Panpsychism and the Dissolution of Dispositional Properties
Clark Butler, Southwestern Philosophical Society
Southwest Philosophy Review 2010 DOI: 10.5840/swphilreview201026246 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Citations | 1 |
| Key points | Argues that all properties, including physical ones, are phenomenal, and that panpsychism offers explanatory value, contrary to Churchland, by making a cosmology based on comparative psychology possible and hypothesizing that particles' mental life explains their behavior. |
Abstract
The article explains my third argument for panpsychism, based on disolving all properties, including dispositional physical properties like mass, energy, and force, into phenomenal properties. I thus reject a dual-property version of panpsychism. I seek to show, contrary to Paul Churchland, that the general panpsychist hypothesis has some explanatory value, and makes a cosmology consisting in comparative psychology possible. The mental life even of so-called physical particles in physics is hypothesized to help explain their behavior.