Panpsychism

Panpsychism (from ancient Greek. Πᾶν pan " all " and ψυχή psyche, " mind, soul " ) is a metaphysical theory that all existing (and not on other reducible ) objects have mental properties.

The panpsychism offers a solution proposal for the so-called " mind-body problem ", which deals with the relationship between matter and spirit. Panpsychisten assume that has occurred an increasing development of intellectual or mental properties in the course of evolution. One can now ask whether and how mind can emerge from matter. Dualists argue that the mind can not emerge from matter and principle of a different type than the matter. Materialists, however, claim that mental or spiritual qualities are nothing but complex arrangements of purely material things. Panpsychisten deny the dualistic separation of mind and matter. They also deny the thesis that mental or mental properties from purely material things can suddenly and unexpectedly emerge. For Panpsychisten the development of the spiritual and mental is only explicable when precursors of the spiritual or mental are already integrated into the basic structure of the material world. Such precursors mental properties are often called "proto- mental ' properties. The contemporary panpsychism, therefore, does not claim that atoms, bacteria or machines, for example, can experience pain or similar states of consciousness. Modern Panpsychisten therefore not assume that all things have a soul.

• 2.1 The genetic argument
• 2.2 The argument of the intrinsic natures
• 2.3 Analogy arguments

• 3.1 Combination Problem

• 4.1 pre-Socratic and ancient
• 4.2 Renaissance
• 4.3 Modern Times
• 4.4 German idealism
• 4.5 19th century
• 4.6 20th century
• 4.7 21st century
• 4.8 Other Panpsychisten

• 5.1 Liberal Naturalism
• 5.2 Gradual panpsychism

Definition and delimitation

Creator of the term " panpsychism " was the Renaissance philosopher Francesco Patrizi. Contemporary Panpsychisten denote the spiritual or proto- mental aspect, they ascribe all existing things, often as phenomenal properties, or qualia. The term Qualia says that something feels somehow. Qualia are a ( pre-) form of what is called in the case of man as phenomenal consciousness. Similar preforms of consciousness as the Qualia is called sensation or experience (experience ). A panpsychistische position that knows easy experience at all levels of nature, mostly in the tradition of Alfred North Whitehead and is called by David Ray Griffin also Panexperientialismus.

In addition to qualia and experience Panpsychisten generalize other aspects of the spiritual - including subjectivity, the unit of a subjective experience, teleology are ( purposefulness ), spontaneity ( Decide, freedom ), intentionality ( directedness, representation ), perception, memory, or even recognizing, thinking, speaking and self-confidence. Either the smallest parts of the world one of these properties attributed directly or preform them - which is not purely physically interpreted.

The panpsychism does not necessarily ascribe the smallest things just mental or proto- mental properties. Instead, talk a lot (especially historical ) Panpsychisten the world as a whole intellectual properties. You draw a distinction on the one hand atomistic Panpsychisten for which all individual things have a spiritual aspect, because it has spiritual parts - and on the other hand, holistic Panpsychisten derived by the spirituality of all things from the spirituality of the whole.

Demarcation from animism

At first glance, panpsychism seems to be an animistic position. Animists believe that, for example, Water sources or trees feel feelings similar to those of humans. Against the panpsychism has therefore been argued occasionally that he was absurd, because it is as stones or phones ascribe things, a kind of soul. Contemporary Panpsychisten borders with two considerations against such a confusion of panpsychism with animism from:

Distinguish from the idealism

The panpsychism is often equated with an idealistic approach. An idealistic position that says that every thing in the universe (proto - ) has mental properties can be referred to in this sense as panpsychistisch. Conversely, however, does not open any panpsychistische believes in a philosophical idealism.

The terms idealism and panpsychism are therefore not identical: For most idealists material properties to mental properties are reducible. This just is not true of many Panpsychisten as they consider the material and the spiritual as two equally original aspects of an underlying substance. Such a view is not idealistic in that specific sense.

A further definition of idealism states that all properties must be thought to exist. Many Panpsychisten require only a weaker condition for the existence of a property, such as Whitehead only the existence of pre-conscious " Prehensionen " ( observations ).

Arguments for panpsychism

The main arguments for panpsychism are the genetic argument and the argument from the intrinsic natures. Furthermore be mentioned analogy - arguments, and the argument that panpsychism leads to the best view of the world.

