It seems to me that the basic appeal of panpsychism goes like “It seems really weird that you can put together some apparently unfeeling pieces, and then out comes this thing that feels. Maybe those things aren’t actually unfeeling? That would sort of explain where the feeling-ness comes from.”
But this feels kind of analogous to a being that doesn’t have a good theory about houses, but is aware that some things are houses and some things aren’t, by their experiences of those things. Such a being might analogously reason that *everything* is a little bit house-y. Panhousism isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s not actually very enlightening. It doesn’t explain how the houseyness of a tree is increased when you rearrange the tree to be a log cabin. In fact it might naively want to deny that the total houseyness is increased.
I think panpsychism is outrageously false, and profoundly misguided as an approach to the hard problem. But I think I can describe it in a way that makes its appeal more obvious:
When I introspect, it seems like there’s a lot of complexity to my experiences. But it doesn’t seem like a complex fact that that I’m conscious at all—the distinction between conscious and unconscious seems very basic. It feels like there’s ‘what it’s like to be an algorithm from the inside’, and then there’s the causal behavior of the algorithm, and that’s all there is to it.
And thought experiments show that ‘how an algorithm feels from inside’ can’t be exhaustively reduced to any functional/causal/‘external’ behavior. (See the knowledge argument, the zombie argument, etc.)
So maybe I should just think of ‘algorithms have an inside’ as a basic feature of the universe, an extension of ‘everything has an inside (so to speak) and the only reason I feel “special” is that I happen to be this one part of the universe’.
Panprotopsychism might make this an easier pill to swallow. We can say that electrons aren’t “conscious” in the fashion of a human; but they maybe have an “inside” (in the sense of “how an algorithm feels from inside”) in the most rudimentary and abstract way possible, and the more complex “inside” of things like humans is built up out of all these smaller, more bare-bones “insides”.
We can imagine that “how an electron feels from inside” is like an empty room. There’s an “inside”, but there’s no content to it, just empty structure. This structure can then produce some amazing things, if you arrange an enormous number of parts in just the right way; but the important thing is to start from the kind of universe that has an “inside” at all, as opposed to the zombie universe.
The problem with this view, as usual, is that we’ve assumed that the “inside” can’t causally affect the “outside”; and yet I just wrote a bunch of paragraphs about the “inside”, presumably based on some knowledge I have about that inside.
So either my paragraphs must be straightforwardly false; or I must be confused about what I’m discussing (ascribing attributes to a nonfunctional, nonphysical thing that are really just run-of-the-mill descriptions of physical facts); or my statements must be miraculously true, even though there is no explanation for why I would have any knowledge of the things I’m discussing.
Without some further argument to make sense of the miracle, I think we have to reject the miracle, even if we still feel confused about what’s actually going on with phenomenal consciousness.
I think panpsychism is outrageously false, and profoundly misguided as an approach to the hard problem.
What do you think of Brian Tomasik’s flavor of panpsychism, which he says is compatible with (and, indeed, follows from) type-A materialism? As he puts it,
It’s unsurprising that a type-A physicalist should attribute nonzero consciousness to all systems. After all, “consciousness” is a concept—a “cluster in thingspace”—and all points in thingspace are less than infinitely far away from the centroid of the “consciousness” cluster. By a similar argument, we might say that any system displays nonzero similarity to any concept (except maybe for strictly partitioned concepts that map onto the universe’s fundamental ontology, like the difference between matter vs. antimatter). Panpsychism on consciousness is just one particular example of that principle.
I haven’t read Brian Tomasik’s thoughts on this, so let me know if you think I’m misunderstanding him / should read more.
The hard problem of consciousness at least gives us a prima facie reason to consider panpsychism. (Though I think this ultimately falls apart when we consider ‘we couldn’t know about the hard problem of consciousness if non-interactionist panpsychism were true; and interactionist panpsychism would mean new, detectable physics’.)
If we deny the hard problem, then I don’t see any reason to give panpsychism any consideration in the first place. We could distinguish two panpsychist views here: ‘trivial’ (doesn’t have any practical implications, just amounts to defining ‘consciousness’ so broadly as to include anything and everything); and ‘nontrivial’ (has practical implications, or at least the potential for such; e.g., perhaps the revelation that panpsychism is true should cause us to treat electrons as moral patients, with their own rights and/or their own welfare).
But I see no reason whatsoever to think that electrons are moral patients, or that electrons have any other nontrivial mental property. The mere fact that we don’t fully understand how human brains work is not a reason to ask whether there’s some new undiscovered feature of particles ∼1031 times smaller than a human brain that explains the comically larger macro-process—any more than limitations in our understanding of stomachs would be a reason to ask whether individual electrons have some hidden digestive properties.
