05.31.07
Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism?
Consciousness and Its Place in Nature
Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism?
by Galen Strawson et al.
Imprint Academic, 2006
Review by Ed Brandon on May 22nd 2007
Volume: 11, Number: 21
When I learnt philosophy in the late ’60s, I think it is fair to say that most philosophers were very much still under-labourers, in Locke’s phrase, clearing away the nonsense that besets our thinking but not advancing many novel ideas of their own. Now, however, they explore realms of supposedly actual possible worlds, or even impossible ones; they contemplate the possibility that some contradictions are true; maybe some even count the number of angels on the end of a pin. This volume presents arguments for and against another bizarre, but strangely prevalent idea: panpsychism, the notion that the fundamental stuff of the universe is somehow conscious.