Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism?

[atanu]

If physical stuff is, in itself, in its fundamental nature, something wholly non-experiential, then how do we know it at all?

And if we know it through consciousness, which is not inherent in the ultimate fundamental substance then there is no monism and no fundamental substance.

Physicalism without ingrained competence for experience and discernment therefore cannot be tenable as monism.

Discuss.

 

[exchemist]

If physical stuff is, in itself, in its fundamental nature, something wholly non-experiential, then how do we know it at all?

And if we know it through consciousness, which is not inherent in the ultimate fundamental substance then there is no monism and no fundamental substance.

Physicalism without ingrained competence for experience and discernment therefore cannot be tenable as monism.

Discuss.

How silly.

 

[Skwim]

If physical stuff is, in itself, in its fundamental nature, something wholly non-experiential, then how do we know it at all?

I once had a philosophy class in college that focused entirely on the subject of knowing. I recall dissecting one of Plato's dialogues wherein Socrates asks Theaetetus, one of his students, "What is knowledge?" As I recall, the ensuing answer, which took up the entire semester to get to, regarded knowledge as taking two forms: direct experience, and reasoning. So in answer to your question here, I would say we recognize "physical stuff" because we experience it: we directly experience its materiality, and we reason that its existence is known by this experience.

.

 

[Jollybear]

If physical stuff is, in itself, in its fundamental nature, something wholly non-experiential, then how do we know it at all?

And if we know it through consciousness, which is not inherent in the ultimate fundamental substance then there is no monism and no fundamental substance.

Physicalism without ingrained competence for experience and discernment therefore cannot be tenable as monism.

Discuss.

Say what?

 

[Jumi]

I don't think most physicalists start from the same assumptions about reality as you do. Monism tends to include whatever one wants into the one substance though, so I wouldn't be surprised to find panpsychist physicalists existing.

 

[siti]

If physical stuff is, in itself, in its fundamental nature, something wholly non-experiential, then how do we know it at all?

And if we know it through consciousness, which is not inherent in the ultimate fundamental substance then there is no monism and no fundamental substance.

Physicalism without ingrained competence for experience and discernment therefore cannot be tenable as monism.

Discuss.

First, I think (the fact of, not the content of) experience is the only thing we can be certain of - I know, without any doubt, that "I" am experiencing the "world" - even if either or both of the "I" experiencing and the "world" that is experienced are illusions, there is no question that I am experiencing that illusion.

That being the case, we then have to ask: whence experience? Where does it come from? Is it, as you seem to be hinting at, a fundamental aspect of nature - or something that emerges at some level of organic (or organismic) complexity. Galen Strawson (for example) balks at the idea of such radical emergence - and I tend to have the same gut feeling about it - but I don't think there is any way to know for sure whether 'experience' really does exist at the most fundamental levels of reality.

I don't like the term 'panpsychism' because it sounds too much like new age woo to me, so I prefer to think of the (possible) fundamental and fundamentally 'sensible/relational' aspect of nature as 'panexperientialism'. If an electron does not, in some sense, 'experience' its environment, what is it that makes the electron respond (at all, let alone in reasonably predictable ways) to changes in its environment?

I also think it is much easier to swallow the idea that nature is fundamentally 'experiential' if you take a process-relational view of nature such as A.N.Whitehead describes in Process and Reality. In that view, the fundamental 'atoms' of nature are 'occasions of experience' each of which has a 'mental pole' and a 'physical pole'. It is, I suppose, a kind of 'dual aspect monism' in which experience is the fundamental 'substance'. The hard part, I think, is explaining how that is still 'physicalism'. And yet the physicalist 'paradigm' has been extraordinarily successful in elucidating the nature of Nature over the last few centuries. So I am inclined to go with my gut on 'panexperientialism' and the proven track record of science on 'physicalism' and guess that they are both (somehow, to some extent) correct ways of viewing the world.

 

[Polymath257]

If physical stuff is, in itself, in its fundamental nature, something wholly non-experiential, then how do we know it at all?

And if we know it through consciousness, which is not inherent in the ultimate fundamental substance then there is no monism and no fundamental substance.

Physicalism without ingrained competence for experience and discernment therefore cannot be tenable as monism.

Discuss.

