smcder
Paranormal Adept
@Soupie
Did you read this article
What is the relation between an experience, its subject, and its content
?
Did you read this article
What is the relation between an experience, its subject, and its content
?
-
NEW! LOWEST RATES EVER -- SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE VERY BEST PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! Welcome to The Paracast+, eight years young! For a low subscription fee, you can download the ad-free version of The Paracast and the exclusive, member-only, After The Paracast bonus podcast, featuring color commentary, exclusive interviews, the continuation of interviews that began on the main episode of The Paracast. We also offer lifetime memberships! Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! You can sign up right here!
Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
- Start date
Free episodes:
- Status
smcder
Paranormal Adept
Strawson continues:
"Let me also register my view (it is as much a terminological decision as an assumption) that subjects of experience are happily thought of as objects, even when they are thinly understood, as here. Let me make this conditional: if one is going to talk of objects at all in one’s metaphysics, then it is I think not hard to show that thin subjects have at least as good a claim to be called objects as anything else.[25] For very briefly, all concrete reality is substance (this view will be supported by the discussion of the object/property distinction in §9); [ii] whatever objects or individual substances are, they are physical unities of a certain sort; and [iii] there are no more indisputable physical unities than subjects of experience.[26]
That said, I think matter is best thought of as what one might call ‘process-stuff’, and that all physical objects are best thought of as processes, even if the converse is not true. And I take it this to be true on a three-dimensionalist (3D) view of objects as much as on a four-dimensionalist (4D) view.[27] We have to combat an intense staticism in our thought about matter and objects. Matter is essentially dynamic: essentially in time and essentially changeful.[28] All reality is process, as Whitehead was moved to observe by his study of twentieth-century physics, and as Heracleitus and others proposed long ago. Perhaps we would do better to call matter ‘time-matter’, or at least ‘matter-in-time’, so that we never for a moment forget its essential temporality. We think of matter as essentially extended, but we tend to think only of extension in space—something that can, we intuitively feel, be given to us as a whole at an instant. But space and time are interdependent. They are aspects of spacetime, and all concrete spatial extension is extension in spacetime.[29"
Strawson discusses this more in his paper on Nietzsche's metaphysics.
"Let me also register my view (it is as much a terminological decision as an assumption) that subjects of experience are happily thought of as objects, even when they are thinly understood, as here. Let me make this conditional: if one is going to talk of objects at all in one’s metaphysics, then it is I think not hard to show that thin subjects have at least as good a claim to be called objects as anything else.[25] For very briefly, all concrete reality is substance (this view will be supported by the discussion of the object/property distinction in §9); [ii] whatever objects or individual substances are, they are physical unities of a certain sort; and [iii] there are no more indisputable physical unities than subjects of experience.[26]
That said, I think matter is best thought of as what one might call ‘process-stuff’, and that all physical objects are best thought of as processes, even if the converse is not true. And I take it this to be true on a three-dimensionalist (3D) view of objects as much as on a four-dimensionalist (4D) view.[27] We have to combat an intense staticism in our thought about matter and objects. Matter is essentially dynamic: essentially in time and essentially changeful.[28] All reality is process, as Whitehead was moved to observe by his study of twentieth-century physics, and as Heracleitus and others proposed long ago. Perhaps we would do better to call matter ‘time-matter’, or at least ‘matter-in-time’, so that we never for a moment forget its essential temporality. We think of matter as essentially extended, but we tend to think only of extension in space—something that can, we intuitively feel, be given to us as a whole at an instant. But space and time are interdependent. They are aspects of spacetime, and all concrete spatial extension is extension in spacetime.[29"
Strawson discusses this more in his paper on Nietzsche's metaphysics.
Last edited:
smcder
Paranormal Adept
I'll bet that here the "S-reality" is influenced by Buddhism:
"My (empirical) bet is that thin subjects last for a maximum of about three seconds, in the human case,[34] with many being much shorter. I think that there is always some complete interruption of consciousness in any longer period of time, although this is not phenomenologically accessible to most people in normal life. There may either be a straightforward temporal gap, as already remarked, or there may be a new experience, with a new subject, following seamlessly on from the previous one. The next experience may even overlap the previous one temporally, as one recruitment or neurons gathers pace and peaks in consciousness before the previous one has died to nothing.[35] There is no particular difficulty in the idea (whether or not it happens is an empirical issue)."
