I recently wrote a review (in Croatian) of Steven Shaviro's book Discognition (2016/2021) which is supposed to be published at the beginning of 2023. Although the review is quite long and detailed, there is really no critique of Steven Shaviro's book or his philosophical position. The reason is that I don't like criticizing and that I also think I am not very good at it (it is a skill which, like any other, has to be practiced). So instead of criticizing I rather focused on making a reliable portrait of the author's book and his position, so that each reader can decide for himself/herself what he/she thinks about the author's book and his position. I expect there will be some readers who will agree with Shaviro's position and others who will not share it. As for me, while I find Shaviro's book interesting and accessible - its two characteristics that made me want to write a review in the first place - I don't share his position. In the text that follows I would like to outline some of my disagreements with Shaviro and other philosophers/theorists who share the same position which can be characterized as panpsychism.
First, we have to define what is panpsychism. To use the definition Shaviro provided on his blog, panpsychism is "the philosophical doctrine that 'mentality' is in some sense a universal property of all entities in the universe, or of matter itself". Now, it is important to note that, following Whitehead, Shaviro doesn't equate mentality or experience with consciousness. Instead, he argues that consciousness is probably quite rare in Nature and that most mental processes (especially what Whitehead calls feelings) are actually unconscious.
Now, the reason why panpsychism came into prominence in the last few decades is that it offers quite an elegant solution to the so-called "hard problem of consciousness", which concerns "the relationship between physical phenomena, such as brain processes, and experience i.e., phenomenal consciousness, or mental states/events with phenomenal qualities or qualia)". Besides panpsychism, there are two other positions known as eliminativism and emergentism. As Shaviro writes, "Eliminativism is a reductionist thesis; it argues that qualia, consciousness, intentionality, and phenomenal experience are merely illusions, or linguistic misunderstandings, which disappear once we understand how neurological mechanisms operate on the physical level". Emergentism, on the other hand, "argues that mentality is the epiphenomenal result of interacting physical processes that have attained a certain level of complexity, as is the case with the massive aggregations of neurons in our brains". What is problematic to Shaviro about both these positions is that instead of trying to explain consciousness, they rather explain it away!
Panpsychism is polemically oriented toward both of those positions. In contrast to eliminativism, it proposes that consciousness (or rather mentality) is real and, in contrast to emergentism, that it "doesn’t just come into being out of nothing; it is always already there, no matter where you look". Thus we return to the fundamental thesis of panpsychism, at least in its Whiteheadian variant, that mentality is the universal property of all entities in the universe.
Although this may seem like an elegant solution for explaining how it is that we and some other animals have phenomenal experiences, by saying that simply all entities have them, there really is no evidence for such a claim. Moreover, since phenomenal experience is by definition something that cannot be empirically proved, there is no chance that pieces of evidence for it could ever be acquired. It is simply an empirically non-testable and non-provable statement. In conclusion, I don't think that panpsychism really explains mentality, as Shaviro seems to imply. Its solution is actually not that different from one practiced by eliminativism. While eliminativism does away with experience (proclaiming it illusionary), panpsychism simply projects it to everything (proclaiming it ubiquitous).
The second reason why I don't endorse panpsychism is because of its epistemic consequences. In his blog post "Panpsychism And/Or Eliminativism", Shaviro presents panpsychism as one of two solutions to the core problem that provoked the emergence of speculative realism, namely correlationism (the philosophical position that we can only think being in its correlation with thought). In that text, Shaviro argues that there are two ways of exiting correlationist circle or of untying the knot of being and thought. The eliminativist solution, which can be found in the work of Quentin Meillassoux and Ray Brassier, proposes that in order to exit correlationist circle we must displace thought (and language) from the world or purge being from thought. In contrast to correlationism which always already presupposes thought, eliminativism urges us to recognize thought's ultimate contingency. Only in this way do we become able to think the world in its indifference to whether someone thinks it or not.
What is problematic to Shaviro about the eliminativist solution is that it restores the old, mechanistic view of matter as entirely passive and inert. Shaviro suggests that it is "anthropocentric prejudice to assume that things cannot be lively and active and mindful on their own, without us". In other words, the eliminativist view presupposes human exceptionalism - it posits thinking as a rare faculty, something only humans can do. Shaviro thinks that, in order to avoid anthropocentrism, we need an alternative way of unbinding the Kantian knot of being and thought - one offered by panpsychism. In contrast to eliminativism, panpsychism urges us to recognize "the commonness and ordinariness of thought". According to panpsychists like A.N Whitehead and William James, thought is not something rare and unique to humans but rather something ubiquitous, found in all of Nature. Everything thinks in its own way - from electrons and protons to plants and animals. Although this may sound at first as an outrageous philosophical hypothesis, Shaviro reminds us that there is actually scientific evidence that suggests that not only "higher animals" but also plants and bacteria can think.
Now, even if this were so and we could agree that thought is, if not ubiquitous, then at least much more common than we used to think, and that not only humans but also other animals and even non-animals evince cognitive abilities, there is still a need for a distinction between sapient and sentient cognition. That is why I cannot agree with Shaviro that "We don’t need a criterion of demarcation, because there is nothing to demarcate or separate". Right on the contrary, if thought is not something unique to humans, then there is an even bigger need for criterion and demarcation between different types of thinking, mainly between conceptual and non-conceptual thinking! And it is exactly this will to absolve and abandon all distinctions that I find unacceptable in Shaviro's position. I think that under the premise of rejecting anthropocentrism panpsychism actually promotes epistemological irresponsibility or speculative language games. By resolving us of any worry about the specificity of our cognitive access to the world and the correctness of our representations of it, panpsychism invites us to indulge in free speculations about "the universe of things". Again, from the epistemological perspective, I find that unacceptable. And I'm deeply convinced that there can be no ontology worthy of attention without epistemology.
Shaviro, Steven. „Panpsychism“. http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=763. Published June 23, 2009.
See Shaviro, Steven. Discognition. Repeater, 2016, pp.?
„Hard problem of consciousness“. http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Hard_problem_of_consciousness.
Shaviro, Steven. „Panpsychism“. http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=763. Published June 23, 2009.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Shaviro, Steven. „Panpsychism And/Or Eliminativism“. http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=1012. Published October 4, 2011.
Ibid.
Ibid.