Experience is one type of interaction. And physical things interact with other physical things as a matter of nature. So, yes, we know it through consciousness (actually, sensory experiences), but that is only one type of possible physical interaction.

 

[atanu]

How silly.

Why?

 

[siti]

How silly.

Why?

Yeah Why? I don't see what's "silly" about the OP.

 

[exchemist]

Yeah Why? I don't see what's "silly" about the OP.

If things exist independently of perception, it does not remotely follow that it is impossible to perceive them.

 

[exchemist]

Why?

See post 10.

 

[atanu]

If things exist independently of perception, it does not remotely follow that it is impossible to perceive them.

Has this point any remote connection with OP? Kindly explain.

 

[exchemist]

Has this point any remote connection with OP? Kindly explain.

Nope. If it hasn't, you are at liberty to explain why not.

 

[Nous]

I cannot restrain myself from providing philosopher Galen Strawson's paper, “Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism,” in which he enumerates his well-discussed argument.

The following seems to me to summarize the critical element of his argument (by “realistic physicalism” he just means non-eliminative physicalism). His argument demonstrates:

. . . that something akin to panpsychism is not merely one possible form of realistic physicalism, real physicalism, but the only possible form, and, hence, the only possible form of physicalism tout court. Eddington is one of those who saw this clearly, and I am now going to join forces with him and ask you to be as tolerant of his terminological loosenesses and oddities as I hope you will be of my appeals to intuition.[¹⁷]

One thing we know about physical stuff, given that (real) physicalism is true, is that when you put it together in the way in which it is put together in brains like ours, it regularly constitutes--is, literally is--experience like ours. Another thing we know about it, let us grant, is everything (true) that physics tells us. But what is this second kind of knowledge like? Well, there is a fundamental sense in which it is ‘abstract’, ‘purely formal’, merely a matter of ‘structure’, in Russell’s words.[¹⁸] This is a well established but often overlooked point.[¹⁹] ‘Physics is mathematical’, Russell says, ‘not because we know so much about the physical world’--and here he means the non-mental, non-experiential world, in my terms, because he is using ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ conventionally as opposed terms--

but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. For the rest, our knowledge is negative... . The physical world is only known as regards certain abstract features of its space-time structure--features which, because of their abstractness, do not suffice to show whether the physical world is, or is not, different in intrinsic character from the world of mind.[²⁰]​

Anyone who disputes that “realistic physicalism” entails panpsychism, please show where Strawson goes awry in his argument.

 

[Nous]

If physical stuff is, in itself, in its fundamental nature, something wholly non-experiential, then how do we know it at all?

And if we know it through consciousness, which is not inherent in the ultimate fundamental substance then there is no monism and no fundamental substance.

Physicalism without ingrained competence for experience and discernment therefore cannot be tenable as monism.

Discuss.

Did you know about Strawson's argument, atanu? If you did, you are very clever, and if you didn't, you are very clever. Which is it?

 

[siti]

If things exist independently of perception, it does not remotely follow that it is impossible to perceive them.

I perceive you might have grasped the wrong end of the stick old stick. In fact, the way I read it, the OP is possibly, in effect, saying exactly the opposite in - that there is nothing in existence that does not betray its existence to other things. Every existing thing both 'perceives' and is 'perceived' by other things. Of course I am not talking (necessarily) about conscious perception of the human kind - but an electron (for example) does seem to 'sense' the presence of other 'electrons' (and other stuff of course) and respond accordingly in a reasonably predictable and recognizable manner by which we (in turn) perceive that an electron is there (approximately).

 

[exchemist]

I perceive you might have grasped the wrong end of the stick old stick. In fact, the way I read it, the OP is possibly, in effect, saying exactly the opposite in - that there is nothing in existence that does not betray its existence to other things. Every existing thing both 'perceives' and is 'perceived' by other things. Of course I am not talking (necessarily) about conscious perception of the human kind - but an electron (for example) does seem to 'sense' the presence of other 'electrons' (and other stuff of course) and respond accordingly in a reasonably predictable and recognizable manner by which we (in turn) perceive that an electron is there (approximately).

Ah thank you very much for the crystal clear explanation. Now I understand. I owe Atanu an apology then...which I will attend to.....

By "perceives" in this context we really mean "interacts", don't we?

