The Routledge Handbook of PanpsychismWilliam Seager Panpsychism is the view that consciousness – the most puzzling and strangest phenomenon in the entire universe – is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the world, though in a form very remote from human consciousness. At a very basic level, the world is awake. Panpsychism seems implausible to most, and yet it has experienced a remarkable renaissance of interest over the last quarter century. The reason is the stubbornly intractable problem of consciousness. Despite immense progress in understanding the brain and its relation to states of consciousness, we still really have no idea how consciousness emerges from physical processes which are presumed to be entirely non-conscious. The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism provides a high-level comprehensive examination and assessment of the subject – its history and contemporary development. It offers 28 chapters, appearing in print here for the first time, from the world’s leading researchers on panpsychism. The chapters are divided into four sections that integrate panpsychism’s relevance with important issues in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, metaphysics, and even ethics:
The volume will be useful to students and scholars as both an introduction and as cutting-edge philosophical engagement with the subject. For anyone interested in a philosophical approach to panpsychism, the Handbook will supply fascinating and enlightening reading. The topics covered are highly diverse, representing a spectrum of views on the nature of mind and world from various standpoints which take panpsychism seriously. |
From inside the book
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... according to which particles influence each other by pairs . . . (d) a single and simple principle of composition, according to 3 Introduction.
William Seager. (d) a single and simple principle of composition, according to which the behavior of any aggregate of particles, or the influence of any one aggregate on any other, follows in a uniform way from the mutual influences of ...
... according to Plutarch, all of the ancient philosophers, except for Aristotle and the atomists, believed that the world was infused with a divine, animal soul (Plutarch III 1870: 133). In two passages in Plato's later dialogues ...
... according to the Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination (Pratītyasamutpāda) there are no independent existents; everything that exists is conditioned by its causes. Furthermore, dharmas are not universals, for Vasubandhu argues ...
... According to most Abhidharma schools, sensory perception is always intentional, and is brought about by an interaction among the sense faculties (e.g., eye), the corresponding type of consciousness (e.g., visual consciousness) and their ...
Contents
1 | |
13 | |
Part II Forms of Panpsychism | 117 |
Part III Comparative Alternatives | 181 |
Part IV How Does Panpsychism Work? | 243 |
Index | 374 |