The Problem With Panpsychism
by Adam Robbert
Is not that it’s bad theory. The problem with panpsychism is that it’s often marshaled to generate an overly homogenizing sense of unity in the cosmos. The issue I have with this reading is that nothing about panpsychism warrants such a statement. From the thesis that all things prehend, abstract, affect, or experience — terms I use as synonymous with panpsychism — it does not follow that those experiences are (a) anything like one another; (b) translatable into terms that can be exchanged without friction across domains; or (c) form some kind of underlying stratum through which all entities communicate.
I started thinking about the questions raised by panpsychism this morning because of THIS post from Graham Harman. It got me thinking about how panpsychist theories get treated in academia as opposed to other ontological theories. Nobody runs around challenging materialism on the grounds that it flattens the distinctions between different entities. We say, for example, that the Sun and Monet paintings are both made of material stuff but no one is at pains to point out that the Sun and painted water lilies are qualitatively very different because everyone already understands that that’s not the point being argued. It’s the same with panpsychism; saying that humans and daffodils share an ontological capacity to abstract from a richer environment is not to make any comment on the kinds of worlds these entities bring forth. To bring this charge against panpsychism is to assume a claim that’s not being made by the theory. In other words the charge that panpsychism flattens the distinction between different entities is a strawman.
Panpsychism is interesting precisely because it implies difference. See that jelly fish over there? It lives in its own world. See that rose bush? Fully in a world. See that blue whale? It lives in a universe all its own. What we humans have in common with these other creatures is that we are equally thrown into a world of meaning, affect, and consequence, it just might not be anything like the world(s) as it exists for jelly fish, roses, and blue whales. The paramount problem of panpsychism is then of attending to irreconcilable differences between enacted worldspaces. We learn, for example, that the Navy’s use of radar is disruptive to the whale’s cognitive ecosystem, so now radar technology is part of what counts as ecology. Ecology means trying to attend to the whale and its world, not just one or the other and panpsychism generates a plausible account of the conditions necessary for the possibility of doing such cognitive ethology. I for one think this kind of work matters when constructing eco-social ethics.
What we need is not a whole sale rejection of panpsychism but rather a critical turn in how we conceptualize what panpsychism means. What does panpsychism mean for politics? For notions of alterity? For social and ecological justice? I’m more interested in seeing where panpsychism can drive these discussions than I am in justifying whether or not panpsychism is a tenable thesis at all. That much has already been established and it’s time to move the theory into new territories.
Quick thought. Yes, we need “a critical turn in how we conceptualize what panpsychism means.” But haven’t we already done that? Whether the work has been popularized or well-known is a different issue. I would also say that your definition of panpsychism is far too loose, i.e., equivocal in irreconciliable ways.
By critical turn I mean something like a dialogue between panpsychism and critical theory/political ecology. I’m not sure that much literature exists on the topic. If you can point me to some sources I would be much obliged.
As for my use of the term, I tend to be more flexible with jargon than most. Given the number of iterations and variations of “panpsychism” (Cf. Skrbina) I’m just not that convinced that we’ll succeed in generating one definition that will cover all the permutations so I’m happy addressing an orbit of related terms that convey similar meanings.
A good response–you have me there. I know those fields not well enough to suggest anything, but I know the Americanist tradition well enough that there’s more on the subject than one could ever want, but I cannot think of any cross-over there. In much Americanist literature, we don’t use the term “panpsychist”; even using the term hints at what discourses one converses in most. I might suggest some various threads in which it is discussed in Americanist literature, but I am not sure that will be helpful.
Given the way you are using the word “panpsychism,” cannot deep ecology and similar movements be included? Can you make connections there? This whole discussion, including Harman, feels like an insider discussion and not a cross-tradition issue.
Yeah, it’s hard to say how panpsychism as concept functions in different traditions. There is certainly affinities with deep ecology and in that sense I would argue “with” the deep ecologists on many points. But what both conversations around deep ecology and panpsychism are lacking, I think, is some strong showing of what alterity means. There has been a long standing debate between social ecologists/green marxists and deep ecologists that I think can be aided by thinking panpsychism, alterity, and ecology together; I would throw my hat in that ring in terms of cross-tradition discussions. I don’t know of much literature that takes this up in depth, but would be happy to know that I’m just missing something.
Maybe you have a contribution to make….
What is it about alterity that we need to know? It is not native to a lot of Americanist studies: it is a strong component of continental thought. What is it that you think we are missing? Additionally, what is going on in that debate that you mention.
“Alterity” is something I’ve been trying to smuggle into Dewey studies in the sense that while we share a world, our meaningful experience of the world can be irreconciliably different. While in principle our experience might be translatable, meaning is embodied, and the body is not translatable. Where do I go with this?
Deweyan ethics has not yet confronted issues such a repression, i.e., the notion that not only is our experience not transparent, but that through continent necessity the meaning of our actions may be hidden from our reflective awareness and yet be terribly harmful.
This is a problem because, in addition to the obvious ethical reasons, Deweyan democracy assumes the possibility of a “public” or common grounds and common social consciousness from which we may build a participatory democracy. However, he’s an extreme optimist in this regard, and his contemporary interpreters tend to play down his optimism.
