Consciousness and its place in nature
Galen Strawson et al. Ed. Anthony Freeman
1. The Road to Panpsychism
Although the main title of this book gives an accurate indication of its content, it
could also mislead. In recent years there has been no shortage of books devoted
to the relationship between consciousness and the natural world – rather too
many, some would say – but few (if any) have covered the same ground as this
one. In this regard the book’s subtitle is more revealing: Does physicalism entail
panpsychism? A natural immediate reaction to this might well be along the lines
of ‘What?! Don’t be silly.’ Since physicalists tend to view consciousness as a byproduct of neural activity in the brain, it is hard to see how physicalism could
lend support to – let alone entail – the very radical view that consciousness is to
be found everywhere, or at least, in every material thing. And of course on a more
general level, the two doctrines are commonly associated with very different
philosophical temperaments. Physicalism is the home of the serious, hardheaded, naturalistically inclined and scientifically informed philosopher.
Panpsychism, by contrast, tends to be viewed as an eccentric refuge for the
woolly-minded or mystically-inclined. If people who hug trees and talk to rocks
run the risk of being thought slightly odd, those who believe that rocks and trees
themselves have feelings are likely to be deemed downright weird, if not worse.
Since panpsychism can so easily seem the silliest, most absurd, of
metaphysical doctrines, it is not surprising that it has largely escaped sustained
sober analytical scrutiny. But then again, given the increased interest over the
past couple of decades in ‘alternative’ approaches to the matter-consciousness
problem – i.e., approaches other than reductive physicalism in any of its guises –
such scrutiny is arguably overdue. In Consciousness and its place in nature this
lacuna is filled. The book opens with a usefully provocative (and exuberant)
target essay ‘Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism’ by Galen
Strawson; this is followed by seventeen critical commentaries, which are in turn
followed by a substantial reply by Strawson. Unusually for a volume of this sort,
all the critical essays remain tightly focused on the intended theme, and most are
by well-known figures in the field: Frank Jackson, William Lycan, Colin
McGinn, David Papineau (together with Elizabeth Schechter), George Rey,
William Seager, Peter Simons, David Skrbina, J.C.C Smart, Henry Stapp, Daniel
Stoljar and Catherine Wilson. A few are by relative newcomers – Sam Coleman,
Phillip Goff, Fiona Macpherson – but since these contributions are among the
strongest, the quality of the work as a whole is very high.
It probably won’t come as a surprise to learn that most of Strawson’s
commentators remain unconvinced by his main argument. What is striking,
however, is that none are at all dismissive of it. The case for panpsychism may
not be irresistible, but it is by no means negligible. Anyone unconvinced by this
should certainly read this book. But so too should anyone with an interest in
(truly) foundational issues in the philosophy of mind: there is much here that will
engage and interest them.
The line of argument expounded by Strawson in his opening contribution
simple, but powerful. One thing all physicalists can agree on is that mentality is
fundamentally a physical phenomenon, and hence that mind-body dualism is
false. One of the lessons of modern science is that all physical things are made
from the same elementary ingredients (quarks, photons, strings, etc.); suitably rearranged, the particles in a lump of rock could form a nice ripe tomato, or – if the
lump is big enough – a thinking, feeling human being. Most of us assume that
whereas animals (and in particular, human animals) often enjoy experiences,
potatoes, gas clouds and lumps of granite never do, and neither do individual
electrons, quarks or photons. If animals have experiences, but vegetables and
minerals don’t, and neither do their smaller constituents, then experience must
emerge when suitable numbers of basic particles are arranged in a suitable way.
Strawson accepts that emergence can and does occur in nature. Individual
H2O molecules don’t possess the property liquidity but water does, and water is
nothing but a collection of H2O molecules at a certain temperature and pressure.
However, he goes on to argue, while there is a plausible and easily
comprehensible story to be told as to how atoms and their interactions give rise to
liquidity – roughly, the molecular bonds are loose enough to allow molecules to
slide past one another – no such story can be told about how experience could
arise from combining atoms (or their smaller constituents) in certain ways.
Whereas the emergence of liquidity doesn’t involve any fundamentally new
ingredients coming into existence – in the case of water it involves nothing more
than atoms of hydrogen and oxygen engaging in one of the modes of interaction
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that is available to them – experiences cannot be brought into existence in so
economical a manner. Phenomenal properties, such as redness-as-experienced,
have a distinctive intrinsic character all of their own, a character that is distinct
from the properties physics ascribes to elementary particles (mass, charge, spin,
etc.) Consequently, if we suppose phenomenal properties could be brought into
existence by configuring matter in certain ways, we would be dealing with a far
more radical generative process – Strawson calls it brute emergence – than in the
case of liquidity: for in the experiential case fundamentally new modes of being
are being brought into existence (at least on the assumption, currently in play, that
the most basic forms of matter lack phenomenal properties). Serious-minded
physicalists generally subscribe to the view that every part and aspect of the world
is wholly and completely determined by the properties and interactions of elementary
material things. Since genuine (liquidity-style) emergence conforms to this total
determination of the macro- by the micro-, it is a phenomenon physicalists can
and should accept. Since brute emergence does not so conform, physicalists
should reject it utterly.1
If Strawson is right about this, what follows? Suppose you have a drawer
containing – so you suppose – only white socks, but on opening it you find a red
sock; since ordinary interactions among white socks don’t lead to the creation of
red socks, you have little option but to conclude that the red sock must have been
in the drawer all along. Analogously, if phenomenal properties can’t emerge
from the interactions of elementary physical ingredients, we have no option but to
accept – improbable though it may sound – that experience in some (no doubt
quite primitive) form already exists in the elementary ingredients themselves. It
seems that if we hold that consciousness is a physical phenomenon, we must also
accept that the physical world is experiential, and not just in systems exhibiting
the highest levels of complexity (e.g., human brains), but all the way down.
