Constitutive Micropsychism and the Zombie Argument

Panpsychism is a theory of consciousness according to which some rudimentary or primitive form of mentality is a fundamental and pervasive property of reality. Contemporary panpsychism is an attempt to solve the hard problem of consciousness, which arises from the need to explain the nature and origin of phenomenal consciousness (or qualia). Panpsychism has the advantage of avoiding the strong emergence problem, i.e., it does not allow for the emergence of radically new types of high-level properties in the ontology that cannot be reduced to low-level properties and their interactions. The standard form of panpsychism is constitutive micropsychism, according to which there is a distinction between micro- and macro-conscious properties, the latter of which are constituted by the former. Philip Goff advances the microconscious zombie argument against constitutive micropsychism, analogous to the classical philosophical zombie argument. Goff proposes to imagine M-zombies – creatures that are completely physically and behaviorally identical to humans, who lack phenomenal consciousness at the macro level, but whose constituent elementary particles have microconscious properties. If conceivability implies possibility, as proponents of the P-zombie argument believe, then constitutive micropsychism is false, because it is possible that micro-conscious properties will not constitute phenomenal consciousness at the macro level. According to Goff, panpsychists cannot reject the thesis that conceivability implies possibility, because this would undermine their case against reductive physicalism. But if they accept this thesis, they must reject constitutive micropsychism in favor of cosmopsychism and/or emergent panpsychism. This, however, undermines methodological anti-emergentism, because such versions of sophisticated panpsychism allow for strong metaphysical emergence. Such versions of panpsychism no longer have a theoretical advantage over emergent property dualism. However, panpsychists can weaken the P-zombie argument. To argue against reductive physicalism, it is enough that the idea of a P-zombie does not contain obvious contradictions, even if P-zombies are impossible. This proves an explanatory gap between the phenomenal and physical facts, which refutes reductive physicalism. But since conceivability does not imply possibility, the M-zombie argument does not threaten the truth of constitutive micropsychism. And this allows methodological anti-emergentism to be preserved.