Great piece mate, I've thoroughly enjoyed reading these (in-part because they so closely resonate with my own thinking). As I've mentioned before, Wilber's 'Integral Theory' has been a hugely useful framework for me in integrating theology/philosophy and the natural sciences, particularly when it comes to the topic of consciousness. It's both a fascinating yet somewhat terrifying time we live in and the ground is indeed fertile for these discussions around philosophy of mind and metaphysics to take place. Thanks for making a very worthwhile contribution(s) to these conversations!
I have to ask: Are current trends in philosophy of mind really pointing away from materialist reductionism and towards panpsychism and soul? I keep hearing this, but in my experience, even more open-minded philosophers (Tim Crane, David Chalmers, Tim Bayne) aren't straying far from the functionalist orthodoxy, and that's to say nothing of neuroscience, which remains tightly wedded to a reductionist agenda. Critiques of the consensus ventured by philosophers like Thomas Nagel are compelling, but I can't help but suspect that their confidence that the house of mind is built on sand is akin to Stephen Meyer's confidence that the neo-Darwinian synthesis is on the verge of collapse: renegades, after all, always believe that victory is nigh.
Panentheism, i.e. the Cosmic Christ: cf. Teilhard de Chardin SJ (paleontologist), Ilia Delio OSF (scientist), Kathy Duffy SSJ (theologian), Donald Goergen OP (theologian), Richard Rohr OSF (pastoral theologian), Dr. John Haught, retired.
Another valuable reflection which makes your position clearer - and you focus precisely on the issue of 'self-motion' (or 'semovience', for the Argentine tradition).
In fact Mario Crocco begins his essay 'Diferencias entre neurociencias anglófonas y neurobiología iberoamericana: del desencuentro a la comprensión' quoting Plato:
'"La definición de la cosa que llamamos alma estriba en
eso de moverse por sí misma."
"El alma, pues, en virtud de su propio moverse que nosotros
llamamos voluntad…
gobierna y suscita al movimiento todas las cosas en los
The issue being what really counts as 'self-motion' - or the ability to initiate causal series rather than simply react to or continue them (transeunt causality).
Crocco will argue that only individual, non-fungible psychisms (whether human or not) have self-motion.
You claim about 'ethical credibility' is interesting - but not everything is alive or conscious.
If I understand Crocco correctly he is claiming that only finite existentialities, pysches, or souls, have intrinsic valuel:
'Ultimate value makes every existentiality ultimately nondispensable.
stay as the beloved realities among the facts encountered in nature,
while other facts appear as a means used to uncoercively attain differentiations
in the ontic consistency of such sensing semoviences.' (A Palindrome).
I take the liberty of pasting this extract from Crocco - partly because it is not well-known, but mainly because of its relevance:
'Aristotle conceived knowing, gnoeín, as a variety of metabolic assimilation only for the purpose, and with the precise objective, of being able to compose a unique descriptive series with which to delineate the full variety of living beings – by comparing species among themselves and comparing the developmental sequences of individuals. With this conceptual tool, Aristotle was able to achieve his purpose, of attaining conceptual means suitable for unifiedly and uniformly describing the living beings found in nature in all their possible forms. His informational view of knowledge, presenting it as a variety of metabolic assimilation, is thus why Aristotle managed to institute biology as a unified science. In this way Peripatetism and the whole of European culture found a coherent exposition of a sector of reality, the living beings. Scholasticism then procured the goal of extending this exposition to the whole of reality, establishing a description of every type of reality in ontological terms. When Christian Peripatetism paid descriptive attention to psyches or individual existentialities, its purpose was to depict their ontical constitution, which it accordingly did not do in cadacualtic but in fungible terms, as Matter, Form, and their instances are. Its pre-Renaissance ideas permeated most scientific descriptions during Modernity, even those of its ideological opponents.
Therefore, Christian Peripatetism, in order to account for the constitution of every individual, sensibly considered as its formal cause the matter signed by quantity. This name denotes the piece or particular portion of fungible prime matter that, while accidentally composing the individual of the case, after successive information by the Forms of the system's components finally assumes the Form proper of its species or Type.
For Aristotle, in view of his mentioned purpose, it was uninteresting to detect if within the series of organisms animated by a vegetative-sensitive soul the individuals of some species included an existentiality circumstanced to sense and move its body. This is the case of a dog, for instance. Other organisms lack such an existentiality in charge of biological functions, for example a starfish – or its common ancestors with the dog, if Aristotle could have paid attention to them. These other organisms are constituted purely in the hylozoic hiatus and operate in a purely reactive way: they are unable to inaugurate innovative causal series semoviently, that is to say with decisions.' (This is frome 'A Palindrome) - also published in the M.I.T collection 'Ontology of Consciousness: percipient agency.'
So this is not pansychism and it is unclear to me how pansychism can account for cadacualtic, non-fungible individuals.
Btw, I own few books but I do have a copy of Roger Scruton's 'The Soul of the World' which you would surely like.
The Nagel book is interesting but again seems to fall short in some ways.
