Dan Dennett is a Panpsychist

Dan Dennett is a Panpsychist

Tam Hunt

Now here’s my main point — admittedly a fairly subtle point. If Dennett is a materialist and he admits that subjective experience is real, and he is an anti-vitalist, then he must also be a panpsychist. This is the case because if subjective experience is real, and materialism is true, then matter must include experience at some level, however nascent. And if anti-vitalism is true, then life does not suddenly appear where it was not present before — it must also be a continuum from the most simple forms of matter up through the chain of being all the way to us, human beings.

And if anti-vitalism is true, then Dennett can’t argue consistently that consciousness magically appeared at some arbitrary point in the history of the universe. Ergo: life and consciousness are present in some tiny amount from the most simple type of matter up through the most complex forms we know of today. In other words, all things are alive to some degree, and all things are conscious to some degree. This is panpsychism.

A difference between what we consider to be “life” and what we consider to be “consciousness” is that explaining the functions of consciousness does not explain consciousness, subjective experience. We can explain the various functions of human consciousness, such as sight, dreaming, judgment, etc. But these functions all pre-suppose a first-person point of view, what we call subjective experience. We must somehow explain this first-person point of view, and why it is different than a third-person point of view, if we’re seeking insight into the nature of the universe — or “merely” in explaining consciousness.