A Place for Consciousness: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World (Philosophy of Mind Series) [Hardcover]

The first half of this book argues against physicalism and makes a preliminary case in favour of panpsychism - or rather pan(proto)experientialism. Here the arguments are well-known: physics only deals with "facts of a functional, structural, or evolutionary sort" and such facts cannot entail facts about the existence of qualitative experiences such as the feeling of pain or the taste of orange juice. He gives physicalist responses and makes rebuttals to them.

In the second half he develops an important and highly original theory of causation. Rather than attempting to characterise which event or fact caused a given event, he argues that: (i) what actually occurs in our universe is a `selection' from a wider domain of possibilities. This domain is in some sense real; (ii) there are real links between possible events in this domain - these links can occur in hierarchies; (iii) there are universal causal laws at every level of this hierarchy that, at each level, further `narrow the selection', or make more determinate, the selections made at the levels below. He uses mathematician John Conway's "Game of Life" to illustrate these ideas. Later, in what he calls the "Carrier theory of Causation", he goes on (iv) to ontologically base events and the links between them respectively upon protophenomenal properties and upon the range over which they can be immediately experienced.

There are several advantages to his theory of causation. First, there has always been a metaphysical problem in understanding what gives our universe its unity, and how we can know of this unity. (For example, Leibnitz required God's foresight to constrain disjoint monads to always be in harmony.) Provided we accept Rosenberg's rule (ii) the universe is unified, and, with rule (iv), we have hopes of developing a rational account of perception. Second, his rule (iii) ensures consistency so that, for example, although the human brain, considered as a whole, has its own causal effects, these cannot conflict with the laws of physics as these apply to each tiny portion of the brain considered in isolation. Third, rules (ii) and (iii) divide the universe into what Rosenberg calls `natural individuals': this allows him to refer to, say, a `cat' and literally and strictly mean exactly this. (In contrast, as William James pointed out, a hard-line materialist and reductionist would have to explain how it is that the term `cat' can refer to a genuine object rather than being merely convenient shorthand for an incredibly complex system of atoms.) Fourth, Rosenberg begins to address the difficult combinatorial problem of panpsychism, namely How could the separate micro-experiences of physical ultimates be combined to give a sufficiently unified high-level experience such as may be found within the human brain?

The theory is, as Rosenberg concedes at the outset, no more than a framework that is open for development and revision. Here I would like to point out some of my main disagreements with him. First Rosenberg describes his theory as being a type of dual-aspect monism, yet it is clear that his laws of causation determine the laws of physics and are thus more fundamental than them. Indeed he even sketches how time and space might be defined in terms of his laws of causation. His carrier theory of causation is moreover grounded in the experiential. For these reasons it would therefore be more accurate to characterise Rosenberg's theory as a form of `pure mentalistic panexperientialism': one in which experience and causal laws are fundamental, and upon which physical laws supervene. Physical laws merely express law-like regularities in the perceptive fields of natural individuals.

Second, Rosenberg characterises his theory as holding that consciousness is `strongly emergent'. Here he does grave disservice to his theory. Although consciousness emerges at level n rather than at level 0, it does this on the rational basis of the causal laws that hold for our universe at levels 0 through n (by his rule (iii)). [In contrast, a physicalist who is also a strong emergentist holds that radically novel, sui generis properties come into being in a manner that is wholly unpredictable - this is magical thinking and certainly cannot amount to an explanation.]

Third, Rosenberg opts for panprotoexperientialism rather than panexperientialism. This has led some to reject his ideas immediately on the grounds that he does not avoid the radical emergence of qualitative experience from non-experience. I would prefer to argue that qualia existing at the level of physical ultimates are identical to or analogous with those found at the human level, with the exception that the former are experienced `naked' whereas the latter are always `clothed' in cognitive associations. For example, for humans certain shades of red are associated with blood.

Fourth, hierarchies of individuals in the domain of possibilities are taken as given by Rosenberg in all his examples. The theory would have to be developed to explain how hierarchies come to have the particular structure that they do.

Finally, although free will and agency are mentioned in a few places, the theory is biased towards a deterministic view of the universe, or at least towards compatiblistic accounts of free will. My own preference would be to attempt to adapt it towards a libertarian position.

To sum up, this book is both important and highly original. Although Rosenberg's theory is intended to be a preliminary framework, subject to development and amendment, certain portions of it are likely to remain. These include: understanding causation in terms of real linkage between events; panexperientialism in which experience is the carrier of causation; and the theory of natural individuals.