The genetic argument

First, it should be noted that purely spiritual and Physical fundamentally different: Mental properties as phenomenality, intentionality ( directedness ) or teleology ( intentionality ) can not be detected by physical structures. As the Spirit now comes in the ( purely physical) nature? Where is the line between the mental and non - mental into nature? When the mental makes its appearance in the context of evolutionary history? When does a human embryo has consciousness? Is the idea that mental arises suddenly - one speaks in this context of radical emergence - plausible?

Much more elegant seems to be a smooth transition between purely physical and the psychological. Now, however, there can be no smooth transition between two fundamentally different areas. Just as there is no homogenous transition between the numbers (from 1 to 200) and a meter stick, there are according to the genetic argument also no transition between purely material and the (proto - ) the mental. Consequently, something's got to (proto - ) Mental can already be found on the lower levels of nature. If you want to have the simplest possible theory, then there should be no purely physical. If you want to avoid the latter thrift whereas you can achieve the same result when you combine the genetic argument with the following consideration.

The argument of the intrinsic natures

Take any object in the world. It describes him thus, that he is part of a system: capital and labor in the system of economy, certain atomic lattice and molecules in the system of chemistry etc. For each such system, there is an illustration in a textbook, often a simulation in a museum or on a computer. What does now but the difference is that you a specific molecule and not a simulation in the museum means by the word " salt "? Chemistry can not express this difference with their terms. A specific salt molecule must therefore be distinguished by something that is outside the system of chemistry. This award is done by its intrinsic nature. In this case, the intrinsic nature of the physical constitution of the salt molecule be assigned.

For an elementary particle in physics, but again results in the same problem as for the molecule. His writing properties in the system of physics, it does not draw from so clear that it could not be part of a simulation. For the basic science physics but there is no underlying science that could explain the difference to a simulation. So the physical elementary particles must be characterized by properties that relations are not (physical) writable, but get the physical things in themselves. There are intrinsic properties that can no longer be described as physical structures.

The only intrinsic properties of this kind that we know, however, are our own sensations. But they come to a subject so that it does not have to be in relationship with others. If there is now no meaningful alternatives to the intrinsic properties of physical things, they must be thought of the spiritual feelings analog. The fact that the intrinsic nature of the smallest physical units has actually to do with the mental, it is further reinforced by the genetic argument.

Analogy arguments

A third class of arguments refers to analogies between physical and mental processes, which may suggest a panpsychism. If some interpretations of quantum mechanics speak of an objective reduction of the quantum state, so resembles a mental selecting or deciding. Also, between the concept of information in quantum mechanics and applied sciences can suggest parallels to the intentionality of the mental.

Arguments against panpsychism

Therefore, many authors refuse the panpsychism because they doubt that intrinsic properties must be phenomenal. Before over -stretching the language to such an unreasonable manner, it would be preferable to the intrinsic nature, similar to the Kantian " thing in itself ", to be regarded as something unknowable.

Combination problem

The most important objection to the panpsychism who wants to stand apart from physicalism and dualism interaktionalistischem, according to John Searle applies the so-called combination problem. It was first formulated by William James and is particularly aimed at the atomistic panpsychism. The problem is how by combining a large number of simple mental building blocks (such as atoms or cells) the uniform, higher consciousness of an organism can be formed - rather than just a disjointed collection of many primitive proto- sensations.

Possible solutions to the combination problem were by Alfred North Whitehead with the process philosophy (solution by " dominant / regnant nexus of personally ordered actual occasions within a spatiotemporal society of occasions " ) and Ken Wilber with the AQAL model of Integral Philosophy ( solution by combining proposed by far Eastern non- dualism with Arthur Koestler's Holon concept).

Physical properties can be combined by adding about the masses of the individual parts and assigns the focus that you win over vector addition. In such a simple way, phenomenal properties do not seem to be put together. It seems impossible that such a new subjectivity arises. But then, it seems, this raises the Panpsychisten the problem of re-emergence of the mind in humans and animals in a similar sharpness as the physicalists and dualists many.

A panpsychistische defense against this argument consists in pointing out that there is no such a simple combination of principles in modern physics. In particular, the so-called quantum entanglement refers to completely different combination of principles, which are closer to the phenomenally experienced unit.

