Head to head
Chalmers’s Panpsychism vs Descartes’s Substance Dualism
Chalmers’s Panpsychism and Descartes’s Substance Dualism, 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, Descartes’s Substance Dualism to Dualism.
- Both treat consciousness as fundamental.
- On AI consciousness, Chalmers’s Panpsychism says “Conditional” and Descartes’s Substance Dualism says “No”.
- On life after death, Chalmers’s Panpsychism says “Uncertain” and Descartes’s Substance Dualism says “Yes”.
- On mind uploading, Chalmers’s Panpsychism says “Uncertain” and Descartes’s Substance Dualism says “No”.
- On meaning and purpose, Chalmers’s Panpsychism says “Uncertain” and Descartes’s Substance Dualism says “Cosmic/Ultimate”.
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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.
Descartes’s Substance DualismRené Descartes holds that consciousness, which he calls thought (cogitatio), is the essence of an immaterial thinking substance (res cogitans) wholly distinct from extended, mechanical body (res extensa). Every conscious state, from reasoning and willing to pain, color, and emotion, is a mode of the thinking thing and is immediately present to it. Sensations and passions, though, arise only in the union of mind and body, where brain processes stand in regular relations to experiences they do not resemble.
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.
Descartes’s Substance DualismConsciousness is thought, defined as everything that happens within us insofar as we are immediately conscious of it, and it is the principal attribute of the mind.
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.
Descartes’s Substance DualismNoSince thought belongs only to immaterial substance and matter is pure extension, a machine, however complex, would be mechanism without a mind.
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.
Descartes’s Substance DualismYesDescartes presented the real distinction of soul and body as what makes the soul’s survival intelligible, and the Meditations announce that aim in their subtitle.
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.
Descartes’s Substance DualismNoCopying the body’s mechanism would not copy the immaterial thinking substance.
Chalmers’s PanpsychismUncertainPlacing experience in the basic fabric of nature gives it a cosmic footing, but Chalmers draws no conclusions about meaning or purpose.
Descartes’s Substance DualismCosmic/UltimateDescartes’s system rests on a non-deceiving God who guarantees knowledge and created even the eternal truths.
Nature of mind
Ontology
Chalmers’s PanpsychismPanpsychism (Russellian monism)
Descartes’s Substance DualismSubstance dualism (Cartesian)
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.
Descartes’s Substance DualismMind and body are really distinct finite substances with exclusive essences, thought and extension, and could by divine power exist apart. They are joined in the human being, where bodily motions give rise to sensations and the mind moves the body, though Descartes never explained that interaction satisfactorily.
Fundamental or emergent
Chalmers’s PanpsychismPrimitive
Descartes’s Substance DualismPrimitive
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.
Descartes’s Substance DualismSensory qualities are not properties of matter, which has only size, shape, motion, and arrangement. Experienced redness or pain is a mental mode arising in the embodied union and cannot be captured by extension.
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.
Descartes’s Substance DualismMechanism on the bodily side and non-reduction on the mental side. Light mechanically affects eyes, nerves, and brain, and the mind then experiences color, distance, and shape in regular correspondence with those motions.
Where it is
Chalmers’s PanpsychismThroughout physical reality, at the level of its most basic entities.
Descartes’s Substance DualismThe mind is unextended. Sensations and passions are felt as belonging to one’s own body, and Descartes located mind-brain communication in the pineal gland.
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.
Descartes’s Substance DualismPassions are caused and strengthened by movements of the animal spirits and dispose the soul toward volition and action. The will can in turn move the body.
Evidence and criticism
Testability
Chalmers’s PanpsychismConceptually testable
Descartes’s Substance DualismConceptually testable
Tests so far
Chalmers’s PanpsychismNot stated
Descartes’s Substance DualismNot stated
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.
Descartes’s Substance DualismPrincess Elisabeth of Bohemia asked how an immaterial soul could move a material body, and the interaction problem remains unresolved. Arnauld and later critics charged circularity, since the proofs of God that guarantee clear and distinct perception themselves rely on clear and distinct perception. The standard reading denies consciousness to animals, which most now find implausible.
Sources
Key sources
Chalmers’s Panpsychism
- Chalmers’s Panpsychism, David Chalmers (Landscape of Consciousness entry)
Descartes’s Substance Dualism
- Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes (trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch) (1984)
- Principles of Philosophy, René Descartes (trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch) (1985)
- The Passions of the Soul, René Descartes (trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch) (1985)
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