Mind under matter
Sam Coleman
...ideas apparently clothed in particles of electric oxygenous fire
William Belcher
Panpsychism is an eminently sensible view of the world and its relation to mind. If
God is a metaphysician, and regardless of the actual truth or falsity of panpsychism, it
is certain that he regards the theory as an honest and elegant competitor on the field of
ontologies. And if God didn’t create a panpsychist world, then there’s a fair chance that
he wishes he had done so, or will do next time around. The difficulties panpsychism
faces, then, are not metaphysical ones. They are, instead, difficulties of understanding,
and of acceptance by philosophers.
The main difficulty of this sort the theory faces is that its ontology - with con-
sciousness in some sense at the heart of all that exists1 - is deemed too bizarre, frankly,
too humano-centric to be taken seriously. Why should anyone think that conscious-
ness, widely held to be the preserve only of ourselves, plus the most recently evolved
organisms, infuses the basement level of all existence? Such a thought seems to many -
especially, to scientifically scrupled philosophers of mind - a narcissistic (or at best
hopelessly anti-realist) folly, which doesn’t even deserve its day in court. Panpsychism
appears, in this respect, on a par with the claim that the cosmos orbits the Earth; it
seems to place the ‘human element’ too close to the centre of what exists - in Bernard
William’s (1978:64) phrase - anyway.
In this paper I counteract the tendency to view panpsychism as unacceptably
parochial. Panpsychism’s proponents, far from being metaphysically short-sighted,
and lazily reaching for what’s nearest by - consciousness - in order to solve perplexing
metaphysical puzzles, are those who have taken a most demanding philosophical step,
which uniquely positions them to offer a coherent, elegant and wholeheartedly realist
account of our world.
Contrary to first appearances, the explanatory trajectory pursued by panpsychists
is not the ‘top-down’ one of taking something familiar to us, something local, and
. A sense to be explained shortly. By ‘all that exists’ I mean ‘all that concretely exists,’ excluding abstract existents from the discussion as is customary in these matters.
Sam Coleman
trying to shoehorn it into basic ontology for the sake of a comfortable worldview.
What we are doing is not, for example, akin to the mistake of conveniently assuming
that everywhere else must be just like around here. Rather, the explanatory direction
taken is bottom-up; the crucial question for any realist being: Given the world, richly-
propertied and populated as we know that it is, what must this world be composed of
at its lowest level to metaphysically account for the way that we know it to be?2
By explaining a new argument for panpsychism, I show that the theory answers the call of the deepest and most sober of metaphysical needs, reaching far beyond local human interests and contingencies.
. Existing motivations for panpsychism
On the way to our central points, I will survey three important existing motivations
that have led philosophers to panpsychism. The new argument to be presented here
draws upon these motivations in various important ways, as will become clear. More-
over, with other extant reasons to be panpsychist already in view, it will be more easy
to clearly distinguish and situate, as well as weigh, the new reasons to be offered here.
Roughly speaking, the exposition of the three extant motivations proceeds according to a decreasing element of humano-centricity in each.
. The problem of consciousness
Perhaps the most obvious reason to endorse panpsychism is as a solution to the
mind/body problem, or that aspect of the problem relating to phenomenal con-
sciousness at any rate. Notoriously, contemporary conventional physicalism faces an
explanatory gap3 when it comes to accounting for the presence of consciousness. Such
physicalism - still the orthodoxy in one or another form - claims that the experien-
tial nature of the world metaphysically supervenes upon its non-experiential physical
nature. The explanatory gap occurs because we seem - in principle, not merely con-
. This question reveals the essential reductionism behind panpsychism, as well as most con-
temporary metaphysics of mind. The mission seems to be to deduce the nature of the world’s
tiniest components, given that the way it is with all else that exists is determined by their proper-
ties and arrangement. So, truly novel properties cannot arise at any ‘higher level’ of being. This
doctrine, which I elsewhere call ‘smallism’ (Coleman 2006), is open to question, philosophically
and empirically, and I have my doubts about it. Perhaps we live in an emergentist’s world, for ex-
ample; this remains to be seen. However, for the purposes of this paper I set these doubts aside.
