A Higher Dimension of Consciousness: Constructing an empirically falsifiable panpsychist model of consciousness

Panpsychism, the view that consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality rather than a product of brain activity, offers an elegant solution to the mind-body problem but is often dismissed as untestable. This paper presents a panpsychist model that treats consciousness as a higher physical dimension, a speculative idea that nonetheless yields empirically testable predictions. While the model is likely wrong, its main purpose is to demonstrate how metaphysical theories of consciousness can be specified to allow scientific testing, thereby bridging the gap between philosophy and empirical science.

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Abstract

Panpsychism is a solution to the mind-body problem that presumes that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality instead of a product or consequence of physical processes (i.e., brain activity). Panpsychism is an elegant solution to the mind-body problem: it effectively rids itself of the explanatory gap materialist theories of consciousness suffer from. However, many theorists and experimentalists doubt panpsychism can ever be successful as a scientific theory, as it cannot be empirically verified or falsified. In this paper, I present a panpsychist model based on the controversial idea that consciousness may be a so called higher physical dimension. Although this notion seems outrageous, I show that the idea has surprising explanatory power, even though the model (as most models) is most likely wrong. Most importantly, though, it results in a panpsychist model that yields predictions that can be empirically verified or falsified. As such, the model's main purpose is to serve as an example how a metaphysical model of consciousness can be specified in such a way that they can be tested in a scientifically rigorous way.