But are you then contending that an isolated atom in deep space does not exist? Or only exists when it interacts with a passing photon or something? I would have difficulty accepting that.

 

[exchemist]

Why?

Siti has now explained with admirable clarity (post 16) what you were getting at in the OP, which I did indeed apparently misunderstand. So I owe you an apology for saying it was silly. See my reply to 16.

 

[siti]

...are you then contending that an isolated atom in deep space does not exist? Or only exists when it interacts with a passing photon or something? I would have difficulty accepting that.

That is an interesting question. Am I allowed to say "I don't know"? Because I don't know. And how could I know - and if it were sufficiently isolated, how could anything else "know" (aka interact with /respond to/experience/perceive/detect...its presence)? And if its presence could not be detected (etc.) so that in fact the entire (rest of the) universe were completely unaffected and unaltered by its presence, so that, in fact, this isolated atom could make no difference at all to anything at all, in what sense can it be said to "exist"? OTOH - the very fact that it is said to be "isolated" and "in deep space" suggests that it does indeed exist because its isolation is a relational aspect of its reality - and in any case, it is not really clear yet that space itself is not a "thing" - is it?

An even more mind-bending thought experiment is to imagine that this isolated atom (and by 'atom' I mean an indivisible bit of reality) is the ONLY thing that exists and the space in which it exists is exactly that - space - nothing (and definitely not "something" for the purposes of this game). Now, how would it "know" which was up or down, whether it was stationary or in motion, whether it was spinning and in what direction, whether it was now, or before or after...if there were really, truly ever only one thing in existence with absolutely nothing to relate to temporally or spatially (or any other how), in what sense could it be said to "exist"?

 

[exchemist]

That is an interesting question. Am I allowed to say "I don't know"? Because I don't know. And how could I know - and if it were sufficiently isolated, how could anything else "know" (aka interact with /respond to/experience/perceive/detect...its presence)? And if its presence could not be detected (etc.) so that in fact the entire (rest of the) universe were completely unaffected and unaltered by its presence, so that, in fact, this isolated atom could make no difference at all to anything at all, in what sense can it be said to "exist"? OTOH - the very fact that it is said to be "isolated" and "in deep space" suggests that it does indeed exist because its isolation is a relational aspect of its reality - and in any case, it is not really clear yet that space itself is not a "thing" - is it?

An even more mind-bending thought experiment is to imagine that this isolated atom (and by 'atom' I mean an indivisible bit of reality) is the ONLY thing that exists and the space in which it exists is exactly that - space - nothing (and definitely not "something" for the purposes of this game). Now, how would it "know" which was up or down, whether it was stationary or in motion, whether it was spinning and in what direction, whether it was now, or before or after...if there were really, truly ever only one thing in existence with absolutely nothing to relate to temporally or spatially (or any other how), in what sense could it be said to "exist"?

Regarding your 1st para, we do in fact have a situation fairly closely approximating this in deep space, where atoms, ions or molecules are separated by such distances that they interact with matter or radiation very seldom. (The evidence for this comes from the interactions with radiation that they do occasionally undergo and which we then detect.)

I think therefore I could argue the reason such an isolated atom can be said to exist is because it always has the potential to interact with other material entities, whether or not it is doing so at any given moment.

Indeed, pursuing this line of thought, if one were to contend that existence requires interaction, then one would, rather absurdly, be implying that ordinary everyday matter is continually winking in and out of existence! After all, interactions occur only at intervals, and in between one has matter and radiation in states that are not interacting.

I don't myself see any purpose being served by such a complicated concept of "existence". To me, the concept of "existence" ought to meet some sort of Ockham's Razor test of practical utility.

Regarding your 2nd para, I see your point but do not see where such a speculation gets us, given that this is not the case.

Regarding panpsychism, I can quite see that if the idea of "mind" is defined merely to be the process of interactions of matter and radiation, then that nicely gets rid of the problem. The human mind can be seen simply, and correctly in my view, as just the activity of the brain, i.e. the interactions of neurons and the chemistry therein. All other "mind" activities of other organisms, consciousness etc, can be treated likewise, as interactions of material entities. So we have, at a stroke, got rid of dualism and reduced "mind" to a physical basis. But then I do not think I would call that "panpsychism".