Panpsychism is the idea that basic physical entities are essentially micro-consciousnesses and that our macro-consciousnesses result from combining the phenomenal natures of the physical entities that constitute us. The view faces the combination problem: how do simple, discrete micro-consciousnesses combine to produce complex, unified macro-consciousnesses? This problem has been much discussed, but there’s an aspect of it that has, I think, been relatively neglected. Here it is. It looks like a sensible methodological assumption that if two entities are qualitatively identical from a physical point of view, then they are phenomenally identical too. If panpsychists don’t make this assumption, then […]
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Essential-state materialism and multiple realizability
Suppose that phenomenal properties, such as the intrinsic feel of pain, are not physical properties in the standard sense. It’s a fair bet that science will be able to identify physical causes for all the effects of experience. So how can phenomenal properties have any effect on us? How does the feel of our experiences make a difference to us? Panpsychists have a neat answer to this. They say that the phenomenal properties of experience are the intrinsic natures of the physical states that play the functional roles of the relevant experiences, including causing their characteristic effects. So (to use […]
Continue readingIntroducing mephistos
Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint! — J. W. Goethe, Faust I, 1338 Zombies are not conscious but believe they are. They are as tempted as we are to believe that their experiences possess nonphysical qualitative properties, but they are wrong. I want to introduce another class of creatures, who are conscious but don’t believe they are. They are consciousness deniers. As a nod to the denying spirit depicted by Goethe, I’ll call them mephistos. Let me tell you a little about them. Mephistos are conscious in just the way we are. Their brains are like ours and they […]
Continue readingThe last word about Mary
What happens when Mary leaves her black-and-white room and has a red colour experience for the first time? Here’s the answer, in outline. (I’ll assume for the sake of argument that Mary has developed the neural circuitry required for colour vision.) Mary’s visual system begins tracking something red, generating a huge set of active, interconnected first-order informational states, which in turn generate a vast range of reactions and reactive dispositions. Call complex of first-order informational and reactive states R1. Mary’s introspective system begins tracking the states in R1, generating a huge set of active, interconnected second-order informational states, which in […]
Continue readingIllusionism and compassion
I often get emails from people who have questions about illusionism. Most of them focus on the theory itself, but recently I received one that raised concerns about its emotional and ethical implications. The writer was persuaded that that illusionsm was true, but found it a deeply disturbing view, which, they felt, undermined the bases for empathy and compassion. Why should we care about other people and creatures if what’s happening in them is just a bunch of physical processes with no subjective component? Why should we even care about ourselves, if our subjective experience is an illusion? How, they […]
Continue readingWhat is consciousness for?
In 2015 I was invited to write a short piece on consciousness for the magazine Aeon. The text now appears to be unavailable on Aeon, so I am reposting it here. From the moment we wake we are bombarded with stimuli. Electromagnetic radiation floods our eyes, pressure waves hit our ears, surfaces press against our skins, molecules adhere to the membranes of our noses and tongues. Our sense organs react, sending nerve impulses to our brains, where they trigger waves of neural activity, which may culminate in motor commands to our muscles (shielding our eyes from the light, for example). […]
Continue readingNothing but
Many people find physicalism an inhumane, philistine view. I wish I could dispel that idea. What underlies it, I suspect, is the ‘nothing but’ thought: If we are nothing but matter, then where is our specialness, our value, our subjectivity? But why does it matter what we are made of? Suppose we were immaterial souls instead of physical beings. Would that make us special? Why? Couldn’t we still worry that we were nothing but soul stuff? So where does our specialness come from? Perhaps our physical bodies are infused with a nonphysical essence that confers subjectivity and value? But that […]
Continue readingHow to annihilate everything
Does reality get on your nerves? Do you sometimes wish there was nothing at all? Then this is the post for you! Read on, and I’ll show you how to prune your ontology down to nothing. It’s easy and won’t harm anyone or anything. Ready? Let’s start by clearing out the attic. We’ll throw out abstract objects and universals, together with mathematical objects and structures. We’ll get rid of possible worlds too — the actual one is more than enough! And we can manage without God, can’t we? In fact, let’s get rid of everything supernatural while we’re at it. […]
Continue readingFor the record
A little note on something that happened on Twitter. Yesterday I created a gender-swap image of myself with FaceApp. I liked it — it give me a different perspective on myself — and I posted it on Twitter. Some people liked it and no one complained. Later, one person (not themselves trans, I believe) wrote to say that they felt such images were disrespectful to trans women. They were polite and didn’t ask me to remove the image. However, I became concerned that some trans women might think I was mocking them, and I decided to delete the image, just […]
Continue readingThe phenomenal concept strategy is a worn-out band-aid
For a quarter of a century, the default physicalist response to arguments for property dualism has been the phenomenal concept strategy (PCS). The strategy turns on a claim about the nature of our phenomenal concepts — the concepts we employ when we attend to our current experiences and think about what they are like. There are many variants of the strategy, and the literature on it is large and technical, but the core idea is simple. It’s this. Phenomenal concepts function as bare referential devices — demonstratives perhaps. They do not pick out their referents as properties that fit some […]
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