Strawson concedes that, strictly speaking, this reasoning only establishes
(what he calls) microspsychism, the doctrine that some species of elementary
physical particles have an experiential aspect to their nature. But if – as he thinks
likely – all physical things have the same fundamental nature, then we can
Strawson characterizes emergence properly so-called thus: ‘Emergence cannot be
brute. It is built into the heart of the notion of emergence that emergence cannot
be brute in the sense of there being absolute no reason in the nature of things why
the emerging thing is as it is (so that it is unintelligible even to God). For any
feature Y of anything that is correctly considered to be emergent from X, there
must be something about X and X alone in virtue of which Y emerges, and which
is sufficient for Y.’ (18)
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reasonably conclude that all forms of matter and energy have an experiential
aspect. This yields panpsychism proper, which (for Strawson) is the claim that all
physical things have both an experiential and a non-experiential aspect or
component. It is the latter proviso which differentiates panpsychism from
orthodox idealism.
A natural question at this point is how this position can coherently be
viewed as a species of physicalism. After all, the mental properties panpsychists
attribute to elementary physical particles certainly don’t figure among the
properties physicists ascribe to these particles. Recognizing this, Strawson
distinguishes two forms of physicalism: ‘physicSalism’ and ‘real physicalism’.
According to the physicSalists, the fundamental properties of matter are limited
to those recognized by a successful and complete fundamental physics.
Strawsonian ‘real’ physicalists take a more expansive view. Like the
physicSalists they believe there is just one basic kind of stuff in our universe, and
that this stuff is physical. But they also take the experiential to be as real as any
other form of concrete reality, and hold that it cannot be reductively identified
with any non-experiential mode of reality – such as collections of particles
possessing only the properties recognized by physicSalists. Physicalists of this
persuasion not only hold that everything that is concrete (or non-abstract) is
physical, experience included, they also reject the (for Strawson) hugely
implausible reductionism to which most physicSalists subscribe.
Strawsonian physicalism may not be to everyone’s taste, but anyone who
shares his commitment to a naturalistic world-view and a non-reductionist stance
with regard to consciousness will find it largely congenial. In any event one thing
is clear: panpsychism is at least an option for anyone who adopts this liberal form
of physicalism.
Returning to the main line of argument, Strawson later concedes that his
claim that ‘physicalism entails panpsychism’ is misleading. It is not (real)
physicalism which has this entailment, but the latter combined with two further
claims: (a) that experience cannot emerge from the non-experiential, (b) that the
intrinsic nature of matter is fundamentally homogeneous – the latter claim taking
us from micropsychism to panpsychism. When these additional premises are
inserted, Strawson’s argument begins to look broadly similar to the one explored
in Nagel’s ‘Panpsychism’ (1979), to which Strawson acknowledges his debt.
Nagel’s argument has four stages: (i) Material Composition (all organisms are
composed of the same small family of elementary physical ingredients); (ii)
Nonreductionism (mental states are not physical properties of organisms, nor are
they implied by physical properties); (iii) Realism (it is organisms which possess
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mental states, not immaterial souls); (iv) Nonemergence (all the properties of a
complex thing derive from the properties of its constituents and their relations
with other things, hence there are no truly – or brutely – emergent properties).
Strawson’s real physicalism together with the commitment to the homogeneity
thesis are largely equivalent to Nagel’s (i), (ii) and (iii). There are, however,
differences. Strawson devotes a good deal of space to motivating the
nonemergence claim, whereas Nagel simply states it. A second difference is
terminological-cum-doctrinal. Nagel operates with a narrow, physicSalist,
conception of physical properties, and so for him panpsychism and physicalism
are in competition. Strawson is also a non-reductionist, but his more
accommodating construal of physical properties means that for him physicalism
and panpsychism are entirely compatible.
2. Objections
Nagel himself remarks that ‘panpsychism should be added to the current list of
mutually incompatible and hopelessly unacceptable solutions to the mind-body
problem’ (1979: 193). Strawson takes issue with the ‘hopelessly unacceptable’
verdict. In closing he remarks that panpsychism ‘seems to me to be the most
parsimonious, plausible, and indeed “hard-nosed” position that any physicalist
who is remotely realistic about the nature of reality can take up in the present
state of our knowledge.’ (29) Nonetheless, there are problems to be overcome,
and he draws our attention to some of the more serious. As one would expect,
his commentators mention several more, and dwell on them at greater length.
While the lines of argument pursued by the various commentators are all very
much relevant to Strawson’s position, they are also quite diverse, and I lack the
space here to mention them all. There are, however, a number of recurrent
themes, and it is these that I will focus on.
Strawson has little patience for reductionist approaches to the experiential;
indeed, as we have seen, he incorporates a non-reductionist stance into his
account of what ‘real/realistic’ physicalism involves. Unsurprisingly, a number
of commentators – including Lycan, Rey, Rosenthal and Smart – take exception
to Strawson’s characterization of reductionism as ‘a large and fatal mistake … the
strangest thing that has ever happened in the whole history of human thought’ (45) Several others – Caruthers and Schechter, Coleman, Papineau – suggest that
Strawson has failed to adequately address the a posteriori physicalism much in
vogue in some contemporary circles, the doctrine (roughly speaking) that the
experiential does reduce to the non-experiential, even though we are unable to
comprehend how, thanks to the incommensurability of the relevant concepts. In
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his Reply – to which I will return in more detail – Strawson is entirely
unrepentant, but he does provide some indications as to where (in his eyes) a
posteriori physicalists go wrong. Roughly, their approach to the experiential is
overly linguistic-cum-conceptual, they overlook – or refuse to acknowledge – that
we have direct access to the true nature of the conscious states: we know their
nature simply by having them.
Given the key role played by emergence in Strawson’s main argument one
might have expected that this topic would feature prominently in the subsequent
discussion. As it turns out, there is surprisingly little discussion of it: most of the
commentators seem happy to accept what Strawson says on this topic. Then
again, perhaps this is not so surprising. It’s easy to see how liquidity might be
emergent with respect to the entities postulated by physics; if it was anything like
as easy to see how experience could be similarly emergent the mind-body
problem would not be the live issue it continues to be. Most would agree that the
relationship between phenomenal consciousness and matter is puzzling and
problematic – in a manner that the relationship between liquidity and its physical
underpinnings is not.