History of panpsychism

Pre-Socratic and ancient

First panpsychistische theories are already with the pre-Socratics. In particular, the Milesian natural philosophers Thales, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras and Pythagoras assume that mental properties deploy anywhere as a universal principle of life and as an organizing element of the cosmos, its effect. In contrast, Empedocles represents the view that all properties - and hence that of the spiritual - emerge from the four elements ( emergence).

As for Plato independent movement is a defining characteristic of the soul, he also summarizes animals and stars as animated on, in the Timaeus also plants. The cosmos itself has reason, which has its headquarters in the world soul ( psyche tou pantos ψυχή τοῦ παντός ). A creator god, the Demiurge, was the soul of the world, gave her participation in the ideas and planted them into the world to bring reason into the world as a whole and thereby make it more perfect. The World Soul is the force that moves itself and everything else. It is immanent in the world, spread everywhere in it and surrounding it at the same time.

The Stoics, the thesis that all matter ( hyle ) of reality by the divine reason (logos) is animated. Inspired by Plato and the Stoa philosopher Plotinus also claims that the cosmos everywhere carries spiritual qualities, as the divine cosmos, and thus spiritual origin ( emanation ).

The coined by Aristotle Medieval philosophy is the panpsychism most skeptical about: Most thinkers in the Christian tradition speak only living things (and usually only the people in the image of God ) to a soul, and thus spiritual qualities. The inanimate things of this life are purely physical in nature and thus " ghost - free".

Renaissance

In the Renaissance panpsychism flourished: the philosopher Nicholas of Cusa ( Nicolaus Cusanus ), Gerolamo Cardano, Bernardino Telesio, Francesco Patrizi da Tommaso Campanella Cherso and talked the whole of reality mental properties. Patrizi is the first philosopher who coined for this belief the term " panpsychism ". Giordano Bruno assumes that the universe is infinite both in time and in spatial terms: The cosmos has existed since time immemorial and has no geographic boundaries. Bruno summarizes the cosmos as infinitely large organism in which all things are connected with all others. Things may interfere with each other by virtue of the pervasive intellectual properties. Bruno here takes the monads of Leibniz anticipated - with the difference that Bruno ( as Whitehead in the 20th c.) Does not consider the interacting monads as windowless.

Modern Times

For Baruch de Spinoza there is only one substance: the nature or God. According to Spinoza's deus sive natura known formula ( " God or Nature " ) nature is identical with God and God is identical with nature. That is, the entire cosmos is a single substance, there is nothing outside of it, she is in nothing else, and thus all existing things and properties are also ways of being and properties of this one substance. The substance or God has an infinite number of attributes ( properties). Two of these attributes are thinking ( intellectual properties) and the extension (physical properties). Since the substance has spiritual qualities and everything that exists in reality, only one mode of being of a substance is, the reality everywhere on intellectual properties.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in his Monadology is assumed that the entire cosmos of infinitely many monads is. The point-like monads are immaterial principles shape or form forces, all of which are indivisible, imperishable and different from each other. Every monad seeks a goal in, which means it operates as entelechy and so far has a capacity for perception on. The perceptions are simple, unconscious perceptions. Only when an organism is sufficiently complex ( through the organization of monads ), is consciously experienced apperceptions emerge that can lead eventually of higher organisms in the self-perception. Leibniz represents a psychophysical parallelism: between mental and physical events there is no direct causal interaction. Rather, from these events, like the hands of synchronized clocks run parallel to each other. God has provided the world with a pre-established harmony, so that mental and physical events occur in perfect harmony with each other.

German idealism

The mind is for G.W.F. Hegel the truth and the " absolutely first " nature. For all things and properties of reality ( eg nature ) are derivatives of the idea can be derived from the objective, eternal basic structures of reality. For Hegel, the whole historical reality is the process of an omnipresent spirit world.

Friedrich Schelling considers the nature, like Giordano Bruno, as a giant organism. Nature has everywhere mental and physical characteristics and is in a constant dynamic process of evolution. The Absolute (the world soul) sees himself in the course of evolution of the spirit of human activities.

