By Jonathan Flynn In the realm of philosophy and science, the mysterious and difficult problem of consciousness stands unparalleled. Despite the scientific method granting us unprecedented access in understanding the natural world, it has brought us no closer to solving a problem most fundamental to our human experience – The Hard Problem of Consciousness. Photo Credit: whatifshow What exactly is the Hard Problem of Consciousness? For most people, our conscious experience is something we take for granted. It is more intrinsic to us than breathing. But have you ever wondered how a mere collection of brain cells can produce the vivid sensations, emotions, thoughts we experience every day? This is the hard problem of consciousness. It is the question of how and why we have subjective conscious experience. How does a confluence of neuronal activity give rise to the rich tapestry of our subjective experience? Why does it feel like something to be a person? How and why is there a subject to experience anything at all? Until recently, the dominant theory has, unsurprisingly, aligned with our modern scientific worldview rooted in physicalism and empiricism. The materialist perspective posits that consciousness is an emergent property, a byproduct that emerges from physical neurochemical processes in our brains. However, despite this application of scientific materialist rationale to the problem, it has offered no solution. Consequently, the translation from the objective, the firing of neurons, to the subjective feeling of pain or the taste of sugar, is a gap yet unfilled. This unresolved gap has led some thinkers to revisit an older yet intriguing concept which questions the underlying assumptions of current materialist theories. What if consciousness is not an emergent property, but one intrinsic to the universe, like gravity, space or matter? What if every atom, every particle, holds a hint of consciousness? This provocative idea is known as panpsychism. Despite sounding esoteric, perhaps even fantastical, with no help from its namesake, this theory has actually gained traction in contemporary philosophical circles in recent years. When you first hear “Panpsychism”, it might evoke thoughts of a whimsical world where every household item, from your lamp to your flip-flops, possesses its own consciousness, keenly aware of its surroundings. However, this fanciful interpretation is far from the truth. Contrary to such misconceptions, serious proponents of panpsychism aren’t suggesting your lamp is “watching” you or that your flip-flops harbour opinions about your style. Such interpretations would be mere anthropomorphic projections of our human experience of consciousness onto non-human entities. In reality, we of course have no way of truly grasping what a non-human experience of consciousness might entail. Panpsychists are not adversaries of the scientific method or mathematical physics. Rather, their primary contention is that the quantitative approach of physical science, while immensely powerful, may not capture the entirety of reality. It is not that they reject the scientific method or materialist world view thus far, they only believe that our current models are insufficient in solving the hard problem. Indeed, our society has largely embraced a quantitative method of breaking down reality. We meticulously dissect the vast complexities of our universe, categorizing everything from the life processes of plants to the mechanisms of our technological gadgets. However, this fixation on quantitative compartmentalization can make us feel easily alienated to everything around us, something which Max Weber called the disenchantment of nature. Could this hyper-focus on scientific compartmentalization blind us to a larger, holistic picture of existence? What if, beyond these tangible breakdowns, there exists a pervasive interconnectedness that we’ve overlooked? What if our rigorous, objective methods have inadvertently distanced us from considering the possibility of a unified field of consciousness? And most importantly, what would a society look like which, instead of accepting the former world view, embraced the latter? In this society, what would our views be on something like the environment for example? Photo Credit: Mind Matters
If you’re a materialist and you believe a tree to simply be a collection of cells and organic matter then its value is indirect, it only has significance as far as what it can do for us. But if you view a tree as possessing consciousness, albeit a non-human form of consciousness, it may add intrinsic value, and therefore a whole other moral dimension previously non-existent. Chopping down a tree may become an act of moral significance. Much of the exploitation of our natural world in our current society is justified in viewing consciousness as a uniquely human domain. Humans are conscious and things are not, therefore we can view them as resources at our disposal. But in a panpsychist society, maybe we would see ourselves as nothing but a highly refined version of the same thing that is going on all around us. With this shift in perception, an inherent feeling of interconnectedness might lead us to structure society in a way in which the metaphysical worth of our ecosystem is accounted for. Just as technological progress is a major goal of our current society, could symbioses be the goal of a panpsychist one? a
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May 2024
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