In short, there is no hint of alterity in Deweyan thought, which in part might be due to his lingering Hegelianism, for in spirit all wounds eventually heal … or do they? There’s a political issue for ya.
jh, this is why I keep bringing up the body in all of its kluged conflicts and other warps and woofs, as W.James noted there are multiple and inevitably conflicted interests at work in any system including individual bodies let alone imagined collective ones that are not reducible/solvable by sublation.
maybe you can help me out of my correlationalist framework a bit here b/c coming from say Wittgenstein or the phenomenologists to have a world is different than merely having characteristic ways (of the kind one would find described in say physics or chemistry) of interacting with the world, it is to have very complex background capacities/systems at work of the kind that a rock doesn’t seem to physically possess, so what am I missing from say understanding a rock as the sum of what I would know about its capacities from the physical sciences?
DMF,
Not necessarily. I took the original comment in a quasi-Heideggerian sense wherein the reality of the world is fundamentally a semiotic of existence, i.e., how existential structures relate to each other from the standpoint of something that can comprehend those structures in some way. Hence, an alien phenomenology would radically rethink what it is to comprehend the semiotic structure of worldhood. Given Harman being a departure from Heidegger, it seemed like a plausible inference to me, but perhaps I can be corrected. If there’s a critique of Heidegger, it’s that he focused on what human comprehension would be.
in the spirit of this blog that is a reasonable angle, but I reject Harman’s Heidegger and prefer the critique along the lines of M-Ponty. I think b/c I did research in psychopharmacology/life-sciences before studying philo I am much more struck by how much of who we are is like other materials than how much they may be like us, and I just have no feeling/need for a unified theory of everything, when Wittgenstein said that he came to teach differences he was singing my song.
Dmf,
I also reject Harman’s Heidegger insomuch as I do not think it a historical or necessary reading of Heidegger, though I love its originality and productivity. Yet that is not what I was describing. I described the semiotic of worldhood, which can–against Heidegger–be understood or speculated about in a non-human way. Hence, alien phenomenology. It must be, of course, a speculative position as there is no way out of the hermeneutic circle. There are many ways in which Peirce and like-minded contemporary thinkers accomplish this without resort to Heidegger.
dmf —
All good questions. As you might expect I think Whitehead has the best take on the situation. For Whitehead, any kind of “world” that a rock has is negligible. A note: in short hand we might say that Whitehead reframes the primary/secondary distinction with what he calls “presentational immediacy” and “causal efficacy.” We might see these as distinguishing between “perception” and “reception.” So, rocks might receive but not perceive, even has both are intermixed in all entities/relations. The point is that Whitehead sees what Locke called secondary qualities as present to all beings (even if only in an impoverished way), rather than just humans (i.e., qualitative worlds are not the exclusive properties of beings with complex brains; qualitative worlds are actual for all beings.) Though for rocks the physical sciences are probably the best way to learn about them. Bogost has a lot of fun with this question in his new book. Lots of good stuff there.
Jason –
More short hand responses. Carolyn Merchant has a great anthology out just called Ecology. In it you can find several essays from social ecologists (e.g., Murray Bookchin) and deep ecologists (e.g., Arne Naess). I’ve been fascinated by the disagreements between these two groups for some time. Social ecologists charge that deep ecologists ignore the political/social dimension of ecological problems arguing that, in some cases, the deep ecological emphasis on things like unity, interconnectedness etc. actually hides the social asymmetries that different groups face in the struggle for ecosocial justice. I think cosmopolitics (Latour/Stengers/Haraway) and the alter-panpsychism I’m trying to work out can contribute much to these issues. More to come.
I am familiar with and have read Bookchin, Naess, feminist ecological thinkers, Leopold, etc. I just didn’t recall it, but you quickly point out some problems. I don’t think that interconnectedness necessarily hides asymmetries, but I’m thinking from a general Buddhist perspective and not what Naess et all wrote. THanks for the clarification.
http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/108/215
Towards a Post-Phenomenology of Life:
Castoriadis’ Critical Naturphilosophie
Suzi Adams
This looks great. Have you checked out this yet:
http://tinyurl.com/6swm2hf
not yet, saw some interesting reviews but I have pretty limited library access these days is it worth buying? there are big gaps in Castoriadis but he makes some moves that I thought might be of some interest to your project.
John Searle certainly doesn’t think panpsychism is a legitimate philosophical position… Most skeptics seem to take the route that Johnson took against Berkeley’s esse es percipi, i.e., the infamous rock argument. Rock consciousness is incredible. Unbelievable. On the face of it, I have to agree.
I know it isn’t a popular aspect of Whitehead for OOOists, but his philosophy of organism would not find reception/perception (concrescence) in the rock as a rock; rather, he would point to the enduring societies/organisms that make up (or are made up of) the rock as the experiencing individuals. The rock is an aggregate and not an organized being.
On the other hand, there are no rocks on the earth that have not been affected by living processes, even if indirectly (even meteorites pass through an atmosphere whose composition is biologically regulated). Rocks are more like the scab or excretion of what on the whole is a living process. They are not simply inorganic, since they would not be what they are without the organic.