Based on the idealism of Hegel justified Anglo-Saxon philosophers like Francis Herbert Bradley, John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart and Josiah Royce in the late 19th century and early 20th century, a school of the Absolute idealism with panpsychistischer embossing.

19th century

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe has developed no independent philosophical system. Nevertheless, he considers, in his " Natural Philosophical Writings" a significant panpsychism. Inspired by Spinoza goes Goethe believed that mental and physical properties can never exist independently. Moreover, Goethe believed, influenced by the writings of Schelling, in a world soul, which is responsible for the entelechy of nature.

Arthur Schopenhauer sees the reality are two principles at work here: first, the reality exists only insofar as it perceives a subject, that is the reality corresponds to an idea ( idealism ). Secondly, is this imaginary world is a will to reason, understand the Schopenhauer as basic and aimless blind urge. This will determines all the processes of organic and inorganic nature. He objectifies itself in the phenomenal world as will to live and to reproduce.

The physicist and philosopher Gustav Theodor Fechner he defended similar to Leibniz a psychophysical parallelism. However, the reason for the lack of interaction between mental and physical is not as Leibniz in a pre-established harmony, but in different perspective, which is assumed to things. While Leibniz body and soul are like two clocks that were set by their Creator in the same time and therefore go without causal influence on each other in parallel, for Fechner body and soul, so to speak, a single clock that can be viewed from two different perspectives: from the outer to the clock and from the inner to the clock itself, the spiritual so that's from the perspective of the first person given, while the Physical comprising from third person given. The parallelism is therefore not, as in Leibniz to a common cause, namely God, return it to the correlated occurrence of perspective different properties of the same carrier property: Intellectual and Physical therefore correspond to each other as the inner and outer sides of the same reality. Fechner tried inductively establish that his two- page lesson is applicable as a whole not only to humans but also to the universe. The cosmos and nature are harmoniously constructed so that it is difficult to imagine that only the spiritual abruptly with the people (and incomprehensible way ) kick in appearance. That Fechner has spoken frequently of a sentient " plant soul " and a spanning everything, also sentient " Earth Soul ", was held at the now still encountered prejudices against panpsychism.

20th century

A comprehensive panpsychistisches worldview developed by the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Influenced by Henri Bergson and William James goes Whitehead believes that reality is not constituted of carrier, without feeling matter, but out of "real individuals " ( "actual entities" ), as " complex and interlocking experience droplet " with the character of processes that will be and pass away, are to be considered. The real individual, the Whitehead also called real events that are indivisible and the most fundamental entities of reality. Thus they resemble the monads of Leibniz indeed, but the real individuals have "windows": That is, the real individual beings capture each other and take each other by influence. In his main work process and Reality Whitehead speaks of " Prehensionen " ( capturing ), so do not need conscious processes of information processing. Through this mutual Prehensionen the real events of the cosmos is a gigantic network of individuals who influence each other, thus allowing the process of evolution. In Whitehead are all real individuals " bipolar", ie they have a physical pole of causal causation and a spiritual pole of the teleological reasons.

In the process philosophy Charles Hartshorne, David Ray Griffin and Christian de Quincey the panpsychistische system Whiteheads have interpreted, modified and formulated novel. Although the philosophers mentioned have not carried out an entirely original models of thought and strongly oriented to Whitehead, is to their credit that they have done the work for the current philosophy of mind fertile. Whitehead's work is extremely complex and sometimes difficult to understand. David Ray Griffin has helped to give the Whitehead 's panpsychism an easily comprehensible form and make it more popular. (However, in a modified version: for example with nested macro event processes in contrast to whiteheads microscopic event atoms, and with Hartshorne concept of process theology, which is quite controversial among philosophers process. )

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a philosopher, geologist and world-renowned paleontologist. In addition, the Jesuit priest has embedded one of the first thinkers the theory of evolution Charles Darwin in a philosophical school of thought, giving him the part of the Vatican earned a publication ban and a 20 - year exile in China. Teilhard de Chardin assumes that all physical things are inherent spiritual qualities: the " world stuff" corresponds to a dynamic energy ( " tangential energy " ) as well as a spiritual inner side has both a physical outside ( " radial energy ").

The British philosopher Timothy Sprigge published in 1973 his work The Vindication little attention of Absolute Idealism. Sprigge represents the fact the idealistic view that physical reality has a purely spiritual basis that the cosmos consists of innumerable " experiential elements " that organize themselves in a large overall system.

