Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives

425 Pages·2016·33.098 MB·English

by  Godehard Brüntrup, Ludwig Jaskolla

Panpsychism
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
Series Editor 
David J. Chalmers , Australian National University
and New York University
Self Expressions What Are We?
Owen Flanagan Eric T. Olson
Deconstructing the Mind Supersizing the Mind
Stephen Stich Andy Clark
The Conscious Mind Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion
David J. Chalmers William Fish
Minds and Bodies Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind
Colin McGinn Robert D. Rupert
What’s Within? The Character of Consciousness
Fiona Cowie David J. Chalmers
The Human Animal Perceiving the World
Eric T. Olson Bence Nanay (editor)
Dreaming Souls The Contents of Visual Experience
Owen Flanagan Susanna Siegel
Consciousness and Cognition The Senses
Michael Thau Fiona Macpherson (editor)
Thinking Without Words Attention is Cognitive Unison
José Luis Bermúdez Christopher Mole
Identifying the Mind Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism
U.T. Place (author), George Graham, Derk Pereboom
Elizabeth R. Valentine (editors)
Introspection and Consciousness
Purple Haze Declan Smithies and Daniel Stoljar (editors)
Joseph Levine
The Conscious Brain
Three Faces of Desire Jesse J. Prinz
Timothy Schroeder
Decomposing the Will
A Place for Consciousness Andy Clark, Julian Kiverstein,
Gregg Rosenberg and Tillmann Vierkant (editors)
Ignorance and Imagination Phenomenal Intentionality
Daniel Stoljar Uriah Kriegel (editor)
Simulating Minds The Peripheral Mind
Alvin I. Goldman István Aranyosi
Gut Reactions The Innocent Eye
Jesse J. Prinz Nico Orlandi
Phenomenal Concepts and Does Perception Have Content?
Phenomenal Knowledge Edited by Berit Brogaard
Torin Alter, Sven Walter (editors)
The Varieties of Consciousness
Beyond Reduction Uriah Kriegel
Steven Horst
Panpsychism
Godehard Brüntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla
(editors)
Panpsychism
Contemporary Perspectives
EDITED BY GODEHARD BRÜNTRUP
and
LUDWIG JASKOLLA
1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Brüntrup, Godehard, editor.
Title: Panpsychism : contemporary perspectives /
edited by Godehard Brüntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2016. |
Series: Philosophy of mind series | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016006039 | ISBN 9780199359943 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Panpsychism. | Philosophy of mind. | Consciousness.
Classification: LCC BD560 .P34 2016 | DDC 141—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016006039
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
CONTENTS
List of Contributors vii
Introduction 1
Godehard Brüntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla
PART I THE LOGICAL PLACE OF PANPSYCHISM
1. Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism 19
DAVID J. CHALMERS
2. Emergent Panpsychism 48
Godehard Brüntrup
PART II THE VARIETIES OF PANPSYCHISTIC ONTOLOGIES
3. Mind and Being: The Primacy of Panpsychism 75
Galen Strawson
4. Panpsychism and Priority Cosmopsychism 113
Yujin Nagasawa and Khai Wager
5. In Search of Mentons: Panpsychism, Physicalism, and the
Missing Link 130
Berit Brogaard
v
vi Contents
6. Land Ho? We Are Close to a Synoptic Understanding of
Consciousness 153
Gregg Rosenberg
PART III PANPSYCHISM AND THE COMBINATION PROBLEM
7. The Combination Problem for Panpsychism 179
DAVID J. CHALMERS
8. What Combination Problem? 215
Barbara Gail Montero
9. Panpsychist Infusion 229
William Seager
10. Panpsychism and Neutral Monism: How to Make up One’s
Mind 249
Sam Coleman
11. The Phenomenal Bonding Solution to the Combination
Problem 283
Philip Goff
PART IV PANPSYCHISM AND ITS ALTERNATIVES
12. Mind Dust, Magic, or a Conceptual Gap Only? 305
Brian P. McLaughlin
13. Emergence and Panpsychism 334
Achim Stephan
14. Neutral Monism and Panpsychism 349
Leopold Stubenberg
15. Dualism and Panpsychism 369
Charles Taliaferro
16. Idealism and Panpsychism 387
Uwe Meixner
Index 407
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Berit Brogaard (University of Miami)
Godehard Brüntrup (Munich School of Philosophy)
David J. Chalmers (New York University)
Sam Coleman (University of Hertfordshire)
Philip Goff (Central European University)
Ludwig Jaskolla (Munich School of Philosophy)
Brian P. McLaughlin (Rutgers University)
Uwe Meixner (University of Augsburg)
Barbara Gail Montero (City University of New York)
Yujin Nagasawa (University of Birmingham)
Gregg Rosenberg (senior executive in private business)
William Seager (University of Toronto Scarborough)
Achim Stephan (Osnabrück University)
Galen Strawson (University of Texas at Austin)
Leopold Stubenberg (University of Notre Dame)
Charles Taliaferro (St. Olaf College)
Khai Wager (University of Birmingham)
vii

Introduction
Godehard Brüntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla
καὶ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ δή τινες αὐτὴν μεμῖχθαί φασιν
There are some, too, who say that soul is interfused throughout the
universe.
— Aristotle on Thales, De Anima, 411a7
Panpsychism is as old as philosophy itself, a key idea in Western and Eastern
philosophical traditions (Skrbina 2005). It comes in many forms, and the def-
inition of the term varies. In his benchmark entry on Panpsychism, William
Seager defined the term very broadly:
Panpsychism is the doctrine that mind is a fundamental feature of
the world which exists throughout the universe. (Seager and Allen-
Hermanson 2010)
It is thus distinguished from absolute idealism, according to which the world
consists solely of minds and their activities. It is also distinguished from ma-
terialism, for which the world consists ultimately of mindless physical entities
and their configurations. Finally, it is distinct from substance dualism, which
assumes two categorically different realms of entities, mental and physical,
which can possibly exist independently from each other. Panpsychists in con-
trast claim that mental being is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the
universe but is not the only fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the uni-
verse. There are many ways to spell this out in a metaphysical system. The most
common one in recent debate is the idea that physical structure as described
in the formalized language of physics cannot by itself provide the ultimate
grounding of reality but rather needs to be complemented by nonstructural in-
trinsic facts which escape the vocabulary of physics. These so- called quiddities
are omnipresent in the cosmos, and at least some of them are metaphysically
1