While not denying this point, two commentators – Coleman and Jackson
– suggest Strawson is too dismissive of the notion that experience is emergent in a
more radical way from the (non-experiential) physical. Jackson looks favourably
on a model in which there are ‘fundamental laws of nature that go from certain
complex arrangements of the non-conscious to consciousness.’ (64). Coleman
considers the merits of a similar proposal: ‘Perhaps experience is a distinct and
autonomous feature or level of existence, which through natural law comes into
being under specific condition [e.g. when microphysical ingredients enter brainlike configurations]’ (42). But isn’t this multiple-level view simply a form of
dualism? Views matters thus is not an option for Strawson, given the way he
characterizes the physical as ‘whatever is out there in our universe, irrespective of
its intrinsic nature’. In fact, the sort of position Jackson and Coleman have in
mind is similar to that advocated by the school of British Emergentists – in
particular C.D Broad. Strawson does not ignore this position entirely. He
remarks: ‘The most ingenious attempt to get around this [i.e., the reasoning
which leads to panpsychism] that I know of is Broad’s … but it does not, in the
end, work’, and refers us to McLaughlin (1992) for an explanation of why it
doesn’t work. This is intriguing, for although McLaughlin argues that the fall of
British Emergentism was inevitable, this was not due to any philosophical flaws
in the doctrine: ‘British Emergentism does not seem to rest on any “philosophical
mistakes”. It is one of my main contentions that advances in science, not
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philosophical criticism, led to the fall of British Emergentism’ (1992: 50). Prior to
the advent of quantum mechanics it was a complete mystery why the different
chemical elements look and behave as differently as they do, hence an
emergentist view of chemistry looked to be a very viable option; obviously when
quantum theory made a reductionist approach to chemistry look more viable the
situation changed dramatically. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, for the
distinctive features of living matter and molecular biology. If Strawson is correct
in his contention that consciousness is not like life (or chemistry), and will always
elude the reductionist’s net, then a dose of British-style Emergentism may be just
what the doctor ordered. This sort of emergentism no doubt brings disadvantages
of its own – the universe becomes less deeply-unified, to mention but one – but if
the only viable alternative is panpsychism, these disadvantages may not seem so
serious.2
Moving on, several of Strawson’s commentators are of the view that his
main line of argument suffers from tensions which reduce its effectiveness. One
such derives from the differential epistemic access Strawson claims we have to the
physical and phenomenal realms. Descartes believed we have a transparent,
essence-revealing access to both the physical and the mental – indeed, it was
because of this that we can be sure the mental and physical belong to two distinct
realms. Strawson only meets Descartes half-way here: he agrees that we have
transparent access to the experiential, but denies that have such access to the
physical (or non-experiential) realm. This lack of transparency is important to the
plausibility of panpsychism, for even the most powerful microscope will fail to
reveal the experiential properties of water, wood or lead, and the same goes for
other modes of empirical scrutiny. But this is only a problem if we suppose these
modes of scrutiny provide us with a complete insight into the nature of matter,
which Strawson denies: ‘we have no good reason to think that we know anything
about the physical that gives us any reason to find any problem in the idea that
experiential phenomena are physical phenomena’ (4). However, as Stoljar
observes, this ‘Ignorantist’ standpoint leaves Strawson in a delicate position. For
if we are radically ignorant about the true nature of the non-experiential, how can
While most physicists probably do shun the more radical forms of emergence,
the ‘multiple autonomous level’ picture is one that other contemporary scientists
– in particular biologists – have found appealing, e.g. Noble (2006). There are
also physicists prepared to look kindly on radical emergentism, a prominent
example being Robert B. Laughlin, the Nobel prize-winning condensed matter
physicist; indeed, one of Laughlin’s examples of a strongly emergent
phenomenon is water (2005: 33-46; also see (2000)) However, it is probably fair to
say that Laughlin’s brand of non-reductionism is not (as of now, at least) widely
endorsed by other physicists.
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we be warranted in supposing that its nature is such that it is impossible for the
experiential to emerge from it? If our ordinary (physicSalist) conception of matter
is hopelessly inadequate, surely we can’t be sure about this. Ignorance inevitably
weakens the case for non-emergence. In reply, Strawson confesses to being an
Ignorantist, but not a radical Ignorantist: we are not completely in the dark about
the nature of matter, we know enough to know that there is something deeply
problematic in the notion that the non-experiential could give rise to the
experiential.
A second tension – discerned and developed in different ways by
Carruthers and Schechter, Goff, Papineau, Lycan and McGinn – concerns the
relationship between the ‘micro- ’ and ‘macro-experiential’. Although a
panpsychist might conceivably hold that elementary physical particles possess
conscious lives as rich and complex as our own, in practice few do, and Strawson
is no exception. The doctrine is more plausible if we suppose elementary
particles possess only elementary mentality, and that complex forms of
consciousness come into being when the simpler forms combine in various ways,
and this is what Strawson proposes. But while taking this line enhances the
plausibility of panpsychism, it also introduces a vulnerability. We are driven in
the direction of panpsychism in the first place because it is very difficult to
comprehend how consciousness could emerge from micro-physical elements
which entirely lack it. Does panpsychism eliminate problematic modes of
emergence, or does it simply re-locate them? There is a case for thinking the
latter. For how, precisely, is it that complex macro-experientiality (of the sort we
enjoy) emerges from the micro-experientiality (of the sort elementary particles
enjoy)? This issue is sufficiently important to have been given a name of its own:
several commentators call it ‘the Combination Problem’. And as soon becomes
apparent, the problem is both multi-faceted and serious.
One difficulty is epistemic. Let’s suppose a form of panpsychism is true,
and my current state of consciousness is composed of a hundred trillion smaller
and simpler states of consciousness, the latter belonging to individual elementary
particles in my brain. It is not obvious (to put it mildly) that my consciousness is
composed of the experiences of trillions of smaller minds. This absence of
evidence is a problem for those who believe, as Strawson does, that we have
transparent access to the nature of our experience.
Other difficulties are metaphysical. Strawson accepts the principle that for
every experience there is a subject whose experience it is (‘no experience without
an experiencer’). This means there is a different and distinct subject for every
elementary particle in my brain. Does it really make sense to suppose that the
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experiences of a multiplicity of distinct subjects could be combined in the
consciousness of a further subject? Arguably not, for it seems plausible to think
that subjects and experiences are governed by an Exclusivity Principle along these
lines: if an experience e1 belongs to a subject S1, it belongs ONLY to S1, e1 cannot
also (and simultaneously) belong to a distinct subject S2. It is difficult to see how
your current experiences and mine could possibly be parts of the consciousness of
a larger and more encompassing mind; why shouldn’t the same hold in the case
of smaller minds? If this difficulty proves insuperable then macro-level
experiences won’t be composed of micro-experiences, they will be entirely distinct
creations, which come into being – presumably in virtue of an appropriate natural
law – when elementary particles and their associated micro-experiences enter into
certain configurations. But clearly, emergence in this form is similar to that
posited by Broad; and since it is no longer clear what micro-experiences are
contributing to the situation, we might as well dispense with their services.
