Greg Hill made a really interesting post on his blog today in which he discusses the contention raised by the philosopher Galen Strawson that physicalism entails panpsychism, or the stance that all physical matter is conscious. Now I don’t propose to develop that specific argument, but in comments I have discussed the idea that it is not so much that matter is conscious but that consciousness resides in the experience of relationship (it turns out that Strawson defines consciousness in terms of the ability to experience, so that is quite handy).
Greg refers to the experience of Jung where he “reported an experience he had as a child: ‘Am I sitting on the stone or am I the stone on which he is sitting?’”. To me, it is not so much that I experience the rock and the rock experiences me, but that there is an experience of relationship between me and the rock. Consciousness manifests experience, which in turn requires distinction to acquire form. From the creation of distinction (what G Spencer-Brown would have defined as perfect continence) comes identity and the experience of an experiencer and that which is experienced; subject and object.
So I fall to wandering. If the process of manifesting consciousness as experience gives rise to duality (in order for experience to have form), then this process appears to be mirrored in language and music. Unformed sound becomes language, words, sound with form that creates distinction. Every word cleaves our perception of the world in two. The word sand divides the world of experience into sand and not sand. Music defines a structure of sound against the chaos. Language shapes our experience of the world and gives it form in ways that mirror that primary manifestation of universal consciousness as experience.
There is potentially a tie in with Professor Julian Jaynes’ hypothesis that includes the premise that consciousness is a learned process based on metaphorical language and gives rise to the ability (amongst other things) to introspect, to self-examine. While this is a different definition of consciousness, it does stress the importance of developed language in understanding the experience of experiencing. And if language mirrors the process of the emergence of form-as-experience from consciousness, while giving rise to the ability to understand how that process shapes our sense of self… then it seems fair to understand language itself, and every word, sentence, song, poem, story as sacred. As truly and fully participating in that process of emergence and co-creation.
Yes Adam, Jaynes is a different definition of consciousness. As a result of comments on different fora where the original idea has been raised I’m becoming convinced that the best word to use, in order to avoid confusion, is ‘experience’ for what Strawson proposes. Our ability as humans to construct abstract, metaphorical and other fabulations has enabled us to do many things, though it comes at a cost (see my recent ‘Philosopher and the Wolf’ blog on Hill’s Chronicle). The dualism you note also leads to a dualistic sense of body and soul as distinct entities. Something which some versions of panpsychism would reinforce, but which Strawson is, I think, trying to avoid. Which is what makes his proposition so interesting. He is saying to his fellow materialists: “you gotta believe this”!
The issue with dualism is that that is how people experience the world, at such a fundamental level that it is per-verbal and probably pre-conscious (in the awareness sense of the word). So any discussion has to acknowledge this and any analysis has to take that into account. But I think Strawson is right to start with the proposition of ‘experience’. I must read the book. I’ve been trying to break down my thinking in this area as a series of semi-axiomatic principles and corollaries and my starting point has always been that ‘there is an experience’ as the one true a priori… but that the experience of duality comes into being at the level of the experience of experience.