Colloquial Abstract: Under panpsychism, there may be no means of determining the conditions under which fundamental consciousness becomes an integrated conscious person, because panpsychism may be indifferent to testable, physical laws.... more

Colloquial Abstract: Under panpsychism, there may be no means of determining the conditions under which fundamental consciousness becomes an integrated conscious person, because panpsychism may be indifferent to testable, physical laws. This gives reason to think panpsychism is an inadequate model for understanding the nature of consciousness in persons.



Full Abstract



Philip Goff is a proponent of panpsychism, a theory that proposes consciousness appears in the universe in small bits in every piece of physical matter, and that those bits combine together to form higher-order and more complex forms of consciousness, like that found in human beings. The question of how these bits of matter sum up into groups of higher-order consciousness – known as the subject summing problem – remains open. Some propose these bits must be present in an organism for the requisite relation to obtain. Goff thinks this is vague and proposes some other – yet to be defined – spatial relationship as the rule that governs the combination problem.



In this essay I look at a known physical situation in which bits sum into a complex whole, namely the covalent bonding of Hydrogen and Oxygen to form water. From this determinant physical situation, I conclude that no spatial relationship could give a solution to the subject summing problem because of the very vagueness Goff identifies. Additionally, there appears to be little optimism that there could be an empirical solution to the subject summing problem at all. This leaves open the possibility that, for example, subject summing may be indifferent to physical laws.