A Discussion of Panpsychism: The Metaphysics of Consciousness
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published 02/10/2007
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Summary
Panpsychism describes a world in which “everything has a mind (Chalmers 298),” and everything- animal, botanical, even mineral- is conscious. In order to determine whether or not all things are indeed conscious, two problems must be addressed. A definition of what it means to be conscious must be accepted, and further, the nature of that consciousness (the mechanism by which experience is experienced) must be ascertained. Rather than actually attempting to achieve a definitive answer to these questions in this paper, several hypotheses and their critiques will be discussed.
Table of Contents
- Panpsychism describes a world in which 'everything has a mind (Chalmers 298),' and everything- animal, botanical, even mineral- is conscious. In order to determine whether or not all things are indeed conscious, two problems must be addressed.
- For Thomas Nagel, the question of the consciousness of a particular organism boils down to whether or not 'there is something that it is like to be that organism .?
- Rather than solving the problem of universal consciousness, this Realist approach to panpsychism merely considers what further problems must be addressed before a complete definition can be determined.
- Extrapolating this discussion of mental states to the ‘minds' of those things which we intuitively believe to be unconscious- plants and rocks, for example- leads to a philosophical catch-22.
- The distinction between cognition and consciousness is Chalmers' second significant contribution to the panpsychism debate.
- While Chalmers formulates that ‘everything has a mind,' Buddhism posits that ‘everything is mind.?
- The citta-matra (mind-only) tradition of Buddhism distinguishes three levels of consciousness.
- To relate these concepts directly back to the discussion of panpsychism is quite logical.
- This model of existence, which demonstrates that existence is contingent on consciousness and vice-versa, suggests a possible solution to Nagel's missing link.
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