"My (empirical) bet is that thin subjects last for a maximum of about three seconds, in the human case,[34] with many being much shorter. I think that there is always some complete interruption of consciousness in any longer period of time, although this is not phenomenologically accessible to most people in normal life. There may either be a straightforward temporal gap, as already remarked, or there may be a new experience, with a new subject, following seamlessly on from the previous one. The next experience may even overlap the previous one temporally, as one recruitment or neurons gathers pace and peaks in consciousness before the previous one has died to nothing.[35] There is no particular difficulty in the idea (whether or not it happens is an empirical issue)."
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
No, I disagree with this but I thinks it's moot. I'm not arguing that subjective experience exists without a subject.
At this point, I think it would be best for you to point out how the concept of subjectivity contradicts the notion that phenomenal consciousness is a substrate.
As it is, you appear to be arguing that phenomenal consciousness, subjectivity, and subjective experience must strongly emerge simultaneously from non-phenomenal, physical processes. And thus exist in ontological duality.
Also, is Strawson's terminology that "we don't know enough about the intrinsic nature of the physical" simply more palatable than my terminology that the physical is our human perception of and perspective on the noumenal?
Do you see a conceptual difference in those statements? If not, I can adopt Strawson's terminology.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
"One could express it paradoxically by saying that if per impossibile there could be intense pain-experience without any subject of that experience, mere experience without any experiencer, there would be no point in stopping it, because no one would be suffering."
"No, I disagree with this but I thinks it's moot. I'm not arguing that subjective experience exists without a subject."
What is it that you disagree with?
Here you write "subjective experience" - so obviously subjective experience has to have a subject - but when you write:
I was trying to capture the concept that consciousness (feeling) must precede the emergence of subjectivity.
You are clearly indicating that consciousness (feeling) precedes and therefore exists before subjectivity and therefore before a subject and therefore without a subject, so are you drawing a distinction between "consciousness (feeling)" and "experience"?
If so, how do you respond to Strawson:
"Some have said—they have appeared to say—that there can be an experience without a subject of experience; they have appeared to doubt (2), which I will call the Subject thesis. But this view is crazy, on its most natural reading, for ‘an experience is impossible without an experiencer’.
So do you argue that there can be an experience without a subject of experience?
------
"At this point, I think it would be best for you to point out how the concept of subjectivity contradicts the notion that phenomenal consciousness is a substrate.
As it is, you appear to be arguing that phenomenal consciousness, subjectivity, and subjective experience must strongly emerge simultaneously from non-phenomenal, physical processes. And thus exist in ontological duality."
I'm saying that where there is experience, there is a subject. I don't know that "the concept of subjectivity contradicts the notion that phenomenal consciousness is a substrate" - but if phenomenal consciousness (feeling )/ what it is like / experience is a substrate, then there has to be a subject there - when you say this substrate which is subjective experience precedes the emergence of subjectivity you seem to say that it exists without a subject which you say you are not saying! So it is very confusing.
"Also, is Strawson's terminology that "we don't know enough about the intrinsic nature of the physical" simply more palatable than my terminology that the physical is our human perception of and perspective on the noumenal?
Do you see a conceptual difference in those statements? If not, I can adopt Strawson's terminology."
First, I don't know what you mean by "the physical is our human perception of and perspective on the noumenal" the noumenal is fraught to say the least - yes, just fraught - the noumenal most simply might be the "thing in itself" apart from any particular view of it - what that is ...
I will take a stab to say that what you are arguing for is a kind of Idealism - only mind exists - what we take to be matter is our individual perspective within that mind. Strawson is a materialist - he is saying, with Russell - that consciousness, experience, feeling, etc are intrinsic properties of matter - so for him the physical is the physical - he gets along fine with the physicists - for your approach it seems you have to come up with why matter has the physical properties it does if it is just our human perception of the noumenal. Otherwise you're just saying "it's all mind and physics is just the way we see the thing-in-itself because of our human perception" ... OK.
The main problem is that to get around the hard problem and the combination problem, not just consciousness or mind has to be fundamental but subjectivity has to be fundamental - what you seem to be doing is saying ok, well experience is fundamental and precedes subjects (ahem) and so when subjects do show up (and how do they show up) the consciousness is already there waiting for them ... and voila! the hard problem.
By offering what seem to be plausible routes or possibilities like Strawson offers I am trying to mitigate your absolute statement that mind cannot except by brute fact emerge from matter - and thus relieve pressure on the "the hard problem - therefore conscious realism" argument ... we can attack that absolutness at any of several assumptions - Strawson is just one reasonable possibility.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
What Strawson is saying is that the physical realm has a non-recognized intrinsic property (among others) that allows subjective experience to emerge with organisms.
