Abstract:

We have got it all wrong from the start of consciousness studies. Asking ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ assumes that the physical bat is conscious. This leads to the insoluble ‘hard problem’ of how subjective experience arises from objective matter. I suggest, instead, that bats or humans are not conscious but only the mental models they construct. As well as avoiding the hard problem, this has implications for neuroscience, altered states, and the nature of self. I will explore these implications and ask whether this model based panpsychism makes sense and whether it leads to any testable predictions.