Those interested in the interface between philosophyof mind and the question of reductionism’s
truth can take my overall argument to be of the form: if smallism is true, then panpsychism is
true, for the reasons given.
. The term is Levine’s - see his 1983 for example.
Chapter 4. Mind under matter
tingently - to be unable to make sense of the metaphysical entailment (for example:
generation, constitution) of consciousness by non-conscious physical matter.
Conventional physicalism has even been thought by some to disappear entirely
into this explanatory gap: there are famous arguments to the effect that without an
epistemically transparent transition from the (non-experiential) physical to conscious-
ness, we have reason to think it false that everything which exists supervenes upon the
(non-experiential) physical.
Given this backdrop, the allure of panpsychism is clear. For example, Strawson
(2006) has recently argued that brute emergence - the production of new properties
in ways that are not epistemically transparent - is impossible. Sometimes phenomena
at one level do produce entirely novel properties at a higher level, as when non-liquid
molecules yield a liquidbody by being bonded together in the right way. But it is always
intelligible - it always makes metaphysical sense - how transitions like this occur, says
Strawson. In the case of liquidity, we understand well enough how loose bonding be-
tween non-liquid H2O molecules (say) allows these molecules to slide over and around
one another, in a way that produces the characteristic liquid behavior we recognize of
water at room temperature.
Certain other properties though, it seems, cannot emerge from a lower-level ‘base’
that utterly lacks them. Strawson challenges us, for example, to make metaphysi-
cal sense of the emergence of mass from the massless space-time points that some
(philosophers think that some) physicists believe constitute matter’s ultimate fabric.
How couldany amount of aggregation of items without mass be responsible for objects
having mass, as we know that they do? The purported brute emergence of extension
from these space-time points, which are supposed also to occupy no ‘space,’ offers
another good case here. To have extended and massy macro-objects, it appears, their
ultimate components must also be somewhat massy and extended.4
Some properties, then, must be basic: if they are to be possessed by large-scale
things at all, they must be present all the way down, even in the ultimates - Strawson’s
term5 for whatever turn out to be matter’s tiniest building blocks. And consciousness
is a property of this kind, argues Strawson; for its emergence from non-conscious un-
derpinnings would be as (metaphysically) unintelligible as the emergence of mass and
extension from the massless, extensionless space-time points of physical lore. Hence
the problem of the explanatory gap for conventional physicalism. The ultimates that
. Note here the clandestine adherence to smallism, the part/whole reductionism which I am not calling into question in this paper.
. First coined in his 1999.
Sam Coleman
compose a conscious being, by virtue of which it is conscious,6 then, must themselves be conscious.7
One further highly plausible assumption completesthe argument for panpsychism
here, the assumption I call refundability. If you happen not to like the ultimates com-
posing your consciousness, you can always take them back and exchange them for
others that you prefer: Allowing that physicists are correct about the ultimates (strings,
on one view) being fairly homogenous entities, it seems then that any right-sized (and
arranged) group of them could compose a sensate human being. After all, we’re each
constantly exchanging matter with the environment; in fact continuously refunding
all of our ultimates. In which case, given that only conscious ultimates could compose
a macro-consciousness like one of ours, all the ultimates must be conscious. This is
panpsychism.
Still, if Strawson’s were our only motivation for panpsychism, then we could per-
haps understand the accusation that panpsychism is unacceptably humano-centric.
It might seem extravagant, narcissistic, even explanatorily empty, to attempt to ex-
plain the production of consciousness as we know it by transposing it to the basement
level of existence, and making it the property of every ultimate there is. Indeed, I have
heard this manoeuvre described (somewhat melodramatically) as taking the tumor of
the problem of consciousness and metastasizing it throughout the universe.8 How-
ever, although I agree with the thought driving Strawson’s argument9 (in fact, I will
later claim that the problem of consciousness as Strawson conceives it is but the most
local manifestation of the deep metaphysical demand for panpsychism identified in
this paper), his has by no means been our only motivation for panpsychism.
