Mørch's Phenomenal-Causal Powers Panpsychism

Philosopher Hedda Hassel Mørch advocates a version of panpsychism that integrates insights from both philosophy and neuroscience. It is inspired by Bertrand Russell's concept of a neutral monism, where consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world. Here, the intrinsic nature of physical entities includes experiential aspects, meaning that even basic particles possess rudimentary forms of consciousness (Mørch, 2023).

Phenomenal Powers as Causal Efficacy

In her “Phenomenal Powers” view, Mørch proposes that phenomenal properties—our inner felt awareness (i.e., consciousness)—are not just passive experiences but have active, real-world, causal efficacy. She argues that phenomenal properties are identical to certain causal powers in the physical world.

This perspective aims to bridge the explanatory gap between physical processes and conscious experience. She says, “Phenomenal properties are essentially dispositional—they are the categorical bases of certain causal powers.” This means conscious experiences (like pain, color perception, etc.) aren’t just what-it’s-like experiences but ground or constitute the causal capacities of physical systems. She says, “Phenomenal qualities are not inert; they are essentially powerful—they are the very things that make matter behave as it does” (Mørch, 2020).

Morch articulates her work on panpsychism with Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information Theory (IIT), seeking compatibilities and addressing challenges like the “combination problem,” which asks how micro-simple forms of consciousness can combine to form complex experiences. Separately, she speculates that the hard problem of consciousness and the hard problem of matter (what are physical things like in themselves, or intrinsically?) could be connected.

Linking Consciousness and Matter

According to Mørch, “There is already a tradition for connecting problems in physics with the problem of consciousness, namely in the area of quantum theories of consciousness. Such theories are sometimes disparaged as fallaciously inferring that because quantum physics and consciousness are both mysterious, together they will somehow be less so. The idea of a connection between the hard problem of consciousness and the hard problem of matter could be criticized on the same grounds. Yet a closer look reveals that these two problems are complementary in a much deeper and more determinate way… It goes like this. The hard problem of matter calls for non-structural properties, and consciousness is the one phenomenon we know that might meet this need. Consciousness is full of qualitative properties, from the redness of red and the discomfort of hunger to the phenomenology of thought. Such experiences, or ‘qualia,’ may have internal structure, but there is more to them than structure. We know something about what conscious experiences are like in and of themselves, not just how they function and relate to other properties… This suggests that consciousness—of some primitive and rudimentary form—is the hardware that the software described by physics runs on. The physical world can be conceived of as a structure of conscious experiences” (Mørch, 2017).