Condensed Matter
Condensing recent work in metaphysics and the philosophy of science down to what matters. Hosted by Dr Sam Kimpton-Nye, research associate on the MetaScience project (ERC, Horizon 2020, grant agreement No 771509; www.metascience.xyz) at the Unversity of Bristol. Music: NaturesEye from Pixabay. Art: Francesca Smith
Condensed Matter
Ep. 28: "Panpsychism", Thomas Nagel (CM classic!)
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Sam Kimpton-Nye
The focus of this episode is Thomas Nagel’s “Panpsychism”, published by Cambridge University Press in his “Mortal Questions” anthology.
This isn’t a recent paper, it was first published in 1979. But it is a nice, sober, discussion of panpsychism that makes quite clear a relatively sensible motivation for the view as well as what is involved in its denial. This all makes for a nice change to some of the rather heated public debates of the issue nowadays. So, call this a Condensed Matter classic. Maybe I’ll do more of these in future because I definitely think there are plenty of older papers out there that are worth revisiting in this format.
Link to the paper: https://philpapers.org/rec/NAGP