Combination-related difficulties do not end here. There is an identity
preservation issue: how can micro-experiences retain their original phenomenal
character when they enter into larger configurations? How can very faint micropains hang on to this character when they form parts of an intense macro-level
pain? And also a derivation difficulty. To illustrate, suppose the micro-level
experiences are all different shades of phenomenal grey; how do we combine
these to get the full range of human experiences: phenomenal yellow, orange,
sounds of thunder, sounds of speech, bodily sensations, conscious thoughts etc.?
As McGinn notes (96), there are a lot of phenomenal primitives at the macro-level,
and its difficult to see how these could result from combining experiences with
different and simpler qualitative features.
Conceding that he doesn’t have full solutions to these Combination-related
problems, Strawson notes that his paper was intended to be ‘schematic and
exploratory’ (246), rather than a full-blown elaboration and defence of a
panpsychist metaphysic. He also suggests that even if panpsychist emergence is
problematic, it is nothing like as problematic as the alternative: emergence in the
context of two radically disparate modes of being (the experiential and the nonexperiential) looks utterly hopeless, in a way that emergence within a single realm
(the experiential) is not. There are two further proposals. At various points
Strawson suggests that to make progress on the mind-body problem we will need
to abandon the classical metaphysics of object and property (or substance and
attribute), in favour of a conception of objects as processes, where the latter consist
of nothing more than properties. He is thus led to construe subjects of experience
as nothing more than collections of suitably unified conscious states. He does not
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spell it out explicitly, but I take it that (part of) his thinking is that once liberated
from the confines of a traditional substance, one of the main constraints on the
compounding of conscious states is no more. The second move is made explicit,
in the course of a complex discussion of one of his own epistemic theses, namely
that so far as experience is concerned, ‘the having is the knowing’. Strawson
distinguishes a stronger and weaker version of this doctrine (252), and endorses
only the weaker:
The Full Revelation Thesis: In the case of any particular experience, I am
acquainted with the whole essential nature of the experience just in having
it.
The Partial Revelation Thesis: In the case of any particular experience, I am
acquainted with the essential nature of the experience in certain respects,
at least, just in having it.
If experiences can only reveal a part of their true natures to their subjects – if
experiences can have partially concealed natures – then the Combination Problem
loses a good deal of its bite. Given Partial Revelation, the fact that my current
experience does not seem (to me) to be composed of trillions of smaller
experiences is perfectly compatible with its being composite in precisely this way.
Unfortunately for the panpsychist, while the move to Partial Revelation
helps with some problems, it also creates a now-familiar tension. If some
significant features of experience are concealed from us, might it not be that these
features make it possible for phenomenal consciousness to emerge from nonphenomenal ingredients?
3. From Descartes to Spinoza
Strawson’s Reply goes well beyond the responses to particular lines of criticism to
which I have given brief mention thus far. Over the course of an illuminating and
invigorating hundred-page essay – Strawson’s prose is turbo-charged throughout
– he sets out to clarify what the real issues are, as he sees them. In an attempt to
establish a ‘Basic Framework’ for future discussion he constructs a list of some 41
theses (37 metaphysical, 4 epistemological); some familiar claims about the
nature of physical reality and its relationship with the experiential domain are to
be found here, along with a good many that are good deal less familiar. But this
is by no means all: a substantial chunk of the Reply is historical. Strawson is
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intent on demonstrating not only that the issues he is engaging with are by no
means new, but that the general level of discussion on these matters was a good
deal higher when conducted by Descartes, Locke, Leibniz and Spinoza than it
has been in contemporary philosophy.
On the historical front most space is devoted to ‘the magnificent,
contumacious Descartes’ who, Strawson claims, remains the best and deepest
thinker on the mind-body problem, the philosopher from whom we still have
most to learn. Readers unpersuaded by Strawson’s influential ‘realistic’ taken on
Hume on causation may have a ‘Oh no, not again …’ feeling here. Inspired by
Desmond Clarke (2003), Strawson argues that the traditional textbook
interpretation of Descartes is mistaken in several respects.3 First of all, Descartes
wasn’t a substance dualist, at least in the contemporary sense of the term. For
him the term ‘substance’ serves as a mere placeholder; he regarded the distinction
between object and property to be a merely conceptual distinction, rather than a
real one. He did think there are two kinds of property – or better, that there is
‘experiential being’ and ‘non-experiential being’ – but having adopted the view
that there is no real distinction between a substance and its properties, his dualism
must be of the bundle-variety. This makes for an interesting conception of the self
or subject:
there is, for Descartes, no real distinction between (a) the concrete
existence of the attribute of thinking and (b) the concrete existence of
thinking substance. His root – radical – idea about the nature of the
subject of experience or soul is that it is somehow wholly and literally
constituted of experience, i.e. of conscious experiencing: that is what res
cogitans – a soul – is.
Strawson goes on to argue that an alert reader of his correspondence will find
grounds for concluding that Descartes may even have been committed to (or at
least tempted by) a position similar to real physicalism – if so, he clearly wasn’t the
dualist he is commonly assumed to be. There is abundant evidence that
Descartes was very much aware of a very contemporary-sounding objection to
dualism: namely, that we are ignorant of the true nature of matter, and so not in a
position to rule out the possibility that it possesses a mental aspect or component.
There is, of course, plenty of textual evidence that points in the opposite
direction, but as Strawson points out, we also know that Descartes was cautious,
and prone to concealing his true beliefs when these might provoke (possibly
And also Yablo (1990); Strawson does say that he may have gone slightly
further than either in this regard.
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dangerous) public controversy. Above all, ‘what one has to do is feel one’s way
into the intellectual heart of this man who went to the butcher’s for brains when
he wanted to understand the mind’ (215), and then ask oneself which
interpretation has the ring of truth. Whether Strawson’s interpretation of
Descartes is correct is an issue for Cartesian scholars to decide, but it certainly
makes for interesting reading.
