Thesis advisor: Ronald Tacelli / Thesis advisor: Micah Lott / Physicalism has a problem: experience must derive from wholly physical things, but how can physical matter produce experience? An answer to this question may require a drastic change in the physicalist paradigm. Some propose Panpsychism as the best available response. Panpsychism contends that all physical matter has mental properties. To many such a notion is a sheer absurdity. Two mainstream responses may be more tolerable: Reductionism and Emergentism. Panpsychism is defensible only if these alternate approaches fail. This project lays out the logic of the panpsychist arguments against reductionism and emergentism, as well as stating an overall case for physicalist panpsychism. The apparent absurdity of panpsychism will be found trivial in comparison with the remaining difficulties for more traditional physicalist approaches. Panpsychism should therefore be considered a viable option on the mind-body problem. Despite outstanding difficulties with the view, it has considerable theoretical value and cannot be merely considered an absurd position. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Arts and Sciences Honors Program. / Discipline: Philosophy.

In my thesis, I will argue that while at first glance Spinoza's system seems to conflict with itself and provide an explanation of the mind that can be more confusing than helpful, its aspect of panpsychism provides a sort of lifeline for understanding. Not only does Spinoza's cosmopsychism make his system cohesive, but it can also be independently motivated by ideas that are compatible with the more contemporary intuitions in philosophy of mind. I will explore the specific nature of this universal mentality, how Spinoza's particular genre of panpsychism relates to other theories of panpsychism, and how his conception of omnipresent mind affects our understanding of consciousness and its place in the world.

Although evolution is a very important concept in contemporary biology, it does not help to answer the question to the origin of the human consciousness. If all reductionist theories are ruled out because it tries to reduce consciousness to an objective aspect of the natural world and ignore the storytellers’ (consciousness) subjective side, panpsychism seems to be a favourable candidate for an alternative theory. The so called Copenhagen-interpretation furthermore brought an end to determinism and classical objectivity and pointed out that our reality is partly created by the observer. The work of Alfred North Whitehead establish the basis on which Christian de Quincey build his theory and attempt to build a bridge between the objective physical and the subjective psyche. Panpsychism provide a post-modern solution to the problem of identifying the origin of consciousness by presenting a relationship between psyche and physis as two temporal ordained poles of the same experiencing individual entity. The interaction between psyche and matter become a relationship between events or “moments of experience” where, through the natural process of the flow of time, subjects (psyches) become objects (physical matter). Time, as the lost link in the recurring body/mind problem is the radical solution for the explanation gap between physical systems and conscious systems. The reductionist solution demand an ontological leap (the emergence of an entity with an interior, subjective viewpoint from completely objective entities); and this is not the case with panpsychism (where primordial experience are already subjective and the emergence of consciousness or conscious experience are not an ontological objective to subjective leap). Mind and body is separated on a numerical level but not on an ontological level. Mind and body is of the same sort, type or reality – the inevitable creation and decline of experience. Psyche is therefore the unifying process of all the total hierarchy of events. Panpsychism however has many deficiencies and these deficiencies are also critically analysed. / MPhil, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Although evolution is a very important concept in contemporary biology, it does not help to answer the question to the origin of the human consciousness. If all reductionist theories are ruled out because it tries to reduce consciousness to an objective aspect of the natural world and ignore the storytellers’ (consciousness) subjective side, panpsychism seems to be a favourable candidate for an alternative theory. The so called Copenhagen-interpretation furthermore brought an end to determinism and classical objectivity and pointed out that our reality is partly created by the observer. The work of Alfred North Whitehead establish the basis on which Christian de Quincey build his theory and attempt to build a bridge between the objective physical and the subjective psyche. Panpsychism provide a post-modern solution to the problem of identifying the origin of consciousness by presenting a relationship between psyche and physis as two temporal ordained poles of the same experiencing individual entity. The interaction between psyche and matter become a relationship between events or “moments of experience” where, through the natural process of the flow of time, subjects (psyches) become objects (physical matter). Time, as the lost link in the recurring body/mind problem is the radical solution for the explanation gap between physical systems and conscious systems. The reductionist solution demand an ontological leap (the emergence of an entity with an interior, subjective viewpoint from completely objective entities); and this is not the case with panpsychism (where primordial experience are already subjective and the emergence of consciousness or conscious experience are not an ontological objective to subjective leap). Mind and body is separated on a numerical level but not on an ontological level. Mind and body is of the same sort, type or reality – the inevitable creation and decline of experience. Psyche is therefore the unifying process of all the total hierarchy of events. Panpsychism however has many deficiencies and these deficiencies are also critically analysed. / MPhil, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Panpsychism, the view that fundamental physical entities are basic phenomenal subjects, is motivated by a commitment to explaining human subjects of experience, as well as by a rejection of the possibility that phenomenal properties are arbitrarily necessitated – human subjects of experience are thought to only be possible if prefigured by more basic phenomenal subjecthood. In this paper I will consider autopoietic enactivism as an alternative to panpsychism when it comes to explaining human subjects of experience on the basis of subjective precursors. Both of the theories theorise possible subjective precursors but panpsychism (which will be referred to as panphenomenal monism) is mostly based on speculative, unobservable, fundamental phenomenal subjecthood. Autopoietic enactivism does not require that there is fundamental phenomenal subjecthood. Instead it describes emergent individuals with subjective behaviour at the biological level. This involves a form of bodily subjecthood that may be pre-phenomenal. If autopoietic enactivism involves describing phenomenal subjecthood as possible on the basis of bodily subjecthood, it is not describing an arbitrary but an intelligible necessitation, because phenomenal subjecthood, then, is understandable on the basis of some other subjecthood. However, that other subjecthood is not fundamental. Since autopoietic enactivism does not require fundamental phenomenal subjecthood it is compatible with the NFM (The No Fundamental Mentality Constraint) which means that it is seamlessly compatible with a form of physicalism that panpsychism is not compatible with. The fundamental question that panpsychists start out with is The Hard Problem of Consciousness, a version of the problem of experience that may contain an unnecessarily wide, or even insurmountable, gap between two types of mutually exclusive properties – phenomenal and physical properties. Autopoietic enactivism has a corresponding problem that is tied to a common denominator between phenomenal and physical properties, namely biological life. The enactivist's Body-Body Problem involves an explanatory gap between the living body and the lived body. Since the phenomenal and the physical are united in (at least some) biological life, life is a relevant starting point for investigation regarding the problem of consciousness. I will argue that autopoietic enactivism offers a way of understanding the intelligible necessitation of the known subjects of experience on the basis of emergent, and not necessarily fundamental, subjective precursors. Moreover, I will briefly show how autopoietic enactivism also is compatible with panprotopsychism, a view closely related to panpsychism. My argument in favor of autopoietic enactivism, and against the need for fundamental phenomenal subjecthood, may lead undecided pan(proto)psychists to choose panprotopsychism over panpsychism.

