It looks like panpsychism has graduated to the big time of mainstream scientistic thought. A sign of desperation on the part of materialistic neuroscientists with the continual frustrating confrontation with the "hard problem?
A recent article in Scientific American expounds on this, and is authored by several of the leading lights in not only consciousness research but also parapsychology - Adam Crabtree, Bernardo Kastrup and Edward Kelly. The title is "Could Multiple Personality Disorder Explain Life, the Universe and Everything?".
The article appears to be partly derived from Kastrup's consciousness research paper, "The Universe in Consciousness". Kastrup claims that his hypothesis does not have a problem with the "hard problem", because everything is consciousness. It seems to me that it just shifts the problem, substitutes one mystery with another. It is revealed to really be the unsolved perhaps unsolvable mystery of what really is the ultimate nature of consciousness.
The basic idea appears to be that not only are the Universe and ourselves all consciousness, but that we ourselves consist of "dissociated alters" of this Cosmic Consciousness. This terminology purposely imitates the clinical psychological description of multiple personality disorder. They profess to see many parallels between human MPD and this panpsychist concept of the nature of human consciousness. They go into some interesting clinical research on MPD:
The "dissociated personality alters" appear to be totally separate and independent of the main personality, but also, somehow part of the whole.
Panpsychism might be growingly popular, but I'm not persuaded. Much of the empirical evidence of parapsychology including data from many phenomena such as reincarnation memories, mediumistic communications, and many NDEs, fits much better with interactive dualism. In this understanding, human consciousness is seen as constituting a mobile center of consciousness with a fundamentally different basic nature from the physical, separate and apart from yet communicating with the physical world via the physical brain. As far as the "hard problem" is concerned, like this new version of panpsychism, interactive dualism also avoids the "hard problem", but it also just substitutes this with another just as deep mystery.
A recent article in Scientific American expounds on this, and is authored by several of the leading lights in not only consciousness research but also parapsychology - Adam Crabtree, Bernardo Kastrup and Edward Kelly. The title is "Could Multiple Personality Disorder Explain Life, the Universe and Everything?".
The article appears to be partly derived from Kastrup's consciousness research paper, "The Universe in Consciousness". Kastrup claims that his hypothesis does not have a problem with the "hard problem", because everything is consciousness. It seems to me that it just shifts the problem, substitutes one mystery with another. It is revealed to really be the unsolved perhaps unsolvable mystery of what really is the ultimate nature of consciousness.
The basic idea appears to be that not only are the Universe and ourselves all consciousness, but that we ourselves consist of "dissociated alters" of this Cosmic Consciousness. This terminology purposely imitates the clinical psychological description of multiple personality disorder. They profess to see many parallels between human MPD and this panpsychist concept of the nature of human consciousness. They go into some interesting clinical research on MPD:
Quote:"In 2015, doctors in Germany reported the extraordinary case of a woman who suffered from what has traditionally been called “multiple personality disorder” and today is known as “dissociative identity disorder” (DID). The woman exhibited a variety of dissociated personalities (“alters”), some of which claimed to be blind. Using EEGs, the doctors were able to ascertain that the brain activity normally associated with sight wasn’t present while a blind alter was in control of the woman’s body, even though her eyes were open. Remarkably, when a sighted alter assumed control, the usual brain activity returned."
The "dissociated personality alters" appear to be totally separate and independent of the main personality, but also, somehow part of the whole.
Quote:"We know empirically from DID (or MPD) that consciousness can give rise to many operationally distinct centers of concurrent experience, each with its own personality and sense of identity. Therefore, if something analogous to DID happens at a universal level, the one universal consciousness could, as a result, give rise to many alters with private inner lives like yours and ours. As such, we may all be alters—dissociated personalities—of universal consciousness."
Panpsychism might be growingly popular, but I'm not persuaded. Much of the empirical evidence of parapsychology including data from many phenomena such as reincarnation memories, mediumistic communications, and many NDEs, fits much better with interactive dualism. In this understanding, human consciousness is seen as constituting a mobile center of consciousness with a fundamentally different basic nature from the physical, separate and apart from yet communicating with the physical world via the physical brain. As far as the "hard problem" is concerned, like this new version of panpsychism, interactive dualism also avoids the "hard problem", but it also just substitutes this with another just as deep mystery.
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