Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism? [Paperback]

I have been going to meetings, workshops and seminars about consciousness since I was knee high to a puppy, and after a few years when it was a minority interest, it is very noticeable that consciousness is currently back in favor, with new books, journals and research appearing extremely rapidly.

The interdisciplinary conferences are always fun, though they tend to be populated by an extraordinary array of people, many of whom are convinced that they have The Answer, and nothing will ever dissuade them. I have met mystics, philosophers, psychologists, brain scientists and a lot of people who used to do physics. Several Nobel laureates have written books purporting to explain the connections between consciousness and their primary area of expertise.

Yet for all this activity, we are still left with the central problem that philosophers call `the hard problem:" if, as most materialists believe, the world is made entirely of physical matter, how can matter be conscious? How could three pounds of material inside the skull have experiences?

Most people who have done philosophy 101 will have learned that there are two main schools of thought about the "hard problem." The first says that the hard problem is easy: consciousness `emerges' from neural processes. This succeeds in replacing the question, "what is consciousness and how is it possible?" with a similar one: "what is emergence and how is that possible?" In effect "explaining" one mystery with another one.

Option two is to say that the hard problem is so hard that it is insoluble: consciousness must be some sort of illusion. Some serious writers, including the editor of a popular magazine on psychology, have claimed that all of human experience can be reduced to reflexes, and if we believe in consciousness, love and faith, these are all programs, because we are, in fact, not conscious at all. Though I know, like and respect many of them, they remind me of some of the members of the Flat Earth Society who continued their activities for almost twenty years after the moon landings. I remember hearing the announcement that the final thirteen members of the British branch of the society decided to call it a day.

There is a third alternative that proposes that the universe is not made only of matter, but that it also composed of another material, mind, perhaps, that is the home of consciousness. We then have another problem: if matter and mind are fundamentally different, how can they interact? How can one cause another to change? This is far form being an academic exercise: if you feel that you would really like some chocolate, how does that cause a change in your physiology and behavior? We all know that the desire can change your body and behavior, but how?

A fourth approach, the non-dual, says that everything is Mind and that matter is but one of its manifestations. This is a fundamental tenet of Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist traditions, and beloved in the New Age movement. There are, though, a number of technical snags with this very attractive idea.

So we clearly need to find some way to square the circle.

So this is the background to Galen Strawson's new book. It begins with a lead essay by Strawson, commentaries by 18 other philosophers, and then Strawson's extensive comments on the comments.

The book is a goldmine of valuable insights. Strawson is imaginative and the commentaries are insightful, informative and very well argued. Unlike many books on philosophy, it is fun to read.

There is no question that Strawson's fascinating model is at odds with most mainline thinking in science, psychology and philosophy.

Strawson's three main principles are first that the existence of consciousness is undeniable; second is the principle of monism: that everything that exists is made of the same material. Third is the notion that emergence is not possible: a mind could not spring out of the activity of material cells in the brain. He argues that although water can emerge form the combination of one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, the same trick could not happen with consciousness. There is no way of organizing matter that is not conscious, so that it produces something that is.

This leads to a philosophical position that could have straight out of the mouth of an Advaita Vedantist at any time over the last thirteen centuries.

If everything is made of the same sort of stuff as tables and chairs, cats and dogs, and if at least some of the things made of that sort of stuff are conscious and if there is no emergence, it follows that the stuff that those tables and chairs and cats and dogs are made of, must itself be conscious. This is the central core of the "panpsychist" philosophy that views all matter as involving consciousness. Even an atom is sentient.

He goes on to say that there are no experiences without subjects of experience; if there is a pain, it must belong to and be experienced by someone. The trouble with that is the experience of meditators and mystics who report pure egoless experience.

I normally like books that give me answers. This one does not, but I have a strong intuition that the debates in this book are going to generate more and unexpected answers.

I am going to leave the last word to Galen Strawson,
"There is, I feel sure, a fundamental sense in which monism is true, a fundamental sense in which there is only one kind of stuff in the universe. Plainly, though, we don't fully understand the nature of this stuff, and I don't suppose we ever will - even if we can develop a way of apprehending things that transcends discursive forms of thought."

An excellent mental work out, so it is warmly recommended!