Notes
- This is a rather annoying Audio. It’s available for the whole of 2024 but may then disappear, but I’ve not got the time or inclination to transcribe it (there’s no auto-transcription or download option). Enough to note a few points and follow some things up via the reading list.
- Tim Crane1 is the physicalist set against two panpsychists. I'm in sympathy with his position, but simply branding panpsychism as 'odd' isn't enough.
- He needed to rebuff the Zombie Argument2 by saying - as his former colleague and more robust physicalist David Papineau does – that sometimes what we think we can imagine we cannot actually imagine, if physicalism is true; so the Zombie argument begs the question against physicalism. See "Papineau (David) - The Impossibility of Zombies".
- He was also a bit dismissive of oysters – arguing that they are not conscious because they don't have the requisite neural complexity. I tried following this up but couldn't find anything definitive. Someone suggested the analogy might be with snails. Pond snails have 11k neurons and sea slugs 18k: Wikipedia: List of animals by number of neurons.
- Goff argues as though putting consciousness before matter and suggesting that this 'explains' anything is a research program of some sort. Just how does it work? Despite David Chalmers' complaints about the ‘explanatory gap3’, there is at least a research program – neuroscience – to study consciousness on a physicalist level. What is the parallel for panpsychism?
- There are discussions about the use of mathematics in physics, asking 'what puts fire into the equations' (as Stephen Hawking put it). Crane's view is that mathematics describes the physical world – but the world is fundamentally physical, not mathematical.
- Leidenhag just talked unhelpful nonsense. As she half admitted, 'trees clapping their hands' is a figure of speech and doesn't suggest that the OT writer thought they were conscious.
BBC Abstract
- Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that some kind of consciousness is present not just in our human brains but throughout the universe, right down to cells or even electrons. This is panpsychism and its proponents argue it offers a compelling alternative to those who say we are nothing but matter, like machines, and to those who say we are both matter and something else we might call soul. It is a third way. Critics argue panpsychism is implausible, an example of how not to approach this problem, yet interest has been growing widely in recent decades partly for the idea itself and partly in the broader context of understanding how consciousness arises.
- With
- Tim Crane: Professor of Philosophy and Pro-Rector at the Central European University; Director of Research, FWF Cluster of Excellence, Knowledge in Crisis.
See:-
→ Tim Crane (Home Page)
→ Central European University: People - Tim Crane
→ FWF: Austrian Science Fund
→ Tim Crane (Peterhouse)
→ Wikipedia: Tim Crane
Joanna Leidenhag: Associate Professor in Theology and Philosophy at the University of Leeds. See:-
→ University of Leeds: Dr Joanna Leidenhag
Philip Goff: Professor of Philosophy at Durham University. See:-
→ Philip Goff: Home Page
→ Durham University: Professor Philip Goff
→ Wikipedia: Philip Goff (philosopher)
Reading list:-
- Anthony Freeman (ed.), Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism? (Imprint Academic, 2006), especially 'Realistic Monism' by Galen Strawson
See:-
→ "JCS - Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 13, Issue 10-11 (2006)";
→ "Strawson (Galen) - Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism"
"Goff (Philip) - Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness" (Pantheon, 2019)
"Goff (Philip) - Why? The Purpose of the Universe" (Oxford University Press, 2023)
David Ray Griffin, Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom and the Mind-Body Problem (Wipf & Stock, 2008)
- Presumably this is David R. Griffin, as the author was Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont School of Theology
- It seems that this is the same David Ray Griffin that's written lots of books supporting conspiracy theories of 9/11 being an 'inside job'. Eg.
→ Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action
→ Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and the Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory
- He was also a conspiracy theorist about Pearl Harbor, and has written several books on that topic as well.
- See Wikipedia: David Ray Griffin
Joanna Leidenhag, Minding Creation: Theological Panpsychism and the Doctrine of Creation (Bloomsbury, 2021)
"Leidenhag (Joanna) - Panpsychism and God" (Philosophy Compass Vol 17, Issue 12, e12889)
"Morch (Hedda Hassel ) - Non-physicalist Theories of Consciousness" (Cambridge University Press, 2024)
"Nagel (Thomas) - Mortal Questions" (Cambridge University Press, 2012), especially the chapter 'Panpsychism' See:-
→ "Nagel (Thomas) - Panpsychism"
David Skrbina, Panpsychism in the West (MIT Press, 2007)
"Van Cleve (James) - Mind-Dust or Magic? Panpsychism Versus Emergence" (Philosophical Perspectives Vol. 4, Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind, Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1990)
Comment:
See BBC Sounds - Melvyn Bragg - In Our Times - Panpsychism.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 1: Footnote 3:
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)