. For an internalist, say, these might be the ultimates that compose the brain of the conscious
being.
. Why must it be the ultimates that are the first home of consciousness, why not something
larger - carbon molecules, or brain cells say? As long as these were conscious, the panpsychist
could have his story of macro-consciousness’ non-brute emergence from its components, but at
a (slightly) lower cost to credulity, one might think. The answer is that, were it items above the
smallest level of existents that constituted the conscious bedrock, items themselves composed
by the (now non-conscious) ultimates, the explanatory gap would just recur at this lower level:
Howcould it be that non-consciousultimates produced consciousmolecules, orconsciousbrain
cells? The puzzle of consciousness’ emergence remains untouched here. So for panpsychism to
operate at all, it must operate on the policy that it is the ultimates that are the fundamental loci
of experience.
. By an anonymous philosopher.
. And behind the longdistinguished tradition that thinkssimilarly. See Descartes (1641/1996)
and Chalmers (1996) for a good snapshot of venerable and more recent related lines of thought.
Chapter 4. Mind under matter
. Russell’s Insight and the pull of parsimony
I take it that most extant forms of panpsychism have, broadly speaking, a Russellian heritage - deriving much of the structure of their ontology, if not also their philosophical motivation, from Russell’s famous analysis of (micro)physics and consequent embracing of panpsychism.10
According to Russell, physical theory describes the occupants of its ontological
catalogue - electrons, protons, photons, forces etc. - in exclusively extrinsic terms.
Physics tells us what electrons, for example, are only by telling us how they interrelate
with protons, forces and the like. Electrons are proton attractors, they are electron
repulsors, they react to forces in such-and-such ways, have a mass of 9.10938188 ×
10-31 kilograms - which tells us about the kinds of displacements we can expect them
to produce - the list continues. We are told about the nature of electrons, then, only
in terms that relate them (largely via their doings) with other physical phenomena
(similarly defined), and their eventual impact on our measuring instruments. And
what of their intrinsic11natures? Physics is silent on this point. We know an awful lot
about what electrons do, but nothing at all about what they are. Physical theory as
a whole - the idea goes - sets out a formal structure of entities specified in extrinsic
terms: via their relations with one another. What these entities are in themselves12 is
not a matter that physics busies itself with.
It follows, Russell observed,13 that we don’t know anything about the intrinsic
nature of (micro)physical matter that could rule out its being intrinsically mental, in
some sense. For we just don’t know anything about its nature. All that we do know, on
assumption of physicalism, is that the physical items whose intrinsic natures we have
direct access to are intrinsically conscious - these are our own conscious experiences:
[W]e know so little [of matter]: it is only its mathematical properties that we
can discover. For the rest, our knowledge is negative...The physical world is only
. Russell 1927a. Panpsychism is of course a very old view, with exponents including Thales, Spinoza, Leibniz and James (see Skrbina 2005 for exhaustive detail on past panpsychists). My point here is just to emphasise the Russellian influence over modern versions.
. ‘Intrinsic’ is just one word often used to gesture at the non-relational nature of physical
phenomena in this context. Others are ‘essential,’ ‘categorical,’ ‘inner,’ ‘qualitative’ and ‘core,’
and this does not exhaust the list of alternatives. There are difficulties with each term, (see Seager 2006 and Stoljar 2006, for example, for some of these) which I will not address here. I will allow myself to flit between those terms on the list that I feel get closest to whatever we really mean, something which I’m hopeful may be more clearly specifiable in future.
. To the extent that this idea makes sense. We are assuming it true that relations need relata that have ‘intrinsic’ (but see n. 11 above) natures, that things can’t be relational all the way down. Whatever that would mean.
. Though he was far from the first; Eddington, Locke and (arguably) Descartes made much the same observation. See Strawson 2006 for more, especially on Descartes.
