Date of Award
2013
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in Philosophy
Department
Philosophy and Religion
First Advisor
Donovan Wishon
Second Advisor
Robert Barnard
Third Advisor
Steven Skultety
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
It is only recently that panpsychism has emerged as a viable position in philosophy of mind and metaphysics. As such, the exploration and defense of it is not yet on par with some competing views. The current project is a step towards a remedy to this unfortunate state of affairs. It concerns one of the most important objections to the view, which I label the 'mind-dust' objection in homage to William James. It is essentially the conceptual difficulty of how proto-experiential being at the micro-level is supposed to 'sum' in a way that forms the consciousness with which we are intimately aware. I argue that the objection is more forceful than some suppose, and attempt to explicate a way around it. A possible route to circumvent the problem, I explain, is to develop a suggestion made by Grover Maxwell almost forty years ago. The insight is to conceive of proto-experiences not as particles or bits but as fields of influence. The end result is a position that looks in many ways similar to the epistemic neutral monism of Bertrand Russell, but is also a novel version of panpsychism. The suggestion is simply this: it might be the case that we should think of the world as inherently and ontologically qualitative in nature. I call this resultant position panqualiaism and hope that it represents a step forward.
Recommended Citation
Hamilton, John Heath, "Panpsychism And Mind-Dust" (2013). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 749.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/749