As for the Basic Framework and its 41 distinctions and theses, it does
(perhaps not surprisingly) allow Strawson to refine and clarify the metaphysical
position he wants to defend. Having come around to the view – shared by several
commentators – that his use of ‘physicalism’ (even when prefixed by ‘real’) may
be doing more harm than good, he eventually settles on the following statement
of his position:
Equal-Status Fundamental-Duality Monism [ESFD]: Reality is substantially
single. All reality is experiential and non-experiential. Experiential and
non-experiential being exist in such a way that neither can be said to be
based in or realized by or in any way asymmetrically dependent on the
other (241)
This formulation certainly makes it clear what Strawsonian panpsychism involves
and requires. It answers the criticism (forcefully made by Macpherson) that his
position has many of the features of orthodox property dualism. Also on plain
view is the main problem confronting ESFD-monism: how can a single mode of
being combine such diverse features? How can one sort of stuff be both
experiential and non-experiential? Strawson gives credit to Descartes for being
the first to appreciate the seriousness of this difficulty: it is what led him to
espouse dualism (if he in fact did, ultimately). But for all that ESFD-monism
may seem untenable, Strawson finds consolation in the fact at least one other
philosopher – a philosopher whose brilliance is beyond question – certainly
espoused something very much akin to it: Spinoza held that ‘experiential being
and non-experiential being … are indeed in some metaphysically immoveable
sense identical, but that maintaining this is compatible with maintaining some
sort of real fundamental duality’ (242). That said, Strawson concedes that even
Spinoza failed to make it fully clear how reality could be like this, and so further
work is required. But even if the solution remains beyond our grasp, there is a
further consoling thought: there is plenty of evidence in both science and
philosophy ‘that many of our ways of thinking of reality are quite hopelessly
inadequate to reality as it is in itself’ (242).
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Strawson suggests ESFD-monism is what ‘many people really want, even
though they are likely to deny it’ (241). The second claim may well be true, but I
have doubts about the first. Although most people are certainly of the view that
both experiential and non-experiential modes of being are to be found in our
universe, surely most people also believe that large tracts of our universe are
entirely non-experiential in nature, with experience being confined to only small
portions (e.g., animal brains, or immaterial souls). For those in this camp it
would come as a surprise to be told that each and every part of the universe –
down to the smallest sub-atomic particle – possesses both experiential and nonexperiential aspects. Many people find it very natural to think physical world has
a dark (non-experiential) aspect, it is by no means evident that this idea will retain
its appeal if the only way of retaining it is to ascribe a light (experiential) side to
the entirety of the physical world.
This point aside, it should be noted that Strawson’s stance is a cautious
one. ESFD-monism may be the best we can hope for, but we cannot (at this
point in time) be sure it is true, or ultimately intelligible. If it should turn out not
to be acceptable, given the assumptions currently in play (e.g. monism, no brute
emergence), so far as he can see there is only one other option open to us: pure
panpsychism. If the non-experiential cannot co-exist (ESFD-style) with the
experiential, since we cannot deny the existence of the latter, we must deny the
existence of the former, and hold that concrete reality is wholly experiential.
In explicit recognition that this is may ultimately prove to be the more
plausible position, from this point on ESFD-monism is largely sidelined, and for
most of the remaining sections of the Reply Strawson assumes pure panpsychism
to be true. Some of the ground covered in these sections is already familiar – it is
here that he discusses the Combination Problem, and takes the strategic decision
to reject the Full Revelation thesis – but one final aspect has yet to be mentioned.
The pure panpsychism Strawson want to defend and explore is of the
‘naturalistic’ variety: he is still assuming that the world is composed of small
elementary particles (so as to ensure maximum compatibility with current
physics), but he also wants to make room for causation, construed realistically
(i.e., as more than mere behavioural regularities). The move to Partial Revelation
is of assistance here: that our conscious states are composed of causally active
constituents is not something that is evident in our experience, but this is not a
problem if our experiences have features that are not discernible by us. Making
this move brings benefits on several fronts. First, it is easier to regard experiences
as genuine things if they possess causal powers. Second, we now have available
something akin to an external world even though reality is entirely experiential in
13
nature, for when one ‘experiencing affects another …. the second obviously will
not have access to the from-the-inside nature of the first in the way in which only
the first can … In this sense experiential realities may be said to function as nonexperiential but experience-causing realities for other experiential realities’ (261).
Last, but certainly not least, viewing experiences in this way gives us ‘a first
intimation of how panpsychist monism can allow some sort of fundamental and
all-pervasive duality to existence (a glimmering of the possibility that ESFDmonism may be intelligible after all’ (256).
Strawson evidently takes pure panpsychism to be a way in which (real)
physicalism could be true, and this may sound odd. If the universe of the pure
panpsychist contains nothing that is not experiential in nature, isn’t pure
panpsychism simply a form of idealism? In one sense it is, but it is also a form of
idealism in which there is an external reality which, in a sense, is recognizably
physical: the elementary particles may be experiential in nature, but they are
distributed through a space of three (or more) dimensions, and their behaviour
conforms to the laws of fundamental physics. This is precisely the conception of
physical reality to which the growing band of followers of the Russell-Eddington
line subscribe, and with which Strawson has considerable sympathy. According
to Russell and Eddington (but also Clifford, Lockwood and others), physics only
provides us with formal or structural descriptions, it has nothing to say about the
intrinsic nature of the physical; if we assume, as seems plausible, that the physical
world does have an intrinsic nature of some kind, the latter might well be
experiential – this is certainly the most economical hypothesis, given that we
know beyond any doubt that intrinsic properties of this sort do exist.
There is much that is plausible here, but this phenomenalized physicalism, as
one might call it, also brings difficulties of its own. Are the causal laws to which
elementary (phenomenalized) physical things conform necessary or contingent?
