The Panpsychist
Critique
ES3409. Week
5
 The main exponent of a revitalised panpsychist current in
ecological thinking is Freya Mathews
 “[t]o characterize a metaphysic in which mentality in some
sense is restored to materiality, I resort, in these pages, to the
old but little-used term panpsychism. This term is often
associated with the view that every material object is also a
subject, a centre of subjectivity. But I do not restrict the term in
this way. I characterize any view that reunites mentality with
materiality, and thereby dismantles the foundational dualism of
Western thought, as panpsychist, inasmuch as it attributes a
psychical dimension to all physicality.” (Mathews, 2003, p.4)
 The language of panpsychism is rarely used even in those
traditions which anticipate it
 Mathews argues that “space and time and the existence of a
universe at all can only be explained if subjectivity is taken as
fundamental to the nature of reality.” (Mathews, 2003, p.7)
 Dualistic theories may be contrasted with materialist theory, but
“materialism and idealism are in fact just flip sides of dualism
itself, since materiality is dualistically conceived from the
perspective of materialism and ideality is dualistically conceived
from the perspective of idealism.” (Ibid., pp.26-7)
 As Mathews states, “[t]he true converse of mind-matter dualism
is neither [mechanical] materialism nor idealism but a position
that posits some form of nonduality or mind-matter unity,
implicating mentality in the definition of matter and materiality
in the definition of mind. Yet there is not even a well-established
name, in the history of philosophy, for such a view.” (Mathews,
2003, p.27)
 “Materialism and idealism are equally retrograde from an
environmental point of view: the materialist regards the world
as an inert lump of putty for his own designs; for the idealist it is
an inconsequential mirage of appearances, knowable and
hence for practical purposes nonexistent in its own right.
(Mathews, 2003, p.27)
Pansychism and Romanticism
 In one of Mathews’ few forays into politics she seeks to
distinguish her ecological panpsychism from what she takes to
be the politically reactionary legacy of Romanticism. For
Mathews, “[t]he reasons for such a legacy are complex, but… is
largely attributable to the fact that Romanticism was literally a
reaction to Enlightenment thought.” (Ibid., p.173)
 Mathews’ charge is that in political terms, Enlightenment and
Romantic thinkers were essentially locked in a battle of
reversal, each privileging alternate sides of a dualistic
epistemology.
 “Appealing exclusively to the heart for understanding,
particularly in matters of morality, politics and religion, is
treacherous as those on the political left have always known,
because the heart is likely to cherish beliefs and prejudice, such
as racism, xenophobia and sexism, implanted in people’s minds
in early life.” (Mathews, 2003, p.174)
Mathews’ Pansychism
 Mathews’ starting point is experiential, phenomenologically
grounded in the “palpable sense of the world from within, a
sense that everything that exists in the realm of extension…
partakes of some kind of presence to itself that is intrinsic to
matter per se.” (Mathews, 2003, p.31)
 There may be a distinction to be made between subjectivity and
consciousness. Whether this is a legitimate or merely a semantic
distinction is a difficult question. For Mathews, subjectivity may
be regarded as subtending thoughts, feelings and sensations.