However, there is clearly a move to towards pansychism as a reaction to the false problem of 'ermergence'....psyches do not emerge :)
Great piece mate, I've thoroughly enjoyed reading these (in-part because they so closely resonate with my own thinking). As I've mentioned before, Wilber's 'Integral Theory' has been a hugely useful framework for me in integrating theology/philosophy and the natural sciences, particularly when it comes to the topic of consciousness. It's both a fascinating yet somewhat terrifying time we live in and the ground is indeed fertile for these discussions around philosophy of mind and metaphysics to take place. Thanks for making a very worthwhile contribution(s) to these conversations!
I have to ask: Are current trends in philosophy of mind really pointing away from materialist reductionism and towards panpsychism and soul? I keep hearing this, but in my experience, even more open-minded philosophers (Tim Crane, David Chalmers, Tim Bayne) aren't straying far from the functionalist orthodoxy, and that's to say nothing of neuroscience, which remains tightly wedded to a reductionist agenda. Critiques of the consensus ventured by philosophers like Thomas Nagel are compelling, but I can't help but suspect that their confidence that the house of mind is built on sand is akin to Stephen Meyer's confidence that the neo-Darwinian synthesis is on the verge of collapse: renegades, after all, always believe that victory is nigh.
Panentheism, i.e. the Cosmic Christ: cf. Teilhard de Chardin SJ (paleontologist), Ilia Delio OSF (scientist), Kathy Duffy SSJ (theologian), Donald Goergen OP (theologian), Richard Rohr OSF (pastoral theologian), Dr. John Haught, retired.
If stalks of wheat have souls, is bread mass murder?
Another valuable reflection which makes your position clearer - and you focus precisely on the issue of 'self-motion' (or 'semovience', for the Argentine tradition).
In fact Mario Crocco begins his essay 'Diferencias entre neurociencias anglófonas y neurobiología iberoamericana: del desencuentro a la comprensión' quoting Plato:
'"La definición de la cosa que llamamos alma estriba en
eso de moverse por sí misma."
"El alma, pues, en virtud de su propio moverse que nosotros
llamamos voluntad…
gobierna y suscita al movimiento todas las cosas en los
cielos, sobre tierra y en el mar."
Platón, Leyes X: 895c, 896a y 896c'
(the essay can also be found on Academia.edu)
The issue being what really counts as 'self-motion' - or the ability to initiate causal series rather than simply react to or continue them (transeunt causality).
Crocco will argue that only individual, non-fungible psychisms (whether human or not) have self-motion.
You claim about 'ethical credibility' is interesting - but not everything is alive or conscious.
If I understand Crocco correctly he is claiming that only finite existentialities, pysches, or souls, have intrinsic valuel:
'Ultimate value makes every existentiality ultimately nondispensable.
Sensing semoviences – percipient agencies, sentient intelligences – irrevocably
stay as the beloved realities among the facts encountered in nature,
while other facts appear as a means used to uncoercively attain differentiations
in the ontic consistency of such sensing semoviences.' (A Palindrome).
I take the liberty of pasting this extract from Crocco - partly because it is not well-known, but mainly because of its relevance:
'Aristotle conceived knowing, gnoeín, as a variety of metabolic assimilation only for the purpose, and with the precise objective, of being able to compose a unique descriptive series with which to delineate the full variety of living beings – by comparing species among themselves and comparing the developmental sequences of individuals. With this conceptual tool, Aristotle was able to achieve his purpose, of attaining conceptual means suitable for unifiedly and uniformly describing the living beings found in nature in all their possible forms. His informational view of knowledge, presenting it as a variety of metabolic assimilation, is thus why Aristotle managed to institute biology as a unified science. In this way Peripatetism and the whole of European culture found a coherent exposition of a sector of reality, the living beings. Scholasticism then procured the goal of extending this exposition to the whole of reality, establishing a description of every type of reality in ontological terms. When Christian Peripatetism paid descriptive attention to psyches or individual existentialities, its purpose was to depict their ontical constitution, which it accordingly did not do in cadacualtic but in fungible terms, as Matter, Form, and their instances are. Its pre-Renaissance ideas permeated most scientific descriptions during Modernity, even those of its ideological opponents.
Therefore, Christian Peripatetism, in order to account for the constitution of every individual, sensibly considered as its formal cause the matter signed by quantity. This name denotes the piece or particular portion of fungible prime matter that, while accidentally composing the individual of the case, after successive information by the Forms of the system's components finally assumes the Form proper of its species or Type.
For Aristotle, in view of his mentioned purpose, it was uninteresting to detect if within the series of organisms animated by a vegetative-sensitive soul the individuals of some species included an existentiality circumstanced to sense and move its body. This is the case of a dog, for instance. Other organisms lack such an existentiality in charge of biological functions, for example a starfish – or its common ancestors with the dog, if Aristotle could have paid attention to them. These other organisms are constituted purely in the hylozoic hiatus and operate in a purely reactive way: they are unable to inaugurate innovative causal series semoviently, that is to say with decisions.' (This is frome 'A Palindrome) - also published in the M.I.T collection 'Ontology of Consciousness: percipient agency.'
So this is not pansychism and it is unclear to me how pansychism can account for cadacualtic, non-fungible individuals.
Btw, I own few books but I do have a copy of Roger Scruton's 'The Soul of the World' which you would surely like.
The Nagel book is interesting but again seems to fall short in some ways.
However, there is clearly a move to towards pansychism as a reaction to the false problem of 'ermergence'....psyches do not emerge :)