In this book, the author takes a stand for a variant of panpsychism as
being the best solution available to the mind-body problem. More
exactly, he defends a view that can be labelled
'dual-aspect-pan-proto-psychism'. Panpsychism claims that mentality is
ubiquitous to reality, and in combination with dual-aspect monism it
claims that anything, from fundamental particles to rocks, trees, and
human animals, has two aspects: a physical aspect and a mental aspect.
In short, the view is that the nature of reality is 'phental'
(physical-mental). But this does not mean, according to the author, that
rocks and photons think or have conscious experiences, in the sense in
which human animals have experiences. This is where pan-proto-psychism
enters the picture as being a better theoretical option, where the
mental aspects of fundamental particles, rocks, and trees are not
experiential.
Many hard questions arise here. In this book, Benovsky focuses on the
combination problem: in short, how do tiny mental aspects of
fundamental particles combine to yield macro-phenomenal conscious
experiences, such as your complex experience when you enjoy a great
gastronomic meal? What makes the question even harder is that the
combination problem is not just one problem, but rather a family of
various combination issues and worries. Benovsky offers a general
strategy to deal with these combination problems and focuses on one in
particular - namely, the worry concerning the existence of subjects of
experience. Indeed, if standard panpsychism were true, we would need an
explanation of how tiny micro-subjects combine into a macro-subject like
a human person. And if panprotopsychism is true, it has to explain how a
subject of experience can arise from proto-micro-mental aspects of
reality. Benovsky shows that understanding the nature of subjectivity in
terms of the growingly familiar notion of mineness in combination with
an eliminativist view of the self, allows us to have a coherent picture,
where this type of combination problem is avoided, without throwing the
baby out with the bathwater.
