#panexperientialism

Consciousness doesn't seem to be a "blunder" of "blind" nature. Some form of panpsychism/panexperientialism is probably closer to the truth than emergentist materialism. If you follow materialism to its ultimate conclusion, conscious beings ought to instead just be zombies -- machines shambling about in a dead mechanical universe, without any will or interiority. But we have will and interiority; in fact it's the one thing we can be absolutely 100% sure about in this world, and it's reasonable to assume that other beings have them as well.

“If the mind is flat then our mental lives must exist purely at the ‘mental surface.’ Our brain is an improviser, and it bases it’s current improvisations on previous improvisations: It creates new momentary thoughts and experiences by drawing not on a hidden inner world of knowledge, beliefs and motives but on memory traces of previous momentary thoughts and experiences.

The analogy with fiction is helpful here too. Tolstoy invents Anna’s words and actions as he writes the novel. But he strives to make Anna’s words and actions as coherent as possible – she should ‘stay in character’ or her character should ‘develop’ as the novel unfolds. and when we interpret the behavior of other people, and of ourselves, the same aim applies: a good interpretation is one that does not just make sense of the present moment, but links it with our past actions, words, and indeed interpretations. Our brain is an engine that creates momentary conscious interpretations not by drawing on hidden inner depths, but by linking the present with the past, just as writing a novel involves linking its sentences together coherently, rather than creating an entire world.

…

On closer analysis, the stories we tell about our stable personalities, beliefs and motives can’t possibly be right. By contrast, the quirks, variability and capriciousness of human nature make sense when we realize that our brain is an incomparable improviser: an engine for spontaneously finding meaning and choosing actions that make the best sense in the moment. Thus our thoughts and actions are based on a rich tradition of past thoughts and actions, which our brain harnesses and reworks to address the challenges of the moment. Moreover, just as today’s thoughts follow yesterday’s precedents, so they also set precedents for tomorrow – giving our actions, words and our life a coherent shape. So what makes each of us special is, to a large extent, the uniqueness of our individual history of prior thoughts and experiences. In other words, each of us is a unique tradition continually in the process of creation.”

The above passages come not from a Confucian or Buddhist scholar nor from a process theologian or philosopher, but from the prologue of behavioral scientist Nick Chater’s book, The Mind is Flat, in which he lays out his ideas about the “improvisational brain” and discusses his “flat mind theory.”

I’ve written about Chater a bit before after reading some articles he wrote, some videos he made, and an interview he did. I already have a few problems with the way he’s defining “consciousness” and take issue with how he seems to conflate “mind” with “brain”… but that said I’m really liking all the other stuff he’s saying so far (i.e. I dig the story he’s telling!); I am picking up on some heavy pragmatist influence on Chater (ala William James), and the bit about interpretation and the importance of coherence really sounds like stuff Whitehead would talk about, for instance like when Whiteheads talks about philosophy: “Philosophy is the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience–everything of which we are aware, which we enjoy, perceive, will or think–can be interpreted.”

I’m excited to continue reading the book as I anticipate that I will indeed find more resonances with a Whiteheadian and Confucian understanding of “the self” and panexperientialist understandings of consciousness to which I am partial. I’m sure I’ll be posting more reflections on it as I go.

“I worry a bit about the glorification of consciousness as the pinnacle of all Creation…there is…a seductive, but deceptive, seeming move away from anthropocentrism in the ascription of consciousness to all things, but what this really does, I think, is to say “oh right, all things are like us, or all things have this awesome thing [i.e. consciousness].” But I’m no great fan of consciousness…photosynthesis is much more interesting to me.”

…

“It seems to me that most conversations concerning emergence theory, that either resolve themselves in a paradigm of reductionism or a strong emergence or weak emergence or a strong panpsychism or a weak panpsychism, still operate with this utterly unquestioned assumption that the most complex creatures on the planet are humans and that mind is the pinnacle of Creation and that human mind is the phenomenon toward which universal history has been tending.”

…

“And I’d love to be able to ask if there’s a different way to account for the emergence of, not just complexity, but difference…and so rather than taking our own mental cognitive processes and projecting them back upon bacterial flagella, quarks and protons and neutrons, to ask instead…how it is that what we think of as mind is the process of bacterial processes; which isn’t to say that they’re a random concourse of inanimate things…we might just say agency is something other than what we thought it was…and there has to be lots of different ways to dislodge human consciousness as the pinnacle of Creation and of the locus of all agency that matters. And I think that a bi-product of thinking that way is, again, this disembodied God in the sky who is just masculine consciousness.”

