One of the questions that people raise about consciousness, is that of how it is possible to have experience. By experience, here, I mean things like pain, color, smell, etc. These are often discussed as qualia. I don’t find qualia talk to be useful, and perhaps I’ll say why in a future post. But there is still the question of why we experience something, rather than nothing at all. And that’s my topic for this post.
Can a material object have experience?
It would seem strange to say that a chair or a table can have experience. If you think of people as material objects, then you have to wonder how they could have experience.
Personally, I do not think of people as material objects. Rather, I think of them as processes. I’m not made of atoms, because the atoms come and go, while I stay who I am. To me, the question of experience is to be looked at in terms of processes rather than material objects.
Before we look at processes, I should mention panpsychism. That’s the view that everything has a little bit of psychology and a little bit of consciousness. So a panpsychist might believe that atoms have some sort of experience.