That is exactly what I am saying.
(Note that most people balk at the idea that physical reality has an intrinsic, quasi-experiential/phenomenal/consciousness/feeling property.)
And while I maintain that this physical substrate has intrinsic and extrinsic properties in addition to this quasi-experiential/phenomenal/consciousness/feeling property, I am much less confident than Strawson about what he feels are extrinsic, mind-independent properties of this substrate.
You seem to have the notion that because I feel this substrate has an innate quasi-experiential/phenomenal/consciousness/feeling property that this is the only property I believe it has. And that all other properties are mind-dependent a la Hoffman.
I've repeatedly stated this is not my position.
That is exactly what I am saying.
(Note that most people balk at the idea that physical reality has an intrinsic, quasi-experiential/phenomenal/consciousness/feeling property.)
And while I maintain that this physical substrate has intrinsic and extrinsic properties in addition to this quasi-experiential/phenomenal/consciousness/feeling property, I am much less confident than Strawson about what he feels are extrinsic, mind-independent properties of this substrate.
You seem to have the notion that because I feel this substrate has an innate quasi-experiential/phenomenal/consciousness/feeling property that this is the only property I believe it has. And that all other properties are mind-dependent a la Hoffman.
I've repeatedly stated this is not my position.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
smcder
Paranormal Adept
Soupie: What Strawson is saying is that the physical realm has a non-recognized intrinsic property (among others) that allows subjective experience to emerge with organisms.
What Strawson says is:
"I find this odd because we know exactly what consciousness is — where by “consciousness” I mean what most people mean in this debate: experience of any kind whatever. It’s the most familiar thing there is, whether it’s experience of emotion, pain, understanding what someone is saying, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or feeling. It is in fact the only thing in the universe whose ultimate intrinsic nature we can claim to know. It is utterly unmysterious."
Soupie: And while I maintain that this physical substrate has intrinsic and extrinsic properties in addition to this quasi-experiential/phenomenal/consciousness/feeling property, I am much less confident than Strawson about what he feels are extrinsic, mind-independent properties of this substrate.
"The nature of physical stuff, by contrast, is deeply mysterious, and physics grows stranger by the hour. (Richard Feynman’s remark about quantum theory — “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics” — seems as true as ever.) Or rather, more carefully: The nature of physical stuff is mysterious except insofar as consciousness is itself a form of physical stuff. This point, which is at first extremely startling, was well put by Bertrand Russell in the 1950s in his essay “Mind and Matter”: “We know nothing about the intrinsic quality of physical events,” he wrote, “except when these are mental events that we directly experience.” In having conscious experience, he claims, we learn something about the intrinsic nature of physical stuff, for conscious experience is itself a form of physical stuff.
I think Russell is right: Human conscious experience is wholly a matter of physical goings-on in the body and in particular the brain. But why does he say that we know nothing about the intrinsic quality of physical events except when these are mental events we directly experience? Isn’t he exaggerating? I don’t think so, and I’ll try to explain. First, though, I need to try to reply to those (they’re probably philosophers) who doubt that we really know what conscious experience is.The reply is simple. We know what conscious experience is because the having is the knowing: Having conscious experience is knowing what it is. You don’t have to think about it (it’s really much better not to). You just have to have it. It’s true that people can make all sorts of mistakes about what is going on when they have experience, but none of them threaten the fundamental sense in which we know exactly what experience is just in having it."
smcder
Paranormal Adept
I do think we'd proceed a lot more efficiently if we had a semi-formal writing/essay from you on your position - it's extremely difficult trying to find and reconcile your view on a post by post basis.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
http://www.timcrane.com/uploads/2/5/2/4/25243881/crane_hist_of_consciousness_draft.pdf
By the end of the century, the central concern of theories of consciousness in analytic philosophy was the question of physicalism, and the problem of consciousness had become the prob
lem of explaining how any physical thing could be conscious. Moreover, consciousness was not considered to be the essential feature of the mental, and thought (or intentionality) and conscious ness were typically treated as distinct, separable phenomena. Both this conception of conscious ness and its perceived relation to the rest of the mind are very different from the conception to be found at the beginning of the century. The aim of this chapter is to explain how this change came about.
