Panpsychism and Priority Cosmopsychism

Abstract

Panpsychism and Priority Cosmopsychism Y u jin Nag a sawa a nd K h a i Wager 4.1 Introduction A contemporary form of panpsychism says that phenomenality is prevalent because all physical ultimates instantiate phenomenal or protophenomenal properties. According to priority cosmopsychism, an alternative to panpsychism that we propose in this chapter, phenomenality is prevalent because the whole cosmos instantiates phenomenal or protophenomenal properties. It says, moreover, that the consciousness of the cosmos is ontologically prior to the consciousness of ordinary individuals like us. Since priority cosmopsychism is a highly speculative view our aim in this chapter remains modest and limited. Instead of providing a full defense of priority cosmopsychism, we try to show only the theoretical advantage of the view over panpsychism. This, however, by no means entails that we develop the view in logical space merely for its own sake. We offer instead a blueprint for a new alternative to panpsychism and explain how such a view avoids some of the most persistent problems for panpsychism while maintaining several of its strengths. 1 This chapter has the following structure. In section 4.2, we discuss panpsychism and priority monism, which are relevant to priority cosmopsychism. In section 4.3, we introduce priority cosmopsychism. In section 4.4, we show that priority cosmopsychism overcomes the main difficulties for panpsychism, including the problem of infinite decomposition and the combination problem. In section 4.5, we defend priority cosmopsychism against possible objections. Section 4.6 concludes.

Cosmopsychism and Consciousness Research: A Fresh View on the Causal Mechanisms Underlying Phenomenal States

“…In particular, we believe that some philosophical ideas recently rediscovered and redeveloped within the fields of metaphysics and the philosophy of mind give fresh impetus to consciousness research in that they provide a conceptual matrix opening up new interpretations of the neuroscientific body of evidence and, potentially, leading to unprecedented research strategies. In this spirit, we present the central ideas behind a novel variant of cosmopsychism, a holistic form of panpsychism from the genus of priority cosmopsychism that relies on the assumption of a cosmic level of consciousness serving as the ultimate bedrock of experiential reality (Keppler, 2012;Shani, 2015;Shani and Keppler, 2018; for different variants of priority cosmopsychism, see Mathews, 2011;Goff, 2017;Nagasawa and Wager, 2017).…”

Priority Cosmopsychism and the Advaita Vedānta

“…However, the same cannot be said about the brand of PC discussed by Nagasawa and Wager (2016), who construe PC precisely as the thesis that the (independently existent) physical universe instantiates cosmic consciousness. So the Brahman-based picture presented by AVT does not square with PC as a theory-type.…”

Not Its Own Meaning: A Hermeneutic of the World

“…Nonetheless, the experiments do show that the idea of a mental world must be taken seriously, if nothing else for the sheer power of the empirical evidence now accumulated. Moreover, philosophers have recently proposed coherent ontologies that can, at least in principle, make sense of reality without the need to postulate anything distinct from mind itself (Kastrup 2017;Nagasawa and Wager 2016;Shani 2015). These ontologies provide coherent frameworks in which the experimental results can be placed and interpreted.…”