(Brian Tomasik’s view superficially sounds a lot like what Ben Weinstein-Raun is criticizing in his second paragraph, so I thought I’d add here the comment I wrote in response to Ben’s post:
> Panhousism isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s not actually very enlightening. It doesn’t explain how the houseyness of a tree is increased when you rearrange the tree to be a log cabin. In fact it might naively want to deny that the total houseyness is increased.
I really don’t see how that is what panhousism would say, at least what I have in mind when I think of panhousism (which is analogous to what I have in mind when I think of (type-A materialist[1]) panpsychism). If all that panhousism means is that (1) “house” is a cluster in thingspace and (2) nothing is infinitely far away from the centroid of the “house” cluster, then it seems very obvious to me that the distance of a tree from the “house” centroid decreases if you rearrange the tree into a log cabin. As an example, focus on the “suitability to protect humans from rain” dimension in thingspace. It’s very clear to me that turning a tree into a log cabin moves it closer to the “house” cluster in that dimension. And the same principle applies to all other dimensions. So I don’t see your point here.
I’m not sure if I should quote Ben’s reply to me, since his post is not public, but he pretty much said that his original post was not addressing type-A physicalist panpsychism, although he finds this view unuseful for other reasons.
Thanks for sharing. :) Yeah, it seems like most people have in mind type-F monism when they refer to panpsychism, since that’s the kind of panpsychism that’s growing in popularity in philosophy in recent years. I agree with Rob’s reasons for rejecting that view.
There’s another theory that isn’t even on Chalmers’s list: dual aspect neutral monism.
This holds that the physical sciences are one possible map of territory which is not itself, intrinsically, physical (or, for that matter, mental). Consciousness is another map, or aspect.
This approach has the advantage of dualism, in that there is no longer a need to explain the mental in terms of the physical, to reduce it to the physical, because the physical is no longer regarded as fundamental (nor is the mental, hence the “neutral”). Although an ontological identity between the physical and mental is accepted, the epistemic irreducibility of the mental to the physical is also accepted. Physicalism, in the sense that the physical sciences have a unique and priveleged explanatory role, is therefore rejected.
Nonetheless, the fact that the physical sciences “work” in many ways, that the physical map can be accurate, is retained. Moreover, since Dual Aspect theory is not fully fledged dualism, it is able to sidestep most or all of the standard objections to dualism.
To take one example, since the a conscious mental state and physical brain state are ultimately the same thing, the expected relationships hold between them. For instance, mental states cannot vary without some change in the physical state (supervenience follows directly from identity, without any special apparatus); furthermore, since mental states are ultimately identical to physical brain states, they share the causal powers of brain states (again without the need to posit special explanatory apparatus such as “psychophysical laws”)This holds that the physical sciences are one possible map of territory which is not itself, intrinsically, physical (or, for that matter, mental). Consciousness is another map, or aspect.
This approach has the advantage of dualism, in that there is no longer a need to explain the mental in terms of the physical, to reduce it to the physical, because the physical is no longer regarded as fundamental (nor is the mental, hence the “neutral”). Although an ontological identity between the physical and mental is accepted, the epistemic irreducibility of the mental to the physical is also accepted. Physicalism, in the sense that the physical sciences have a unique and privileged explanatory role, is therefore rejected.
Nonetheless, the fact that the physical sciences “work” in many ways, that the physical map can be accurate, is retained. Moreover, since Dual Aspect theory is not fully fledged dualism, it is able to sidestep most or all of the standard objections to dualism.
To take one example, since the a conscious mental state and physical brain state are ultimately the same thing, the expected relationships hold between them. For instance, mental states cannot vary without some change in the physical state (supervenience follows directly from identity, without any special apparatus); furthermore, since mental states are ultimately identical to physical brain states, they share the causal powers of brain states, and in that way epiphenomenalism is avoided.
The more familiar kinds of dualism are substance and property dualism. Both take a physical ontology “as is” and add something extra, and both have problems with explaining how the additional substances or properties interact with physical substances and properties, and both of course have problems with ontological parsimony (Occam’s Razor).
In contrast to a substance or property, an aspect is a relational kind of thing. In Dual Aspect theory, a conscious state is interpreted as being based on the kind of relationship and entity has with itself, and the kind of interaction it has with itself. The physical is reinterpreted as a kind of interaction with and relation to the external. It is not clear whether this theory adds anything fundamentally new, ontologically, since most people will accept the existence of some kind of inner/outer distinction, although the distinction may be made to do more work in Dual Aspect theory. Reinterpreting the physical is a genuine third alternative to accepting (only) the physical, denying the physical, and suplementing the physical.
