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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... things are present (to the mind). It is undeniable that panpsychism is intuitively implausible. It is frequently ... thing which is or could be intrinsically conscious. In fact, though commonplace the former belief is demonstratively ...
... things like this, think marbles or, indeed, LEGO bricks, is what funds confidence in our conception of matter or the ... thing that quantum mechanics is 'trying to tell us'. Quantum entanglement seems to hint that nature is holistic and ...
... things that has caused materialists or dualists to suppose that the microscopic parts of these things also lack self-motion (see Hartshorne 1983: ch. 2–3). In Plato's dialogues we learn that soul is the universal cause (aitias tou holou ...
... things (based on the evidence provided by things being capable of self-motion and being possessive of other sorts of dynamic power). Second, there is an argument from continuity (apparently based on the idea that we can notice various ...
... things. Furthermore, each conscious state is also goal-directed in that it is always associated with volition or an intention to act. This together with feeling is responsible for determining the ethical quality of consciousness, that ...
Contents
1 | |
13 | |
Part II Forms of Panpsychism | 117 |
Part III Comparative Alternatives | 181 |
Part IV How Does Panpsychism Work? | 243 |
Index | 374 |