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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... nature of consciousness, by taking seriously panpsychism. It contains a large variety and number of quality contributions, both from a historical and a contemporary perspective, which makes it a book of reference indispensable for ...
... nature of mind from various standpoints which take panpsychism seriously. The handbook is divided into 28 chapters roughly sorted into a number of themes. The first is a set of historical reflections ranging from Ancient Greek ...
... nature of matter: it came in chunks akin to the small particles we are familiar with in ordinary experience: impenetrable, capable of motion and – thanks ultimately to God's decree – observant of the fundamental rules or laws of nature ...
... nature of observation or measurement, may suggest a fundamental role for consciousness8 but, even if it is real, it is a role which figures outside of the system described by physical theory, breaking the law which governs the evolution ...
... nature of somatosensory perception exactly as the Abhidharma believed. Furthermore, it makes sense if a brain/mind embeds within it what Varela et al. (2001) called a brainweb, a massive parallel distributed system of highly specialized ...
Contents
1 | |
13 | |
Part II Forms of Panpsychism | 117 |
Part III Comparative Alternatives | 181 |
Part IV How Does Panpsychism Work? | 243 |
Index | 374 |