In Defence of Strong Emergentist Panpsychism

Panpsychism is the view that physical objects possess phenomenal properties. According to this view, as well as their more familiar properties such as shape, size and charge, the ‘essence’ of physical matter partly consists of mental properties at a fundamental level. The view shows great promise for providing a solution to Chalmers’ hard problem of consciousness. It will be made clear that the reasons that motivate one to adopt panpsychism are compelling. By accepting panpsychism we can recognise the world possesses micro-phenomenal properties and from here it seems we have the beginnings of how consciousness arises in our universe. -/- Many contemporary panpsychists subscribe to ‘constitutive panpsychism’. Drawing on ‘the combination problem’, I will argue that this form of the doctrine is untenable. The central claim of the piece is that ‘strong emergentist panpsychism’ should be adopted in its place. There is empirical evidence for the existence of strongly emergent properties in biochemical systems. If it is intelligible to hold that non-experiential properties can strongly emerge from (more basic) non-experiential properties, it is equally intelligible to hold that experiential properties can strongly emerge from (more basic) experiential properties. The intelligibility of strong phenomenal emergence will thus be established. This will demonstrate that strong emergentist panpsychism can provide a defendable, and a highly plausible solution to the hard problem of consciousness. Website: www.thepanpsychist.co