Notes
- This paper is absurdly brief for such a contentious topic. Consequently, I've copied the complete text below. For now, I’ve added a few footnotes to this text.
- It attracted – it seems – 122 Comments on Aeon. I've not read these yet, so don't know whether they are of any value.
- I'm reserving my final comments until I've read them.
- Also, I think Goff no longer believes in micro-panpsychism, so will leave further comments until I know more of his current theories.
Full Text
- Common sense tells us that only living things have an inner life. Rabbits and tigers and mice have feelings, sensations and experiences; tables and rocks and molecules do not. Panpsychists deny this datum of common sense. According to panpsychism, the smallest bits of matter – things such as electrons and quarks – have very basic kinds of experience1; an electron has an inner life2.
- The main objection made to panpsychism is that it is ‘crazy’ and ‘just obviously wrong’. It is thought to be highly counterintuitive to suppose that an electron has some kind of inner life, no matter how basic, and this is taken to be a very strong reason to doubt the truth of panpsychism. But many widely accepted scientific theories are also crazily counter to common sense3. Albert Einstein tells us that time slows down at high speeds. According to standard interpretations of quantum mechanics, particles have determinate positions only when measured. And according to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, our ancestors were apes. All of these views are wildly at odds4 with our common-sense view of the world, or at least they were when they were first proposed, but nobody thinks this is a good reason not to take them seriously. Why should we take common sense to be a good guide to how things really are?
- No doubt the willingness of many to accept special relativity, natural selection and quantum mechanics, despite their strangeness from the point of view of pre-theoretical common sense, is a reflection of their respect for the scientific method. We are prepared to modify our view of the world if we take there to be good scientific reason to do so. But in the absence of hard experimental proof5, people are reluctant to attribute consciousness to electrons.
- Yet scientific support for a theory comes not merely from the fact that it explains the evidence, but from the fact that it is the best explanation6 of the evidence, where a theory is ‘better’ to the extent that it is more simple, elegant and parsimonious than its rivals. Suppose we have two theories – Theory A and Theory B – both of which account for all observations, but Theory A postulates four kinds of fundamental force while Theory B postulates 15 kinds of fundamental force. Although both theories account for all the data of observation, Theory A is to be preferred as it offers a more parsimonious account of the data. To take a real-world example, Einstein’s theory of special relativity supplanted the Lorentzian theory that preceded it, not because Einstein’s theory accounted for any observations that the Lorentzian theory could not account for, but because Einstein provided a much simpler and more elegant explanation of the relevant observations.
- I maintain that there is a powerful simplicity argument in favour of panpsychism. The argument relies on a claim that has been defended by Bertrand Russell, Arthur Eddington7 and many others, namely that physical science doesn’t tell us what matter is, only what it does. The job of physics is to provide us with mathematical models that allow us to predict with great accuracy how matter will behave. This is incredibly useful information; it allows us to manipulate the world in extraordinary ways, leading to the technological advancements that have transformed our society beyond recognition. But it is one thing to know the behaviour of an electron and quite another to know its intrinsic nature: how the electron is, in and of itself. Physical science gives us rich information about the behaviour of matter but leaves us completely in the dark about its intrinsic nature8.
- In fact, the only thing we know about the intrinsic nature9 of matter is that some of it – the stuff in brains – involves experience. We now face a theoretical choice10. We either suppose that the intrinsic nature of fundamental particles involves experience or we suppose that they have some entirely unknown11 intrinsic nature. On the former supposition, the nature of macroscopic things is continuous with12 the nature of microscopic things. The latter supposition leads us to complexity, discontinuity and mystery. The theoretical imperative to form as simple and unified a view as is consistent with the data leads us quite straightforwardly13 in the direction of panpsychism.
- In the public mind, physics is on its way to giving us a complete picture of the nature of space, time and matter. While in this mindset, panpsychism seems improbable, as physics does not attribute experience to fundamental particles. But once we realise that physics tells us nothing about the intrinsic nature of the entities it talks about, and indeed that the only thing we know for certain about the intrinsic nature of matter is that at least some material things have experiences, the issue looks very different. All we get from physics is this big black-and-white abstract structure, which we must somehow colour in with intrinsic nature. We know how to colour in one bit of it: the brains of organisms are coloured in with experience. How to colour in the rest? The most elegant, simple, sensible option14 is to colour in the rest of the world with the same pen.
