The Distribution Question is for Panpsychists and Idealists, Too

Yes, the empirical debates from consciousness science matter for everyone

I have developed a philosophical pet peeve. Sometimes, philosophers speak as though the distribution question in consciousness research—that is, the problem of determining where consciousness can be found in nature—isn’t just as serious a challenge for panpsychists and idealists as it is for everyone else. This is wrong. In what follows, I’ll explain why.

Panpsychism may seem, on its face, to offer a complete answer to the distribution question: Consciousness is everywhere. Problem solved! Unfortunately, feeling satisfied with this response reflects a fundamental misunderstanding. The vast majority of panpsychist views—with Luke Roelofs’ radically plenitudinous panpsychism arguably being the sole exception—don’t claim that literally every entity in the universe is phenomenally conscious. Rather, they only claim that every fundamental entity in the universe is phenomenally conscious. Priority monists who accept panpsychism need only say that the universe as a whole is conscious—not that every single macrophysical object within it has a separate consciousness of its own. Similarly, priority atomists who accept panpsychism need only say that the smallest bits of the universe are conscious—not that every single macrophysical object they compose has a consciousness over and above that of its parts. Panpsychism consequently does not imply the truth or falsity of any thesis about where consciousness is distributed among macrophysical entities, and different panpsychists may dramatically disagree about the matter. For example, one panpsychist could hold the view that the only macrophysical entities who possess consciousness are those with a global workspace. In other words, they could adopt some form of Global Workspace Theory (GWT). Another panpsychist, meanwhile, could coherently maintain that the only macrophysical entities who possess consciousness are those that constitute a maximally irreducible cause–effect complex whose integrated information (Φ) is greater than zero. In other words, they could adopt Integrated Information Theory (IIT). To settle such disputes, panpsychists must join forces with their emergent physicalist peers to (1) empirically determine the most reliable markers of consciousness in macrophysical systems, and (2) discover a general theory of which brain states, cognitive states, or informational states in macrophysical systems are associated with consciousness.

Relatedly, people often assume that the distribution question disappears if idealism is true. This, I suspect, is because the distribution question is often formulated as, “Which physical systems in nature are phenomenally conscious?” Philosophers then assume it’s trivially true that idealism entails the answer “zero,” since the prototypical forms of idealism imply that there aren’t any physical systems at all. But there are several problems here. First, I don’t think it’s correct to say that all idealists are committed to the view that physical systems don’t exist. For reasons I won’t discuss in this post, my preferred formulation of idealism is that mentality is fundamental while the physical world is not. (Similarly, my preferred formulation of physicalism is that the physical world is fundamental while mentality is not.) Idealism understood this way allows for the existence of non-fundamental physical systems, and an idealist who believed in such things could coherently take the question posed above to be a legitimate one. More importantly, however, I think the distribution question can be interpreted in manner that doesn’t assume the existence of physical systems. Why? Even idealists who maintain that physical systems don’t exist should accept that certain experiences which appear to present an external world are indicative of the presence of other minds. For example, idealists should presumably hold that my experience of speaking to you and touching you, as well as my disposition to see a brain that looks just like my own if I give you an MRI, strongly suggests that there’s another conscious mind in my vicinity. Thus, idealists must ask: which external-world-like experiences reveal the presence of other conscious minds, and which ones don’t? Different idealists may dramatically disagree about the matter. For example, one idealist could coherently hold the view that only external-world-like experiences that appear to present a brain with a global workspace are indicative of other conscious minds. Another idealist could coherently hold that only external-world-like experiences that appear to present a brain with the right sorts of higher-order representations are indicative of other conscious minds. To settle such disputes, idealists must join forces with their physicalist and dualist peers to (1) empirically determine the most reliable markers of consciousness in systems that are or appear to be physical, and (2) discover a general theory predicting which physical systems or external-world-like experiences of physical systems are associated with consciousness.