It is not obvious how they could be necessary. To illustrate, suppose that in the
actual world some elementary particles are (phenomenal) red, others are
(phenomenal) blue, and particles of these kinds attract one another. Might it not
be otherwise? Is there a possible world where intrinsically indistinguishable red
and blue particles repel one another? It is difficult to see why there shouldn’t be
such a world: what is it about these colour qualities which entails that instances of
them can only attract one another? There seems to be no such behaviourguaranteeing feature. But if we conclude that the laws governing the elementary
particulars are merely contingent a difficulty looms on the horizon. The
elementary particulars which exist in our world also exist in worlds where the
laws governing them are very different. In some worlds the laws restrict the
14
particles to just one spatial dimension; in others these same particles are
distributed through million-dimensional space – yet further worlds finds the
particles behaving in all manner of strange (to us) ways. Since many of these
worlds will bear any resemblance to our world, it is difficult to see why we should
regard them as physical at all. But if this is right, the particles which make up our
world are themselves at best only contingently physical: as it happens, in our
world they are disporting themselves in a physical way, but in a multitude of
other worlds they are behaving very differently. It is starting to look as though
our world is not fundamentally physical at all – and indeed, on a number of
occasions John Foster has appealed to considerations of just this sort in arguing
that physicalism – construed as the claim that reality is essentially physical – is an
incoherent doctrine.4
Perhaps aware of this threat, Strawson immunizes himself against it: he
holds that all things – and hence basic experiential particulars – possess all their
causal powers essentially (262). He willingly grants that it is not transparently
obvious why certain phenomenal qualities essentially possess certain causal
powers, but here once again his rejection of Full Revelation comes to the rescue:
experiences possess some features which are not revealed in the simple having of
them. But while this certainly makes room for the required causal essentialism,
the latter remains problematic. It is very difficult to see why any phenomenal
property should necessarily possess the causal powers that it does possess. So
much so that we are, I think, entitled to be sceptical of this essentialist doctrine, at
least in the absence of any positive arguments as to how it could be true –
arguments which Strawson does not (here) provide.
4. Unity and Transitivity
To bring matters to a close I want to take a brief look at a topic that is largely
overlooked by Strawson and his commentators, but has some relevance to the
themes under discussion. In his contribution Lycan writes:
Suppose I am looking out of my kitchen window, and simultaneously
seeing a rabbit in my back yard, hearing my wife’s cat yowling that he
wants to behead the rabbit, feeling the touch of my fingertips on a bottle of
salad dressing, smelling the spaghetti sauce in the pot, suffering an ache in
my right shoulder, and imagining in anticipation a very tall frosty beer. In
4
Most recently Foster (2008); see also Robinson (1985).
15
what way could such a mental aggregate consist of or be determined by or
otherwise ‘arise from’ a swarm of smaller mentations? (69)
Lycan’s concern here is the Combination Problem, but he nicely brings to our
attention an important, but easily overlooked, feature of our ordinary streams of
consciousness. At any one time, our overall consciousness typically comprises a
collection – or aggregate – of different experiences; these experiences do not occur
separately, or in complete isolation from one another, rather they are experienced
together – or, as it is commonly put, they are co-conscious. Lycan’s visual
experience of the rabbit is co-conscious with his hearing of the cat’s yowling, and
both these are co-conscious with his various bodily sensations, and the imagining
of the tall frosty beer. Generally speaking, each of our experiences at any one
time is co-conscious with all our other experiences. Indeed, this distinctive mode
of unity runs further and deeper than this. Co-consciousness not only connects
experiences of different sorts, it also holds within experiences: as Lycan looks out
onto his garden, all the different parts of his visual experience are themselves coconscious.
This relationship of co-consciousness is in one sense elusive, for the
relationship itself does not have any introspectively discernible features. When a
visual experience is co-conscious with an auditory experience, we are not aware
of any additional experiential element joining the two – there is no discernible
phenomenal glue, as it were – we are simply aware of the auditory and visual
experiences together. From a purely phenomenological perspective, coconsciousness just is this ‘experienced togetherness’. But since we are all very
familiar with what it is like for experiences (or their contents) to be experienced
together in this way, in one sense at least there is nothing in the least mysterious
about the relationship in question.5
Strawson is himself fully aware of the distinctive sort of unity which exists
within consciousness. Elsewhere he writes ‘it seems that there is, in nature, as far
as we know it, no higher grade of physical unity than the unity of the mental
subject present and alive in what James calls the “indecomposable” unity of a
conscious thought.’ (1999: 128) What is less clear is whether he appreciates a
difficulty this mode of unity makes for his preferred form of panpsychism, ESFDmonism. The main difficulty confronting the latter is whether such (seemingly)
different and distinct modes of being as the experiential and the non-experiential
can really be aspects of just one mode of being. To put it another way, can the
experiential and non-experiential be unified in a way which makes it plausible or
5
See Dainton (2006, chapters 1-4; 2008 ch.3) for more on this.
16
possible to hold they are parts or aspects of a single thing? A solution (of a sort)
would be available if we could appeal to the doctrine of bare particulars, for there
is no obvious reason why an entity of this sort could not possess – and thereby
unify – experiential and non-experiential properties: after all, being themselves
devoid of properties, bare particulars are neither experiential nor non-experiential
in nature. But Strawson has firmly (and probably rightly) rejected this doctrine in
favour of a bundle-theory: ‘the best thing to say, given our existing terms, is that
objects are (just) concrete instantiations of properties’ (195).6 From this
perspective, the question of which property-instantiations constitute objects
depends on which properties are bundled together, and how.
The trouble now, for the ESFD-monist, is resisting a strong pull in a
dualistic direction. If we focus our attention solely on the experiential realm we
have a reasonably clear picture of the form the bundling-into-objects takes:
experiences are bound into unified wholes by the relationship of coconsciousness. The situation is a good deal less transparent at the nonexperiential level, but we have some idea of the sort of story science is likely to
tell: elementary physical objects existing in spatial relations, being pulled together
– and pushed apart – by various forces. So we have two quite different sorts of
item (phenomenal v. non-phenomenal) and two quite different bundling relations
(co-consciousness v. physical forces and relations). It looks very much like we
have the makings of two distinct ontological realms. Indeed, if we further add to
the mix causal interactions between the experiential and non-experiential, as
Strawson very much wants to do, we end up with something not dissimilar from
the orthodox Cartesian metaphysics!
