https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9014-8487
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ABSTRACT
The history of philosophy is a history of moral circle expansion. This history correlates with a history of expansionism about consciousness. Recently, expansionism about consciousness has exploded: to invertebrates, to plants, to logic gates, and to fundamental entities. The last of these expansions stems from a surge of interest in panpsychism. In an exploratory spirit, this paper considers some largely uncharted territory: the ethical implications of panpsychism. Our conclusion is that while panpsychism probably does significantly expand our moral circle, it's also probably short on anything of practical significance.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Luke Roelofs, Jason Schukraft, two anonymous referees for AJP, and an audience at Texas Tech University for very helpful comments and discussion.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 In axiological terms, we could instead say: ‘recognised as having intrinsic value’.
2 Henceforth, save for when needed for clarity, the ‘phenomenal’ qualifier will be dropped.
3 Granted, the correlation is imperfect. Some expansions of the moral circle have been based on accounts of moral status that are not rooted in consciousness. Biocentric views have pushed for moral expansion based on the property of being alive, not consciousness per se.
4 On the other hand, there has also been some movement towards contractionism about consciousness. For example, on some higher-order theories, consciousness requires a kind of conceptual sophistication, exercised in an ability to token a conceptually thick higher-order thoughts or ‘HOTs’. However, the extent to which HOT theory is contractionist is a matter of controversy; see, e.g., Rosenthal Citation2005, and Gennaro Citation2012. More extreme is illusionism, which says that nothing is conscious (e.g., see Kammerer Citation2019).
5 On insects, see Barron and Klein Citation2016; on plants, see Maher Citation2017; on simple physical systems, see Tononi Citation2012 and Koch Citation2015; on AI, see Brunet and Halina Citation2020.
6 Though see fn. 20 for more on cosmopsychism. Another place of interest that is set aside here is the space between electrons and organisms. If the panpsychist had combination principles that yielded conscious entities sized above electrons but below organisms (e.g., see Roelofs Citation2019), then that too may raise unique ethical questions. Many thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this possibility.
7 Crummett (Citation2022) argues that typical adult humans contain many ‘morally relevant non-agential subjects’ if just one of several various metaphysical theses are true, including panpsychism. Roelofs and Buchanan (Citation2019: 3012–13) briefly discuss the moral implications of universalism, which says that (literally) everything is conscious. Tomasik (Citation2014) discusses suffering in fundamental physics but approaches the issue quite differently than we do. Goff (Citation2019, ch. 5) explores questions related to ‘consciousness and the meaning of life’ given his form of panpsychism, but they aren’t all explicitly ethical (e.g., whether we have free will), and the ones that are (e.g., what grounds ethical objectivity) are different from those taken up here. For work on the ethical implications of panpsychism in environmental ethics, see, e.g., Mathews Citation2003 and Skrbina Citation2013.
8 Likewise, we set aside Coleman’s (Citation2015) panqualityism, which denies that the qualities at the fundamental level—such as the sharpness of a particular pain—are experienced.
9 The term ‘phenomenal theory’ comes from Lee (ms), although he makes it a necessary and sufficient condition. We only need the latter. Other PT-sympathisers include Siewert (Citation1998), Lin (Citation2021), and van der Deijl (Citation2021).
10 Lee (ms) rejects deflationism. But he would say that Grey would be like his ‘Zero’: an entity that cannot accrue welfare goods and bads, but is a welfare subject all the same, because they have a welfare level zero, not no welfare level at all. We set aside the cogency of a welfare level zero.
11 On Duncan’s (Citation2021) view, experience is knowledge of things, a non-propositional form of knowledge.
12 Chalmers stipulates that his Vulcans, while lacking in affect, have desires. While electrons-so-construed would have knowledge, they wouldn’t necessarily have desires. For critical discussion of philosophical Vulcans, see Roelofs Citation2022.
13 This view is sometimes called narrow sentientism. See Roelofs Citation2022.
14 Roelofs (Citation2019) explores similar questions.
15 This is related to Roelofs’s (Citation2014, Citation2019) ‘palette problem’.
16 This view is popular with those in, and influenced by, the phenomenological tradition. It is also endorsed by many proponents of higher-order approaches to consciousness including, e.g., Rosenthal (Citation2005) whose HOTs refer to the self, and Kriegel’s (Citation2009) self-representationalism, which emphasises the so-called ‘for me-ness’ of experience. Of course, here infants would be self-conscious if they are phenomenally conscious, making the first worry inapt.
17 By saying that self-consciousness is constitutive of phenomenal consciousness, we aren’t automatically undercutting the anti-reductionist (i.e., reduction to the physical) impulses that often motivate RP. After all, it’s the sense of self that would need to be reduced.
18 In principle, electrons could differ in their capacities for welfare, just as there could be intra-species capacity for welfare differences. But we don’t know why electrons would vary this way.
19 Note that objective list theorists assume that different kinds of individuals will have different abilities (or no ability, in many cases) to realize the goods on the objective list. Objective list theorists don’t deny that slugs are welfare subjects because they can’t achieve the relevant form of knowledge.
20 This issue is perhaps more pressing if we reject smallism in favor of priority monism, where what’s fundamental is the universe itself, with facts about the ‘little things’ being grounded in facts about the universe. The panpsychist version of this is cosmopsychism (e.g., see Shani Citation2015; Nagasawa and Wager Citation2016; Goff Citation2017), where cosmic-level consciousness facts ground—perhaps ‘by subsumption’, as Goff (Citation2017: 220) puts it—all other facts, including facts about ordinary conscious subjects. This view seems compatible with both affirming and denying the claim that electrons are conscious, but by saying that the universe is conscious, the views discussed earlier suggest that the universe is a welfare subject.
21 Many thanks to Luke Roelofs for raising this point.
22 Fischer (Citation2017) contends that Lewis can dodge this problem.