The above transcribed quotes come from Professor Mary-Jane Rebenstein’s recent interview on The Catacombic Machine. It is a great interview!

In the interview, Professor Rubenstein talks about her new pantheism book and, at the end of the interview (around the 1:08:53 mark), she talks a bit about the animism of Bruno and Spinoza, and expresses some of her concerns regarding panpsychism and the glorification of human consciousness, which I thought was really great. I’ve had very similar thoughts, and this is why I like Griffin’s term panexperientialism better because it does a decent job getting at the unique Whiteheadian idea that not just humans but cells, molecules, atoms and even subatomic particles incorporate a capacity for feeling; unlike other various forms of panpsychism, W’s final real things are actual occasions of experience, not bits of consciousness or proto-consciousness…

That said, however, I do think Whitehead still does sort of fall into that hierarchical, anthropocentric nonsense that Rubenstein was talking about with regard to consciousness; it may not necessarily be consciousness per se that makes humans so special in Whitehead’s scheme (because, again, for Whitehead, consciousness is merely a highly developed form of experience), but intense, complex and novel experiences. This still does seem to assume that humans are at the peak of things because of their ability to enjoy/suffer intense and novel experiences… But along these lines, then, I also liked that Rubenstein talked about trees during her interview because it brought to mind something I recently read by contemporary Whiteheadian scholar and process philosopher, Brian Henning:

“If we are to honestly meet our obligation of education, we must be willing to admit that some plants may be sufficiently complex to support a form of personal society that provides some degree of central coordination. If this is true, the difference between plants and animals may not be quite as neat as the distinction between “democratic” and “monarchic” societies implies. Thus I agree with Ferre, who writes, ‘From a metaphysical point of view, the distinction between them [plants and animals] is far less interesting than the great similarities that unite them as innovative, responsive, creative systems.’ If plants are indeed more complex than previously recognized, then the intensity of experience open to them is greater than previously realized and we must modify our behavior toward them accordingly.”

Yeah, I think we humans need to get over ourselves and our oh so special consciousness!

“Whitehead further identified his God with Eros, the ‘Universe as one’,[xvii] and even, when opposing the Semitic god to Plato’s, Satan.[xviii] Thus, with its panentheism, panexperientialism, divine mischief and intense hedonism, kinship to pagan animism and its Romantic nature worship, we are better to re-designate the god of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, as Pan. We thereby paganize Whitehead under the symbol of this seducer goat-god, a god whose desire for the evocation of intense experiences is instanced in his boast of coupling with each of Dionysus’ intoxicated Maenads.[xix] The lure of Pan is better befitted to the philosophy of organism than the canons of Christ; the latter referring to the attempted Christian hijack of Whitehead’s metaphysics under the name process theology.

Plutarch relates the story of a sailor who, during the reign of Tiberius concurrent to the lifetime of Jesus Christ, receives over the seas an arcane vocal declaration to propagate the news that “The great god Pan is dead.”[xx] G. K. Chesterton’s pronouncement that ‘It is said truly in a sense that Pan died because Christ was born’[xxi] we now invert across a Nietzschean line. The decline in Christian belief and its offspring, modern cosmology, allows for a revival of a truly naturalistic ontology. God is dead; Pan returns.”

The above passage comes from a great essay written by Anglo-Scandinavian philosopher, Peter Sjöstedt-H, who I first heard of through the Catabombic Machine podcast. He’s definitely an interesting thinker, and I like his use of Whitehead. Apparently his thinking was at least a partial inspiration for the Marvel character KARNAK.

Regarding the passage above, I’m completely fine with drawing out the connections between Whitehead’s thought and pagan animism; I think this is a very cool and creative line to explore. But the Christian hijacking stuff is a bit much, in my opinion; Whitehead was a Vicar’s son for crying out loud!

“The majority of biologists picture mind as emerging at some stage in the evolution of animals. Before that time there was no mind. From no mind comes mind. Agar proposed the alternative that there has been no moment in evolution when mind made its first appearance. Minds and bodies evolved together even though that body be only a proton or an atom. It is more reasonable to suppose that both objective and subjective have existed as long as anything has existed than to suppose that the subjective has emerged from the non­subjective or that it does not exist at all.”

The above passage is an excerpt from this essay by Charles Birch.