To avoid this fate it is obvious what we need: a unifying, bundling-relation
which can bridge the gap between the experiential and non-experiential. But it is
not obvious what such a relation would be like, or how it could do what is
required. Clearly, co-consciousness isn’t capable of bridging the divide, since the
relationship of experienced togetherness only holds between experiences. As for
causation, even on the assumption that there can be causal relations between the
experiential and non-experiential, it is unclear how being so related could bring
about the sort of deep unity required by ESFD-monism: after all, most causes are
distinct from their effects. Does this mean there couldn’t possibly be such a
relation? Perhaps not, there are further alternatives. Perhaps most plausibly, the
monist could appeal to a relationship of co-instantiation, and maintain that, in
As the qualification here suggests, calling Strawson a bundle-theorist isn’t quite
right, for he thinks our ordinary concepts of ‘object’ and ‘property’ probably
aren’t suited for capturing how things really are – he prefers ‘modes of existence’
to ‘property’ – but as far as I can see, it’s not far wrong.
6
17
virtue of its complete generality (and neutrality), this relationship is as capable of
binding experiential and non-experiential modes of being as it is of binding
properties of any other sort. But while some panpsychists might avail themselves
of this option, it is unlikely to appeal to Strawson. How does this bare coinstantiation relation differ from the bare particulars he vehemently rejects? Even
if a difference could be found, a pure co-instantiation relation is as devoid of
phenomenal and material characteristics as any bare particular, and so not
something Strawsonian real physicalists will happily embrace.7 Even if it is
embraced we are left with a problem: how does supposing experiential and nonexperiential properties are bound together in this sort of way help us to
understand how they can be aspects of a single mode of reality? Now of course
Strawson might well say that the issue of what unifies the experiential and nonexperiential simply doesn’t arise, for if ESFD-monism is true, they aren’t truly
distinct in the first place. But while this may look to be a promising line to take, it
is also an unstable one. Strawson also concedes (as he must) that there is a
profound duality within ESFD-reality, and so the question of what unifies the
dual elements will not easily be made to go away.8
Let us set ESFD-monism aside and move on to a different but related
issue. It may not be immediately obvious, but the co-consciousness relationship
could prove to be extremely useful to the panpsychist. But it could also be
extremely dangerous, even fatal. Let me explain.
The potential benefits – as well as the potential problems – depend on
whether or not co-consciousness is a transitive relationship. Returning to Lycan’s
example, in actual fact his visual experience of the rabbit is co-conscious with
both his auditory experience of the cat’s yowling and his olfactory experience of
the spaghetti sauce – for (we can plausibly suppose) each and every part of his
experience at this time is co-conscious with every other part. But could it have
been otherwise? Might his visual experience have been co-conscious with his
Here Nagel’s remark about panpsychism bearing ‘the faintly sickening odor of
something put together in the metaphysical laboratory’ (1986: 49) may come to
mind.
8
One final thought on this issue. Properties such as mass and speed are scalar,
involving as they do just one quantity or variable; other properties, such as
momentum and velocity, involve two quantities or variables, and so are vectors.
From this vantage point the ESFD-monist is claiming that the intrinsic nature of
reality is fundamentally vector-like: it consists of two components which are by
their nature inseparable. But while construing matters in this way helps situate
ESFD-monism in the broader metaphysical landscape, it does not help much
with the real difficulty: understanding how the experiential and non-experiential
can be aspects of a single mode of being.
7
18
auditory experience, and the latter co-conscious with his olfactory experience,
without his visual and olfactory experiences being co-conscious? This is hard to
imagine, very hard. The fact that most of us find it impossible to conceive of a
state of consciousness which is only partially unified lends considerable weight to
the contention that co-consciousness is a transitive relation: that for any three
experiences e1, e2 and e3 at a time t, if e1 is co-conscious with e2, and e2 is coconscious with e3, then e1 and e3 will also be co-conscious.
This synchronic transitivity thesis is very plausible – it goes hand-in-hand
with the notion (which many also find plausible) that a subject’s overall
consciousness is necessarily unified, at any given time – but it can also lead to
trouble for the panpsychist. Sitting comfortably in its hard skull, surrounded by
liquid and soft tissues, the human brain looks to be a reasonably sharply
delineated object. The situation would look quite different if we could shrink
ourselves down to the size of elementary physical particles – quarks, photons,
gluons, strings, loops etc. At this very small scale there would be a high degree of
continuity: neurons, blood and bone may look very different, but they are each
entirely composed of the same elementary ingredients. It could very well be that
if we could see down to the quark- (or string-) scale, the entire planet would seem
to be a largely homogeneous swarming of elementary particles, with little or no
differences to be discerned between brain and bone, or sea, earth or air. Indeed, if
– as contemporary physics suggests – even (seemingly) empty space is densely
packed with short-lived virtual particles, this homogeneity could extend
throughout the entire universe.
Why might any of this prove problematic for the panpsychist? Well,
consider a chain of particles, P1—P2—P3—P4—P5—P6, where each is directly
physically bonded to its immediate neighbour. Strawson maintains that all causal
relations – and hence particle-particle interactions (and bonds) – have an
experiential aspect. Let’s suppose he is right about that. How might the physical
connection between P1 and P2 be manifest on the experiential level? A natural
answer – the only answer which springs to mind – is that P1 and P2 are
experientially unified: they are experienced together. Or to put it another way,
they are co-conscious. Hence the difficulty. If co-conscious is transitive, then P1
will not only also be co-conscious with P2, it will also be co-conscious with P3, P4,
P5 and P6; indeed, since each member of this collection of particles-cumexperiences will be co-conscious with each of the others, the collection will
comprise a maximally unified conscious state. While this in itself may not be a
problem, given the depth of physical interconnectedness – i.e., the sheer number
of physical interactions and bonds to be found in the micro-world – the
19
‘contagion’ (as it were) is difficult to contain. If every particle composing the
planet Earth is linked (directly or indirectly) to every other by a chain of physical
connections (or interactions) – a by no means implausible assumption – then the
entire planet will consist of a single fully unified consciousness. Since it is by no
means inconceivable that the same applies to every particle in the universe, the
transitivity of co-consciousness renders absolute idealism – the view that the
cosmos itself is a single (giant) consciousness – a live option. It also leads to a
result which is obviously very implausible, for the experiences of distinct human
subjects – you and me, for instance – are clearly not mutually co-conscious in this
manner.
Of course there is much that is very speculative here, but it is the sort of
speculation which Strawson thinks we should take seriously. The catastrophic
conclusion is easy to avoid. The panpsychist can simply deny that micro-physical
unity goes hand-in-hand with micro-experiential unity. Alternatively, and in a
more constructive vein, they might want to reject the assumption that coconsciousness is a transitive relation.
