Last week on IAI News, Peter Vickers gave his own view on the debate between Philip Goff and Bernardo Kastrup concerning panpsychism and idealism, questioning the role of scientific evidence in this metaphysical debate. But his arguments miss the point of the endeavor and rely on a majoritarian view of scientific truth, argues Bernardo Kastrup.
The thrust of Vickers' piece, “Panpsychism, idealism and science,” is an argument about whether theories of mind such as panpsychism and idealism can be considered scientific. He suggests they cannot. The very question, however, already betrays some conceptual confusion regarding the definitional differences between science and philosophy, particularly metaphysics: insofar as a theory of mind is a metaphysics, of course it is not scientific; by definition. It can therefore be argued that the very motivation for his piece is a straw man.
Science studies nature's behavior, insofar as it can be ascertained through empirical experimentation. Metaphysics, on the other hand, although certainly informed by science, makes tentative statements about what nature is. Theories of mind like panpsychism and idealism are metaphysical theories, in that they maintain that mind is a fundamental part of what nature is.
One could argue that, because of its speculative character, we should refrain from metaphysics altogether and focus solely on what science can ascertain about nature's behavior. This is perfectly fine, but it implies that we have to abandon mainstream physicalism as well, for physicalism is a metaphysics; it makes statements about what nature is—namely, entities outside and independent of mind, which can be exhaustively described purely in terms of quantities. Vickers seems to lose sight of this when he says that panpsychism and idealism
can only be suggestions, or hypotheses. What we find is that the two authors [me and Philip Goff] sometimes state explicitly that we ought to believe in their favoured proposal. But given that these are philosophical proposals this seems like an exaggeration.
I don’t recall calling for belief, as that would be rather out of character for me unless I were to be speaking in a religious context (I have commented extensively on religion, though that tends to be clearly demarcated from my analytical work). By and large, I prefer to talk in terms of living according to the most plausible metaphysical hypothesis, which is an exercise in reason, not belief.
Metaphysics, although certainly informed by science, makes tentative statements about what nature is.
Be that as it may, Vickers’ point again applies to physicalism as well. Defending a belief in physicalism should also be considered an exaggeration, a non-scientific speculation, if Vickers’ argument is to remain internally consistent.
To avoid this rather semantic issue, the panpsychist and idealist arguments can be formulated as follows: insofar as it is okay to believe in physicalism, we have better reasons to believe in idealism or panpsychism instead.
Vickers also denies that there can be empirical, scientific evidence indicative of idealism and contradictory to physicalism:
when one tries to place the evidence put forward for panpsychism and idealism on this spectrum, it certainly comes much closer to the ‘fully philosophical’ end of the spectrum.
Issue 93, 7th December 2020
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