[fusion event]Developing Popularity of Secular Panpsychism

We had a recent meetup on how ontologies are constructed, and this is a discussion of one category of ontologies that has been gaining increased attention among philosophers today.

Backing up, historically there were three main philosophic ontologies that were widely held: materialism (everything is matter), idealism (everything is mind) and dualism (there are two things, mind and matter, and they interact). In our ontology discussion, I noted how there are multiple other options besides these 3, and in the 20th and 21st centuries, there has been some tumult of other ontologies displacing the three classical views.

Early in the 20th century, Einstein showed with E=mc^2 that matter is not fundamental, so materialism was refuted. But the overall success of materially focused science led to a growth of “near” materialism, which adopted the term physicalism – where the nature of what is fundamental is not yet known, but it is postulated to be whatever it is that physics studies. Physicalism became the overwhelmingly dominant worldview among philosophers in the middle of the 20th century. Over the subsequent 75 years, critiques of how physicalism denies abstract objects, causal consciousness, and emergence has nibbled away at that dominance. Today physicalism is still the most popular single worldview, with slightly over 50% of philosophers holding by it, but rival views have been undergoing somewhat of a resurgence. And in the last two decades, the fastest growing of these views are varieties of pan-psychism.

Panpsychism is the view that awareness is not limited to animals, but is instead widely present in the universe. Most classical idealist philosophies are pan-psychist. Many versions of Hindu philosophy hold that most or all of the universe is aware, as do Taoism, and classical neo-Platonist philosophies.

In the 20th century, Whitehead’s process philosophy and Aldous Huxley’s Perennial philosophy both postulate a universal mind or awareness of some non-agential kind, building on the Neo-platonist history of non-religious idealist pan psychism. Both remain active although small strands of philosophic thought today. Bertrand Russell’s neutral monism – where some OTHER material is assumed to be the ultimate source of both material and mental phenomena has had the greatest surge in interest, is of similar early 20th century vintage, but has been recently popularized by Phillip Goff.

Several other of the later alternatives to physicalism tend to lead to a pan-psychist view. Parallelist property dualism, as for example proposed by David Chalmers, where matter has both mental and material properties, would lead to potentially all of matter having a mental component that operates in parallel to its material properties.

Integrated Information Theory, a version of algorithmic identity theory which holds that algorithms have consciousness depending on both the complexity of the algorithm, and the nonreductive complexity of the substrate they run on – was originally developed to explain why our computers are not conscious, but we are. Under IIT, high substrate complexity, our Phi, like our neural nets which cannot be reduced based on structural similarity the way our highly repetitive computers are, are the reason we are conscious. But EVERYTHING does algorithms, and has non-zero Phi, so IIT holds that everything is conscious to at least a limited degree.

Galen Strawson starts with monist materialism, rejects super strong emergence, and concludes that because consciousness and awareness is real, we must not yet understand physics as well as most materialists/physicalists think , and that somehow we will need to include consciousness/awareness in our physics algorithms. Strawson accepts a weaker form of strong emergence (higher consciousness must build on lower consciousness) and that consciousness is causal and so tuned by evolution. He considers himself a materialist/physicalist, but with a VERY different ideal of physicalism form pretty much every other physicalist. See: a summary here: How a Materialist Philosopher Argued His Way to Panpsychism | Mind Matters and his own long form explanation here: MBPP July 2015

OK I have mentioned the rise and partial decline of physicalism, ancient idealist panpsychism, and six more modern movements that constitute multiple secular ways to do pan-psychism. I would suggest for our discussions we initially focus on the modern pan psychisms, then go back to idealist pan-psychsim and then physicalism.
So – what thoughts do people want to share or ask about on:

• Why anyone cares about any of this?
• Whitehead’s Process philosophy
• Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy
• Russelian Monism
• Non-interactive parallelist property dualism
• Integrated Information Theory
• Strawson’s experiential physicalism

Any thoughts to share on classical Greek, Indian, Chinese, or other panspychist idealism?
And finally, are these credible rivals to physicalism?

We meet in person and online. In person will be at the cafeteria of the applied physics lab. Snack and drinks are available for online purchase. Pizza will be provided as well at a price of $2/slice. Online will be: https://teams.live.com/meet/93583191724730?p=hY3jxVvnOciVl2aRn5
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------PS -- Wegman's has made an exception to their "no meetings" rule for us. They ask us to be non-disruptive, and for most of us to purchase food or drink. If someone asks, we have been given permission to meet by Ayana Douglas.