The discussion of worldviews is today dominated by two worldviews, Theism and Naturalism, each with its own advantages and problems. Theism has the advantage of accommodating the individual with existential answers whilst having problems with integrating more recent scientific understandings of the universe. Naturalism on the other hand does well by our developments of science, the problem being instead that this understanding meets difficulty in answering some of the essentials of our existence: questions of mentality and morality. These two views differ fundamentally in stances of ontology and epistemology, and seem not in any foreseeable future to be reconcilable. To deal with this issue, Panpsychism is presented here as the worldview that can accommodate for both existential issues and scientific understanding.

abstract: Russellian monism is a promising theory of consciousness that attempts to capture the strengths of both physicalism and dualism while avoiding their weaknesses. I begin by showing that the Russellian monist’s chief anti-physicalist rival, emergentism, is unable to give an adequate solution to the exclusion problem. Specifically, they fall prey to what I call “the opacity problem.” That is, because the emergentist is committed to there being both a sufficient physical cause and a sufficient mental cause for our actions, it is unclear what difference the mental cause is making in bringing about the effect. This is because, for the physical cause to truly be a sufficient cause, it must be sufficient to bring about the effect as it occurred. This distinguishes mental overdetermination from non-problematic kinds of overdetermination (like double rock throwing cases). I then show how the constitutive Russellian monist is able to avoid the exclusion problem, while the emergent Russellian monist faces similar opacity problems to emergentism. Finally, I give an account of how the constitutive Russellian monist can give a response to the strongest objection against—the subject-summing problem. I argue that we only have translucent access to our conscious states—that is, only part of the essential nature of the state is revealed to us through introspection. I then argue that we have reason to think that part of the essential nature of the conscious state not revealed to us is involved in subject-summing. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Philosophy 2018

abstract: Panpsychist double aspect theory, the most promising version of panpsychism, holds that the mental and the physical are mutually irreducible properties, or features, of ultimate matter, therefore they both are ontologically fundamental and ubiquitous. This version of panpsychism involves the following two notions: anti-reductivism and anti- emergentism. The former states that mental phenomena are not recordable in terms of physics. The latter implies that mental phenomena do not causally arise only from a certain macroscale physical condition, and the mental and the physical do not constitute an ontological hierarchy. From these notions, it follows that any macroscale mental phenomenon is the result of a combination of ultimate mental properties. Yet this idea creates the combination problem: how higher level mentality, e.g., human or animal consciousness, arises from lower level mentality, the ultimate mental "particles." Panpsychist double aspect theory purports to find the proper location of mind in the world without being vulnerable to typical mind-body problems. Nevertheless, since this version of panpsychism explains the ontological structure of higher level mentality as analogous to the atomic structure of a molecular physical entity, the combination problem arises. In Chapter 1, I explain the general conception of panpsychism. Chapter 2 shows the plausibility of panpsychist double aspect theory and how the combination problem arises from this version. I discuss the history and implications of the combination problem in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4, I introduce some alternative versions of panpsychism that do not raise the combination problem, and point out their implausibility. The intelligibility of mental combination is explained in Chapter 5. The moral of these chapters is that our epistemic intuition that mind is not composed of "smaller" minds fails to undermine the possibility that mind is structurally complex. In Chapter 6, I argue that C. Koch and G. Tononi's integrated information theory (IIT) is a form of panpsychism, and that the IIT can serve as a model for solving the combination problem. However, I am not committed to the IIT, and I point out theoretical weaknesses of the IIT besides the combination problem. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Philosophy 2013

Le « problème difficile de la conscience » consiste à comprendre pourquoi certains processus physiques, comme ceux ayant lieu dans le cerveau humain, donnent lieu à de la conscience, c’est-à-dire à de l’expérience subjective. Ce mémoire se penche sur une théorie cherchant à répondre au problème difficile de la conscience : le monisme russellien. Cette théorie affirme en bref que la conscience est la nature intrinsèque de la matière. Le monisme russellien espère pouvoir expliquer l’existence de la conscience humaine en posant la conscience au niveau fondamental de la réalité. Toutefois, des critiques affirment que cette théorie est incapable d’expliquer comment la conscience présente dans la matière pourrait se combiner pour former la conscience humaine. Une telle objection se nomme le « problème de la combinaison ». Après une présentation du monisme russellien et du problème du la combinaison, la plausibilité de quatre différentes réponses au problème de la combinaison sera évaluée. Ces quatre réponses tâchent de rendre intelligible la manière dont la conscience présente dans la matière pourrait se combiner pour constituer la conscience humaine. / The "hard problem of consciousness" is the problem of understanding why certain physical processes, such as those taking place in the human brain, give rise to consciousness, or subjective experience. This thesis examines a theory that seeks to answer the hard problem of consciousness: Russellian monism. In short, this theory asserts that consciousness is the intrinsic nature of matter. Russellian monism hopes to explain the existence of human consciousness by positing consciousness at the fundamental level of reality. However, critics claim that this theory is unable to explain how consciousness present in matter could combine to form human consciousness. Such an objection is called the "problem of combination". After a presentation of Russellian monism and the combination problem, I critically evaluate the plausibility of four different answers to the combination problem. These four different answers try to make intelligible the way in which consciousness present in matter could combine to constitute human consciousness.