Panpsychism and ensemble explanations

Panpsychism claims that the vast majority of conscious subjects in our world are inanimate and physical. Ensemble explanations account for striking phenomena by placing them within an ensemble of outcomes, most of which are not striking. This paper develops an explanatory problem for panpsychism: pa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhilosophical studies Vol. 179; no. 12; pp. 3583 - 3597
Main Authors Li, Han, Saad, Bradford
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.12.2022
Subjects
Education
Epistemology
Ethics
Metaphysics
Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Mind
Consciousness
Origins of life
Multiverse
Panpsychism
Anthropic principles
Fine-tuning
Observation selection effect
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Summary:Panpsychism claims that the vast majority of conscious subjects in our world are inanimate and physical. Ensemble explanations account for striking phenomena by placing them within an ensemble of outcomes, most of which are not striking. This paper develops an explanatory problem for panpsychism: panpsychism renders two appealing ensemble explanations unsatisfactory. Specifically, we argue that panpsychism renders unsatisfactory the multiverse explanation of why a universe supports life and the many-planets explanation of why a planet supports life.
ISSN:0031-8116
1573-0883
DOI:10.1007/s11098-022-01851-0