If you are a physicalist, must you must also be a panpsychist ?

Philsosopher Galen Strawson. Source: University of Texas, Austin

This is the first of four posts investigating the strong claim of philosopher Galen Strawson that physicalism entails panpsychism. Does he succeed in establishing that panpsychism — the idea that all matter includes experience — is a fundamental reality of nature?

Physicalism entails panpsychism: this is the strong argument presented by British philosopher Galen Strawson. The Oxford trained philosopher now at the University of Texas, Austin, has become known for strongly presented and sometimes maverick positions. His explanation is primarily taken from an essay “Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism” published by Clarendon Press, Oxford, in a book titled Real Materialism and Other Essays (2008).

Strawson’s views on consciousness caught my attention because of his response to emergentism, the subject of the last post. Emergentism, the idea that something new and often unpredicted, emerges from the underlying matter, is used to explain snowflakes, birds flocking, the emergence of life from non-life and the emergence of consciousness from brains. Strawson considers the explanation of emergence in relation to consciousness silly, though not the transition from non-life to life.

Strawson is a physicalist. He argues very strongly for what he calls realistic physicalism…