Panpsychism holds that experience must already be present in elementary matter for consciousness to arise at the macroscopic level. We argue that this conclusion, however carefully motivated, follows only if one assumes a particular — and independently refutable — model of how phenomenological contents compose. Once that assumption is identified and rejected, the pressure towards panpsychism dissolves. In its place, a transcendental argument shows that consciousness is not distributed through ma…
Read morePanpsychism holds that experience must already be present in elementary matter for consciousness to arise at the macroscopic level. We argue that this conclusion, however carefully motivated, follows only if one assumes a particular — and independently refutable — model of how phenomenological contents compose. Once that assumption is identified and rejected, the pressure towards panpsychism dissolves. In its place, a transcendental argument shows that consciousness is not distributed through matter but necessitated by the form of composition itself, even when every elementary part carries nothing at all. The position, under the assumption of monism, is called null monism.
