Steven Shaviro: "Consequences of Panpsychism" | The Nonhuman Turn Conference, May 4, 2012
Channel: Center for 21st Century Studies
Date: 2012-08-21

Steven Shaviro (English, Wayne State) delivers their talk, "Consequences of Panpsychism," at the Center for 21st Century Studies (UW - Milwaukee) on May 4, 2012 during The Nonhuman Turn Conference.

Introduction by Elena Gorfinkel (0:00)
Lecture (4:25)
Q&A (53:50)

Abstract: Panpsychism, or panexperientialism, is the philosophical doctrine claiming that all things in the universe have some sort of at least incipient mental or experiential quality. The doctrine seems strange, but it has a long philosophical pedigree, and is defended today by a number of both analytic and continental philosophers. If we take the "inhuman turn" in
contemporary thought seriously -- in any of its forms, ranging from Latour's claim for the importance of nonhuman actants, through Jane Bennett's proposals for a "vital materiality," and the various speculative realist critiques of correlationism, to the revival of interest (following Isabelle Stengers) in the nonanthropocentric thought of Alfred North Whitehead -- then we need to consider at least the possibility that "things think," and that thought cannot be confined solely to human beings and other animals with complex nervous systems. My talk is less an argument for panpsychism, than it is an attempt to consider what consequences might follow for the "inhuman turn,” were panpsychism accepted as true. In particular, I want to develop two points. First, against recent neo-vitalisms, I argue that "experientiality" is a more basic and more widespread category than "life" or "vitality." And second, against cognitivism, I suggest that affect precedes and exceeds cognition, and that it is affectivity, rather than cognition or calculation, that lies at the base of mentality or experience.

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