 In this case, subjectivity would constitute that deeper level of
self-presence out of which thoughts and feelings arise. It is
arguable, contra Descartes, that we are alive to our own
corporeality even when we are not thinking at all: our flesh is
present to itself whether we are conscious or unconscious,
awake or asleep…[t]hat is to say, our bodies go on existing for
themselves even when they are not being registered by our
conscious minds.” (Mathews, 2003, pp.31-2)
Mathews’ Pansychism
 [A]ll matter can be imagined as occupying space from within in
this way. Extension is thus imagined as having an inner as well
as an outer, visible and otherwise sensible dimension. And just
as it is our subjectivity, the innerness or presence-to-itself of our
own body, that assures us that we are really here, that we
really do occupy the space that our body appears to occupy, so
we could say, it is this innerness, this presence-to-itself of matter
generally that renders the world at large real as opposed to
mere externalised husk or insubstantial phantom. (Ibid., p.32)
 Problem of proprioception
Mathews’ Pansychism
 Consciousness as an instance of material self-registration may
be universal in the sense that it is an experienced fact within a
single and unbroken material plenum, and thus a phenomenon
of the plenum as a whole, and inseparably interrelated with all
other material events occurring across the plenum, but its
presence nevertheless persists as a perturbation of that plenum
only under certain very distinct and localised conditions within
the universe – those associated with brains
 For Mathews, by contrast with consciousness, “subjectivity,” in
an extended or analogical sense, is the illusive property that
distinguishes a thing itself from its mere appearance: it is the
fact that matter is present-to-itself, that it occupies space from
within as well as from without, which ensures that bodies are
really there. (Mathews, 2003, p.32)
Causality in panpsychism
 Mathews (2003, p.35) argues, such accounts of causal power or
force are mere reifications of empirical data unless supported
by an idea of agency which derives from our subjective
experience of intentionality, of willing and causing. We
understand one thing causing another because we have
experienced our agency and ascribe to objects a similar though
less conscious or unconscious potential to affect other objects. It
is not difficult to read such arguments as Mathews does, as
lending some weight to the panpsychist case that what
distinguishes cause from succession and repetition is some
quality in matter analogous to our own subjectivity, a sense of
its presence-to-itself.
Panpsychism and
Cartesianism
 Mathews (2003, p.35) argues, such accounts of causal power or
force are mere reifications of empirical data unless supported
by an idea of agency which derives from our subjective
experience of intentionality, of willing and causing. We
understand one thing causing another because we have
experienced our agency and ascribe to objects a similar though
less conscious or unconscious potential to affect other objects. It
is not difficult to read such arguments as Mathews does, as
lending some weight to the panpsychist case that what
distinguishes cause from succession and repetition is some
quality in matter analogous to our own subjectivity, a sense of
its presence-to-itself.
Causality in panpsychism
 The Cartesian proof of real matter outside the mind relies on the
assumption that what reflexive subjectivity identifies for itself is
the activity of a discrete atopic mind. Mathews’ panpsychist
argument (2003, p.37) is that Descartes simply does not allow for
the possibility that what is ‘registered’ in self-reflection might
be merely a point of activity within a wider field of subjectivity.
 “[S]uppose an alternative metaphysical presupposition is
adopted – suppose that we do regard ostensibly individual
minds as points of reflexivity in a wider field of “mind,” a field
which is manifest to us, externally, so to speak, as the manifold
of physical reality, physical reality is thus seen as a continuum
that is possessed of a mental as well as a physical dimension.”
(Mathews, 2003, p. 38)
Causality in panpsychism
 The Cartesian proof of real matter outside the mind relies on the
assumption that what reflexive subjectivity identifies for itself is
the activity of a discrete atopic mind. Mathews’ panpsychist
argument (2003, p.37) is that Descartes simply does not allow for
the possibility that what is ‘registered’ in self-reflection might
be merely a point of activity within a wider field of subjectivity.
 “[S]uppose an alternative metaphysical presupposition is
adopted – suppose that we do regard ostensibly individual
minds as points of reflexivity in a wider field of “mind,” a field
which is manifest to us, externally, so to speak, as the manifold
of physical reality, physical reality is thus seen as a continuum
that is possessed of a mental as well as a physical dimension.”
(Mathews, 2003, p. 38)
Causality in panpsychism
 “In this case there would be no discrete individuals in the world,
and no categorically or metaphysically distinct substances, so
mind-body dualism would dissolve, and with it the “problem of
knowledge,” in the sense of how the problem of mind, once
severed from the world, can reestablish contact with that
world… All parts of the continuum may be considered as
sharing in an underlying subjectival condition, and every part
already participates in all other parts, since subjectivity, like
space, is intrinsically indivisible.” (Ibid., p.38)
 The limits of Mathews’ panpsychism, like Dietzgenite ‘cosmic
socialism’ before it are plainly marked by the political
consequences of socially enacting the ethics that flow from it,
and again the uncomfortable assertion that the truth of its
claims are proved by their rejection within the pathological
individualist order engendered by the capitalist mode.