December 2024
The Panpsychism theory of consciousness remarkably has gained attention of both philosophers and the neuroscience community. One of the world’s leading philosophers of mind matters, Michael Tye of the University of Texas at Austin, contributes to the fervor in “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Panpsychism”, published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies.
In its most common interpretation, dubbed “universalist panpsychism” by Tye, everything from the smallest particles in the microcosm to the largest objects in the macrocosm has consciousness. This leads to the so-called combination problem (the reason for Tye’s previous worry): If every single building block of a person’s body is independently conscious, how does coherent consciousness of that individual person arise?
Panpsychism is a philosophical orientation that, like idealism, posits that consciousness is fundamental and pervades the universe. But while idealism sees consciousness as primary and the origin of matter, panpsychism considers it more of a property of the physical universe.
Tye’s essay proposes a modified form of panpsychism that he claims solves the “combination problem” and that, perhaps, takes one step towards idealism.
He starts off by describing the mesmerizing phenomenon of thukdam among Buddhist monks. Some monks sense when they are going to die and go into a certain, deep meditative state. At some point during this state, clinical death happens – heart and brain activity cease – but the bodies of the monks don’t begin to decompose for days, which is inexplicable from a conventional materialist perspective.
This seemingly gradual exit from a conscious life experience to something else is puzzling, Tye writes, since phenomenal consciousness can have no borderline cases (as is the case with other properties): You are either conscious or not. Phenomenal consciousness is ‘sharp’.
“We know a priori this is the case”, Tye says, just as we know “there cannot be a surface that is red and green all over at the same time, or … that a surface cannot be square and triangular at the same time”.
According to the British philosopher, it appears that consciousness is nonphysical, but “then it seems, it must have emerged at some stage in the history of evolution”, which he finds hard to believe.
“The best solution here is to say that consciousness did not emerge and moreover consciousness is not reducible to anything physical. How is that possible? Answer: consciousness is a fundamental intrinsic feature of basic micro-entities. It was there all along at the absolute bedrock of reality. This is the panpsychist view.”
(Tye notes that “the universe is a strange place”, so perhaps “it is only fitting that phenomenal consciousness should turn out to be strange, too”.)
But how is it that the experience of ‘red’, for example, is just one thing? If the experience were a combination of myriad micro-experiences, it would have many components. But that is not what the experience is like.
Tye’s first measure to solve this problem is to posit that there is a difference between basic consciousness, which he defines by adding an asterisk to the word (consciousness*), and phenomenal consciousness, which is the conscious experiences of human life.
“If consciousness* is what is at the bedrock of reality, and we ourselves undergo conscious mental states, then how did those conscious mental states arise? After all, in opposition to universalist panpsychists, we surely should agree that not all macro states are conscious nor are all macro things. Rocks, for example, are not conscious.”
The best way out of this conundrum, Tye contends, is to become a ‘panpsychist representationalist’. On his way there, he stops by a consciousness theory called Global Workspace Theory (GWT), which pictures the brain as an orchestra with many conductors.
“Global workspace theory gives us a way of understanding the transfer of consciousness* from the micro-parts of reality to macro-wholes”, he writes.
After a few pages of rather convoluted reasoning, Tye concludes:
“We have a solution to the combination problem. We also have a stable response to those who say that if panpsychism is to avoid the charge of arbitrariness, it will inevitably lead to the prima facie absurd view that absolutely everything is conscious, including tables and chairs and rocks.”
Even though Tye does deduce that basic consciousness – the sort he defines with an asterisk – is nonphysical, the whole point of the essay seems to be to explain how, where and when this nonphysical force interplays with the brain, and that this connection, or transfer, is what creates conscious experiences.
He even tries to pinpoint what part of the brain is the ‘on/off’ switch for consciousness. The claustrum? The brain stem? Or maybe the claustrum is the ‘factory’ feature, but you can switch it on or off by other means, just like you can start a car engine even if your ignition key is missing.
Tye doesn’t consider a continuation of phenomenal consciousness after physical death (or before physical birth), as indicated for instance by the large body of research on Near-Death-Experiences.
At the end of the essay, he returns to the Buddhist monks who die by thukdam. He speculates that the content of the monks’ minds is gradually stripped away, and that the states they undergo are global workspace states. Alternatively, he adds, they come to undergo basic conscious states, with entirely new contents.
“How these states could play a role in preserving the body? I currently have no idea.”
Tye’s essay begs the question whether it would not have been more straightforward to simply conclude that consciousness “is what it is” — sufficient in itself, regardless of the brain or any other expressions of physical matter. An idealist would say physical matter, including the brain, is in fact a derivative of consciousness – problem solved.
But Tye instead takes a winding road by splitting consciousness into ‘consciousness*’ and ‘phenomenal consciousness’, plus adding GWT to the mix.
Anders Bolling
See also our Topic Brief: Covering Consciousness