Sam Coleman
known as regards certain abstract features of its space-time structure - features
which, because of their abstractness, do not suffice to show whether the physical
world is, or is not, different in intrinsic character from the world of mind.
(1948:240)
[W]e know nothing about the intrinsic quality of physical events except when
these are mental events that we directly experience.(1956:153)
[A]s regards the world in general, both physical and mental, everything that we know of its intrinsic character is derived from the mental side. (1927a:402)
Hence, when considering the physical ultimates, it comes to seem a reasonable move to speculate that what constitutes their intrinsic nature is consciousness.14 Physics describes their causal/relational roles, experiential natures provide the role-fillers, so to speak. This is panpsychism, but it is also physicalism. For physical descriptions of the ultimates can be taken to pick out the intrinsic, conscious items (‘in themselves’). Such descriptions would in effect detail the causal/relational profiles of conscious natures, to be used as reference-fixers by physical referring terms. So in this sense the psychic constituents of physics’ world would count as physical.15
Of course, if ‘Russell’s Insight’ concerning physics is correct, then physical theory
is precisely crying out for intrinsic somethings to serve as the doers of the doings that
it records and relates. Panpsychism satisfies this need - the ultimate physical particles
are to be thought of, in respect of their intrinsic natures, as loci of consciousness.
Hence, theoretical considerations of parsimony also count strongly in favor of
Russellian (physicalist) panpsychism here: Granted that physics requires an intrinsic
nature, and we have one conveniently to hand in the form of consciousness, simplic-
. Two points here: 1. We assume that there will be tiniest building blocks of matter, not an
infinite continuum. Indeed there is some empirical hope of this; many physicists, additionally,
work on the hypothesis that the ultimates are fundamentally homogenous. Heil (2003) finds
the infinite continuum hypothesis practically incoherent, a priori. I have some sympathy with
him, but place more weight on current scientific backing. (In any case, it’s not clear that the
infinite continuum hypothesis would be damaging to panpsychism. Panpsychists could envisage
a level of existent below which all smaller components of matter had to be conscious, down to
the infinitely small. This would avoid, as desired, any jump from non-conscious components
to conscious composites, albeit with some sacrifice of elegance for the view) 2. Throughout,
‘building blocks’ need not be taken too literally: modern microphysical entities are just energy
fields of greater and lesser concentration. Nonetheless, ‘bigger’ ones are ‘composed’ by ‘smaller’
ones, and these latter taken to systematically determine the properties of their ‘composites.’
. Also in another sense: On Stoljar’s ‘object conception’ of the physical (Stoljar 2004), the physical is whatever lies at the root of the everyday objects of our acquaintance. This Kripkestyle natural-kind view, if it found experiential natures underpinning the microphysical being of tables, rocks and such, would have no problem labelling such natures ‘physical.’ So, on either of these two plausible ways of specifying the sense of ‘physical,’ consciousness provides the physical world’s (physical) bedrock in the panpsychist scenario entertained.
Chapter 4. Mind under matter
ity and elegance would prescribe slotting the phenomenal into the physical, yielding a microexperiential solution.16
As a motivation for panpsychism, Russell’s Insight takes us a healthy distance away
from the purely local preoccupations of the problem of consciousness, which after all
concerned the difficulty of accommodating beings like us in the natural world. Now
the focus is on what there is that can provide the required non-relational nature of
the microphysical. However, while this focus might appear coldly theoretical, and -
for panpsychists desirous of objective grounding for their view - pleasingly untouched
by human concerns, this fact can just serve to make the accusations of parochialism
against panpsychism even more vehement. For now, someone antecedently unsympa-
thetic to panpsychism might say, we have been so heinously vain as to drag human
consciousness along into an unconnected matter. At least consciousness as we know it
is directly relevant to the problem of consciousness! But it could appear short-sighted in
the extreme to suggest that phenomenal properties provide the intrinsic nature of the
microphysical,just because the microphysical is onthe look-out for an intrinsic nature,
and because we can’t be bothered to think any further than the ends of our minds.