Panpsychism and the Emergence of Consciousness

Book excerpt: In this book Fabian Klinge develops a novel approach for explaining phenomenal consciousness. He defends a version of panpsychism, that is the theory, that (some of) the fundamental physical entities exhibit consciousness. However, in contrast to standard conceptions of the view, the author does not take human consciousness to be grounded in but emergent from the consciousness of elementary particles. In this form, he argues, panpsychism can overcome the doctrine’s Achilles' heel, the combination problem, without running into similarly severe problems—thus rendering panpsychism a strong contender to its problem-ridden rivals physicalism and dualism. In addition, the author provides a thorough analysis of the poorly studied concept of metaphysical emergence. He argues that, by refining some of the major contributions in the literature, emergence can be made intelligible enough to serve as a basis for a credible solution proposal to the mind-body problem.