The more familiar kinds of dualism are substance and property dualism. Both take a physical ontology “as is” and add something extra, and both have problems with explaining how the additional substances or properties interact with physical substances and properties, and both of course have problems with ontological parsimony (Occam’s Razor).
In contrast to a substance or property, an aspect is a relational kind of thing. In Dual Aspect theory, a conscious state is interpreted as being based on the kind of relationship and entity has with itself, and the kind of interaction it has with itself. The physical is reinterpreted as a kind of interaction with and relation to the external. It is not clear whether this theory adds anything fundamentally new, ontologically, since most people will accept the existence of some kind of inner/outer distinction, although the distinction may be made to do more work in Dual Aspect theory. Reinterpreting the physical is a genuine third alternative to accepting (only) the physical, denying the physical, and suplemmenting the physical.
Ben Weinstein-Raun wrote on social media:
I think panpsychism is outrageously false, and profoundly misguided as an approach to the hard problem. But I think I can describe it in a way that makes its appeal more obvious:
When I introspect, it seems like there’s a lot of complexity to my experiences. But it doesn’t seem like a complex fact that that I’m conscious at all—the distinction between conscious and unconscious seems very basic. It feels like there’s ‘what it’s like to be an algorithm from the inside’, and then there’s the causal behavior of the algorithm, and that’s all there is to it.
And thought experiments show that ‘how an algorithm feels from inside’ can’t be exhaustively reduced to any functional/causal/‘external’ behavior. (See the knowledge argument, the zombie argument, etc.)
So maybe I should just think of ‘algorithms have an inside’ as a basic feature of the universe, an extension of ‘everything has an inside (so to speak) and the only reason I feel “special” is that I happen to be this one part of the universe’.
Panprotopsychism might make this an easier pill to swallow. We can say that electrons aren’t “conscious” in the fashion of a human; but they maybe have an “inside” (in the sense of “how an algorithm feels from inside”) in the most rudimentary and abstract way possible, and the more complex “inside” of things like humans is built up out of all these smaller, more bare-bones “insides”.
We can imagine that “how an electron feels from inside” is like an empty room. There’s an “inside”, but there’s no content to it, just empty structure. This structure can then produce some amazing things, if you arrange an enormous number of parts in just the right way; but the important thing is to start from the kind of universe that has an “inside” at all, as opposed to the zombie universe.
The problem with this view, as usual, is that we’ve assumed that the “inside” can’t causally affect the “outside”; and yet I just wrote a bunch of paragraphs about the “inside”, presumably based on some knowledge I have about that inside.
So either my paragraphs must be straightforwardly false; or I must be confused about what I’m discussing (ascribing attributes to a nonfunctional, nonphysical thing that are really just run-of-the-mill descriptions of physical facts); or my statements must be miraculously true, even though there is no explanation for why I would have any knowledge of the things I’m discussing.
Without some further argument to make sense of the miracle, I think we have to reject the miracle, even if we still feel confused about what’s actually going on with phenomenal consciousness.
What do you think of Brian Tomasik’s flavor of panpsychism, which he says is compatible with (and, indeed, follows from) type-A materialism? As he puts it,
I haven’t read Brian Tomasik’s thoughts on this, so let me know if you think I’m misunderstanding him / should read more.
The hard problem of consciousness at least gives us a prima facie reason to consider panpsychism. (Though I think this ultimately falls apart when we consider ‘we couldn’t know about the hard problem of consciousness if non-interactionist panpsychism were true; and interactionist panpsychism would mean new, detectable physics’.)
If we deny the hard problem, then I don’t see any reason to give panpsychism any consideration in the first place. We could distinguish two panpsychist views here: ‘trivial’ (doesn’t have any practical implications, just amounts to defining ‘consciousness’ so broadly as to include anything and everything); and ‘nontrivial’ (has practical implications, or at least the potential for such; e.g., perhaps the revelation that panpsychism is true should cause us to treat electrons as moral patients, with their own rights and/or their own welfare).
But I see no reason whatsoever to think that electrons are moral patients, or that electrons have any other nontrivial mental property. The mere fact that we don’t fully understand how human brains work is not a reason to ask whether there’s some new undiscovered feature of particles ∼1031 times smaller than a human brain that explains the comically larger macro-process—any more than limitations in our understanding of stomachs would be a reason to ask whether individual electrons have some hidden digestive properties.
