Rosenberg , Reducibility and Consciousness

Although original, intricate and sophisticated, Gregg Rosenberg’s core argument in favor of panpsychism is a version of an argument that has been around for some time. My paper tries to shed some light on Rosenberg's strategy by comparing it to the views of Leibniz (or a fictional philosopher close to him) who took a similar approach. At the heart of the argument is the idea that relational properties are reducible to intrinsic properties. I argue that Rosenberg's position follows in this tradition. If the reducibility thesis is correct then there must be intrinsic properties ‘behind’ the relational properties of matter revealed by science (what Rosenberg calls effective properties). A crude form of the argument proceeds from the further premise that the only intrinsic properties are those properties in virtue of which certain states are conscious. The argument thus requires defense of both the reducibility thesis and the uniqueness claim about consciousness, both of which present serious philosophical challenges.