How Exactly Does Panpsychism Help Explain Consciousness?

Panpsychism has recently regained attention as a theory of consciousness that might avoid the problems of physicalism and dualism. Panpsychism comes in two forms: strong emergentist and weak emergentist, each facing challenges similar to those of dualism or physicalism, respectively. This paper develops a new hybrid view where subjects of experience are strongly emergent but their phenomenal properties are weakly emergent. The author argues that this hybrid avoids the difficulties that plague both physicalism and dualism, as well as the analogous challenges undermining standard panpsychist views.

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Abstract

There has recently been a revival of interest in panpsychism as a theory of consciousness. The hope of the contemporary proponents of panpsychism is that the view enables us to integrate consciousness into our overall theory of reality in a way that avoids the deep difficulties that plague the more conventional options of physicalism on the one hand and dualism on the other. However, panpsychism comes in two forms — strong and weak emergentist — and there are arguments that seem to show that weak emergentist panpsychism faces problems analogous to those of physicalism whilst strong emergentist panpsychism faces problems analogous to those of dualism. In this paper, I will develop a new hybrid of the strong and weak emergentist forms of panpsychism, a view according to which subjects of experience are strongly emergent but their phenomenal properties are weakly emergent. I will argue that this hybrid view manages to avoid the challenges facing both physicalism and dualism, and the analogues of those challenges that seem to undermine standard forms of panpsychism.