Panpsychism has grown in popularity, and many now see it as the leading answer to the hard problem of consciousness – the problem of how consciousness emerges from physical matter. But here, Tony Sobrado argues panpsychism does not solve the hard problem of consciousness. Rather, panpsychism only inverts and multiplies the problems of consciousness. If matter arises out of some fundamental consciousness, we have a comparable emergence problem as the original hard problem. While we also create other problems, like the combination problem: the problem of how separate bits of conscious matter combine into a single entity? 

Panpsychism argues that consciousness does not emerge from the physical brain, nor is it caused by the physical brain. Panpsychism also denies that consciousness is realized in, or reducible to, the physical brain. The central grievance of panpsychists is treating physicalism and materialism as the fundamental layer of reality. This is because for panpsychists, it is not physicalism and materialism that are primary; instead, consciousness itself is the fundamental basis of reality. As a consequence, consciousness is not an emergent phenomenon but the very essence of existence itself. Instead of asking how subjective experience arises from non‑experiential physical matter like brains, panpsychism claims the opposite: that matter itself is composed of conscious units.

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Instead of explaining how consciousness emerges from possible physical transitions, panpsychism must explain how physical transitions emerge from consciousness.

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This inversion is meant to dissolve the hard problem of consciousness (how and why subjective experience coexists with physicalism and materialism) by making subjective experience the actual base of reality itself rather than a mere derivative. For panpsychists of all stripes, it is easier to get physical matter out of consciousness than it is to get consciousness out of physical matter. It should be noted that certain forms of panpsychism deny the ontology of physical matter in the first instance, in a pure idealist manner, and this will be a later focus.

Panpsychism, however, does not solve the hard problem of consciousness—or any problem of consciousness—for all it does is firstly invert the traditional hard problem and then secondly multiply it. This is because once consciousness becomes the foundation of reality, new explanatory burdens arise concerning physical objectivity, individuation, transitional states, and the ontological status of the physical itself.

How does panpsychism invert the hard problem of consciousness?

There are two profound challenges encountered by panpsychism when it inverts the central question behind the hard problem of consciousness, which is How consciousness arises from, or at least coexists with, physical matter, because panpsychism must then explain how objective physical laws and individual conscious minds arise from a universe already innately saturated with consciousness.

The first of these issues is panpsychism’s objectivity problem: it fails to guarantee objective independent reality, which is the bedrock of the modern world, as crassly evidenced by flying planes. “Mind over matter” is a fun sticky poster and an endearing sentiment for mental positivity, but in actuality no evidence exists that anyone can bring down a plane by willing it so. There appears to be a closed domain to physical reality, a wall prohibiting mental interference. Newton’s law that the force of gravity (F) between two objects is directly proportional to the product of their masses cannot be willingly changed by a human mind.