Inconsistencies in Keith Frankish’s Case Against Panpsychism (Part I)

I’m not a Panpsychist, or, rather, I’m not a Panpsychist in any contemporary sense of the term. Nevertheless, Panpsychism has a rich and rigorous history. It deserves to be taken very seriously. With that being said, I stumbled across an article written by the Illusionist philosopher, Keith Frankish—an article that criticizes Panpsychism severely. I wanted to come to Panpsychism’s defense. I also wanted to examine several inconsistencies in Frankish’s own arguments against Panpsychism.    

“Panpsychism’s popularity stems from the fact that it promises to solve two deep problems simultaneously. The first is the famous “hard problem” of consciousness. How does the brain produce conscious experience? How can neurons firing give rise to experiences of color, sound, taste, pain and so on? In principle, scientists could map my brain processes in complete detail but, it seems, they could never detect my experiences themselves—the way colors look, pain feels and so on: the phenomenal properties of the brain states involved. Somehow, it seems, brain processes acquire a subjective aspect, which is invisible to science. How can we possibly explain this?” (Frankish, Why Panpsychism is Probably Wrong, 1)

Keith Frankish insists that colors, sounds, tastes, and pains are real, and that our experiences of colors, sounds, tastes, and pains are also real (he simply qualifies this by saying that we mischaracterize our experiences (or objects of those experiences) as having properties which they don’t actually instantiate but only “seem” to). If we take the above passage at face value, then Frankish seems to be suggesting that my experience of a color, sound, taste, or pain is the way in which the color, sound, taste, or pain looks, sounds, tastes, or feels to me. Or, to simplify, “my-experience-of-a-color” is “the-way-in-which-the-color-looks-to-me,” “my-experience-of-a-pain” is “the-way-in-which-the-pain-feels-to-me,” and so on. 

Frankish goes on to say that the ways in which colors, sounds, tastes, and pains look, sound, taste, and feel to me are “phenomenal properties.” For example, he says, “the way colors look, pain feels and so on: the phenomenal properties of the brain states involved,” (Why Panpsychism is Probably Wrong) “It seems obvious that phenomenal properties, such as the feel of pain,” (Panpsychism and the Depsychologization of Consciousness), etc. To Frankish, “phenomenal properties…seem completely inaccessible to science. They are wholly subjective features, which simply do not show up on the scientific radar.” (Panpsychism and the Depsychologization of Consciousness). Now, if “phenomenal properties” were real, and were instantiated in the world, then what would these “wholly subjective features” be properties of? Frankish states that these “phenomenal properties” (if they were indeed instantiated in the world) appear to be properties of the brain states involved in our experiences of colors, sounds, tastes, pains, and so on (Why Panpsychism is Probably Wrong).

Confusion ensues. If “my-experience-of-a-color” is just “the-way-in-which-the-color-looks-to-me,” and “the-way-in-which-the-color-looks-to-me” is a “phenomenal property,” then we are faced with several inconsistencies.

(I) Frankish denies that “phenomenal properties” are “real” and instantiated in the world. Since Frankish holds that “my-experience-of-a-color” is just “the-way-in-which-the-color-looks-to-me” (cf. “my experiences themselves—the way colors look, pain feels and so on...” (Why Panpsychism is Probably Wrong)), and that “the-way-in-which-the-color-looks-to-me” are “phenomenal properties” (cf. “the way colors look, pain feels and so on: the phenomenal properties…” (Why Panpsychism is Probably Wrong)), it follows that Frankish is committed to the unreality of my experiences of colors, sounds, tastes, and pains. However, this conflicts with his insistence that “our lives are filled with conscious experiences—episodes of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and of having bodily sensations of various kinds” and that these experiences are indeed real (Cf. The Demystification of Consciousness). 

(II) Furthermore, Frankish, being an Identity Theorist, is committed to the view that “my-experience-of-a-color” is identical to a process in my brain. However, Frankish asserts that “phenomenal properties” (if they were instantiated in the world) would be properties of the brain states involved in our experiences of colors, sounds, tastes, pains, and so on. (cf. “the way colors look, pain feels and so on: the phenomenal properties of the brain states involved.” (Why Panpsychism is Probably Wrong)) This is a manifest contradiction. Let me illustrate this. If “my-experience-of-a-color” is identical to “the-way-in-which-the-color-looks-to-me,” and “the-way-in-which-the-color-looks-to-me” is a “phenomenal property,” then it cannot be the case that the “phenomenal property” is a property of the brain processes involved in “my-experience-of-a-color.” Indeed, “my-experience-of-a-color” is ex hypothesi identical to that very brain process. A property (“phenomenal” or “non-phenomenal”) of the brain process cannot be identical to the brain process of which it is a property—an adjective cannot have itself as its own substantive!