While it is very natural to think that synchronic co-consciousness is
invariably transitive, this may in large part be due to the fact that our overall
states of consciousness at any given moment generally are fully unified. But it
could easily be a mistake to suppose that the character and form of our ordinary
everyday experience is a reliable guide to how experience can be. There are also
well-known pathological cases which can be interpreted in terms of a partially
unified consciousness: to mention just one example, Michael Lockwood has
argued that split-brain cases can plausibly be interpreted in this way (1989: ch.6).
It is certainly possible that these cases are less than conclusive, and that the
difficulty we have in envisaging a partially unified state of consciousness reflects
an insight we have into the real nature of consciousness and phenomenal unity
(Dainton 2006: ch.4; 2008: §8.6). But this line of argument will itself be less than
persuasive for those who, like Strawson, are prepared to accept that experience
can have characteristics which are not evident to their subjects: once again the
rejection of Full Revelation proves useful.
Holding co-consciousness to be non-transitive doesn’t just halt the slide
towards single-subject absolute idealism, it can also assist with the panpsychist’s
Combination Problem. How is it possible for micro-experiences (and/or microsubjects) to combine or sum to form more complex ensembles? If subjects are
entirely separate and discrete, and each experience necessarily belongs to just one
subject, the required combinations seem impossible. However, the situation
changes significantly if co-consciousness is non-transitive. Consider first the
20
simplest instance of a partially unified conscious state, one comprising three
parts, p1, p2, p3, where p1 is co-conscious with p2, and the latter is co-conscious
with p3, but where p1 and p3 are not co-conscious. To make matters a little more
concrete, let’s start by supposing that p1, p2 and p3 are expanses of phenomenal
colour, organized in the manner shown in Figure 1, where the circles indicate
contents which are mutually co-conscious, and the larger experiences E1 and E2
are composed of [p1-p2] and [p2-p3] respectively.
p1
E1
p2
p3
E2
Figure 1
Of interest here is the fact that a single token experience can be a full-fledged part
of a fully unified state of consciousness (in the way p2 is part of E1) but this does
not prevent this same token being a full-fledged part of a distinct fully unified
conscious state (p2 is also part of E2). Of course ‘distinct’ here means ‘nonidentical’ rather than ‘wholly distinct’ – E1 and E2 partly overlap – but this is
already a significant gain. One of the deepest and most puzzling aspects of the
Combination Problem is how a single experience can belong to more than one
total state of consciousness. We see from this simple example that this is possible,
provided co-consciousness can be non-transitive.
A question immediately arises as to how we should interpret this situation:
do p1, p2 and p3 all belong to just one subject, or does each belong to a different
subject (making three subjects in total), or are there just two subjects here, one for
E1 and another for E2? Looked at in one way, the single subject option can seem
a very natural one. Since p1 and p2 are experienced together it is natural to think
they have a single subject; since p2 and p3 are experienced together they must
belong to the same subject, so it seems we are led to the conclusion that all three
21
experiences have a subject, even though p1 and p3 are only indirectly co-conscious.
While this may seem reasonably appealing in this simple case, it is less so in more
complex cases, e.g. where p1 and pn are connected (but also separated) by a chain
of a thousand partially overlapping total states of consciousness. There is further
and more immediate consideration: it is also very natural to suppose that the
consciousness of a single subject is fully unified, and the experiential ensemble
comprising E1 and E2 is most definitely not fully unified. So should we go for the
two-subject option, and regard each of E1 and E2 as a distinct subject? In cases
where the region of overlap is very small, that may well be the most plausible
interpretation. Just suppose E1 is your current state of consciousness, E2 is mine,
and p1 is a tiny pain sensation that is common to us both (thanks to some
experimental neural surgery our brains have been connected). In yet other cases,
e.g., when all three experiences are of much the same kind and character, the
three-subject interpretation may be the most plausible. This metaphysical option,
intriguingly, allows experiencing subjects to be wholly included in other subjects as
parts: to illustrate, suppose p2 has its own subject, but so too does E1. This state of
affairs may well seem odd, but arguably the panpsychist needs precisely this
possibility. Of course, faced with this proliferation of possibilities some may be
inclined to abandon all talk of subjects in such cases. But this may be an overreaction, and it is certainly not an option for those who are committed to the ‘no
experience without an experiencer’ principle, and who also believe – with
Strawson – that there is no real distinction between conscious states and subjects.
One final point. McGinn notes the way in which a vast variety of large
and medium sized physical objects can be constructed from a small range of
elementary physical ingredients, and comments:
The reason for this fecundity is that there are so many possibilities of
combination of simpler elements, so we can get a lot of different things by
spatially arranging a smallish number of physical primitives. But there is
no analogous notion of combination for qualia – there is no analogue for
spatial arrangement (you can’t put qualia end-to-end). We cannot
therefore envisage a small number of experiential primitives yielding a rich
variety of phenomenologies; we have to postulate richness all the way
down. (96)
Once we drop the assumption that co-consciousness is transitive, the claim that
there is no spatial analogue for qualia looks to be highly questionable, as Figure 2
illustrates:
22
Figure 2
If we suppose that the circles in Figure 2 represent expanses of phenomenal
colour, McGinn’s claim that there is no spatial analogue for qualia is obviously
mistaken. But suppose, instead, that each circle represents an auditory-content;
even if these auditory contents lacks much by way of intrinsic spatial extension,
the overlap structure is functionally equivalent to a spatially extended structure:
are there not paths between locations and analogues of distance and direction?
I stress again that I am by no means sure structures of this sort are in fact
possible, but if they are, there may be the beginnings of an answer to the question
of how macro-experientiality emerges from micro-experientiality. Alas, the
Combination Problem is multi-faceted. Partial overlap is of no obvious assistance
with the ‘derivation problem’: explaining how a small family of experiential
primitives give rise to the diversity of very different phenomenal qualities which
figure in our experience – how can colours, tastes, smells emerge from the narrow
range of simple qualities possessed by elementary particles? But when dealing
23
with a doctrine as peculiar, puzzling and seemingly hopeless as panpsychism,
even small measures of progress are worth having.
Barry Dainton
--------------------
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