A better way of overcoming the false alternatives of dualism and reductionism: better than panpsychism and protopsychism
David Chalmers proposes protopsychism as part of an attempt to give an account of how it is that we have minds--an attempt to locate consciousness within nature. I think this move and the positing of panpsychism are both motivated by the recognition of the need to overcome the assumptions that create the false dilemma of dualism vs. (reductive) materialism.
These two approaches get to the heart of the problem: they recognize that as the non-living things in the natural world are thought of as consisting only of the quantifiable, we won't be able to make room for cognition without seeming dualistic. Those who recognize this problem respond by inserting something more than the Democritan quantifiable back into nature so sensation won't seem so radically different from the non-living things that humans and other sentient beings sense.
The Aristotelian approach is, I propose, less exotic, and less of a target for those ready to wield Ockham's razor. It consists of affirming that non-living things have qualities that can't be exhaustively described quantitatively. Non-living things are more than what Democritus thought they were, more than geometry in motion. The common sense regard for qualities in nature is correct, at least partially.
Once one thinks of non-living things as having qualities irreducible to geometry in motion, it becomes possible to construct an account of how those qualities are related to the ones we associate with life. We can articulate founding and founded relations between lower and higher levels of qualities. We can talk about sensation as a re-presence of a lower level quality.
We no longer have to think of cognition, affection as an immaterial state somehow precipitated by an interaction of the immaterial with the material: instead, we can think of perception as a higher-level quality of an organism, founded upon lower-level organic qualities. Even this characterization may miss the mark somewhat, but it sure beats reductive materialism and dualism.
Back to panpsychism: it is an attempt to bridge the divide between living and non-living by making everything alive. But while it may seem to suffice to do that bridging, it is not the only way to do that, and it seems rather exotic compared to the Aristotelian notion that non-living things have qualities in virtue of which they are more than geometry in motion.
A further criticism of panpsychism might be to point out that the consciousness occurring at the lowest seems to be pointless. To argue that we would have to analyze the alternative objects of consciousness to see if that objection is tenable. That is, we'd have to ask if the lowest level psyche is aware of non-psyches, of itself or other psyches. It can't be the first option without sacrificing the "pan" in pan-psychism. Possessing self-awareness alone (the second option) would seem to be pointless. As for the third, I'm not sure of what a panspsychist would say about the point of the lowest level psyche's awareness of other psyches. In any case, it all seems hard to take that third option seriously when the Aristotelian approach gives us what we need--i.e., a continuum between non-living entities and living-sensing entities. Why posit any more if this already suffices to avoid the pitfalls of both dualism and reductive materialism?
These two approaches get to the heart of the problem: they recognize that as the non-living things in the natural world are thought of as consisting only of the quantifiable, we won't be able to make room for cognition without seeming dualistic. Those who recognize this problem respond by inserting something more than the Democritan quantifiable back into nature so sensation won't seem so radically different from the non-living things that humans and other sentient beings sense.
The Aristotelian approach is, I propose, less exotic, and less of a target for those ready to wield Ockham's razor. It consists of affirming that non-living things have qualities that can't be exhaustively described quantitatively. Non-living things are more than what Democritus thought they were, more than geometry in motion. The common sense regard for qualities in nature is correct, at least partially.
Once one thinks of non-living things as having qualities irreducible to geometry in motion, it becomes possible to construct an account of how those qualities are related to the ones we associate with life. We can articulate founding and founded relations between lower and higher levels of qualities. We can talk about sensation as a re-presence of a lower level quality.
We no longer have to think of cognition, affection as an immaterial state somehow precipitated by an interaction of the immaterial with the material: instead, we can think of perception as a higher-level quality of an organism, founded upon lower-level organic qualities. Even this characterization may miss the mark somewhat, but it sure beats reductive materialism and dualism.
Back to panpsychism: it is an attempt to bridge the divide between living and non-living by making everything alive. But while it may seem to suffice to do that bridging, it is not the only way to do that, and it seems rather exotic compared to the Aristotelian notion that non-living things have qualities in virtue of which they are more than geometry in motion.
A further criticism of panpsychism might be to point out that the consciousness occurring at the lowest seems to be pointless. To argue that we would have to analyze the alternative objects of consciousness to see if that objection is tenable. That is, we'd have to ask if the lowest level psyche is aware of non-psyches, of itself or other psyches. It can't be the first option without sacrificing the "pan" in pan-psychism. Possessing self-awareness alone (the second option) would seem to be pointless. As for the third, I'm not sure of what a panspsychist would say about the point of the lowest level psyche's awareness of other psyches. In any case, it all seems hard to take that third option seriously when the Aristotelian approach gives us what we need--i.e., a continuum between non-living entities and living-sensing entities. Why posit any more if this already suffices to avoid the pitfalls of both dualism and reductive materialism?
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