Mentality”. Is the Conscious Mind Subtly Linked to a Basic Level of the Universe?
Summary Age-old battle lines over the puzzling nature of mental experience are shaping a modern resurgence in the study of consciousness. On one side are the long-dominant “physicalists” (reductionists, materialists, functionalists, computationalists. . ) who see consciousness as an emergent property of the brain’s neural networks (“brain = mind = computer”). On the alternative, rebellious side are those who see a necessary added ingredient: proto-conscious experience intrinsic to reality, perhaps understandable through modern physics (panpsychists, pan-experientialists, “funda-mentalists”). It is argued here that the physicalist premise alone is unable to solve completely the difficult issues of consciousness (e.g. experience, binding, pre-conscious conscious transition, non-computability and free will) and that to do so will require supplemental panpsychist/pan-experiential philosophy expressed in modern physics. In one such scheme proto-conscious experience is a basic property of ph