Whitehead and Teilhard de Chardin were the last thinkers who have elaborated an independent panpsychistische cosmology. Thomas Nagel in 1976 published a brief summary of the arguments for panpsychism. In 1996, David Chalmers, in his book The Conscious Mind sympathizes with the panpsychism and some of the arguments presented in favor of such a belief.

Adherence can be that panpsychism since the Second World War has moved into the background of the philosophical debate - what should be changed only at the beginning of the 21st century:

21st Century

At the beginning of the 21st century panpsychism is experiencing a renewed attention: The Australian philosopher Freya Mathews pleaded in For Love of Matter ( 2003) for a holistic panpsychism and describes the consequences of such a position for the ethics and ecology.

In 2004, Gregg Rosenberg has delivered in his book A Place for Consciousness important impetus for the current debate. Rosenberg Communication suggests a new work based on the Game of Life argument against physicalism and derives from these considerations, a new model of mental causation within a context panpsychistischen from.

The philosopher David Skrbina submitted in 2005 under the title Panpsychism in the West, the first history of philosophy workup of panpsychism. The book presents the entire Western history of panpsychism of the pre-Socratics to the end of the 20th century dar. It turns out that panpsychism at almost all times had prominent representatives and thus is not an outsider, it seemed the end of the 20th century.

In 2006, the British philosopher Galen Strawson published the essay " Realistic Monism. Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism " in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. His thesis is: Because we have to presuppose phenomenal awareness of our access to physics, it is the primary physical fact. Many philosophers discuss his thesis on the same band. Strawson goes into a long treatise on all these reviews.

Currently, several authors try to integrate the thoughts Whiteheads in the current debate (about DS Clarke). In this tradition, some authors try spelling out versions of panpsychism empirically (for example in anesthesia and Stuart Hameroff and physics in biology Spyridon A. Koutroufinis ).

More Panpsychisten

More panpsychistische conceptions and mental models ( but sometimes markedly differ in their conception) have been put forward and developed, among others, the following thinkers: Josiah Royce, John Dewey, William James, Charles Peirce, Ernst Haeckel, Henri Bergson, Bertrand Russell, Arthur Eddington, Carl Gustav Jung, Bernhard Rensch, Charles Birch, David Bohm, Freeman Dyson, Ervin Laszlo, Jean Emile Charon and Michael Lockwood. Also influential spiritual teachers and representatives of Integral Theory as Sri Aurobindo and Ken Wilber represented panpsychistische views.

Modern panpsychism in Germany

Liberal naturalism

In German-speaking philosopher Godehard Brüntrup has argued that the Emergenzbegriff without the assumption panpsychistische gradually graded proto- mental properties leads to a dualistic position. In the tradition of Bertrand Russell and Alfred N. Whitehead, he argues that the intrinsic properties of matter must be thought analogous to mental properties. Central to this is the rejection of the concept of matter by René Descartes, which the scientific thinking still dominates. In contrast to the reductionist program of the old materialistic naturalism Brüntrup therefore speaks with Gregg Rosenberg from a "liberal naturalism ," the precursors of the mental to the fundamental properties of the material nature into account. Brüntrup has devoted a separate chapter of the third, expanded edition of his textbook The mind-body problem the panpsychism in analytical philosophy of mind.

Gradual panpsychism

Following Alfred N. Whitehead and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin late Patrick has formulated a " Gradual panpsychism ". The sudden emergence of mental properties is not possible - as if we need to take into account the existence of intellectual properties, if we want to describe and explain the reality in all its facets. Late assumes that in reality a stepped shape is found by intellectual properties: Only if a thing ( an entity ) is sufficiently complex in material terms, and the corresponding spiritual side can take complex traits. Late has 2012 Man does not live alone released from the brain a popular book, the commonly understood and extensively engaged in the " Gradual panpsychism ". Late refers to both in his dissertation and in his published book, also drawing on the theory of integrated information of consciousness ( Integrated Information Theory of Conciousness, IIT) of the American psychiatrist and neurobiologist Giulio Tononi, which the U.S. neuroscientists to Christof According to Koch may be regarded as scientific form of panpsychism.