This essay is adapted from the preface to the book What Matter Feels: Consciousness, Energy and Physics.
What Matter Feels is a newly published treatise that offers a bold conceptual framework with which to address one of the deepest intellectual problems: how to explain the relationship between matter and mind. Recent years have seen numerous attempts to solve this problem using existing frameworks from science and philosophy, whether they be computational, neurobiological, mathematical, phenomenological or quantum physical.
While all of these have made valuable contributions, it is widely accepted that none has fundamentally unified our knowledge about the nature of matter from physics with that we have about the nature of mind from psychology. None of these approaches allows us to experimentally study the mental states of physical systems using principles that might explain how those systems have mental states at all.
Had we solved what David Chalmers, 30 years ago, called “the hard problem of consciousness” we would not still be arguing about it.
A New Framework (Based on Some Old Ideas)
The framework outlined in What Matter Feels offers an opportunity to address these challenges experimentally. It sets out a model of mind and its place in nature that draws on a wide range of current scientific and philosophical knowledge but also on the history of that knowledge, and especially on certain ideas that were prominent in earlier centuries but are now largely overlooked.
At the core of the proposed framework is a conjecture that Isaac Newton hinted at in his foundational work, Principia Mathematica, in 1687. In Definition III of the Principia, Newton considered the inherent condition of a body that is being acted on by a force.
A body, from the inactivity of matter, is not without difficulty put out of its state of rest or motion. Upon which account, this vis insita [inherent force], may, by a most significant name, be called vis inertiæ, or force of inactivity.(Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica, 1687)
The conjecture I make in What Matter Feels is that—for the purposes of scientific study—we should consider matter to have, in addition to properties such as mass and charge, a general property called Experience. I follow Newton in thinking of this property of Experience as a state of “difficulty”, or stress, that the body undergoes from its own point of view when it is acted on, against its wishes, by a force.
Experience: A New Property of Matter
In the book I use the word ‘Experience’, capitalised, as a noun in a technical sense that is distinct from — but related to — the various senses in which we use it as a noun or verb colloquially.
Experience in this technical sense is a psychological property that belongs to a portion of matter from its own point of view. It cannot be observed from the ‘outside in’. Yet as I will show, it can be measured.
There is a precedent for an unobservable yet measurable property of nature, which is force. A force cannot be seen. But it can be measured by the changes in motion it produces in a system it acts upon. As will be explained, the psychological property of Experience is measured by the changes in energy a system undergoes when it is subjected to work (as defined in physics).
Besides the general psychological property of Experience, in the book I also define specific psychological properties that can be attributed to matter such as Will, Volition and Conflict and show how these can be measured.
Does Matter Have a Point of View?
The phrase “from its own point of view” above is of utmost importance and highlights one of most conceptually challenging aspects of What Matter Feels.
For the purposes of theoretical and experimental investigation, I ask us to entertain the possibility that all material systems can have an intrinsic perspective, i.e., there can be “something it is like” subjectively to be a material system (to use a phrase given prominence by the philosopher Thomas Nagel).
In saying this, I am following in the wake of earlier scientists such as Gustav Fechner and Ernst Mach in suggesting, as the biologist Ernst Haeckel put it, that matter may be “sensitive”; i.e., matter “feels”. I take this suggestion seriously and literally for the purposes of scientific study. It may, of course, prove to be wrong or require revision in light of experiment.
The Difference between ‘Experience’ and ‘Conscious Experience’
I stress that I am not saying — as some contemporary panpsychists do — that all matter is conscious at some fundamental level, consciousness being defined here as a condition in which a system is aware of itself and its environment. The question of how a given system might become conscious, or even self-conscious, rather than just having a capacity for Experience is addressed in What Matter Feels.
Using evidence from contemporary neuroscience, I describe how nervous systems and brains undergo conscious Experiences when they are organised and behave in certain ways. Conscious and self-conscious Experience, I try to show, are special cases of the general property of Experience.
“But Matter Does Not Experience!”
Many people will balk at the idea that matter can feel, have Experience or sentience of any kind. Yet generations of chemists and physicists have routinely referred to the feelings and preferences of the material systems they study. The earliest example I can find in the modern literature is the physicist James Clerk Maxwell in the 1880s talking about the “experience” of a cannon ball acted on by a force.
Thus the motion of a cannon ball is retarded, but this arises from an action between the projectile and the air which surrounds it, whereby the ball experiences a force in the direction opposite to its relative motion, while the air, pushed forward by an equal force, is itself set in motion, and constitutes what is called the wind of the cannon ball. (James Clerk Maxwell, Matter and Motion, 1877)
Earlier natural philosophers such as René Descartes, Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday also talked about the way material bodies “suffer” or “endeavour” during interactions. Chemists still talk of ‘happy’ and ‘unhappy’ reactions and physicists of systems that ‘want’ to do some things and not others.
Whenever I have asked chemists or physicists what they mean by talking in this way, I invariably get the same response. They say that they are speaking metaphorically; they do not mean to impute psychological states to atoms, liquids or mechanical gears. Matter self-evidently does not feel, they claim. Thinking a bit more carefully, though, how secure is this claim? Has it been tested experimentally? I am not aware that it has. What Matter Feels aims to provide reasons why it should be tested and to suggest how it might be.
Strengths and Weaknesses
What Matter Feels has some unusual features that are both strengths and weaknesses. For one thing it is promiscuously multidisciplinary, drawing on knowledge and methods from the arts, humanities and sciences. The strength here is that the resulting framework benefits from a broader range of perspectives than a monodisciplinary approach could provide.
In my view, the nature of mind and its place in the world are topics that do not respect academic boundaries, and they are certainly not the exclusive concern of philosophy or science. The weakness of the present approach is that the depth and subtlety of the ideas contributed by some disciplines may not be given their full due.
The treatise is also quite short, especially in relation to its scope, and this limits the space for detailed and sustained argument in support of its main claims. But its brevity is also a strength, not just because of the reduced demands it makes on the reader’s time and on the earth’s resources but also because it is only as long as it needs to be to fulfil its main purpose.
It is not intended to convince by argument but rather to outline and illustrate a conceptual framework within which experiments can be conducted to test hypotheses and make predictions. Judgement on the contents of this treatise, I ask, should be withheld pending the outcome of those experiments.
It’s all provisional!
Finally, although this treatise is published it is not finalised. Rather, it is a working document that is designed to encourage discussion and stimulate research.
One of the most valuable lessons I have learnt from my involvement in science is how often rational expectations are confounded by experimental results. When the experiments proposed in the book begin and data is collected, the most likely outcome — based on my previous experience — will be the need for profound revision of what in the absence of that data seemed to be reasonable conjectures.
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What Matter Feels: Consciousness, Energy and Physics (How Science can Explain Minds) is a new book that sets out a scientific framework for studying consciousness. It is available in eBook, paperback and hardback formats from Amazon and other outlets.
The book is accompanied by a series of poster artworks that celebrate and promote the ideas discussed in the book. These are available at https://pepperell.art
A portion of the proceeds from the book and poster sales is used to support interdisciplinary research into the nature of consciousness.