Idealism and the Mind-Body Problem∗

When I was in graduate school, I recall hearing “One starts as a materialist, then one becomes a dualist, then a panpsychist, and one ends up as an idealist”.1 I don’t know where this comes from, but I think the idea was something like this. First, one starts impressed by the successes of science, endorsing materialism about everything and so about the mind. Second, one is moved by problem of consciousness to see a gap between physics and consciousness, thereby endorsing dualism, where both matter and consciousness are fundamental. Third, one is moved by the inscrutability of matter to realize that science reveals at most the structure of matter and not its underlying nature, and to speculate that this nature may involve consciousness, thereby endorsing panpsychism. Fourth, one comes to think that there is little reason to believe in anything beyond consciousness and that the physical world is wholly constituted by consciousness, thereby endorsing idealism. Some recent strands in philosophical discussion of the mind–body problem have recapitulated this progression: the rise of materialism in the 1950s and 1960s, the dualist response in the 1980s and 1990s, the festival of panpsychism in the 2000s, and some recent stirrings of idealism.2 In my own work, I have certainly taken the first two steps and have flirted heavily with the third. In this paper I want to examine the prospects for the fourth step: the move to idealism. 0Forthcoming in (W. Seager, ed.) The Routledge Companion to Panpsychism. Oxford University Press. Thanks to participants in the NYU Shanghai workshop on idealism and in the ANU philosophy of mind work-in-progress group. For written comments, thanks to Eddy Keming Chen and Bronwyn Finnigan. 1I recall either hearing this epigram in conversation or reading it somewhere, with the sense that it came from the school of recent British idealists such as John Foster, Howard Robinson, and T.L.S. Sprigge. To my surprise no one I have consulted (including Robinson) remembers the phrase, so perhaps I hallucinated it or it was the invention of one of my conversational partners. Any leads are welcome! 2The rise of materialism: e.g. Armstrong 1968, Feigl 1958, Lewis 1966, Place 1956, Putnam 1960, Smart 1959. The dualist response: e.g. Chalmers 1996, Foster 1991, Jackson 1982, Kripke 1980, Nida-Rümelin 1997, Robinson 1982 (with support from Nagel 1974 and Levine 1983). The festival of panpsychism: e.g. Bruntrup and Jaskolla 2017, Chalmers 2013, Goff forthcoming, Mathews 2003, Rosenberg 2004, Seager 2002, Skrbina 2009, Strawson 2006 (with support from Chalmers 1996, Griffin 1998, and Nagel 1979). The stirrings of idealism: Adams 2007, Albahari (this volume), Bolender 2001, Foster 2008, Goldschmidt and Pearce forthcoming, Kastrup 2017, Meixner 2017, Pelczar