Head to head
Chalmers’s Panpsychism vs Sam Harris
Chalmers’s Panpsychism and S. Harris’s Mystery of Consciousness, 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, Sam Harris to Challenge.
- On AI consciousness, Chalmers’s Panpsychism says “Conditional” and Sam Harris says “No”.
- On life after death, Chalmers’s Panpsychism says “Uncertain” and Sam Harris says “No”.
- On mind uploading, Chalmers’s Panpsychism says “Uncertain” and Sam Harris says “No”.
- On meaning and purpose, Chalmers’s Panpsychism says “Uncertain” and Sam Harris 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.
Sam HarrisThis perspective, offered as a challenge rather than a prescriptive theory, frames consciousness as an unbridgeable mystery that cannot be solved by purely physical means. Harris argues that physical descriptions are 'mute' regarding subjective experience; the only thing attesting to sentience is consciousness itself, creating a fundamental explanatory gap. He remains pessimistic that science can dispel this mystery.
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.
Sam HarrisConsciousness is identified as subjectivity or sentience, which is fundamentally mysterious and unexplainable by purely physical processes.
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.
Sam HarrisNoIf consciousness is irreducible subjectivity missing from physical descriptions, then advanced computation (AI, which is purely physical complexity) will fail to generate genuine sentience.
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.
Sam HarrisNoAs a naturalist, Harris implicitly aligns with the view that consciousness is tied to the physical organism, meaning its termination results in permanent non-existence, despite the mystery of its nature while alive.
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.
Sam HarrisNoIf consciousness cannot be explained by purely physical processes, then duplication or uploading of the physical substrate will fail to capture or recreate the essential subjective self.
Chalmers’s PanpsychismUncertainPlacing experience in the basic fabric of nature gives it a cosmic footing, but Chalmers draws no conclusions about meaning or purpose.
Sam HarrisHumanistic onlyThe mystery does not imply cosmic purpose, but Harris advocates finding personal truths through introspection, aligning with self-discovered (naturalized) spirituality and meaning.
Nature of mind
Ontology
Chalmers’s PanpsychismPanpsychism (Russellian monism)
Sam HarrisSkeptical/Mysterianism (Justified: The view asserts the philosophical intractability and unbridgeable nature of the mind-body problem, aligning with core tenets of mysterianism, though without adopting a specific alternative ontology.)
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.
Sam HarrisUnbridgeable Gap / Non-reductive Correlation (Justified: Harris asserts that while physical processes correlate with consciousness, no analysis of these processes can logically yield a picture of consciousness, leaving an unbridgeable gap.)
Fundamental or emergent
Chalmers’s PanpsychismPrimitive
Sam HarrisMystery (Justified: Harris declines to fully endorse emergence, stating that while consciousness may be the lawful product of unconscious processing, he does not find that sentence meaningful in explaining sentience.)
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.
Sam HarrisQualia (what it is 'like something' to be) are the phenomenon that physical events are 'mute' about, thus creating the unbridgeable mystery.
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.
Sam HarrisNone (Justified: The core premise is the failure of all current and foreseeable physical/mechanistic principles to explain subjectivity.)
Where it is
Chalmers’s PanpsychismThroughout physical reality, at the level of its most basic entities.
Sam HarrisUnknown/Mysterious (Justified: While consciousness correlates with the brain, the theory explicitly rejects confining the explanation of consciousness to physical location or distribution because the physical world yields no evidence of consciousness.)
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.
Sam HarrisUnknown/Irreducible (Justified: Causal power is not explained by unconscious complexity. The presence of sentience is an ultimate mystery rather than a functional adaptation that can be described reductively.)
Evidence and criticism
Testability
Chalmers’s PanpsychismConceptually testable
Sam HarrisConceptually Untestable (Justified: If the gap is unbridgeable, as Harris claims, the mystery cannot be dispelled by empirical science as currently practiced.)
Tests so far
Chalmers’s PanpsychismNot stated
Sam HarrisNone (Justified: The framework is a diagnosis of science's failure to address the hard problem and does not propose empirical tests for the mystery itself.)
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.
Sam HarrisIt functions primarily as a critique against reductionism and scientific optimism regarding consciousness, classifying the issue as an ultimate mystery, which reductionists reject as pessimism (mysterianism).
Sources
Key sources
Chalmers’s Panpsychism
- Chalmers’s Panpsychism, David Chalmers (Landscape of Consciousness entry)
Sam Harris
- The mystery of consciousness (Part I & II), Sam Harris (2011)
- Explorations in Consciousness: Death Psychedelics and Mystical Experience (2023)