Panpsychism and Priority Cosmopsychism
Open accessAbstract
This chapter explicates a version of holistic panpsychism, “priority cosmopsychism,” which is understood as a holistic alternative to classical micropanpsychism. Priority cosmopsychism inherits the idea that there is—ontologically speaking—the whole as well as its respective parts from Schafferian priority monism. Despite this quasi-realistic concept of the respective parts, priority monists claim that the whole is fundamental in the sense that the parts are dependent on or derivative of the whole. To this is added a panpsychistic foundation: the cosmos as a whole is mentally—and in particular ‘phenomenally’—propertied. The chapter asserts that priority cosmopsychism is theoretically more advantaged than panpsychism. They conclude their paper discussing some problems exclusive to Priority Cosmopsychism: the inexplicability of a cosmic consciousness, counterintuitiveness, and the seeming estrangement from science.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Priority cosmopsychism (PC) is the view that the consciousness of individual sentient creatures is derivative of an underlying cosmic consciousness.
“The combination of panpsychism and priority monism leads to priority cosmopsychism, the view that the consciousness of individual sentient creatures is derivative of an underlying cosmic consciousness.”
From Priority Cosmopsychism and the Advaita Vedānta (2019) · cites this paper as Nagasawa and Wager (2016)
Section 4.3 (p. 116) defines priority cosmopsychism as holding that the cosmic consciousness is basic and other consciousnesses are derivative of it. But the same section says priority cosmopsychism does not rely on priority monism and remains neutral about their compatibility; it does not support the sentence’s claim that combining panpsychism and priority monism leads to priority cosmopsychism. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredPC maintains that the physical cosmos as a whole instantiates phenomenal properties.
“Moreover, parallel to PP's claim that all ultimates of nature instantiate phenomenal properties, PC maintains that the physical cosmos, which taken as a whole is the one truly fundamental system of nature, instantiates phenomenal properties.”
From Priority Cosmopsychism and the Advaita Vedānta (2019) · cites this paper as Nagasawa and Wager (2016)
PC argues that the phenomenal properties instantiated by creatures like us should be accounted for relative to cosmic consciousness.
“Likewise, PC argues that the physical cosmos as a whole instantiates the most fundamental form of phenomenality (cosmic consciousness), and that the phenomenal properties instantiated by creatures like us should be accounted for relative to cosmic consciousness.”
From Priority Cosmopsychism and the Advaita Vedānta (2019) · cites this paper as Nagasawa and Wager (2016)
PC maintains that there exists exactly one basic consciousness: cosmic consciousness.
“Parallel to PM's claim that there exists exactly one basic object token, PC maintains that there exists exactly one basic consciousness: cosmic consciousness.”
From Priority Cosmopsychism and the Advaita Vedānta (2019) · cites this paper as Nagasawa and Wager (2016)
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Why panpsychism doesn’t help us explain consciousness
Goff, P. (2009) · dialectica · doi:10.1111/j.1746-8361.2009.01196.x · Cited by 163 · see citing works
Mathews, F. (2011) · The Mental as Fundamental · doi:10.1515/9783110319859.141 · Cited by 52 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 10
- Dehmelt, Hans. "Triton, … Electron, … Cosmon…. An Infinite Regression?" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 86.22 (1989): 8618-19.
- Horgan, Terry, and Matjaz Potrc. "Blobjectivism and Indirect Correspondence." Facta Philosophica 2.2 (2000): 249-70.
- Jaskolla, Ludwig, and Alexander Buck. "Does Panexperiential Holism Solve the Combination Problem?" Journal of Consciousness Studies 19.9-10 (2012): 190-99.
- Montero, Barbara. "Physicalism in an Infinitely Decomposable World." Erkenntnis 64.2 (2006): 177-91.
- Schaffer, Jonathan. "Is There a Fundamental Level?" Noûs 37.3 (2003): 498-17.
- Schaffer, Jonathan. "Monism." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition).
- Schaffer, Jonathan. "Monism: The Priority of the Whole." Philosophical Review 119.1 (2010): 31-76.
- Seager, William. "Consciousness, Information and Panpsychism." Journal of Consciousness Studies 2.3 (1995): 272-88.
- Searle, John. The Mystery of Consciousness. New York: New York Review of Books, 1997.
- Strawson, Galen. "Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism." Real Materialism and Other Essays. Ed. Galen Strawson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 53-74. OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF -FIRSTPROOFS, Tue May 17 2016, NEWGEN acprof-9780199359943.indd 129 5/17/2016 5:28:57 PM
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Beyond Combination: How Cosmic Consciousness Grounds Ordinary Experience
SHANI, I., & KEPPLER, J. (2018) · Journal of the American Philosophical Association · doi:10.1017/apa.2018.30 · Cited by 91 · see citing works
Priority Cosmopsychism and the Advaita Vedānta
Gasparri, L. (2019) · Philosophy East and West · doi:10.1353/pew.2019.0002 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
Medhananda, S. (2022) · The Monist · doi:10.1093/monist/onab025 · Cited by 37 · see citing works
On the Plausibility of Idealism: Refuting Criticisms
Kastrup, B. (2017) · Disputatio · doi:10.2478/disp-2017-0025 · Cited by 35 · see citing works
Deploying Panpsychism for the Demarcation of Panentheism
Leidenhag, J. (2020) · Panentheism and Panpsychism · doi:10.30965/9783957437303_005 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
Cosmopsychism, Coherence, and World-Affirming Monism
Shani, I. (2022) · The Monist · doi:10.1093/monist/onab020 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
Cosmopsychism and the Problem of Evil
Cawdron, H. (2024) · Sophia · doi:10.1007/s11841-023-00965-0 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
- Authors
- Nagasawa, Y., & Wager, K.
- Venue
- Panpsychism
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Published
- 2016-12-29
- Pages
- 113-129
- OpenAlex
- W4251744585
- Cited by
- 82
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 47.23
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- philarchive.org
- Locations
- Oxford University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy and History of Science
- Keywords
- panpsychism, priority monism, Schaffer, cosmic consciousness, phenomenal properties, philosophy of mind, metaphysics of mind
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
