AAP2010 Abstracts


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Title Dr
First Name Michael
Surname Blamauer
Institution University of Vienna
Title of Paper Panpsychism – A Promising Way of Treating the Hard Problem?
Select a Stream Philosophy of Mind
Abstract In recent years there has been increased interest in finding solutions and new ways of treating the mind as a natural but irreducible phenomenon. This seems to be the major challenge of the so-called “hard problem of consciousness” – the problem related to the question: How does subjective experience fit into our material world? In my presentation I will argue that a kind of panpsychism (or “real physicalism” according to Strawson 2006) is on first sight a sound theory to handle the “hard problem”. Panpsychism is typically understood as the view that conscious experience is a fundamental and likewise ubiquitous characteristic of our universe equal to physical properties like mass, charge and spin. Thus the scope of experience may range from the micro-experience level of ultimate particles to the macro-experience level of human beings. The transition from lower micro-levels to higher (and more complex) macro-levels of experience is due to combination of the ultimate particles (and accompanying combinatorial effects) to more complex units. But despite its attractiveness concerning the “hard problem” panpsychism faces a serious challenge, as there is no easy answer to the question how lower single states of subjective experience can be combined to result in higher (even more complex) states of consciousness (the so-called combination problem). This question concerns especially the basic concepts of “myness”, “unity” and the “what-it-is-likeness” of conscious experience, as these are fundamental to our understanding of consciousness. I will argue that currently no panpsychistic positions are available to handle the combination problem, as there is no intelligible way in which a combination of micro-experiences may produce full-blown conscious experience like ours. I will further show that due to reasons concerning the nature of consciousness only a revision of the theoretical fundament of panpsychism may lead to some defensible account.