- Panpsychism is crazy15. But it is also highly likely to be true.
Author Narrative
Comment:
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 1:
- As the author goes on to say – this is ‘crazy’. To rebut this accusation the panpsychist would need to give an account – however sketchy – of what this ‘experience’ would be like (if it’s ‘like’ anything, which is presupposed).
Footnote 2:
- This is even more absurd than ‘basic experience’. An ‘inner life’ implies connections between experiences that gives meaning to the sequence of experienced events.
Footnote 3:
- This statement is absurdly hyperbolic. Relativity theory and Quantum Mechanics may be contrary to common sense but are not ‘crazily’ so. They are well-worked-out theories that give precise predictions that have turned out to be true but which could have turned out false. They are mathematical theories with deep theoretical underpinnings which show that we can only rely on ‘common sense’ in the areas for which our senses have been attuned.
- What’s the parallel with panpsychism? What precise falsifiable predictions does it make?
Footnote 4:
- Darwin’s theory was at odds not with ‘common sense’ but with Genesis. The morphological similarity between humans and apes had been obvious since ancient times.
- Saying that we were descended from apes was an affront to human dignity (it was thought), as – of course – was the ‘equality’ of ‘primitive races’ with their top-hatted European contemporaries.
- But when you step back from prejudice, common sense will agree. There are concrete bits of evidence and experiments that can be performed. There are no experiments to determine the ‘inner life’ of an electron.
Footnote 5:
- Indeed, as I said above – maybe superfluously!
Footnote 6:
- This is partly Abductive argument – inference to the best explanation – but also Occam’s Razor. All agreed, but what is the relevance here?
- Supposedly ‘simple’ and ‘elegant’ explanations can turn out to be more complex when unpacked, especially when God (or lesser variants thereof) are introduced as ‘explanations’.
Footnote 7: Footnote 8:
- Well, it depends what you mean!
- No doubt – once upon a time – we were ‘completely in the dark’ about the intrinsic nature of matter (and mind for that matter). However, we’re a lot closer given the advent of the (modern) atomic theory, QM and so on.
- It’s true that Newton’s Laws care only for the mass of matter, whatever matter might be, but other laws of physics do care.
- Of course, there’s always a further layer of ignorance to be searched out, but there’s usually a research programme to do so.
Footnote 9:
- Again, it depends what we mean by ‘matter’. As previously explained, we know a lot more about the constituents of matter than we once did, and we know a lot more about the organisation of these constituents that’s needed for stuff that does things.
- All our evidence is that brains think on account of the organisation of the matter that makes them up, and not in the properties of elementary particles bundled together any old how.
- Presumably experience arises from this organisation – that is extrinsic properties – rather than an aggregate of the intrinsic experience of the constituent particles.
Footnote 10:
- I’m suspicious of ‘choices’ when we don’t know enough of the subject to know whether or not we’ve covered all the bases.
Footnote 11:
- Just what is an ‘intrinsic nature’, known or unknown? And why would we expect to know what the intrinsic nature of a fundamental particle is? Does the question even make sense?
Footnote 12:
- If ‘experience’ was just aggregated from that of fundamental particles, any lump of matter would experience in the same way – the more matter, the more experience. But this isn’t what we have any reason to believe.
Footnote 13:
- Does it really? How does panpsychism explain how – in detail – some aggregates of matter are conscious while others aren’t (or not so you’d notice). Is there anything ‘continuous’ between the consciousness of living brains (coupled with their living bodies) and the supposed consciousness of corpses and rocks?
Footnote 14:
- How so? It just shifts the problem. How come brains are manifestly conscious while corpses and rocks aren’t?
Footnote 15:
- The panpsychism – micro-panpsychism – is completely crazy – and straightforwardly false as – it seems – Goff shortly came to see.
- This paper is just nonsense.
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)