methods. If Panpsychism were true, we would not be able to ever go unconscious, because the material (as he says) is what is responsible for consciousness and it is still there when we go unconscious via being knocked out. It'd be impossible to have any moment of unconsciousness, but when we are given anesthesia we cannot recall what happened during the time we were unconscious. Therefore consciousness is a product of the brain.

[maxmax]

Couldn't we explain any alledged brute fact by appealing to neccesity? For example, it could just be a neccesary fact that when matter achieves a critical level of conplexity, conciousness emerges. We already accept lower level facts, such as the negative charge of an electron, as simply neccesary facts with no prior explanation required. It could just be some quirk within the nature of matter that when particularly arranged, there is a neccesity within its nature to cause conciousness.

This may be utterly disatisfying, sure, but it doesn't strike me as violating PSR (things either have an explanation in an external cause, or some neccesity of its nature which gaurantees it).

[sebastianverney]

i can't see what's wrong with dualism. i am an experiencing subject and as such i experience an objective world, or objects of my perception.