Panpsychism is increasingly being regarded as a respectable position by researchers in various disciplines concerned with solving the ‘hard’ problem of consciousness. Physicists (Hameroff, Shimony, Stapp), psychologists (Velmans, Hunt) and philosophers (Chalmers, Rosenberg, Seager, Griffin) are among those who have presented sophisticated recent formulations of this position in quantum-theoretical, neurophysiological, and information-theoretical terms. However, while such developments are encouraging when viewed from the perspective of a scientifically naturalistic solution to the ‘hard’ problem, they can be shown to be problematic when viewed from a technological standpoint. For example, it is generally assumed that a commitment to (some version of) panpsychism entails a commitment to the possibility of artificial (in the sense of artifactual and not as-if or ersatz) consciousness. This appears to follow from the fact that panpsychism is a type of monism. However, as Griffin (1998) has shown, a commitment to metaphysical monism does not entail a corresponding commitment to phenomenal monism. On what is perhaps the most thoroughly worked out version of panpsychism – Whiteheadian-Hartshornian panexperientialism (or ‘psychicalism’) - a distinction must be made between (1) ‘actual occasions’ (or dipolar physical-mental events) and ‘compound individuals’ (or structured complexes of occasions) that are experiential, and (2) mere ‘aggregates’ of occasions which are not.

In this paper, it is argued that while such an organisational dualism constitutes a necessary basis for classifying natural and artificial (as artifactual) phenomena into experiential (or compound individual) and non-experiential (or aggregative) kinds, it does not constitute a sufficient basis. There are (at least) two reasons for this: First, the fact that experience is causal on panexperientialism (that is, occasions are creative or self-actualising in part) would seem to suggest that an appeal to behavioural criteria is sufficient for classifying complex phenomena as experiential or otherwise. Nonetheless, empirical and conceptual evidence exists which suggests that experience is only contingently correlated with behaviour (Guillain-Barré syndrome, Searle’s Chinese Room gedanken experiment, etc), thereby rendering an appeal to purely epistemic criteria problematic; second, it has been argued that membership of a specific class of processes constitutes a necessary condition for the production of compound individuals (Griffin 1998), thereby offsetting the appeal to purely epistemic criteria. However, the view that such a class might, at least in principle, include processes associated with the production of artifacts is problematic given the failure of panexperientialists to provide a satisfactory account of the nature (as essence) of artificing, that is, artifactual construction of replications of natural phenomena. In fact, detailed phenomenological analysis of artificing in a panexperientialist context establishes the validity of in principle arguments against the possibility of artificial (as artifactual) consciousness and, crucially, irrespective of whether a top-down (or designed) or bottom-up (or emergent) approach to artifact construction is adopted (Ali Forthcoming).

REFERENCES

Ali, S.M. (Forthcoming) The Nature of The Artificial: Augmenting Negrottian Artificiality with Neo-Whiteheadian Naturality. The First Yearbook of The Artificial. Edited by M.Negrotti.

Griffin, D.R. (1998) Unsnarling The World Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and The Mind-Body Problem. Berkeley, University of California Press.