Neutral monism

Panpsychism

The fundamental nature of conscious phenomena is not physical, but all conscious phenomena are always coupled with physical phenomena. Also all physical phenomena are always coupled with some kind of mental or conscious aspect. Therefor the mental and the physical aspect are inseparable aspect.

Related people - Panpsychism

Gustav Fechner — was a physics, he wanted to measure consciousness — but he realized that it was impossible since it was “invisible”. So instead he thought you can measure it in relation to physical stimuli. Psychophysics is still a field within psychology today, and is used in experimental forms.

William James — wrote a lot of books.

Bertrand Russell’s argument for mentality of the physical

Thomas Nagel — agreed with this viewpoint

David Chalmers — Proposed a panpsychist viewpoint, invented the hard problem

Proto panpsychism:

• A double-aspect principle between physical information and phenomenal experience

• There must be something at the fundamental level that contains experience/consciousness

Micropsychism

Some microlevel physical phenomena must themselves be intrinsically experiential

Current versions of panpsychism

• Panpsychism has recently become a surprisingly popular theory of consciousness

• Panpsychist theories are currently defended by some leading philosophers and neuroscientists

IIT

Panpsychism — phenomenal consciousness is everywhere.

Christopher Koch

• Agrees with the panpyshistics points, non emergent.

Giulio Tononi

• Consciousness is (integrated) information (IIT)

  • Information does not have a physical essence

• PHI - amount of consciousness the entity have

• Light that responds with internal process in an external way

IIT Criticism

they criticize that the whole theory is built up on an interpretation that an observer can make of a physical system, that there is actually no information or IIT in protons or neurons; these are purely physical and can be explained with physics.

Functionalism

The computer metaphor of the mind (1950s)

• Mind = computer program (software level)

• Brain = computer (the computing machine, hardware level)

A computer program is an algorithm → that describes how to transform input information to output information. Program is an abstract entity, it does not consist of any particular physical matter.

Positive side of functionalism

• Opening the black box of behaviorism

• Finds smaller boxes inside

  • Mental functions = information processing functions

• Face processing

Multiple realizability

the mind is separate from the brain, therefore you can put the mind in something else as long as it has the specs for it

Transhumanism

• uploading itself at will to a “suitably powerful computational substrate”

  • Achieving immortality by mind uploading

Downside of functionalism

Functionalism says nothing about consciousness, subjectivity, or qualia.

• Treats humans as mere information-processing zombies or robots

Machine consciousness?

• Machines that appears conscious to external observers by mimicking human behaviors and responses? Yes.

• Truly internally phenomenally conscious machines, that can feel their own existence and have a conscious self? No.

  • Zombie machines