Page 68 - BBC Focus - August 2017

IN FOCUS | CONSCIOUSNESS

“Consciousness is

not a miraculous
2 exist in the first place? Physical sciences seem BELOW: Was Karl Popper, an
unable to answer these fundamental questions. To influential 20th-Century phenomenon that
philosopher, wrong to dismiss
use a metaphor, the mystery of consciousness is about
panpsychism as nonsense?
explaining the ‘magic of turning the water of material arises out of nothing
processes’ into the ‘wine of conscious experiences’.
Many scientists and philosophers have tried and in the brain, but
failed to expose the trick for a long time.
Panpsychists try to solve this mystery by appealing something that
to the radical hypothesis that everything in the
Universe, including the subatomic particles of the
brain, is conscious. They say that if the constituents exists everywhere in
of the brain are already conscious, then it is not much
of a stretch to suggest that they give rise to a full-scale the Universe”
human consciousness when they are gathered and
arranged with the necessary complexity. It is not a
surprise that the ‘wine of consciousness’ is produced
from the ‘water of material processes’ if the water
already contains wine.
So what is the consciousness of subatomic
particles? Panpsychists do not necessarily say that
these particles have conscious experiences in the
same way that humans do. Particles have no sensory
apparatus such as eyes or ears, so they do not enjoy
visual or auditory experiences as we do; they must
encounter something much more primitive. That is
why some panpsychists call the consciousness of
these entities ‘protoconsciousness’. Physical sciences
postulate many fundamental features of the Universe,
such as space-time, mass, charge and spin. These
features are fundamental because they cannot be
explained in terms of more basic features.
Panpsychists say that the consciousness of subatomic
particles is comparable to these fundamental
features. They are the ultimate building blocks of
reality that ground our fully fledged consciousness.
Panpsychism offers a simple yet elegant solution to
the mystery of consciousness. Consciousness is not a
miraculous phenomenon that arises out of nothing in
the brain, but something that exists everywhere in
the Universe.
Exactly how the consciousness of subatomic
particles can combine to form a full-scale human
consciousness is a matter of dispute. Some
panpsychists hypothesise that smaller conscious
experiences merge or fuse to yield full-scale human
conscious experiences. Some other panpsychists
hypothesise that when an aggregate of small
conscious experiences reaches a certain level of ABOVE: thought experiment. Take a sentence of five words,
Subatomic
complexity, a full-scale human consciousness arises say, ‘It is a beautiful day’. Gather five people and
particles can
as an emergent property. These hypotheses are help us assign one of the words to each person. Stand these
inevitably speculative as we do not have direct access explain the people in a row and let each contemplate their own
world, but
to the consciousness of subatomic particles. word as intently as possible. Is there now a
could they
Critics argue that panpsychism faces a serious also be consciousness of the entire group contemplating the
problem of its own: the combination problem. The conscious? whole sentence? No. Members of the group are
combination problem was originally introduced by individually conscious but their presence does not
William James, the so-called father of American give rise to a unified consciousness of the entire group
psychology. James presents the problem with this contemplating the whole sentence.

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