Panprotopsychism
I thought I would post about this because I like the word. It denotes the view, apparently held by David Chalmers, that all matter has mental properties. At least in some latent form.
It occurred to me to wonder what exactly makes this view distinct from pretty much any view of the mind that’s held today. Suppose that I have mental properties, and suppose that that’s something to do with my brain in some significant way. My brain is made up of molecules. Each molecule could, I presume, be replaced with another (token-)identical molecule and the whole thing would carry on working. So it looks like any molecule has the property of being a potential component of a system that has mental properties. I would have thought that most people will agree with all that, so is everybody a panprotopsychist?
RSS - Posts
The distinctive thing about panprotopsychism is that it rejects the idea that the universe can be reduced to a purely physical description. That is, there are properties that are more (or equally) fundamental than physical properties. Depending upon the particular brand of panprotopsychism that one endorses, it could be that all or just some molecules are capable of giving rise to (or having) mental properties. It might therefore be possible to replace all of the molecules in one’s brain with physical duplicates that lack the relevant mental properties and so therefore create something like a philosophical zombie (although it might not function correctly, depending upon whether you hold mental properties to be causally efficacious, which opens up a whole other can of worms). I don’t think is possible on Chalmers’s view, since he takes information to be the relevant ingredient, but it does distinguish most ordinary views (e.g. physicalism) from panprotopsychism since the physicalist is committed to the entailment of phenomenal properties from purely physical ones.
I suppose my point is that it would seem sort of odd to think that only some molecules have this property. Presumably it’s not the property of being conscious, but just of potentially being a proper part of a conscious whole. Why only those ones?
The view that all molecules have this property seems sort of ok, but what makes it panPROTOpsychism is the claim that it only amounts to being a potential part of a conscious system. Otherwise it’s the claim that all matter has mental properties, which I think is straight panpsychism. If any systems made up of molecules are conscious then don’t all molecules have that property of being potential components in such systems?
I think it’s a lot clearer when it’s put in term of intrinsic vs. extrinsic properties.
I was thinking some more about this and wondered whether it’s possible to have both Type-A and Type-B panprotopsychism. On Type-A protopsychism, there is some necessary connection between the physical and (proto-)mental properties of matter, and so philosophical zombies would be impossible. Type-B protopsychism, on the other hand, would allow for exact physical duplicates to lack the relevant mental properties, and so allows for the possibility of zombies (although if mental properties have causal efficacy, then it’s possible that such creatures would be relatively inert lumps of matter).
Does this sound possible? Someone told me the other day that Russellian (i.e. neutral) monists should accept that zombies are conceivable, but perhaps there is a Type-A version that denies this? Also, the whole issue of causal efficacy brings up the issue of the physical universe being closed due to conservation of energy etc. How does the panprotopsychism get around this without turning the view into a kind of dualism or epiphenomenalism?
Also, the causal effects of the relevant proto-mental properties would presumably need to make themselves felt in a way that doesn’t interfere with the known laws of physics, which doesn’t leave much for them to do, except possibly influence the probability of certain apparently ‘random’ outcomes of quantum mechanical processes. Panprotopsychism then starts to sound a bit like the Roger Penrose view that consciousness is due to weird quantum effects that take place at the microphysical level of the brain…
This all makes me wonder about the traditional Other Minds worries. If I accept that there could be zombies in a world physically indistinguishable from mine then why not among the people physically indistinguishable from me (in the relevant ways) in the actual world?
This is probably an issue for type A materialists and panprotopsychists. Accepting a causal role for consciousness blocks that worry for the panprotopsychist anyway.
Is it Chalmers who jokes that the appeal to quantum mechanics here is just a symptom of assuming that two things we don’t understand must be related?
Yes, he does make a comment about that, although I’m still worried as to how consciousness can be causally active in a way that doesn’t undermine the closure of the laws of physics.