Head to head
Chalmers’s Panpsychism vs Crick and Koch’s NCC
Chalmers’s Panpsychism and Crick and Koch’s Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC), compared field by field from their entries in the Atlas.
At a glance
- Chalmers’s Panpsychism belongs to the Panpsychism family in Kuhn's Landscape of Consciousness, Crick and Koch’s NCC to Materialism.
- Chalmers’s Panpsychism treats consciousness as fundamental; Crick and Koch’s NCC treats it as emergent.
- On AI consciousness, Chalmers’s Panpsychism says “Conditional” and Crick and Koch’s NCC says “Yes”.
- On life after death, Chalmers’s Panpsychism says “Uncertain” and Crick and Koch’s NCC says “No”.
- On mind uploading, Chalmers’s Panpsychism says “Uncertain” and Crick and Koch’s NCC says “Yes”.
- On meaning and purpose, Chalmers’s Panpsychism says “Uncertain” and Crick and Koch’s NCC says “Humanistic only”.
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The claim
In brief
Chalmers’s PanpsychismDavid Chalmers argues that consciousness may be a fundamental feature of physical reality, carried by the intrinsic properties of its most basic entities. He treats panpsychism, and its cousin panprotopsychism, as a synthesis of materialism and dualism, and holds that it would become the most promising answer to the mind-body problem if someone solves the combination problem.
Crick and Koch’s NCCThis theory proposes a scientific agenda to identify the Neural Correlate of Consciousness (NCC), defined as the minimum activities in the brain that are jointly sufficient and necessary for any specific conscious perception or subjective experience. It asserts that consciousness is entirely physical and can be fully reduced to these specific brain activities.
What consciousness is
Chalmers’s PanpsychismChalmers identifies consciousness with the intrinsic properties of fundamental physical entities, the categorical bases of the dispositions that physics describes. Physics tells us what basic entities do; on this view, phenomenal or protophenomenal properties are what they are.
Crick and Koch’s NCCConsciousness (phenomenal consciousness/qualia) is identified as the Neural Correlate of Consciousness (NCC), the precise minimum pattern of neural activity in the brain necessary and sufficient for subjective experience.
Big questions
Can AI be conscious?Differ
Chalmers’s PanpsychismConditionalSince every physical system has phenomenal or protophenomenal properties at its base, an AI is built from the same ingredients as a brain. Whether it forms a unified conscious subject depends on how the unsolved combination problem is answered.
Crick and Koch’s NCCYesIf consciousness is entirely reducible to physical organizational patterns (NCC), then non-biological systems capable of replicating those precise patterns should also become conscious, barring technological constraints.
Chalmers’s PanpsychismUncertainThe fundamental properties outlast any body, but nothing in the view says whether the particular combined subject survives once the brain's structure breaks down.
Crick and Koch’s NCCNoAs a Materialist theory, consciousness is wholly dependent on the physical brain; cessation of brain function entails the end of consciousness.
Chalmers’s PanpsychismUncertainAn upload would be made of the same fundamental properties, but whether it reconstitutes the same subject turns on the unsolved combination problem.
Crick and Koch’s NCCYesIf the NCC states can be perfectly measured and replicated in a digital or artificial medium (mind uploading), the resulting system would be functionally and phenomenally identical, achieving virtual immortality in principle.
Chalmers’s PanpsychismUncertainPlacing experience in the basic fabric of nature gives it a cosmic footing, but Chalmers draws no conclusions about meaning or purpose.
Crick and Koch’s NCCHumanistic onlyConsistent with Materialism, consciousness is a biological product of evolution and physics, conferring no ultimate cosmic meaning or teleology beyond that which humans create for themselves.
Nature of mind
Ontology
Chalmers’s PanpsychismPanpsychism (Russellian monism)
Crick and Koch’s NCCReductive Physicalism/Materialism. The NCC approach is considered macroscopic materialism.
Mind and body
Chalmers’s PanpsychismMind and matter are two sides of one fundamental stuff that has both physical and phenomenal properties. Chalmers places this ‘monism’ in the sixth of his six classes of views, the nonreductive ones that expand or reconceive physical ontology.
Crick and Koch’s NCCIdentity Theory. Mental states are wholly identical to and fully explained by the physical NCC states.
Fundamental or emergent
Chalmers’s PanpsychismPrimitive
Crick and Koch’s NCCEmergent
Qualia
Chalmers’s PanpsychismQualia are real and irreducible. In the panpsychist version they exist in simple form at the fundamental level; in the panprotopsychist version, basic entities have protophenomenal properties that are not themselves experiences but can ground them.
Crick and Koch’s NCCQualia (the qualitative feel of experience) are identified with the minimum neural activities (NCC) that are jointly sufficient for specific conscious perception, although the mechanism for this identity remains the central 'hard problem' challenge.
How it works
Mechanism
Chalmers’s PanpsychismChalmers reasons dialectically. Materialism (thesis) meets dualism (antithesis) and yields panpsychism; panprotopsychism challenges it and yields Russellian monism; the combination problem then challenges Russellian monism, with no settled resolution yet.
Crick and Koch’s NCCThe search for and definition of the Neural Correlate of Consciousness (NCC): the specific minimum neural activities necessary and sufficient for subjective experience.
Where it is
Chalmers’s PanpsychismThroughout physical reality, at the level of its most basic entities.
Crick and Koch’s NCCLocalized in specific brain areas. Early candidates included the claustrum (as a 'conductor' coordinating percepts); later candidates focused on the posterior cerebral cortex (temporo-parietal-occipital hot zone).
What it does
Chalmers’s PanpsychismBecause phenomenal or protophenomenal properties are the categorical bases of physical dispositions, consciousness sits at the base of physical causation itself.
Crick and Koch’s NCCConsciousness is directly caused by, and is identical to, the NCC activity. NCC mechanisms (spikes, flows, circuits) are seen as constitutive of phenomenal consciousness.
Evidence and criticism
Testability
Chalmers’s PanpsychismConceptually testable
Crick and Koch’s NCCEmpirically testable. The search for the NCC is defined as a scientific program seeking testable biological bases for consciousness.
Tests so far
Chalmers’s PanpsychismNot stated
Crick and Koch’s NCCIdentifying specific clusters of neurons or brain regions (like the claustrum or posterior cortex) that are active during conscious experience.,Measuring electrophysiological activity (e.g., action potentials and neural circuits).
Criticisms
Chalmers’s PanpsychismThe combination problem is the central difficulty, and Chalmers concedes it is unsolved. He also calls panpsychism initially counterintuitive, holding that the sense of oddity fades on reflection.
Crick and Koch’s NCCThe primary tension is the 'explanatory gap': identifying a correlation (NCC) does not explain the identity statement of how physical activity (spikes/chemicals) literally generates phenomenal feel (qualia). The failure to identify a 'clear' NCC after decades of research is a practical limitation.
Sources
Key sources
Chalmers’s Panpsychism
- Chalmers’s Panpsychism, David Chalmers (Landscape of Consciousness entry)
Crick and Koch’s NCC
- Towards a neurobiological theory of consciousness, F. Crick and C. Koch (1990)
- What is the function of the claustrum?, F. Crick and C. Koch (2005)
- The Quest for Consciousness: a Neurobiological Approach, C. Koch (2004)