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Harmony in a panpsychist world.

Experiences tend to be followed by states for which they provide normative reasons. Such harmonious correlations cry out for explanation. Theories that answer or diminish these cries thereby achieve an advantage over theories that do neither. I argue that the main lines of response to these cries th...

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Published in:Synthese Vol. 200; no. 6; pp. 1 - 33
Main Author: Saad, Bradford
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Dec2022
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        au: Saad, Bradford
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          Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
          Sentience Institute, New York, US
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      keyword:
        Consciousness
        Design hypotheses
        Fine-tuning
        Functionalism
        Hedonic match
        Multiverse
        Panpsychism
        Psychophysical luck
        Rationality
        Teleological laws
      ab: Experiences tend to be followed by states for which they provide normative reasons. Such harmonious correlations cry out for explanation. Theories that answer or diminish these cries thereby achieve an advantage over theories that do neither. I argue that the main lines of response to these cries that are available to biological theorists—theorists who hold (roughly) that conscious subjects are generally biological entities—are problematic. And I argue that panpsychism—which holds (roughly) that conscious subjects are ubiquitous in nature—provides an attractive response to these explanatory cries. Taken together, these considerations underwrite a kind of ‘psychophysical fine-tuning’ argument in support of panpsychism, one that is reminiscent of cosmological fine-tuning arguments in favor of multiverse hypotheses.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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