Missing Entities: Has Panpsychism Lost the Physical World?
Panpsychists aspire to explain human consciousness, but can they also account for the physical world? In this paper, I argue that proponents of a popular form of panpsychism cannot. I pose a new challenge against this form of panpsychism: it faces an explanatory gap between the fundamental
experiences it posits and some physical entities. I call the problem of explaining the existence of these physical entities within the panpsychist framework 'the missing entities problem'. Space-time, the quantum state, and quantum gravitational entities constitute three explanatory
gaps as instances of the missing entities problem. Panpsychists are obliged to solve all instances of the missing entities problem; otherwise, panpsychism cannot be considered a viable theory of consciousness.
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: Central European University, Budapest, Hungary., Email: [email protected]
Publication date: 01 January 2021
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