First, I am a physicalist. That means I think science MAY one day explain the nature of reality and difficult phenomena such as "consciousness" and "subjective experience". Please notice the use of MAY as opposed to WILL, lest science is accused of being arrogant. IMO, to say science will NEVER explain these phenomena, even in principle, is an arrogant position that the people who put it forward are blissfully or intentionally ignorant about.
Lately, there has been an (apparent) resurgence of ideas like Idealism, Dualism, and Panpsychism. In the next few blog posts, I will write about my thoughts on these ideas and try to argue against them one by one. In the last blog post, I addressed Idealism. In this blog post, I will address Panpsychism.
It must be noted that like fashion or fad, isms like Idealism and Panpsychism come and go but the Physicalism continues to be present and gets stronger ever since the scientific revolution/enlightenment started with Galileo and even with ancient Greeks thinkers and some Hindu Vedic schools of thoughts.
On YouTube, you will find that this idea/philosophy of Panpsychism is put forward by people like Philip Goff. You say, wait, what is Panpsychism? Oh right, I forgot to tell what I understand it to be.
The idea of Panpsychism says - science describes fundamental particles like electrons, quarks, and photons in terms of what they do and what properties they have, but science does not explain what they ARE in of themselves i.e. what stuff they are made out of? Punchline - according to Panpsychism they are made out of consciousness - whatever that means and is.
So let us get into the discussion. An electron has mass, charge, and spin. Its mass resists the change of velocity, is the cause of inertia, and gives kinetic energy. The charge affects the behavior in an electric field. Spin is a more obscure representation of angular momentum. And the standard model of physics does not say what electron is made out of because it treats electrons as point particles. It does not have an extent/volume. So as such there is no need for there to be any stuff. It is also true though that as soon as there is even a zero-dimensional point and not NOTHING, one should not expect there to be stuff that is different than NOTHING. Otherwise, there will be no difference between an electron and a point in empty space. Field theories say that an electron is a knot in an electric field that manifests properties of charge, mass, and spin. And yet it still leaves the explanation as to what stuff the electron is made out of unsatisfactory. I get that. However, outside of the standard model of Physics, there is the String theory, which proposes that fundamental particles are manifestations of more fundamental entities called strings vibrating in different modes in 11 dimensions.
As an aside, IMO, the notion of word dimension does not necessarily mean spatial dimensions but simply mutually independent variables. Yes, the familiar spatial dimensions and the time dimension may be a subset of those 11 dimensions.
But, then the question still remains as to what are strings made out of? So we are back to square one. It is my understanding that some flavors of Panspychisms claims are at the same level as string theory. The existence of strings has not been demonstrated though, but there is strong mathematics that backs and motivates the string theory. And if strings were shown to exist, some Panschysists will then say that the strings are made out of consciousness. Ok, they moved the goal post but we will discuss it.
The strong motivation behind why Panpsychism proposes that the electrons are made out of consciousness is as follows - They believe that consciousness cannot be generated by simply organizing the physical (matter, energy, space, time, forces) stuff of the universe - even in principle. This contradicts some other claims Panpsychism makes...more on that later. IMO this is an incorrect presumption/premise in the first place. It also seems like an assumption from incredulity.
Before people realized the Earth was not flat, almost every human thought the Earth was flat. It was hard to even imagine that the Earth was not flat. Similarly, people thought only our Solar system existed before the telescopes showed us the vast universe with the multitude of galaxies. The point is that science has brought us, sometimes kicking and screaming, to forego our intuition and expand our perspective.
But let me not just state/assert that. Let us discuss it further...
The idea is that because consciousness cannot be generated by the complex organization of the physical stuff, let us, by hand, just put it in and have the physical universe be made out of consciousness. IMO this does not explain anything. It simply calls the stuff consciousness. It does not explain why and how this consciousness generates the properties of electrons like mass, charge, and spin. Unlike string theory which has strong mathematical backing and attempts to explain the properties of electrons in terms of vibrations of string in 11 dimensions, consciousness proposal by panpsychism does not even try. IMO the kinds of requirements of a framework that is needed to explain observed physical properties is not only not satisfied by consciousness but is not even considered as a thing it should satisfy. At least the string theory wants to satisfy those requirements.
There are other absurdities. It is said that (obviously) an electron does not have the same form or level of consciousness as human beings but has proto-consciousness. I do not even know what that means. A lot of non-conscious objects like rocks, which are made out of a large number of fundamental particles are not considered conscious. Huh? Are they at least considered proto-conscious? In some forms of Panspsychism, they are not. But to be fair, there are some Panpsyhists who say even rocks have a collection of the so-called proto-consciousness. At least that type of (strong) Panpsychism is consistent and true to its conviction. I commend them for that. But the weak Panpsychists say that rocks are not conscious or a fruit that has just fallen from a tree is not conscious, because to achieve consciousness the stuff has to be organized in a complex, connected structure in a special way. What? Isn't that what Physicalism proposes? That is, the phenomenon we call consciousness emerges from the complex, networked organization of physical stuff. No? Then why do we need consciousness to be the stuff everything is made out of.
IMO the position of Panpsychism is consciousness is another word for existence. It does not explain or even try to explain anything. It simply states the problem using another word and calls it an answer.
IMO, as I have said in other blog posts, the whole confusion occurs because Panpsychism assumes that consciousness is a thing. IMO it is not. It is a shorthand name for a class of phenomena, which by fuzzy convention we call consciousness. And it is truly fuzzy at the boundaries.
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