In Defence of Cosmopsychism: A Fundamental Approach to the Problem of Consciousness

<p><b>Is the cosmos itself conscious, and could our minds be aspects of its vast, overarching consciousness?</b><br><br> In this ambitious and original study, Khai Wager defends <i>cosmopsychism</i>, the view that the universe as a whole is conscious and that individual minds like ours derive from this cosmic consciousness. Wager situates cosmopsychism within what he calls the <i>landscape of fundamental consciousness</i>, bringing it into productive dialogue with closely related views such as panpsychism, panqualityism, and perennialism. The result is a fresh perspective on one of philosophy’s deepest puzzles: the nature and origin of consciousness.<br><br>The problem of phenomenal consciousness asks how subjective experience can emerge from non-conscious matter. Fundamental approaches reject the idea that consciousness arises from non-conscious matter, instead proposing that it is present at the most basic level of reality. <i>Panpsychism</i>—the most prominent such view—holds that all fundamental microphysical entities are conscious. This, however, leads to the <i>combination problem</i>: how do billions of micro-level minds combine to form distinct macro-level minds like ours? Cosmopsychism offers a radical alternative: rather than being formed from a combination of micro-level instances of consciousness, individual minds are partial aspects of a larger, cosmic-level consciousness. As a result, cosmopsychism sidesteps the combination problem entirely. Yet this gives rise to a new and equally pressing challenge—the <i>derivation problem</i>: how are individual minds derived from the cosmic consciousness?<br><br>Through rigorous and insightful analysis, Wager argues that cosmopsychism can navigate these problems and offers a compelling alternative to both physicalism and panpsychism. As such, this first book-length treatment of cosmopsychism makes an illuminating contribution to debates about the deep structure of reality and our place within it.</p>

ISBN-13: 9781350508613