Consciousness, Revelation, and Confusion

Constitutive panpsychism, the view that consciousness is a fundamental feature of matter and that human consciousness is composed of countless simpler conscious parts, has been criticized as internally inconsistent. Critics argue that panpsychists rely on the idea that we know the nature of consciousness directly through introspection (revelation), yet they attribute to consciousness properties—like being made of trillions of experiential parts—that conflict with how it appears introspectively. This creates a dilemma: either revelation is false (supporting physicalism) or it is true and panpsychism is self-defeating. The paper argues this dilemma is too simplistic.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Critics have charged constitutive panpsychism with inconsistency. Panpsychists reject physicalism for its seeming inability to explain consciousness. In making this argument, they commit themselves to the idea of "revelation": that we know, in some especially direct way, the nature of consciousness. Yet they then attribute properties to our consciousness---like being constituted out of trillions of simpler experiential parts---that conflict with how it seems introspectively. This seems to pose a dilemma: either revelation is false, and physicalism remains intact, or revelation is true, and constitutive panpsychists are hoist by their own petard. But this is too simplistic. Constitutive panpsychists can say that our minds contain innumerable phenomenal states that are "confused" with one another: immediately present to introspection only en masse, not individually. Accepting revelation does not require ignoring the attentional, conceptual, and interpretive limitations of introspection, and these familiar limitations remove the tension between panpsychism and relevation.