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 (Chalmers 1996) ou la question de pourquoi nos états mentaux sont dotés d’une certaine qualité subjective met en évidence l’existence d’un « écart explicatif » (Levine 1983) entre l'expérience vécue du sujet et les structures physiques et fonctionnelles du cerveau (ou de l’organisme dans son ensemble). Parmi les plusieurs solutions envisagées pour le trancher, le monisme neutre s’érige comme une option attirante entre les extrêmes du physicalisme et le dualisme. Dérivé initialement de la pensée de Bertrand Russell (1927), le monisme neutre part d’une simple constatation : dans notre conception scientifique de la matière, il y a un écart conceptuel important entre le rôle causal qu’on lui reconnait, et ses propriétés intrinsèques, fondamentales, qu’on ignore complètement. En d’autres mots, on sait que la matière se comporte de telle ou telle façon, mais on ne comprend pas pourquoi il en est ainsi. En ce sens, la nature fondamentale de la matière ne serait ni de l’ordre physique ni de l’ordre mental, mais quelque chose de neutre duquel émergeraient les propriétés physiques et mentales. L‘objectif de notre mémoire est d’expliquer en détail les antécédents, l’origine, le développement, l’évolution et les perspectives de cette solution en la comparant, notamment, avec d’autres postures monistes et neutralistes. Au passage, nous allons aussi évaluer certaines des objections qui ont été formulées à son égard. On s’attardera enfin sur quelques formulations contemporaines inspirées de la thèse russellienne dans le but de réfléchir sur leur plausibilité. / The “hard problem” of consciousness (Chalmers 1996) or the question on why our mental states are endowed with a certain subjective quality renders evident the existence of an “explanatory gap” (Levine 1983) between the experience lived by the subject and the brain’s physical and functional structures (or the organism’s altogether). Among the many solutions devised to solve it, Neutral Monism stands as an appealing alternative between the extremes of physicalism and dualism. Initially derived from Bertrand Russell’s thought (1927), Neutral Monism departs from this starting fact: within our scientific conception of matter, there is an important conceptual gap between the causal role thereof and its hitherto unknown intrinsic, fundamental properties. In other words, we know that matter behaves in such and such a way, but we do not know why it is so. In the light of these facts, the fundamental nature of matter is neither physical nor mental, but it identifies to a neutral stuff from which would emerge both the physical and mental properties. In that sense, this research focuses on spelling out the antecedents, origin, development, evolution and prospects of this solution, comparing it with other monist and neutralist positions. As research develops, we shall assess some of the objections raised against it. Finally, we shall consider some contemporary formulations inspired by the Russellian thesis in order to reflect upon their plausibility.

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.