Experience and the subject

I’ve noticed on the net that recent work of Gregg Rosenberg and Galen Strawson on panexperientialist themes seems to be generating more responses to the topic from mainstream analytical philosophy, which on the whole I think has hitherto often regarded the subject as something the absurdity of which had already been established, or for which one’s intuitions that this were the case were sufficient.

Bridging the gap

In this interesting paper, Peter Carruthers and Elizabeth Schechter (‘C & S’) argue that the case for panpsychism expounded by Galen Strawson (previously discussed here and here in this blog) fails to close the explanatory gap “between description of the physical and functional properties of the human body and brain, on the one hand, and consciousness described in phenomenal and experiential terms on the other”.

From Fundamentality to ubiquity

In a paper entitled "Realistic monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism" (linked on this page and previously mentioned on this blog here), Galen Strawson argues against experience being an emergent phenomena on the grounds that ‘If it really is true that Y is emergent from X then it must be the case that Y is in some sense wholly dependent on X and X alone, so that all features of Y trace intelligibly back to X ’. He contends that this does not apply in relation to the supposed emergence of experience from wholly non-experiential matter.

Experience debate at the Infidel's Forum

Here is the link to an interesting on-line forum discussion I came across (on 'Panpsychism vs Materialism'). The Infidel Guy is an atheist radio announcer.

The discussion contains a number of posts by philosopher Christian de Quincey, author of Radical Nature.