By the end of the century, the central concern of theories of consciousness in analytic philosophy was the question of physicalism, and the problem of consciousness had become the prob
lem of explaining how any physical thing could be conscious. Moreover, consciousness was not considered to be the essential feature of the mental, and thought (or intentionality) and conscious ness were typically treated as distinct, separable phenomena. Both this conception of conscious ness and its perceived relation to the rest of the mind are very different from the conception to be found at the beginning of the century. The aim of this chapter is to explain how this change came about.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
But Strawson doesn’t actually say/claim that this “non-recognized intrinsic property” demonstrably exists in ‘the physical realm’, and he certainly doesn't show how we can or could know that it does. What he says is that "we don’t know enough about physical matter” to know whether or not that notion is or could be valid. So what Strawson has to offer is only speculation, a hypothesis without either evidence or reasoning to support it.
You go on to say that what Strawson says is “exactly what I am saying,” but it turns out now not to be what you are saying, as developed in the rest of your post:
Then, as Steve suggests, you need to state more clearly and in detail what ‘your position’ is and what your evidence – or in the absence of evidence, your reasoning – is in support of your position. It also looks like you will need to differentiate your position from the positions of both Strawson and Hoffman (and even Russell). I look forward to reading your effort to do so.
Last edited:
I think this is an example of what I refer to as Strawson's 'squirrelyness', his habit of jumping from the possible location of one buried nut to another possible location. It's astonishing to read the last few sentences of that paragraph if one has also read his paper on "Cognitive Phenomenology." I wonder which paper came first, and whether Strawson has actually made much progress in reading and comprehending phenomenological philosophy. Then again, it might not matter since Strawson's own consciousness might only be operative for three seconds at a time, as he claims all of ours are.
Yes. I'm about to read it.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
ROFL ... that's funny!... I thought of his CP paper ... but maybe it's better not to! ;-)
smcder
Paranormal Adept
p. 8 and 9 on Wittgenstein and Ryle's views on consciousness are very helpful - steering between Behavior and Cartrsian -isms.
The whole piece is very good on the modern history of consciousness.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
The Mental as Fundamental: New Perspectives on Panpsychism // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame
"Blamauer believes the combination problem rests on construing the ultimates as having two sides: mental and physical. If we shed this 'microdualism', say by going full-blown idealist (or Leibnizian), we would not have a combination problem, he maintains. I don't see this; but before explaining why, it would seem a good place for a note on panpsychic variations. What Blamauer is referring to is a panpsychist microdualism, on which all ultimates have irreducible physical as well as mental properties. So a given ultimate might instantiate mass, charge, spin and so on, alongside a separate phenomenal property. This, I believe, is Strawson's position.
Another way of implementing panpsychism is more thoroughgoingly mentalistic, close, in fact, to idealism.
On this view -- one might call it a 'pure panpsychism', I show here my preference -- the physical properties that ultimates have are strictly derivative upon their phenomenal properties. A way to think about this is to take the physical properties as purely structural -- physics describes a causal/relational web of entities, but remains silent about their intrinsic natures. Pure panpsychism slots phenomenality into this lacuna. The mass of an electron tells us something about how the electron will interact with other things -- but the thing that so interacts is intrinsically, and wholly, phenomenal in character. 'Mass' shows up just as a way of describing the interactive propensities of this phenomenal thing. Is this idealism? Not in this sense: physics can be a true theory on this view, plus there is nowhere a requirement that ultimates (or the dry goods they make up) only exist in so far as they are perceived. I think that pure panpsychism has a good claim to be considered a sensible form of physicalism (there's the tiniest of puns here)."
@Soupie this seems to me to distinguish your view from Strawson's et al. Your view as I understand it, is Idealist -
(paraphrasing from here on out)
... a requirement that ultimates (or the dry goods they make up) only exist in so far as they are perceived - whereas in a pure panpsychism the physical properties that ultimates have are strictly derivative upon their phenomenal properites - i.e. physical properties are purely structural - and phenomenality slots phenomenality into this lacuna - ... but physics is a true theory on this view and there is no requirement that ultimates ... only exist in so far as they are perceived.
Idealism: ultimates only exist in so far as they are perceived
Pure Panpsychism: the physical properties of ultimates are strictly derivative upon their phenomenal properties etc etc.
"Blamauer believes the combination problem rests on construing the ultimates as having two sides: mental and physical. If we shed this 'microdualism', say by going full-blown idealist (or Leibnizian), we would not have a combination problem, he maintains. I don't see this; but before explaining why, it would seem a good place for a note on panpsychic variations. What Blamauer is referring to is a panpsychist microdualism, on which all ultimates have irreducible physical as well as mental properties. So a given ultimate might instantiate mass, charge, spin and so on, alongside a separate phenomenal property. This, I believe, is Strawson's position.
