Free Will and Panpsychism

Abstract

I argue that a minimal condition of free action, the capacity of an agent to act for a reason, is incompatible with conventional atomic constitutive panpsychism. If fundamental particulars are physical and mental simples, then fundamental particulars cannot possess complex mental representations, including representing an action as for a reason. Options for the panpsychist include Leibnizian Pan-agentialism, Spinozist Cosmopsychism, Cavendishian Infinitism, and a kind of strong emergentist panpsychism on which acting for a reason is strongly emergent with increased complexity even while phenomenal consciousness is only weakly emergent.