(Brian Tomasik’s view superficially sounds a lot like what Ben Weinstein-Raun is criticizing in his second paragraph, so I thought I’d add here the comment I wrote in response to Ben’s post:
I’m not sure if I should quote Ben’s reply to me, since his post is not public, but he pretty much said that his original post was not addressing type-A physicalist panpsychism, although he finds this view unuseful for other reasons.
)
Thanks for sharing. :) Yeah, it seems like most people have in mind type-F monism when they refer to panpsychism, since that’s the kind of panpsychism that’s growing in popularity in philosophy in recent years. I agree with Rob’s reasons for rejecting that view.
There’s another theory that isn’t even on Chalmers’s list: dual aspect neutral monism.
This holds that the physical sciences are one possible map of territory which is not itself, intrinsically, physical (or, for that matter, mental). Consciousness is another map, or aspect.
This approach has the advantage of dualism, in that there is no longer a need to explain the mental in terms of the physical, to reduce it to the physical, because the physical is no longer regarded as fundamental (nor is the mental, hence the “neutral”). Although an ontological identity between the physical and mental is accepted, the epistemic irreducibility of the mental to the physical is also accepted. Physicalism, in the sense that the physical sciences have a unique and priveleged explanatory role, is therefore rejected.
Nonetheless, the fact that the physical sciences “work” in many ways, that the physical map can be accurate, is retained. Moreover, since Dual Aspect theory is not fully fledged dualism, it is able to sidestep most or all of the standard objections to dualism.
To take one example, since the a conscious mental state and physical brain state are ultimately the same thing, the expected relationships hold between them. For instance, mental states cannot vary without some change in the physical state (supervenience follows directly from identity, without any special apparatus); furthermore, since mental states are ultimately identical to physical brain states, they share the causal powers of brain states (again without the need to posit special explanatory apparatus such as “psychophysical laws”)This holds that the physical sciences are one possible map of territory which is not itself, intrinsically, physical (or, for that matter, mental). Consciousness is another map, or aspect.
This approach has the advantage of dualism, in that there is no longer a need to explain the mental in terms of the physical, to reduce it to the physical, because the physical is no longer regarded as fundamental (nor is the mental, hence the “neutral”). Although an ontological identity between the physical and mental is accepted, the epistemic irreducibility of the mental to the physical is also accepted. Physicalism, in the sense that the physical sciences have a unique and privileged explanatory role, is therefore rejected.
Nonetheless, the fact that the physical sciences “work” in many ways, that the physical map can be accurate, is retained. Moreover, since Dual Aspect theory is not fully fledged dualism, it is able to sidestep most or all of the standard objections to dualism.
To take one example, since the a conscious mental state and physical brain state are ultimately the same thing, the expected relationships hold between them. For instance, mental states cannot vary without some change in the physical state (supervenience follows directly from identity, without any special apparatus); furthermore, since mental states are ultimately identical to physical brain states, they share the causal powers of brain states, and in that way epiphenomenalism is avoided.
The more familiar kinds of dualism are substance and property dualism. Both take a physical ontology “as is” and add something extra, and both have problems with explaining how the additional substances or properties interact with physical substances and properties, and both of course have problems with ontological parsimony (Occam’s Razor).
In contrast to a substance or property, an aspect is a relational kind of thing. In Dual Aspect theory, a conscious state is interpreted as being based on the kind of relationship and entity has with itself, and the kind of interaction it has with itself. The physical is reinterpreted as a kind of interaction with and relation to the external. It is not clear whether this theory adds anything fundamentally new, ontologically, since most people will accept the existence of some kind of inner/outer distinction, although the distinction may be made to do more work in Dual Aspect theory. Reinterpreting the physical is a genuine third alternative to accepting (only) the physical, denying the physical, and suplementing the physical.
The more familiar kinds of dualism are substance and property dualism. Both take a physical ontology “as is” and add something extra, and both have problems with explaining how the additional substances or properties interact with physical substances and properties, and both of course have problems with ontological parsimony (Occam’s Razor).
In contrast to a substance or property, an aspect is a relational kind of thing. In Dual Aspect theory, a conscious state is interpreted as being based on the kind of relationship and entity has with itself, and the kind of interaction it has with itself. The physical is reinterpreted as a kind of interaction with and relation to the external. It is not clear whether this theory adds anything fundamentally new, ontologically, since most people will accept the existence of some kind of inner/outer distinction, although the distinction may be made to do more work in Dual Aspect theory. Reinterpreting the physical is a genuine third alternative to accepting (only) the physical, denying the physical, and suplemmenting the physical.