Another way of implementing panpsychism is more thoroughgoingly mentalistic, close, in fact, to idealism.
On this view -- one might call it a 'pure panpsychism', I show here my preference -- the physical properties that ultimates have are strictly derivative upon their phenomenal properties. A way to think about this is to take the physical properties as purely structural -- physics describes a causal/relational web of entities, but remains silent about their intrinsic natures. Pure panpsychism slots phenomenality into this lacuna. The mass of an electron tells us something about how the electron will interact with other things -- but the thing that so interacts is intrinsically, and wholly, phenomenal in character. 'Mass' shows up just as a way of describing the interactive propensities of this phenomenal thing. Is this idealism? Not in this sense: physics can be a true theory on this view, plus there is nowhere a requirement that ultimates (or the dry goods they make up) only exist in so far as they are perceived. I think that pure panpsychism has a good claim to be considered a sensible form of physicalism (there's the tiniest of puns here)."
@Soupie this seems to me to distinguish your view from Strawson's et al. Your view as I understand it, is Idealist -
(paraphrasing from here on out)
... a requirement that ultimates (or the dry goods they make up) only exist in so far as they are perceived - whereas in a pure panpsychism the physical properties that ultimates have are strictly derivative upon their phenomenal properites - i.e. physical properties are purely structural - and phenomenality slots phenomenality into this lacuna - ... but physics is a true theory on this view and there is no requirement that ultimates ... only exist in so far as they are perceived.
Idealism: ultimates only exist in so far as they are perceived
Pure Panpsychism: the physical properties of ultimates are strictly derivative upon their phenomenal properties etc etc.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
The Mental as Fundamental: New Perspectives on Panpsychism // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame
I'm upgrading this review to a definite read and re-read, the last few paragraphs esp ... I don't have a full grasp on it yet:
"I spy a better view. Manzotti starts from the oft-alleged incommensurability between neural tissue and phenomenality. But another theory of perception, Russell's causal theory, diagnoses this sort of reasoning as mistaken from the outset. Panpsychists are familiar with the idea that physical science only has access to the extrinsic 'outside' of an ultimate -- to the effects it has on instruments and the relations it stands in with other entities likewise comprehended. Against this backdrop -- science as a merely structural characterization of the world -- panpsychists speculate that the intrinsic natures of ultimates involve phenomenal qualities. Thus the mind/body problem is ameliorated and physics is given an ontological heart by means of a single posit. Therein lies the parsimonious theoretical power of panpsychism, emphasized too by Brüntrup in his argument against a pure structural realism.
Russell, though, says much the same about the brain -- from without, as an observer, all one can get hold of are the effects of another brain on one's own consciousness (that's why the neuroscientist observing another man's brain really observes his own). Its intrinsic nature is totally inaccessible from outside. Thus, someone who infers, as so many have done, that brains are inappropriate vessels for phenomenality errs in taking it that she has ever accessed a naked brain, a brain as it is in itself. The only brain with which she has had that intimate relationship is her own. As regards the brains of others -- as regards our neuroscientific grip of them -- we have only an extrinsic characterization. No wonder there appears a shortfall between the neural and the phenomenal -- the neural is to the phenomenal, on this understanding, as a flimsy night garment is to the luscious body underneath. One can discover the contours, but not the substance. Thus, if we make the Russellian move there is no need to extend consciousness beyond the head in order to accommodate it in the material world, even if that maneuver held some promise of assisting in this cause (which I cannot see that it does).
Russell takes the view that the brain is a material object like any other, and here we have (in introspection) a window into the intrinsic nature of some matter. There is no reason, then, to consider that other matter outside the head is very much different in its inner character. If we did stretch to that consideration, we would neatly construct ourselves a mind/body problem (historical diagnosis). However, Russell's theory -- which Brüntrup seems to consider an open possibility -- need not result in the little-subjects-everywhere version of panpsychism. One might hypothesize that the sorts of qualities we apprehend in consciousness (colours and suchlike) are made conscious by some relational activity supported in the complex feedback mechanisms of brains (say, higher-order representation). Perhaps outside the head all that exist are variegated quality instantiations, with causal/relational profiles as we receive them from physics.
Without micro-subjects everywhere, there seems no unavoidable reason why we will run into a combination problem. Basile finds this Russellian avenue foreclosed by the thesis that experiences cannot exist without an experiencer -- which suffices to put ubiquitous micro-subjects back in the frame, and the combination problem, with its threat of emergentism, thereby re-surfaces. I accept this thesis, that experiences require subjects. But what the Russellian posits are less than experiences. The option overlooked in this collection, though it also puts mentality -- in a sense -- into the ontological fundamentals, is that phenomenal qualities can be split up: into qualities, which perhaps exist throughout micro-ontology as the panpsychist envisages, and that which makes these phenomenal, i.e., conscious to us. This latter is likely to be a relational matter. The options, then, appear to be emergentism of some form (whether it be physicalism, emergentism proper, or panpsychist emergentism) or a Russellian compote of realism about qualities, topped with a little light deflationism about consciousness. Overall, The Mental as Fundamental is a mixed bag, much as one would expect of any newly (re)born field of research, where rampant innovation gives a certain roughness to proceedings. But for devotees of panpsychism, as well as those intrigued by an idea steadily gaining in relevance, this is a book worth having."
I'm upgrading this review to a definite read and re-read, the last few paragraphs esp ... I don't have a full grasp on it yet:
"I spy a better view. Manzotti starts from the oft-alleged incommensurability between neural tissue and phenomenality. But another theory of perception, Russell's causal theory, diagnoses this sort of reasoning as mistaken from the outset. Panpsychists are familiar with the idea that physical science only has access to the extrinsic 'outside' of an ultimate -- to the effects it has on instruments and the relations it stands in with other entities likewise comprehended. Against this backdrop -- science as a merely structural characterization of the world -- panpsychists speculate that the intrinsic natures of ultimates involve phenomenal qualities. Thus the mind/body problem is ameliorated and physics is given an ontological heart by means of a single posit. Therein lies the parsimonious theoretical power of panpsychism, emphasized too by Brüntrup in his argument against a pure structural realism.
Russell, though, says much the same about the brain -- from without, as an observer, all one can get hold of are the effects of another brain on one's own consciousness (that's why the neuroscientist observing another man's brain really observes his own). Its intrinsic nature is totally inaccessible from outside. Thus, someone who infers, as so many have done, that brains are inappropriate vessels for phenomenality errs in taking it that she has ever accessed a naked brain, a brain as it is in itself. The only brain with which she has had that intimate relationship is her own. As regards the brains of others -- as regards our neuroscientific grip of them -- we have only an extrinsic characterization. No wonder there appears a shortfall between the neural and the phenomenal -- the neural is to the phenomenal, on this understanding, as a flimsy night garment is to the luscious body underneath. One can discover the contours, but not the substance. Thus, if we make the Russellian move there is no need to extend consciousness beyond the head in order to accommodate it in the material world, even if that maneuver held some promise of assisting in this cause (which I cannot see that it does).
Russell takes the view that the brain is a material object like any other, and here we have (in introspection) a window into the intrinsic nature of some matter. There is no reason, then, to consider that other matter outside the head is very much different in its inner character. If we did stretch to that consideration, we would neatly construct ourselves a mind/body problem (historical diagnosis). However, Russell's theory -- which Brüntrup seems to consider an open possibility -- need not result in the little-subjects-everywhere version of panpsychism. One might hypothesize that the sorts of qualities we apprehend in consciousness (colours and suchlike) are made conscious by some relational activity supported in the complex feedback mechanisms of brains (say, higher-order representation). Perhaps outside the head all that exist are variegated quality instantiations, with causal/relational profiles as we receive them from physics.
Without micro-subjects everywhere, there seems no unavoidable reason why we will run into a combination problem. Basile finds this Russellian avenue foreclosed by the thesis that experiences cannot exist without an experiencer -- which suffices to put ubiquitous micro-subjects back in the frame, and the combination problem, with its threat of emergentism, thereby re-surfaces. I accept this thesis, that experiences require subjects. But what the Russellian posits are less than experiences. The option overlooked in this collection, though it also puts mentality -- in a sense -- into the ontological fundamentals, is that phenomenal qualities can be split up: into qualities, which perhaps exist throughout micro-ontology as the panpsychist envisages, and that which makes these phenomenal, i.e., conscious to us. This latter is likely to be a relational matter. The options, then, appear to be emergentism of some form (whether it be physicalism, emergentism proper, or panpsychist emergentism) or a Russellian compote of realism about qualities, topped with a little light deflationism about consciousness. Overall, The Mental as Fundamental is a mixed bag, much as one would expect of any newly (re)born field of research, where rampant innovation gives a certain roughness to proceedings. But for devotees of panpsychism, as well as those intrigued by an idea steadily gaining in relevance, this is a book worth having."
- Status